Price <\/a>cunningly notes in his post, Koppes praises Worster\u2019s use of the Dust Bowl as an example the failures regarding short term New Deal relief, the flaws in agricultural capitalism, the misuse of land, and the need to blame Midwest farmers for the Dust Bowl.\u00a0 Further Koppes critiques Bonnefield\u2019s emphasis on natural blame for the Dust Bowl, as Bonnefield insists that capitalism, free market economics, and technology had little impact on this disaster.\u00a0 From my prospective, it seems almost impossible to argue one way or another about Koppes opinion. As I have read neither book, I am forced to accept Koppes\u2019 interpretation of the author\u2019s arguments as true, well thought out and warranted.\u00a0 If everything that Koppes interprets and reviews is true, I would say his article seems justified.\u00a0 Nevertheless, one must be careful as Koppes could very well have had an ideological bias behind his review.<\/p>\nWhen I was reading this book review, I could not think about the historical significance of the Dust Bowl.\u00a0 As Koppes notes, there has been little scholarly work covering the Dust Bowl and of the work that has been done, there is still much debate about the cultural, economic, environmental, governmental, and historical significance. There seems to be large scientific evidence (as noted in Worster\u2019s use of the lack of grass cover, diminished crop yield, and the lowered population rate in affected areas) that humans, pushed mostly by the government, attributed to Dust Bowl and the black blizzards.\u00a0 While we can blame whomever we would like, the question must now be about the historical meaning of the Dust Bowl.\u00a0 If we consider Worster\u2019s argument and place the entire blame on the government and capitalism does this mean we should extend the Gilded Age through the 1930\u2019s?\u00a0 If it was truly the government wanting to extend power to large corporations through exploitative measures, certainly this seems justified.\u00a0 As seen in this course, the Gilded Age was defined by disasters of premature technological innovation and favored the expansion of powerful companies.\u00a0 However does this mean that the Gilded Age continued into the 1980\u2019s like Koppes mentions?\u00a0 How much does government favor large corporations and big business even today?\u00a0 Should we blame capitalism for modern environmental disasters or do we blame the failures of technology and ignorance? Personally, I think Koppes book review opens up many different discussion points about the meaning of the Dust Bowl.\u00a0 The 1930\u2019s is often considered a hybrid time period mixed between the Depression and World War II and thus many of the events have been underreported.\u00a0 I do not think we can expand the Gilded Age and place blame for the Dust Bowl on Gilded Age policy or any economic policy. From what I have interpreted about these two books, the Dust Bowl seems more an unknown consequence of government policy.\u00a0 The New Deal policy was not purposely imposed for the destruction of natural land nor for the promotion of big business.\u00a0 It was more what FDR thought would be the best temporary fix for the Depression and unfortunately the Dust Bowl was an unforeseen problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Clayton Koppes two part book review of Paul Bonniefied\u2019s The Dust Bowl and Donald Worster\u2019s Dust Bowl offers an interesting comparison on two books about the same general topic.\u00a0 Koppes strongly favors Worster\u2019s book as a more compelling use of the Dust Bowl for a general critique on capitalism, government policy, and technological impact on … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “The Dust Bowl: An End to The Gilded Age or a Critique on Government”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[123,180,185],"class_list":["post-702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dust-bowl","tag-gilded-age","tag-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":828,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702\/revisions\/828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}