The Grapes of Wrath

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath

. . . Deep plowing and other methods used to prepare the land for cultivation eliminated those native prairie grasses that held the soil in place and retained the moisture during period of drought. When and condition caused crops to wither and die, topsoil lay exposed to the elements. The first “black duster” or “black blizzard” occurred on September 14, 1930. The worst came on April s14, 1935, when multiple storm in a single afternoon moved twice as much dirt and had been dug in seven years to create the Panama Canal. All this reduced the Great Plains farmers to a wretched poverty and forced many to migrate westward in a thankless quest for work (as depicted in John Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’). Yet there was no mass starvation. And those who expressed their opposite to government policy -- notably Hugh Hammond Bennet, the author of ‘Soil Erosion: A National Menace’ -- were not persecuted but promoted. The National Industrial Recovery Act, passed in June 1933, established the Soil Erosion Service in the Department of the Interior. Bennett was put in charge of it in September 1933. He also sat on the Great Plains Drought Area Committee, the interim report of which, on August 27, 1936, stated unequivocally, “Mistaken public Policies have been largely responsible for the situation.” . . . Page 186

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