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Utah's Great Drought of 1934
Utah's Great Drought of 1934
BY LEONARD J. ARRINGTON
WHEN ZEBULON MONTGOMERY PIKE CONDUCTED an 1806 military exploring expedition that crossed present-day Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado, he referred to the region as the Great Sandy Desert and compared it with the African Sahara. Fourteen years later Maj. Stephen H. Long, an army engineer, explored the area east of the Rockies in a more systematic and comprehensive way and produced a map that labeled the area the Great American Desert. The absence of trees, the sparseness of vegetation, the apparent sterility of the soil, and the long, hot summers led subsequent visitors to support the appellation, and it continued to be called the Great American Desert until the Civil War. The next major explorer, however, John Charles Fremont, who traversed the area in 1842 and again in 1843- 44, discovered to the surprise of many that livestock could subsist on the grasses of the region, and he ventured to hope that farmers might succeed in growing crops. Farther west, he warned, between the Rockies and the Sierra, in the Great Basin, was the true desert, with rainfall that sometimes dropped to less than five inches per year.
As explorers and settlers came to realize in the years that followed, there were cycles in the amount of rainfall. During the late 1870s and early 1880s, for example, the rainfall was above average, and tens of thousands of persons moved into the upper, central, and lower Great Plains, as the area came to be called. This was followed in the late 1880s by a period of drought, dust storms, blizzards, and grasshopper plagues. When the wet cycle returned, dry farming techniques were developed, windmills were installed, and drought resistant plants were introduced. The region once more prospered, and there was widespread belief that the problems had been overcome. These happy hopes, however, were shattered by the dust storms and drought of the 1930s. In more recent years, of course, the expansion of irrigation, the spread of air conditioning, the improvement of transportation networks, and the continued development of plant breeding and farming techniques have made the Great Plains the largest producer of wheat and beef in the world. No one would imagine that it was once called the Great American Desert.
Although the Great Basin region has not been quite so fortunate, the early Mormon settlers were delighted to find that the heavy snowfall in Utah's Wasatch Mountains drained each spring into creeks that could furnish water for irrigation into the spring and early summer. With the eventual extension of high-line canals and reservoirs water could be supplied for irrigation during the dry late summer weeks as well. Thus, in most years farmers and ranchers in Utah have been able to grow even late-season crops such as fruit, potatoes, and sugar beets. However, precipitation remains uncertain. The normal precipitation for most of the state is about thirteen inches per year. If we define drought as being a period when precipitation is less than 75 percent of normal, the Great Basin, or some part of it, has experienced drought on the average of three years out of ten. And there were two years in recorded history when it was only about 35 percent of normal, 1856 and 1934. In those years there had been little snowfall in the mountains during the previous winter. Hardly more than a third of the normal crop was produced, and thousands of animals died for lack of forage. This paper focuses on the catastrophe of 1934.
The climatological data tell us that never before in United States history had so little rain fallen over so wide a territory during an entire growing season as in 1934. Moreover, according to U.S. Weather Bureau reports, although most dry years are preceded by years of adequate rainfall, this was not true in 1934, for the preceding four years were abnormally dry in many parts of the country. The year June 1933 to May 1934 was the driest on record in most midwestern and Great Plains states (Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and the Dakotas), and the seasonal snowfall in California, Colorado, and Utah was about half of normal and in Wyoming about one-third of normal. In New Mexico there was hardly even a drift of snow on the northern slopes at the higher elevations. During the spring and early summer of 1934 (April through July) the rainfall in eight states (Nebraska, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Kansas, Michigan, and Colorado) was the lowest on record; in Utah the rainfall during the same period was only 51 percent of normal. Utah Lake contained only one-third of its normal volume of water, and the actual shoreline was two and one-half miles inside the traditional outer border. Bear Lake was fourteen feet below normal.
There was also record-breaking heat. Although Utah was surely not "the vast simmering caldron" that sometimes described the Great Plains, the average temperature even here was four degrees above normal and two degrees above the previously warmest year of record. Temperatures at St. George on July 27 and 28 reached 112 degrees, and the mean of the daily maximum temperatures at St. George for the entire month of July was just short of 104 degrees. Even the temperatures at normally cold spots like Woodruff were three to five degrees above normal. The Weather Bureau reported that nothing remotely approaching the severity of this combination of heat and dryness appeared in its annals.
The general annual precipitation for the entire state of Utah in 1934 was just above nine inches—four inches below the average for the preceding forty years. The annual precipitation at Hanksville was just over two inches. Month after month the Weather Bureau reported "the warmest of record." By May the drought had become so severe that irrigation was restricted. Some grain was cut for hay or abandoned, and the first alfalfa cutting was the lightest of record.
To understand the seriousness of the situation one needs to keep in mind that Utah was far more dependent on agriculture in 1934 than it has been since the build-up of industry and the service trades after World War II. The state's agricultural economy was already in a depressed condition when the Great Depression of the 1930s began. High grain prices during World War I had encouraged Utah farmers to plow up thousands of acres of rangeland for winter wheat. The failure of the government to check the decline in grain prices after World War I caused a farm depression from which Utah had not recovered before the stock market crash of 1929. Then, Utah's economy being primarily dependent on farming and mining, the ruinous drop in farm prices and the stagnation of the metals industry caused thousands to suffer even more. Personal income in 1933 was approximately 51 percent of what it had been in 1929, already a low figure. Farm income had dropped from $69 million to only $30 million. Some 43,000 persons, 25 percent of the state's work force, were unemployed, and 36,000 families and single persons were receiving relief of some kind by the end of 1933. Utah's relief situation in relation to population was fully as bad as that of many of the industrial states in the East and Midwest where idle factories had created unprecedented industrial unemployment.
In this debilitated condition Utah sustained the blow of 1934. The drought came at the worst possible time—a natural disaster on top of a human-caused disaster. Utahns might well have complained, "It never rains but it pours." But somehow the metaphor seemed inappropriate.
The nation, of course, had already embarked on a program to combat the effects of the depression. President Herbert Hoover had established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) in 1932 to lend money to large banks, railroads, and other large corporations that were essential to any climb out of the slough. Utah had received $12 million in repayable funds from this agency during 1932-33. With the assumption of the office of president by Franklin D. Roosevelt in March 1933, he and his associates, with the nearly unanimous approval of Congress, had established, in the spring and early summer of 1933, several agencies to combat the depression:
All told, these programs, during the fiscal year from July 1, 1933, to June 30, 1934, expended $18,858,267 in Utah, approximately $37 per capita. Not a very sizable amount, but certainly welcome, and unquestionably helpful in stemming depression and want. It represented a little over 10 percent of the state's income during fiscal 1933-34.
The key agency in dealing with the immediate problems created by the depression was the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, created in May 1933, with an appropriation of $500 million. Half of this amount was allotted as direct relief to state and principal relief agencies, and the rest was distributed on the basis of $1 of federal aid for every $3 of state and local funds spent for relief. Work relief projects were established by state and local bodies, and FERA supplied the authorized funds through the state's relief administrator. The national FERA administrator was Harry Hopkins.
Appointed to administer FERA in Utah was Robert H. Hinckley. Descended from a prominent pioneer Utah family and one of thirteen children of a poorly paid geology teacher at Brigham Young Academy, he graduated from Brigham Young University, taught at North Sanpete High School, and moonlighted as an automobile dealer and pioneer in commercial aviation. Active in Democratic politics, he was elected to the state legislature and served as mayor of Mount Pleasant. He then took advantage of an opportunity to establish a large automobile dealership in Ogden, where he moved in 1927. He had become acquainted with George H. Dern when the two were in the legislature together. Later, as governor, Dern first appointed him to the Board of Regents of the University of Utah and then, as the depression deepened in 1931, asked Hinckley to be a member of the Volunteer Relief Committee. In 1932 Hinckley persuaded Henry H. Blood, chairman of the State Road Commission, to run for governor to replace Dern. After Blood took office he appointed Hinckley to visit the counties and enroll young men and teachers in the CCC. When Roosevelt established the FERA in May 1933, Hinckley was Blood's choice to direct the FERA. Forty-two years of age at the time, Hinckley proved to be, in the words of one national FERA official, "one of the finest and most socially-minded state administrators (in the nation)."
A better appreciation of the impact of the 1934 drought can be had by following the sequence of events as they occurred. The drought was, of course, a national phenomenon and was especially severe in the Great Plains states. High winds had swept across Nebraska in mid-November 1933, depositing dirt in the East from as far north as New York to as far south as Georgia. A second great storm, April 9 to 12, 1934, blew dust from the Dakotas to Florida. There were additional "rollers" in April that culminated in the storm of May 9 to 12, 1934, a great black blizzard that blew an estimated three hundred million tons of soil from the Great Plains to the East and Atlantic Ocean. These storms created what came to be known as the Dust Bowl, a devastated area that included large sections of Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico.
That Utah was experiencing the same phenomenon was first publicly noted the middle of April. On April 16, 1934, for example, the Deseret News ran a lead article headlined "Drought Hits All Utah, Say Church Heads." The article began, "Nearly all parts of Utah are suffering from a water shortage and the outlook for maturing crops in many sections is unfavorable, according to reports made by the general authorities of the L.D.S. church attending quarterly conferences and other meetings...over the weekend."
On the basis of this and other reports that came to him from a variety of sources. Governor Blood made a quick tour of central and southern Utah and found the "unprecedented" water shortage to be "terrifying." The winter of 1933-34 had been the warmest on record, the accumulated snow cover on the state's watersheds was the least on record, and the summer flow in the streams on most of the watersheds would be only 25 to 50 percent of that in 1933. Blood convened a meeting of the state's water experts to formulate a suitable program. All agreed that they must solicit emergency financing from the FERA and that a strong case for the request must be prepared. The governor issued a proclamation expressing the seriousness of the situation and urging each citizen to conserve every drop of water. He also announced the appointment of George Dewey Clyde, irrigation engineer with the Utah State Agricultural Experiment Station in Logan, as state water conservator and authorized him to make a study of Utah's water prospects for the 1934 growing season.
In a report made a week later, Clyde asserted that he had made a hurried study of the nine leading agricultural counties in the state during the first few days of May and had talked with representatives of canal companies, irrigation enterprises, community leaders and individual farmers. He found that the prospective supply of water for irrigation in 1934 was about 35 percent of 1933 and in several counties only 25 percent. The perilous prospect was heightened by the fact that the supply of water in 1933 was only 70 percent of normal. The available water for certain irrigation companies with rights of late priority would not exceed 10 percent of normal. There was little holdover water in the larger reservoirs and none at all in the small ones. Although the irrigation season usually began on May 1, the absence of groundwater and high absorption of the runoff had forced many farmers to begin irrigation on April 1, thus extending the irrigation season thirty days. Normally, water distributors did not resort to the use of storage water until after July 1, but already by April 15 storage supplies had been drawn upon so that late priorities would receive no water at all.
Clyde went on to say that the water holes on the ranges were drying up, and many of the springs that had never been known to go dry were already dry or drying up. The forage on many of the spring ranges was, to use one man's expression, "as scarce as the stubble on an old man's chin." Because they had to trail long distances to water, the stock were tramping out much of that. Moreover, culinary supplies for farmsteads and villages were "extremely deficient," and many farmers were already in a position of hauling in their household water. Communities were enacting ordinances to prohibit the sprinkling of lawns. In most years, Clyde wrote, four million acre-feet were diverted into Utah's irrigation canals each year. Looking at 1934, it was doubtful that as much as one million acre-feet would be available for diversion.
Clyde reported that the people were voluntarily doing everything in their power to spread existing water supplies as widely as possible. They were cleaning out springs, combining their streams, rotating between laterals, lining their canals, and maintaining their ditches and headgates to prevent seepage. "Some are even going so far as to eliminate certain areas from production," he wrote, "in order that they might produce a crop with the water supply that is available." Nevertheless, the situation was extremely critical. Probably only one crop of alfalfa would be harvested, and it was doubtful that corn, potatoes, sugar beets, and fruit could be matured because the supply of water in late summer would be negligible. He estimated that not more than 25 percent of the usual crop could be matured. He suggested that something had to be done to keep the orchards and other perennial crops from dying, even at the expense of annual crops, and that livestock feed must be matured in order to take care of existing herds during the next winter.
More effective utilization of existing water was important, he concluded, but even more urgent was the need for additional water. This might be obtained by pumping from groundwater basins and drains, by clearing out the water in springs, and by lining ditches or piping water over porous formations. This would require a certain investment, but if it could be done quickly, the percent of crops that could be produced might be raised to 50 percent and the anticipated $5 million loss because of the water shortage might be trimmed by at least $3.6 million.
Clyde's report, duly endorsed by Governor Blood, provided the basis for an urgent telegram from Robert Hinckley to Harry Hopkins on May 8:
Hopkins presented "this Utah matter," as he called it, to Roosevelt the very next morning, and as Hopkins reported it, "the President wants to do what is wanted." The next day, thirty-six hours after the telegram had been sent, a news story, simultaneously released from Washington and Salt Lake City, announced the approved grant of $600,000. This was in addition to "regular" relief funds. Apparently this early Utah appeal precipitated an immediate decision by the president to institute a national drought relief program, one that came to constitute a major activity of the New Deal during the next four months.
In announcing the news Governor Blood said he would appoint that day "a non-partisan and wholly impartial board of control consisting of representative engineers and water experts" who would review the list of ninety or more projects drawn by state administrator Robert H. Hinckley and his staff. Blood then promptly appointed an emergency drought relief committee consisting of William Peterson, the sixty-year-old director of the Utah Agricultural Extension Service in Logan, as chairman; Thomas H. Humpherys, the state engineer; and William R. Wallace, chairman of the Utah Water Resources Board.
Peterson, a Republican, was born in Bloomington, Idaho, in the Bear Lake Valley, and was a graduate of Bear Lake Stake Academy, Utah State Agriculture College (USAC, now Utah State University), and the University of Chicago. He had served as a professor of physics and geology at USAC, worked with the U.S. Geological Survey, and been a member of Utah's Water Storage Commission and the Utah State Road Commission. Having served on Herbert Hoover's Commission on Conservation and Administration of the Public Domain in 1930 and 1931, he was well acquainted with people in both the federal and state governments, as well as those at USAC, who could help judge the merits of projects proposed to overcome the drought.
Humpherys was one of the earliest irrigation engineering graduates of the USAC, and Wallace, whose English parents had walked across the Plains from the Missouri River to the Salt Lake Valley before he was born, had been an early graduate of the University of Utah and was a long-time Democratic National Committeeman. Old enough to have accompanied his parents on a visit to Brigham Young, and one of Utah's most noted men of affairs, Wallace was director of Utah National Bank, ZCMI, Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, Bennett Paint and Glass, and Ridge and Valley Mining Company. He was regarded as "the father of Utah reclamation.
With all due speed, Peterson, Humpherys, and Wallace sifted through the many proposals made for increasing and conserving Utah's water and approved a total of seventy-one projects in twentyeight counties. Of the $600,000, $551,569 was appropriated for irrigation projects, $18,950 for stock watering projects, and $29,481 for culinary projects. A considerable share of the funds went to Utah County, but there were also sizable allocations in Sevier, Weber, Uintah, Cache, Sanpete, and Iron counties. Among the approved projects were pumping the seepage from the North Jordan canal back into the canal from the Jordan River lining of the Salt Lake and Utah Canal, installation of a pumping plant at Pelican Point to pump water from Utah Lake to save 60,000 acres of crops in Salt Lake County, and extension of the Strawberry Reservoir outlet so the dead water could be drained. Several dozen projects were set up to dig artesian wells and improve ditches by rip-rapping and concrete. Most of the allocations were for projects costing $1,000 to $5,000 each.
Meanwhile, the drought was becoming worse. The Deseret News for May 11 and 12 carried separate dispatches from six towns:
Scipio: "Most of the grain is burned up and alfalfa is making little growth. The watering place where local cattlemen summer their stock on the forest reserve is dry. This is the fifth year of drouth in this place."
Kanosh: The county farm agent has organized farmers to battle grasshoppers which are savagely devouring crops that the drought has missed. "Hot winds and the lack of sufficient water are combining with the pests to take all the hay and grain in local fields."
Mount Pleasant: The farmers have met to present data to George Dewey Clyde showing their need for federal aid. "The alfalfa is burning in spots in the west fields and also on the bench lands...."
Richfield: "All users are warned by city officials to immediately check their plumbing for leaky pipes, faucets, water closets, and hydrants." Individual inspections will begin in ten days and where waste exists "the supply will be turned off until repairs have been made." There will be a closer check on violations of the scheduled sprinkling hours.
Ephraim: Meetings are being held with Clyde to study the feasibility of increasing the water supply by pumping and other means.
Emery: The grass and forage are showing signs of burning on the range. "Very little snow is found in the tops of the mountains. There is a shortage of water in all sections. The springs are entirely dry on the spring range and those of the intermediate range are reduced to mere seepages. Conditions are very serious for stockmen. The farmers are very much concerned and have planted but small crops. Water gauges in the canals that have carried ten inches of water have been reduced to two and one-half inches.
As these reports continued to come in and as the governor's emergency committee expended its $600,000 and still had more than one hundred additional worthy projects for which it had no funds. Blood and Hinckley lobbied FERA officials in Washington for additional financing. By the end of June they were able to obtain an additional appropriation of $400,000. Most of this was devoted to increasing domestic water supplies which were alarmingly low.
All told, over the period of a little over three months, the committee had allocated $1,000,000 to sink 276 wells, develop 118 springs, line 183 miles of irrigation ditches, and lay 98 miles of pipeline. Some 652,428 acre-feet of irrigation water had been supplied, 270,148 head of livestock had been watered, and 173,115 people had been supplied with culinary water.
Utah's efficiency in obtaining and spending the FERA and drought relief money impressed Harry Hopkins and his associates who not only declared Blood to be one of the most able governors but employed Hinckley to direct the FERA program in the eleven western states and later elevated him to assistant FERA administrator in Washington.
The drought, of course, was a national disaster, and by June the U.S. Department of Agriculture had adopted a program to prevent the starving of cattle and sheep by purchasing them and distributing the meat free of charge to the unemployed. In 1933 the government had established the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation to do this as a relief measure. Now, however, the urgent problem was one of protecting the livestock industry by removing animals from the use of the range, assuring stockmen a reasonable market for their animals, and at the same time making sure that the usable meat went to families in need. During the summer and fall of 1934 the government expended $112 million in the purchase of more than eight million animals, three-fourths of which were beef cattle.
Although the national program inevitably became embroiled in political controversy, the program in Utah seems to have been efficiently and economically administered. Local veterinarians, deputized by the government, inspected the cattle or sheep a rancher wanted the government to buy and calculated the payment.
In many cases, of course, stockmen offered only their culls— "gaunt, scrawny, bony looking," standing "almost lifeless, with their heads down and their tails between their legs like whipped dogs." Nearly all were "beyond hope of saving, hovering near starvation. "
Approximately 126,000 cattle and 206,000 sheep were slaughtered under this program in Utah. For these, the government paid a flat price of $2 per animal for sheep, $4 to $5 for calves, $10 to $15 for yearlings, and $12 to $20 for cattle two years and older. Stock was purchased from 18,920 different Utah farms and ranches. Stockmen sometimes complained that government bureaucrats were stingy ("they'd pinch nickels till the buffalo squeals"), but it was a buyer's market; most of the animals were of advanced age and gaunt and could not have been sold except at distress prices. The total payment for cattle in Utah was $1,755,458, for sheep $411,024. One unique concession was granting permission to the Indians on the Uintah and Ouray Reservations the right to distribute 1,500 beeves, one to a family, so the family could jerk the meat and dry it as they had traditionally done buffalo meat in earlier times.
In order to preserve the scarce forage in the state. Governor Blood issued an order on June 24 halting the shipping of hay or feed from the state. It was also against public policy, he declared, to ship hay or mill feeds from one district to another within the state. About two hundred Uinta Basin farmers abandoned crops on their upland farms and turned stock into their grain and alfalfa fields to salvage what little remained from the long, parching dry spell and moved to river bottom areas that in normal years were flooded in times of high water. Community after community continued to report suffering during June, July, and August. In Bountiful many homes were without water for several days.
Utah's officials energetically lobbied to get the Public Works Administration to act on important long-run solutions to the drought problem. Requests for the Deer Creek, Pineview, and other reclamation projects were justifiably labeled "urgent." Such projects would provide lucrative contracts for the construction industry, provide work for the unemployed, and permit a more efficient use of Utah's water resources. The first Pineview Dam contract was signed on May 31, the second on August 21; ground-breaking was held on September 29, and the dam was finally completed in June 1937. As for the Deer Creek Dam, water from the Provo, Duchesne, and Weber rivers was to be stored in Deer Creek Reservoir and supplied to Utah Valley farmers and to Salt Lake City, making possible the growth of Utah Valley agriculture and of Utah's largest city. The project was inaugurated in 1934 and completed in its preliminary form in 1941 . Other lesser, but still important, projects were launched at Hyrum, Sanpete, and Moon Lake near Duchesne. Nearly half the population of Utah was benefited directly or indirectly by these reclamation projects that were initiated in partial response to the 1934 drought.
But the discussion of these long-term measures only helped to lessen the impact of the drought. To end it would require rainfall. That was more difficult to bring about. The Coyote Clan of the Hopi Tribe held three snake dances for rain in Hotevilla in northern Arizona on August 24. These dances, which culminated in an eight-day ceremony, were not more successful than the incessant prayers for rain in Mormon ward houses and in other religious edifices. Plants continued to wilt, even the grasshoppers were starving, and there seemed to be little reason to hope for a reprieve.
Finally, in early November a few rainstorms came. The ranges and pastures benefited; the germination of fall grains was stimulated. By Thanksgiving, Utahns had reasons for gratitude. Although Utah still had 30,000 unemployed persons on relief and prices and incomes were still low, the people, as was their custom, were prepared to give thanks. The mayor of Logan was thankful for the "pure culinary water" made possible by the installation of a new 24-inch steel pipeline in Logan Canyon. Beaver was thankful that, despite the drought, there had been enough water for culinary use, for irrigating all the city lots, and for keeping the city electric plant running. There had been a large yield of fruit, especially raspberries; there had been good health; the government had taken the cattle so that it would not be necessary to see them starve and die; and Washington had rained a few drops of federal money to provide relief to support the needy and to keep the tax money coming into the county treasury. For all of this they were grateful.
St. George was thankful for the assistance to the unemployed through the CWA, FERA, and drought relief programs; for the installation of water systems in many communities; for the livestock sale to the government "which enabled our farmers and stockmen to get rid of hundreds of scrub, inferior, aged, and poor animals"; for the assistance of Home Owners Loan Corporation which refinanced hundreds of dwellings; and for the work of the CCC. The mayor of Ephraim was thankful "that the great depression did not cause the closing of the elementary schools, the high schools, and Snow College"; that "the much-talked-of revolution among the different social units of the country did not take place"; and that "domestic and political felicity have been obtained as a result of the action of government organizations in a fight to keep up the spirit of the citizens." San Juan correspondents were especially grateful for roadway improvements, the purchase of cattle and sheep, and "the locating and promoting of new sources of good water supply from springs and additional well construction." Salt Lake City, in the words of the president of the Chamber of Commerce, was grateful for drilling programs and for the Deer Creek reclamation project that would deliver water to approximately 100,000 more residents. The mayors of other cities—Heber City, Provo, Ogden, Park City, Roosevelt, Tooele, Cedar City, Kanosh, Brigham City, Panguitch, Kanab, and the cities of the Uinta Basin—expressed a similar gratitude.
DROUGHT RELIEF THROUGH THE FARM CREDIT ADMINISTRATION BY COUNTIES IN UTAH, 1934-35*
FEDERAL EXPENDITURES AND LOANS IN UTAH, FISCAL YEARS 1933-34 AND 1934-45*
In short, despite the unprecedentedly low harvest of fruit, vegetables, grain, and alfalfa, the timely and effective action of Governor Blood and the various state and federal committees and agencies had lessened the suffering. Important ingredients were the expeditious responses of Blood, the effective organization put together by Robert Hinckley, and the cooperative spirit of the people. One national FERA troubleshooter expressed it succinctly: "It was a great pleasure to finally fall into a state where there was no bitterness, no quarrelling, and all that goes with it. In addition—to add to this picture of paradise—the governor. Governor Blood, is by all odds one of the finest state executives that I have met. I told him that he must be an accident." That same spirit permeated the people of the state who, in the spirit of their pioneer ancestors, subdued self-interest in the cause of meeting the dual crisis of depression and drought. Above all, they established a principle that happily is still with us—that federal and state governments, as agents of the people, have a responsibility to provide relief from disaster and, insofar as possible, maintain the economic health of the nation and its constituent parts.
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