Dust Bowl: Capitalism is the Cause of the Environmental and Economic Disaster

In his work, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930’s, Donald Worster primarily argues that capitalism is the cause of the environmental and economic disaster that was the Dust Bowl. Worster starts in his introduction discussing three ways in which capitalism was responsible for the Dust Bowl. These ways were “nature must be seen as capital,” “man has a right, even an obligation to use this capital for constant self advancement,” and “the social order should permit and encourage this continual increase of personal wealth”. Worster goes on to explain that “Every society has within it, of course, contradictory values”. Not only does Worster explain how capitalism is at fault for the Dust Bowl and it’s environmental and economic effects, but so do the people who went through it.

Woody Guthrie’s 1940 Album Dust Bowl Ballads contains songs with some quite obvious titles as to what the content of the lyrics will be. Such as “Dusty Old Dust,” “Dust Bowl Refugee,” and “Dust Pneumonia Blues.” That being said, one of the best tracks on this album to show capitalism as the cause of the Dust Bowl is “I Ain’t Got No Home in This World.” A line in this song we can really look at is “Was a farmin’ on the shares, and always I was poor” . Many farmers within the Dust Bowl were not farming their own land through no fault of their own. Due to the quick, massive increase of farming in the plains, the actual value of crops such as wheat fell significantly. As the law of supply and demand would indicate, as the wheat supply grew larger and larger, the value of wheat shrunk more and more. Because of this, many farmers in the Dust Bowl were driven into tenant farming.

The problem with tenant farming is that it kept poor farmers poor, and prevented any real chance at upward social mobility. Hence why sharecropping, a form of tenant farming, is described by historian Henry Louis Gates as “as close to slavery as you can get without actually being slavery.” Farmers wound up being stuck in these situations as tenant farmers because of capitalism. In order for farmers to sustain their lifestyle as farmers, they had to resort to means such as tenant farming to have the money necessary to stay on their land, while also being unable to climb out of the endless debt that tenant farming causes. If not for capitalism, and if not for nature being seen as capital like Worster describes, this would not have had to happen.

Not only is it important to look at the financial issues within the Dust Bowl, it is equally as important to understand the hardships of just trying to live, whether those struggles are due to finances or just simply trying to survive, that everyone living in the southern plains had to deal with the environmental catastrophe that was taking place. “Wearing our shade hats, with handkerchiefs tied over our faces and Vaseline in our nostrils, we have been trying to rescue our home from the accumulations of wind-blown dust which penetrates wherever air can go”. This is just a small part of one of a series of letters written by Caroline Henderson, but it gives you a taste of what it was like to just try to keep your home an inhabitable place during what was very much a self inflicted event.

So what does capitalism have to with this event being self inflicted? Caroline Henderson, in a separate letter wrote “Oklahoma is one of the first states to get away from direct relief. Official reports of the administrators here emphasize the eagerness with which people accept any sort of work to help themselves and to make unnecessary the acceptance of public aid”. This shows an attitude that many Dust Bowl farmers possessed about individual perseverance and denying government aid. This is another example of capitalism contributing heavily to the rise of the Dust Bowl. The role of capitalism in instilling these ideals that go right back to Worster’s introduction where he mentions the drive to use the land available as a means for personal gain. This drive for personal gain causes individuals and families to feel the need to accomplish things and make money for pride instead of knowing when to stop and ask for help. Even the most successful people can’t go at it alone, and capitalism suggesting you very well can was detrimental to Dust Bowl farmers.

All things being considered, the Dust Bowl could have been prevented with responsible farming practices, and a government more willing to intervene before things got out of control. It should not have taken one of the worst ecological disasters in not just American history, but all of human history to realize that laws such as the Soil Conservation, which was created to help “build soil protection and water conservation works”, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which was created for “ price stabilization and income support through government purchases, marketing boards, and land retirement” were needed to protect farmers and other citizens. If not for capitalism, and the laissez faire approach by the government in the early days of the Dust Bowl, this crisis could have possibly been avoided. However, the government, banks, and the folks living within the Dust Bowl were so focused on the second way that Worster says capitalism caused the Dust Bowl, how humankind was encouraged to use land to benefit their own personal gain and wealth, with little regard environmental impact due to the conflicting values of capitalism and environmentalism.