The Worst Hard Time: A Book Review

Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 340 pages, Some photographs, a map, and an abridged appendix with notes and source references.


Seeing this book sitting on my desk waiting to be read, a friend warned: “I didn’t want to go outside after reading that book.” Although I didn’t find it quite that intense, there are places in the book where Egan describes the suffocating dust in such detail that I found myself breathing deeply and cherishing each breath. This is history that reads like a novel. I’m glad for who ever it was that reviewed this book in their blog which caused it to rise to the top of my “to read” pile.

After years of bumper wheat crops, in which large sections of the high plains were cultivated, a drought descended upon the region in the 1930s. With no water to spout new growth and all the native grasses having been removed for wheat, the topsoil of the region began to blow away. Huge black storm clouds of dust would descend upon the region that became known as the “Dust Bowl.” Some of these storms were so strong that the dust descended not only on cities on the Eastern Seaboard, but were even witnessed by ships out in the Atlantic. The description of “Black Sunday,” April 14, 1935, with its huge dust clouds filled with static electricity, reads as if out of the horror genre. That one storm carried twice as much dirt as had been dug out of the Panama Canal (8).

Egan discusses the reasons behind the dust bowl. Certainly nature played a role, but these areas had faced drought before without such consequences. Ultimate blame was placed on human intervention. The removal of the buffalo and the wandering tribes of Native Americans set the stage for the area to be converted first into livestock production while its sale helped fund the Texas state capital (26). After the huge cattle ranches failed, the land was divided by land speculators into parcels for wheat and corn. Marketing played a role as the area, which had previously been referred to as the Great American Desert, became known as the Great Plains (22). Great advances in technology allowed farmers to expand production. In the 1930s, it only took a farmer 3 hours to plant and harvest an acre of land, a drastic improve over a century earlier when it took a farmer 58 hours to do the same work. (47) “Machinery was, as Henry Ford proclaimed, “the new Messiah” (75).

Immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia flooded into the region, taking advantage of the “Homestead Act” which granted 160 acres of land upon which they could raise a family. Egan tells of the German settlers, who’d left Germany centuries before, taking up the free land offer along the Volga River by Catherine the Great. She also promised these Eastern European settlers (opened to all but Jews [64]), many of whom were pacifist, an exemption from the Czar’s draft. That promise was withdrawn in the 1870s, causing whole villages of German/Russians to flee to America (63-65). Ironically, these settlers also brought Russian thistle, also known as Tumbleweed, with them. (63)

In the wet years of the early 20th Century, aided by machinery, this area produced huge wheat crops. In the teens and twenties, wheat was in great demand, especially with Europe engulfed in the Great War and with the turmoil in Russia forcing them to suspend wheat exports. But by the late 20s, with so much acreage in wheat and Russia once again exporting, the price of wheat dropped. Then the depression hit. Huge stockpiles of wheat accumulated along the western railroads. With such surpluses and with the skies drying up, the land was often left barren, exposed to the winds and storms. With so many farmers in the region going five years without having a harvest, it’s amazing that all of the “sod busters” didn’t flee the region. Many did leave, but many also stuck it out.

Under Roosevelt’s Administration, a fundamental shift occurred as the government was looked to for help in solving problems. Roosevelt depended upon the son of a North Carolina cotton farmer (I had to plug my mother state), Hugh Bennett, to help draft a plan to save the area known as the Dust Bowl. Under Bennett’s direction, much of the homesteaded land was repurchased by the government and replanted in grasses imported from Africa with the use of CCC workers. His belief was that it was more cost effective to buy people off marginal farms than to continue to dole out relief (255). Bennett also worked with local farmers, creating soil conservation districts. He insisted that farmers work together for what happens on one farm would impact his neighbors. These soil conversation districts are the last of the grass-root depression-era programs that have survived and continue to operate. (311).

In telling the story of the Dust Bowl, Egan weaves together numerous stories of individuals whose heroism, faith and determinism comes through in the pages of this book. The Worst Hard Time is both a testament to their lives as well as a warning that we, the inhabitants of the earth, are connected to one another and that our actions toward the land have implications for others. He shows the good and the bad: the willingness to help one another as well as the racial tensions and Klan activity in the region. Hardship both forces people to come together but also makes them fearful of those who are different. One important point in this book is how the government can bring about positive change and help relieve suffering. Of course, the government can’t make it rain any more that the con-artists who promised rain. Admittedly, some of the ideas from Roosevelt’s Administration, like planting trees in the region, were half-baked. But people were helped and much but not all of the land has been reclaimed.

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