what exactly is the "dirty thirties"?

Question

i have to write a persuasive paragraph about why the farmers couldn't farm in the 1930's. i was going to say something about the stock market crashing, and the dirty thirties, but i dont really know waht exactly it is.. any suggestions to help me? or can someone tell me what exactly it was?

Answer 1

You are on the right track. Here are some additional information that may help you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Thirties

Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl was a series of catastrophic dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands in the 1930s, caused by decades of extensive farming without crop rotation among cotton, corn and grain farmers using techniques that promoted erosion coupled with severe drought. The fertile soil of the Great Plains was exposed through removal of grass during plowing. During the drought, the soil dried out, became dust, and blew away eastwards, mostly in large black clouds. At times, the clouds blackened the sky all the way to Chicago, and much of the soil was completely lost into the Atlantic Ocean. This ecological disaster caused an exodus from Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and the surrounding Great Plains, with over 500,000 Americans left homeless. Many Americans migrated west looking for work while many Canadians fled to urban areas like Toronto. Some two-thirds of farmers in "Palliser's Triangle", in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, had to rely on government aid to survive. This was due mainly to drought, hailstorms, and erratic weather rather than to dust storms such as those which were occurring on the U.S. Great Plains farther south. Some residents of the Plains, especially Kansas and Oklahoma, fell prey to illnesses and death from dust pneumonia and the effects of malnutrition.

The agricultural market was particularly unstable during the 1930s, due to overproduction following World War I. National and international market forces during the war had caused farmers to push the agricultural frontier beyond its natural limits. Increasingly, marginal land that was previously considered unsuitable for use was developed to capture profits from the war.

On November 11, 1933, a very strong dust storm stripped topsoil from desiccated South Dakota farmlands in just one of a series of bad dust storms that year. Then on May 11, 1934, a strong two-day dust storm removed massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the worst such storms of the Dust Bowl. The dust clouds blew all the way to Chicago where filth fell like snow, dumping the equivalent of four pounds of debris per person on the city. Several days later, the same storm reached cities in the east, such as Buffalo, Boston, New York City, and Washington, D.C. That winter, red snow fell on New England.

On April 14, 1935 known as "Black Sunday", twenty of the worst "Black Blizzards" occurred throughout the Dust Bowl, causing extensive damage, turning the day to night. Witnesses reported that they could not see five feet in front of them at certain points.