History of the United States II / Unit 10 USH2 1382 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
A Nebraska Farm
The idea
The anchor gives the Dust Bowl two causes: overproduction and overuse of the land in the boom years, and the harsh weather that followed. Digital History agrees that it had not occurred by accident: the Plains had always been harsh and arid, and farming had stripped away the natural cover. One Nebraska farm shows the result in money: it had been mortgaged for four thousand one hundred dollars and was sold for forty-nine dollars and fifty cents.
In practice
Two historical sums for the same land, a mortgage and a sale price.
Where people slip
The two sums are compared as they stood, which the course allows; neither is converted. The comparison measures a collapse in the value of the land itself. The environment was not only the setting of the Depression on the Plains but one of its causes, which is why unit eleven's New Deal turned to conservation.
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