Lange, Dorothea, photographer. Sharecropper family near Hazlehurst, Georgia. July, 1937. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa2000001489/PP/. (Accessed October 03, 2016.)

Farmers Desert Dust Bowl Lands¹

Settlement Problem Faces Officials

Washington, April 8, 1937 (AP)—Federal relief leaders said today one of their big unsolved problems was caring for between 100,000 and 150,000 farmers and their families who left the Great Plains drought area for a new start in the Far West.

The resettlement administration and state relief leaders in California, Washington, Oregon and Utah contend the migration is a national problem calling for federal action.

A federal report described the mass movement from the region of drought and dust storms as “probably the last great migration of settlers to the Far West.”

If searing heat and rainless weather should ruin crops on the Great Plains again this year, officials predicted the migration will reach larger proportions.

Resettlement officials estimated that more than half of the families who moved to the northwest were virtually destitute, about one-fourth had saved a few hundred dollars, while a few had salvaged enough to finance purchase of a new farm.

Lack of residence requirements made federal and state relief aid difficult, the survey said, and many families spent the winter in shacks, hovels, deserted tourist camps and tents.

“Living conditions in many of these shack towns were a disgrace to civilization.” the survey said.

Squatter camp on county road near Calipatria. Forty families from the dust bowl have been camped here for months on the edge of the pea fields. There has been no work because the crop was frozen. March 1937. ²

Part of the daily motorcade of drought refugees. The Montana-North Dakota state line. July 1936.³

Oklahomans bound for Oregon along a highway in California. February 1937.⁴

References:

1. Reading Eagle, Reading, Pennsylvania, April 8, 1937
2. Lange, Dorothea, photographer. Image retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa2000000922/PP/. (Accessed October 03, 2016.)
3. Rothstein, Arthur, photographer. Image retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998019552/PP/. (Accessed October 03, 2016.)
4. Lange, Dorothea, photographer. Image retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998019552/PP/. (Accessed October 03, 2016.)

Notes:

1. This post was originally published June 17, 2013. It has been updated to be more “mobile friendly” and republished October 6, 2016.

Random Topic #7

The inspiration for this little video was selection of a random prompt, in this instance, “liberate.”  A search of the Internet Archive came up with the newsreel footage and, with a limited  amount of editing, this video was produced for a “random topic” blog post.

Video Selected, Edited and Published 9/23/2016

A temporary Blast from the Past post after reediting for new information. Originally posted June 13, 2011.

Lange, Dorothea, photographer. Unemployed lumber worker goes with his wife to the bean harvest. Note social security number tattooed on his arm. Oregon.  Aug, 1939. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa2000004443/PP/. (Accessed September 29, 2016.)

A public records search shows that 535-07-5248 belonged to one Thomas Cave, born July 1912, died in 1980 in Portland. Which would make him 27 years old when this picture was taken.¹

Part of:  Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection

References:

1. Shorpy

The Bitter Years, Wall 2 (Drought and Erosion)
Corn withered by heat and chewed by grasshoppers. Terry, Montana.
July, 1936.
Arthur Rothstein 5045-D

The Bitter Years, in 1962, was Edward Steichen’s last exhibition as Director of the Department of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The images in the exhibition were personally selected by Steichen from 270,000 photos taken for the Farm Security Administration by a team of photographers employed between 1935 and 1941 to document (primarily) rural America during the Great Depression.

Image information:

• Rothstein, Arthur, photographer. Corn withered by heat and chewed by grasshoppers. Terry, Montana. July, 1936. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998019562/PP/. (Accessed September 19, 2016.)
• Call Number: LC-USF34- 005045-D [P&P]
• Part of: Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection

Art on Sunday #18 and Random Topic #6

The random topic this time was earth which I used as a search term in The Commons at Flickr, changing the results from relevant to interesting, with the above image one of the early results. The Passion Flower image was sketched and painted by Sophina Gordon in the 1860s, and compiled with others into a book, Flowers, Earth’s Silent Voices,¹ with select verses, published in 1865.  The accompanying poem, Flowers Bless Us, was actually part of a longer poem by English poet Mary Howitt, Autumn Wild Flowers,² which appears below.  The Flowers Bless Us verses used by S. Gordon begin at “Flowers spring up by the highway.”

Autumn Wild Flowers
By Mary Howitt.

• The autumn sun is shining.
•    Grey mists are on the hill;
• A russet tint is on the leaves,
•   But flowers are blowing still!
•  
• Still bright, in wood and meadow;
•   On moorlands dry and brown;
• By little streams; by rivers broad;
•   On every breezy down,
•  
• The little flowers are smiling,
•   With chilly dew-drops wet,
• Are saying with a spirit-voice—
•   “We have not vanished yet!
•  
• “No, though the spring be over;
•   Though summer’s strength be gone;
• Though autumn’s wealth be garnered,
•   And winter cometh on;
•  
• “Still we have not departed,
•   We linger to the last,
• And even on early winter’s brow
•   A cheerful ray will cast!”
•  
• —Go forth, then, youths and maidens,
•   Be joyful whilst ye may;
• Go forth, then, child and mother,
•   And toiling men grown grey!
•  
• Go forth, though ye be humble,
•   And wan with toil and care;
• There are no fields so barren
•   But some sweet flower is there!
•  
• Flowers spring up by the highway
•   Which busy feet have trod;
• They rise up in the dreariest wood;
•   They gem the dullest sod.
•  
• They need no learned gardeners
•   To nurture them with care;
• They only need the dews of earth,
•   The sunshine and the air.
•  
• And for earth’s lowly children;
•   For loving hearts and good,
• They spring up all around us,
•   They will not be subdued.
•  
• —Thank God! when forth from Eden
•   The weeping pair was driven,
• That unto earth, though cursed with thorns,
•   The little flowers were given!
•  
• That Eve, when looking downward,
•   To face her God afraid,
• Beheld the scented violet,
•   The primrose in the shade!
•  
• Thank God, that with the thistle
•   That sprang up in his toil,
• The weary worker, Adam,
•   Saw roses gem the soil!
•  
• And still for anxious workers;
•   For hearts with anguish full,
• Life, even on its dreariest paths,
•   Has flowers for them to cull!

Sources:

1. Flowers, Earth’s Silent Voices. Sketched and Painted by Sophina Gordan [and accompanied with select verses]; page 65; © 1864 J. B. Lippincott & Co.; Published 1865, Philadelphia; J. B. Lippincott & Co.
2. The People’s Journal, No.39. September 26, 1846, published by John Sanders and William Howitt Mary’s husband), Compilation Volume 2, page 185, 1847

Tree branches and leaves, a landscape, house, and the photographer taking the picture are reflected in the eyes of an Ellis County, Texas child in June 1937.

The photographer was Dorothea Lange, who, in this reflection, was likely looking down into the viewfinder of her Graflex large format camera.  The image below is from California in February, 1936.

The large format camera and her photographic talents enabled Lange to take stunning, high clarity images of her subjects, in this instance, the child of a former tenant farmer reduced to the status of a day laborer.

This photo was previously used for the post Eyes of the Great Depression 027.

The Bitter Years, Wall 2 (Drought and Erosion)
Eroded land on tenant’s farm. Walker County, Alabama.
February, 1937.
Arthur Rothstein 25121-D

The Bitter Years, in 1962, was Edward Steichen’s last exhibition as Director of the Department of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The images in the exhibition were personally selected by Steichen from 270,000 photos taken for the Farm Security Administration by a team of photographers employed between 1935 and 1941 to document (primarily) rural America during the Great Depression.

Image information:

• Rothstein, Arthur, photographer. Eroded land on tenant’s farm. Walker County, Alabama. Feb, 1937. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa2000006786/PP/. (Accessed September 19, 2016.)
• Call Number: LC-USF346- 025121-D [P&P]
• Part of: Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection

A temporary Blast from the Past post after reediting due to lost images. Originally posted April 15, 2009.

President of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union at Hill House, Mississippi
1936 July.

Lange, Dorothea, photographer. President of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union at Hill House, Mississippi. July, 1936. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998021719/PP/. (Accessed September 28, 2016.)

Call Number: LC-USF34- 009598-C [P&P]

Part of: Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection

While reviewing the Eyes of the Great Depression project, this images for this post were missing.  The post has been redone, with newly edited images.  MpG 9/28/2016