The Worst Hard Time

by Timothy Egan

  "The basic cause of the present Great Plains situation is an attempt to impose upon the region a system of agriculture to which the Plains are not adapted," the report stated. "The Great Plains has climatic attributes which cannot be altered by any act of man, although they may be slowly changed, for better or worse, by natural weather cycles which we cannot yet predict."

  The report moved on to how the disaster had unfolded—a chronology of collapse. One chart showed how quickly the grass was overturned. In 1879, ten million acres were plowed. Fifty years later, the total was one hundred million acres. Grass was needed to hold the soil in place; it was nature's way of adapting to the basic conditions of the plains, the high wind and low rainfall. Buffalo grass, in particular, short and drought-resistant, was nature's refinement over centuries. The turf was intact for thousands of years, and then in two manic periods of exploitation—the cattle boom, followed by the wheat bubble—it was ripped apart.

  "Thus there was not only a progressive breaking up of the native sod but a thinning out of the grass cover on lands not yet plowed."

  But having placed the blame for the flyaway plains on the farming equivalent of a gold rush, Bennett and his colleagues did not then fault the individuals who brought the plow that broke the land.

  "The settlers lacked both the knowledge and incentive necessary to avoid these mistakes. They were misled by those who should have been their natural guides. The Federal homestead policy, which kept land allotments low and required that a portion of each should be plowed, is now seen to have caused immeasurable harm. The Homestead Act of 1862, limiting an individual holding to 160 acres, was on the western plains almost an obligatory act of poverty."

  This was the most damning indictment: the sacred Homestead Act, almost an obligatory act of poverty!

  Technology and speculation came in for their share of blame. Wartime demand drove up prices, stimulating record production. The prices could not hold, leaving farmers to plow more ground as the only way to break even. And these bountiful years happened "at the beginning of a wet period which has apparently been terminated." Had farmers tried to settle the arid plains forty years earlier when it was more typically dry, they never would have broken ground.

  "The dust storms of 1934 and 1935 have been visible evidence to nearly every American living east of the Rocky Mountains that something is seriously wrong. The extent of the erosion on the Great Plains has not yet been accurately measured. It is safe to say that 80 percent of it is now in some stage of erosion."

  Roosevelt liked action plans, programs that could be carried out quickly, grandly mobilizing big forces toward a common goal.

  "We are definitely in the era of building," he said in a speech, "the building of great public projects for the benefit of the public and with the definite objective of building human happiness."

  But the report said there was no easy solution.

  "This is a situation that will not by any possibility cure itself. A series of wet years might postpone the destructive process, yet in the end, by raising false hopes and by encouraging renewal of mistaken agricultural practices, might accelerate it."

  And why should a city person care about this wreckage of lives and land?

  "The situation is so serious that the Nation, for its own sake, cannot afford to allow the farmer to fail," the report concluded. "We endanger our democracy if we allow the Great Plains, or any other section of the country, to become an economic desert."

  It was enough to keep Roosevelt up nights. Failed homestead acts. Settlers misled. A speculative frenzy. And now the retreat: ten thousand people a month leaving the Great Plains, the greatest single exodus in American history. He took to the airwaves, sounding pained and conflicted. In a radio chat on September 6, 1936, too early in the calendar to claim to be from his "fireside," he tried to inspire people to hold on.

  "No cracked earth, no blistering sun, no burning wind, no grasshoppers are a permanent match for the indomitable American farmers and stockmen and their wives and children, who have carried us through desperate days, and inspire us with their self-reliance, their tenacity, and their courage."

  It was an election year, and Roosevelt was extremely popular. Europe was tense, with Hitler consolidating power and fortifying his military in Germany, and the Spanish Civil War a staging ground for the larger battle to come. Consumed by its domestic crisis, the United States declared neutrality in the affairs of Europe. The Republicans ran a Kansan, Governor Alf Landon, the only GOP governor west of the Mississippi. Landon said Roosevelt had no idea how to fix the Great Plains and was taking the country in a radical direction. Most Americans felt otherwise: the election was a rout. Roosevelt carried every state but Maine and Vermont, winning the Electoral College by the largest margin ever, 523 to 8, and the popular vote by more than ten million, with 60 percent of the electorate. Late in his life, Landon was asked about the New Deal and its lasting effect on the country. He said it "saved our society."

  The High Plains, like the rest of the country, had given its heart to Roosevelt. People wrote to him as if he were an uncle, the one who always had an answer.

  "Please do something to help us save our country, where one time we were all so happy," a plainswoman, Mary Gallagher, wrote.

  FDR went back to Bennett and others at work on the larger report of the future of the dusted land. What was next? They had more of the same coming: the past had been a failure, nature was abused, the dust storms were the consequence, don't count on rain to save it.

  "Nature has established a balance in the Great Plains," an early draft of the second report concluded. "The white man has disturbed this balance; he must restore it, or devise a new one of his own." Here was an echo of Aldo Leopold's groundbreaking conservation essay of 1933; they even quoted him, citing the interdependence of people and other species, earth and technology.

  Bennett's agency was ready to start planting the first sections of new sod on the stripped land. But many questions remained: how could grass ever get started during a marathon of drought? What species would survive? How long would it take for the sod to build up, resilient as in the past? Were there enough nutrients in the soil for grass to take hold? Soil science was basic; agronomists could tell the makeup of soil, its composition, but no one had ever dreamed of recreating an entire ecosystem. The new grass would have to live or die on the nutrient-poor land, after it was settled with basic erosion therapy. The nesters had removed a perennial plant, a perfect fit for flat, wind-scraped land, and replaced it with a weak annual. The government bought 107,000 acres in a dead corner of Kansas that drained into the Cimarron River, just over the state line from No Man's Land, and designated it as the first patch in the rebuilding of the great American grassland. They planted a mixture: weeds to hold the ground down, grass from Africa, blue grama, bluestem, buffalo grass, and other flora. It would take time: ten, twenty, maybe fifty years before a big new swath of turf was in place again.

  Roosevelt still wanted something dramatic, something quicker—a Grand Coulee Dam for the soil. His "Big Idea" of planting trees down the middle of America had taken on a life of its own after the Forest Service came back with a positive report. The president had been mocked since he first talked up his vision, a belt of trees a hundred miles wide, stretching from the North Dakota border with Canada to just south of Amarillo, Texas. Trees could not stop the dust. But they could provide shelter from black blizzards, enough so people could get a crop in. He hoped the project could accomplish three things:

  Break up the wind.

  Check erosion.

  Employ thousands of people.

  Some also said the trees would produce more rain, though this promise was never written into the enabling law. And in pushing for government-subsidized tree-planting on the flatlands, Roosevelt was harkening back to an earlier American law, the Timber Culture Act, which allowed people to claim a significantly larger homestead if they agreed to plant and maintain trees on a portion of the land.

  A
tree-planting crew was dispatched to Oklahoma, east of No Man's Land. Roosevelt's Big Idea was underway.

  "This will be the largest project ever undertaken in the country to modify climate and agricultural conditions," said F. A. Silcox, chief of the Forest Service. He apparently had not read the warnings of the Great Plains report, the cautions against trying to remake the climate. The tree planters were CCC crews, young men hungry for work; an eleven-man team could plant six thousand trees a day. Nesters stared at these earnest New Dealers dropping saplings in the ruined soil, planting trees like crops in rows running north and south, filling the tanks of big gas-hauling trucks with water to give the trees a start. Damn fools, the nesters said. Nobody plants a tree on the prairie facing north and south. After a time, the crews shifted and planted rows running east and west, a more effective wind barrier.

  Trees would bring people together, make it easier to live, some of the experts said—social change through hardwood. "We are going to improve living conditions," said Charles Scott, who was in charge of the shelterbelt program in Kansas. "We want to make conditions livable. We want to develop a rural sociability, a rural happiness, a rural contentment which we think such plantings will bring about."

  The goal was to plant 180,000 acres a year, mostly on private land, which the owner would then take responsibility for. The trees were planted in strips up to a mile apart, up to a hundred strips within the width of the shelterbelt. Farming would take place between the strips. One government scientist who had been sent to the Gobi Desert to study what could grow on sterile soil came back with several species; another returned from the Sahara with suggestions. Adjustments were made based on advice from nesters. Into the ground went cottonwoods, honey locusts, hackberries, ash, walnuts, ponderosa pines, and Chinese elms. The trees held through that first winter, and by late spring of 1937, as the dusters started up with the ferocious seasonal winds, Roosevelt sent the crews out again. The president ignored the warnings of Hugh Bennett and others who said man could not alter the basic nature of the Great Plains. Bennett could have his fledgling new grassland and soil conservation districts, but Roosevelt bulled ahead with the idea that had most captivated him from the start. He dispatched his army to half a dozen states, to the most broken counties, the most barren farms, the driest land, with a simple command: plant trees, two hundred million of them, from the top of the plains to the bottom.

  22. Cornhusker II

  AT YEAR'S END, Don Hartwell was worried about his health, his long shadow of debt, the dead land, and about an America that still seemed lost seven years into the Depression. In his summary of 1936, he wrote in his diary that it was the driest year ever in Webster County, Nebraska. He wanted to spend New Year's Eve at a dance in the town of Red Cloud, to put behind him the past twelve months of misery. But a cold drizzle and then a norther packing dust and snow kept Hartwell and his wife at home near Inavale. They ate cornmeal and ham and went to bed early. On New Year's Day, he recorded in his diary the simple facts of life on the farm, the wind at twenty-two miles an hour, gas selling for twenty cents a gallon, which meant it took a full day's work at one of the government road jobs to fill up your tank.

  "Many things of importance have happened," he wrote, "and we are also thankful for some things which did not happen."

  Ike Osteen had walked away from his dugout in Baca County. Hazel Shaw had given up on No Man's Land after losing her baby to the dust. The German Borths had been forced to break up their family, sending the children south to escape death from pneumonia. But in the Republican River drainage of southern Nebraska, Don Hartwell tightened his grip on the land, holding on to it because he had nothing else. At the start of 1937, about nine million acres of former homestead land were orphaned in Nebraska. Hartwell was trying to fend off complete failure—losing the farm to the bank, losing his wife, all his dreams dissolving. He still made a little money playing piano in towns on the Kansas-Nebraska border, banging out dance tunes till early morning. People liked favorites, old-timey songs, but Hartwell would often end a set with the words, "Don't know why, there's no sun up in the sky" from "Stormy Weather," and damn if people didn't care to hear it, Hartwell liked to play it.

  Jan 10

  Influenza is hanging like a pall over the country. Hundreds have died in the large cities & it is gradually closing in on this country. Smallpox was the popular disease last winter.

  Jan 11

  We have only 2 old sows, 6 fall pigs & 5 horses now & I doubt if we can get feed for them much longer. So—I don't know. I don't know whether we can even stay here this year. I wish we could see our way clear again.

  Feb 14

  Well, it's Valentine's Day again! I think everyone has a sneaking desire to send one to someone besides his father or mother or other 'accredited' associates & has still more desire to get one the same way, but few, oh so very few, ever do.

  Feb 18

  The air is filled with dust today. Very bad dust storms are reported in W. Kans., Okla. etc, but that is not unusual for the drouth dust & wind program of this country for the last 4 or 5 years.

  I didn't get home from Superior until 3 a.m. so am rather tired.

  Feb 25

  In Chicago a man offered to give away his baby so he could keep his car and, of course, there is much righteous indignation. But at least he dares to be honest. I'll bet anything that thousands of others would do the same thing, if only they dared to and could.

  Mar 4

  It is fair and clear today, warm in the afternoon. I didn't get home till 2:30 this a.m. But I don't know yet for sure what we are going to do this year & I don't know where or how we can borrow any more money to keep going on this year.

  Mar 6

  I haven't felt extra well for the last 2 weeks. Our yard is bare as the road. I sowed blue grass last spring, but last summers drouth killed it out.

  Mar 18

  We are still wondering what we are going to do this year. We, like the rest have nothing left to mortgage to keep 'farming,' so I don't know. A terrible school house explosion at New London, Texas, 450 killed. Some of our tulips are coming up.

  Mar 30

  Verna & I went to Harry Chaplins sale. A big crowd was there. He, like many others, has lived here many years but also, like many others, is being forced out of the country by the continuous drouth of the last few years.

  Apr 4

  Some people live in hopes of 'something happening,'—I have always lived more or less in fear of it. And, contrary to popular belief, very many of the things we live in fear of DO happen.

  Apr 10

  I did some disking in the field W. of the feed yard in the afternoon. The first disking I have done this year. But we don't know from one day to another what we can or will do this year!

  Apr 14

  Partly cloudy & more or less dusty all the time. I did some disking on the W. bottom in the afternoon. But I don't know yet if & how we can stay here this summer, so it is not very encouraging to try to do very much. Very warm.

  Apr 15

  Well, my hunch concerning last year proved to be utterly correct. 1936 was one of the most complete failures ever known, even here. All the alfalfa & corn I put in last year was utterly destroyed by hot winds except a little fodder on the bottom.

  Apr 16

  The big alfalfa fields which used to be so common in this country are all gone now. Just bare, windswept infested fields remain.

  Apr 24

  Today is the worst so far this year. A mile gale from the N.W. & blinding dust. One can't do much & it doesn't look as though there was any use of doing much anyway. Wind, dust & drouth are getting worse every day.

  Apr 30

  April is ending! I wonder if we ever will live here another April.

  May 20

  The dust still hangs in the air & the drouth is getting worse all the time. I planted corn on the W. bottom. The heat & dust were stifling 1–3 p.m.

  May 25

  Well, I finished planting corn—until
I start replanting it. It seems nothing grows for me even after I get it planted. The air still is sort of hazy & dusty but clouds gathered in the S.W. at 6 p.m. Verna and I went in the cellar for awhile.

  May 29

  Went to R. Cloud ... We took our lawn mower & rake along & cleaned up the cemetery lots.... I went to Riverton to play for a dance—not many there. I doubt if I go again.

  June 1

  I finished re-planting corn today—I guess.

  June 19

  Today was as mean as one could ask for. A driving S.W. wind, dust coming in clouds from the river & at 6 p.m. a vague dusty cloud from the N.W., which passed with a few drops of rain. A crowd gathered for an out door picture show but none was held.

  June 22

  The drouth really got going today. I weeded the corn N. of the feed yard—but the horses have taken to giving out so I don't know just how I will get along. Bad luck seems to follow me.

  July 2

  I laid a thermometer on the ground at the base of a hill of corn today, it registered 137 degrees!

  July 4

  Today is Sunday & the 4th of July, a quiet combination in Inavale. A clear sky, a blazing sun. I swept & dusted in the forenoon. We had cherry pie for dinner. We didn't go anywhere. We used to years ago, but those days are gone—forever, I guess.

  July 7

  The drouth still continues its way of destruction & despair. First the alfalfa seed didn't come up because of drouth now nearly all the cane I sowed is destroyed & it is now starting to destroy the corn, corn is damaged about 20 percent.

  July 14

  Some Russian aviators flew from Moscow to California over the N. Pole today, that would be easy compared to raising corn in Webster C., Nebraska.

  July 15

  I placed a thermometer out in the field beside a stalk of corn, it registered 140 degrees! No wonder things burn! A carnival is in R. Cloud but I haven't been to one for a long time.

  July 16

  One small cloud formed in the W., another in the N.W. This one went S.E. & gave Red Cloud rain & hail, we got a light shower at 7 p.m. One of the horses got sick in the afternoon. I don't know—it seems as though we haven't much left to do much with.