Dripping Dust Bowl

Dust-Bowl farmers looked at their sodden fields last week and cursed the rain they had longed for in other years. Drought-scarred Kansas was drenched. The water lay in placid sheets high as the wheat heads. On lowland farms and in valleys the grain stood rotting under the stagnant waste of water left by spring floods.

But on the upland prairie grew a golden harvest whose rich yield ( 20 to 40 bushels an acre) would more than make up for lowland losses. The crops were weeks ahead. Between rains the farmers worked night & day to keep the lush weeds from choking out the grain. In wheat towns, movies did a booming business while the rain came down, keeping farmers from their fields.

In the cattle country, grass spread thick and tall over the grazing lands. Ponds and wells, for the first time in years, were filled to the brim. Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming were blanketed with fields of wild flowers. Cactus blossoms ranged over the desert, turning the dun earth blue and yellow and orange. On the flanks of Colorado's mountains, snow reached farther down than the oldest citizen could remember. Snow-fed streams would run full this summer.

All this meant: 1) that the U.S. in this year of war would have a bumper wheat crop to help feed hungry Britain; 2) that Dust-Bowl farmers would have money in their pockets to carry them through another dry spell; 3) that pessimists who thought the West's marginal wheatlands should be given back to the desert had reckoned without the whim of changing weather.

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