| Key to Oklahoma |
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The Great Depression and the Dust BowlThe Stock Market Crash of 1929, alone, did not cause the Great Depression. But it was a signal that hard times had returned. One of the twin pillars of Oklahoma’s economy, the agriculture sector, had fallen earlier. Between 1919 and 1929, farm income on various products like wheat and corn declined by as much as 45 percent. By 1929, 60 percent of the Oklahoma farmers did not own the land that they worked. They were but poverty-stricken sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Their real income declined because of a glut of farm products on the world market. Every year the farmers reacted by producing more in order to earn the same income as the year before. That meant that they contributed to the problem of low prices for their products. They produced too much surplus. The oil industry, the other pillar of the state’s economy, also experienced hard times. This was especially true after 1931 when the giant East Texas Field came in. By the end of the year, East Texas was producing more oil than all of Oklahoma. An oil surplus developed that dropped the price of a barrel to 10 cents. That meant complete ruin for Oklahoma oil producers. As the depression ran its course, Oklahomans suffered. At one time about 50 percent of all the state’s laborers had no job. Many families lost everything they owned. They had no choice but to migrate to a "Hooverville" or a "Hoover Hotel." These were shanty towns where people made a room out of apple crates and cardboard boxes and made a roof out of an old piece of canvas or some other material. Most of these settlements were located near the garbage dumps of various cities and towns. The people dug though the garbage hoping to find something to eat or something to sell for a few pennies. The shanty towns were named after President Herbert Hoover because neither he nor his congress did anything effective in helping the people cope with the depression.
Given the terrible conditions, many tenants and sharecroppers packed up and left the state. Some went to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas or the Salt River Valley in Arizona. They became migrant farm workers. Most, however, went to California where they worked as migrants in the lush valleys of that state. They lived in poverty because they were paid very little. Called "Okies," they lived in "Okievilles," which were really just "Hoovervilles" under a different name. In 1939, John Steinbeck chronicled their suffering in the novel, The Grapes of Wrath.
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