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Show KANSAS SAHARA ... In 1936 there were desolated homes such as this around Liberal, Kansas. Pasture lands were ruined and grasshoppers grasshop-pers aided drouth in destruction of crops. In mid-summer not a green ! thing was in sight. i Many Sections Fearful Of New Dust Bowl in 46 (A WNU News Feature) THE "dust bowl's" rich land, after several good years, is I dry enough in some spots to take wings again. But whether I it will or will not is the 64-dollar question. Millions of people j would like to know the answer before the soil starts moving. So far, there has been "a little ! blow" out in western Kansas and Oklahoma and it's dry too. But no one who went through the "black" blizzards of a decade ago would compare this year's storms with those years. "Another dust bowl may develop, but conditions would have to grow a lot worse than they are now before be-fore I would climb out on a limb with any such prediction," one Kansas official has stated after snow and rain fell. The winter has been a dry one in all the old dust bowl states. Wheat made little growth in some areas. And the U. S. department of agriculture agri-culture has reported that a new dust bowl appeared to be forming in the "redlands" district of Kansas and Oklahoma. Some wheat damage has been reported re-ported at Pratt and Liberal. Kans., but recently snows and rains have improved the wheat lands west of Hutchinson. At Amarillo, Tex., Gene 9 . some places in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, a black market in wheat has sprung up. Latest figures fig-ures show visible U. S. wheat to half, compared to a year ago. Millers Mill-ers are paying all the traffic will bear to keep their mills going. Newspaper editors in the wheat-lands wheat-lands who make it their business to know crop prospects, have made their own surveys. To a man they say "not yet" to the government's prediction. It is going to take a lot more dust and dry weather to scare some of those grizzled old farmers who weathered the worst nature had to offer in the '30s. Where does the dust come from? That is easy, say the editors: "Oklahomans say it comes from Kansas; Jayhawkers say the dust plague originates in Oklahoma." The rivers aren't very low yet, either, one Kansas citizen reported. "They're a little too wet to plow and a little too muddy to drink." ! Howe, newspaper publisher, is optimistic, op-timistic, pointing out that conditions con-ditions are not yet critical, and spring snows and rains may end the threat of a drouth. Both farmers and the government combatted the tendency to plow up i grasslands for planting during World War II, as was done in World War I. The land is tied down better this time. Farmers have learned to plow and cultivate so as to leave more stubble on top to hold the soil. In some places in the old dust bowl there has been little or no moisture all winter, and undoubtedly undoubted-ly wheft is in bad shape. Whether or not it will survive much longer no one knows. Perhaps the fate of many fields hangs in the balance, and not until late spring will the verdict be known. Even experts in the winter wheat belt differ widely in their opinions. Some say the wheat is already gone; others hold out for an 80 per cent yield. Still others think that rain any time within a month or six weeks will give the fields new life. Wheat supplies are lower than for many years. Some of the mills are working only five days a week. In BACK IN 1935 . . . Sand storms worked havoc in Oklahoma and other plains states. The above picture was taken in Western Oklahoma and shows drifts of sand around buildings on an abandoned farm. |
