Volume 18 , Issue 24

1935 - The Dust Bowl .... If It Rains

Let us take a trip back to the mid-1930s 15 April 1935, with this front page news article from the Miami Daily News-Record, Miami, Oklahoma, written by Associated Press Staff Writer, Robert Geiger: "Life In Dust Bowl of United States Being Ruled Today By Three Words ... "If It Rains."

Found on Newspapers.com

This was the first of three stories surveying the situation in the dust sector of the Southwest, but small in terms of the whole which had been swept by a series of spectacular dust storms. They were written by Robert Geiger, Associated press staff wit ere, who traveled through the greater part of the "dust bowl."

Guymon, Okla., April 15, (1935) -- Three little words - achingly familiar on a western farmer's tongue - rule life today in the dust bowl of the continent.

It it rains ....
Ask nay farmer, any merchant, any banker what the outlook is, and you hear them - if it rains ....

It it rains .... some farmers will get a wheat crop.

If it rains .... fresh row crops may flourish.

If it rains .... pasture and range for livestock may be restored.

If it rains .... fields quickly listed into wind-resisting clods may stop the dust.

If it rains .... it always has"

The next three weeks will tell the story.

Black and saffron clouds of dust, spectacular, menacing, intensely irritating to man and beast alike, choking, blowing out tender crops, and lasting without mercy for days, have darkened everything but hope and a sense of humor in the dust sector of the Southwest.

Only Small Part
The Southwest is big and the dust area is only a small chunk of it. Roughly, it takes in the western third of Kansas, southeastern Colorado, the Oklahoma Panhandle, the northern two-thirds of the Texas Panhandle, and northeastern New Mexico.

It always has been a region of sparse rainfall. The World war, with it high wheat prices and urgent demands, sen the the plow into the sod and turned this into wheat country. Before then it was range land, and the crop was native buffalo grass, which held the soil firm against insistent winds.

The last three years have been years of drouth, with this spring's field-eroding dust storms their stifling climax. But dust storms are nothing new in the Southwest. Forty years before - decades before the wheat farmers came with their combines - a dust storm of such violence swept western Kansas that stopped trains, just as they were stopped last week. "This is a tough, hardy country," its farmers say, "it will come back overnight."

Two Distinct Types
Dusters approach the prairie country in two ways. Sometimes they start when a gigantic yellow and red cloud floats across the country, high in the air, blotting out the sun.

The wind is gentle, growing in velocity very slowly. This type of storm carries a fine, powdery silt that seems soft and hazy - until you start breathing in it.

The other type starts with a blast, and a huge black cloud approaches across the plains at tremendous speed. It strikes all at once along a well defined front. It carries sand and on hands and face, feels like the blast of a chaff from a threshing machine.

When at tis height, bright lights in towns are invisible across the street, visibility is zero and within buildings lights must be turned on as at night.

The fine silt penetrates motor blocks, and, if motorists are unwary, grinds out bearings.

Bring Huge Drifts
These are the storms which leave drifts of dust along the highways and fences, some times dust drifts up to the eaves of farm buildings.

It can't be kept out of a house and dishes have to be washed not three times, but six times daily - before and after every meal.

But despite the hardship, and a generally encouraging prospect, not a single one of more than 100 farmers interviewed by your correspondent was leaving the country. Each on had hope a getting a crop.

Take Charles Hitch, an elderly rancher-farmer, living south of Guymon, who came here in 1886.

"For the first time since I have been on Goldwater creek - and I was the first settler - we are thinking of shipping cattle to greener pastures," he said.

Drought Is Worse
"Recent dust storms are not much more severe than others in former years," Hitch said, but the drought is worse. "My ranges have supported as many as 10,000 head, but I have only 800 head now and they cannot find sufficient feed. WE have to feed them cottonseed cake.

"But cattle prices are on the upgrade, and I am not discouraged. WE even will get a wheat crop if rains comes. If there is no rain, we will have to start shipping cattle in a few weeks."

A. L. Thereon lives one the line in Texas, and is a big wheat producer. He raised 90,000 bushels in 1931, got only 25 cents a bushel for it. The best he can hope for, he thinks, is a half-crop.

"But we are not suffering acutely," he added. "The government is paying better than a dollar an acre to us in wheat benefits, and in addition we can sell what wheat we raise. That will keep the farmers going. The federal wheat program is OK, and if it wasn't for that the farmers would be in an awful hole. They can hold on indefinitely with wheat payments."
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