What happened to the people who moved to California during the Dust Bowl?

What happened to the people who moved to California during the Dust Bowl?

The arrival of the Dust Bowl migrants forced California to examine its attitude toward farm work, laborers, and newcomers to the state. The Okies changed the composition of California farm labor. They displaced the Mexican workers who had dominated the work force for nearly two decades.

What effects did the Dust Bowl have on farmers?

The drought, winds and dust clouds of the Dust Bowl killed important crops (like wheat), caused ecological harm, and resulted in and exasperated poverty. Prices for crops plummeted below subsistence levels, causing a widespread exodus of farmers and their families out the affected regions.

What happened to the Dust Bowl migrants?

When the drought and dust storms showed no signs of letting up, many people abandoned their land. The Dust Bowl exodus was the largest migration in American history. By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Plains states; of those, 200,000 moved to California.

Why did many farmers move during the Dust Bowl?

Migration Out of the Plains during the Depression. During the Dust Bowl years, the weather destroyed nearly all the crops farmers tried to grow on the Great Plains. Many once-proud farmers packed up their families and moved to California hoping to find work as day laborers on huge farms.

Why did Okies move to California?

“Okies,” as Californians labeled them, were refugee farm families from the Southern Plains who migrated to California in the 1930s to escape the ruin of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl years on the Southern Plains also had economic origins.

Why did people move to California Dust Bowl?

Migrants Were Feared as a Health Threat Many families left farm fields to move to Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay area, where they found work in shipyards and aircraft factories that were gearing up to supply the war effort.

How did farming change after the Dust Bowl?

Some of the new methods he introduced included crop rotation, strip farming, contour plowing, terracing, planting cover crops and leaving fallow fields (land that is plowed but not planted). Because of resistance, farmers were actually paid a dollar an acre by the government to practice one of the new farming methods.

What damage did the Dust Bowl cause?

The strong winds that accompanied the drought of the 1930s blew away 480 tons of topsoil per acre, removing an average of five inches of topsoil from more than 10 million acres. The dust and sand storms degraded soil productivity, harmed human health, and damaged air quality.

Did the Okies strike in California?

Southwesterners had been moving west in significant numbers since 1910. Although Oklahomans left for other states, they made the greatest impact on California and Arizona, where the term “Okie” denoted any poverty-stricken migrant from the Southwest (Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas). …

What impact did the Okies have on California farm workers?

The damaging environmental effects of the dust storms had not only dried up the land, but it had also dried up jobs and the economy. The drought caused a cessation of agricultural production, leading to less income for farmers, and consequently less food on the table for their families.

What happened in California in the 1930s?

California was hit hard by the economic collapse of the 1930s. Businesses failed, workers lost their jobs, and families fell into poverty. In spite of the general gloom of the decade, Californians continued to build and celebrate their Golden State.

How did the Dust Bowl affect people’s lives?

The Dust Bowl was a hard time during the great depression. The Dust Bowl negatively affected people in a personal way. The dust was hard to keep away. People fled and left everything.

What would have happened if the Dust Bowl migrants crossed state lines?

Poor people crossing state lines would have a clear set of rights in the aftermath of the Dust Bowl migration, and the plight of farm workers would be more visible even as the Joads left the fields to families with darker skins and different accents.

How did the Great Plains help farmers survive the Dust Bowl?

These programs helped many of the Dust Bowl residents survive long enough for the rains to return and for the renewed demand for wheat brought on by World War II (1939–1945). As the United States entered the 1930s, Great Plains farmers were among the most prosperous in the nation, while farmers in other regions struggled.

How did the Dust Bowl get its name?

The Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl got its name after Black Sunday, April 14, 1935. More and more dust storms had been blowing up in the years leading up to that day. In 1932, 14 dust storms were recorded on the Plains. In 1933, there were 38 storms.