Land in the Sky

As March sunlight gilded their breakfast tables, Washingtonians read in their morning papers that in about two weeks the Japanese cherry trees around the Tidal Basin would be in full bloom. The same day Kansans breakfasted by lamp light and read in their morning papers that one of the worst dust storms in the history of their State was sweeping darkly overhead. Damp sheets hung over the windows, but table cloths were grimy. Urchins wrote their names on the dusty china. Food had a gritty taste. Dirt drifted around doorways like snow. People who ventured outside coughed and choked as the fields of Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and Oklahoma rose and took flight through the windy air.

In Washington at their sunlit breakfast tables the same Department of Agriculture experts who had foretold the blossoming of the cherry trees, frowned at the news from the West. They did not need to be told that where there is dust there is drought. The records of the Weather Bureau already showed it. The Pacific Coast and Far West had their quota of moisture. So had the States bordering the Mississippi from Iowa southward. But the vast belt that lay between was, for the most part, a parched aftermath of the 1934 drought (TIME, May 21, et seq.).

During last week's dust storm, which lasted four days (and in the heart of the drought district ran on for twelve consecutive days), police closed highways to prevent accidents. Airplanes were grounded. Schools and businesses were closed. Health officers advised every one to stay at home. Three children and several adults were reported dead of pneumonia after breathing dust. During the height of the storm, railway traffic was at a standstill. When high winds swept the dust Eastward Kansas City had night at midday and people walked the streets with handkerchiefs tied across their faces. How great was the crop damage remained largely a matter of guesswork. Oklahoma grimly reported that 50% of the wheat in the Western part of the State was ruined. An Oklahoman was said to have fainted when a drop of rain fell on his head, to have been revived only when two buckets of sand were thrown in his face.

To Secretary of Agriculture Wallace it was a grim jest. If ten tons of dust to the square mile goes scooting across the country in a March gale, what may not happen in July? Mr. Wallace decided that the danger of drought was greater than the danger of surplus. He issued an order: Farmers who had pledged themselves to reduce their 1935 Spring wheat planting 10% below normal were relieved of their pledge. More important, he ordered that some $30,000,000 which AAA had contracted to pay Spring wheat growers for reducing their acreage should still be paid, whether the farmers do anything for it or not.

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