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The Worst Hard Time
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Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “BETRAYAL, 1931-1933”
Chapter 4 Summary: “High Plains Deutsch”
The first paragraph of this chapter explains how the High Plains land becomes over-plowed. With all these new farmers, the region yields a wheat surplus by 1929, but there are foreign factors contributing to the wheat surplus. Europe also has a wheat surplus, especially after Russia starts exporting wheat again. So now the cities and towns on the High Plains have “towers of grain that nobody wanted” (59).Wheat prices go down steadily, to below 1.50 dollars a bushel from 2.25 dollars a few years earlier, then below a dollar, and then to 75 cents a bushel. According to Egan, “Farmers had two choices: They could cut back hoping supplies would tighten and prices would rise, or they could plant more as a way to make the same money on higher output. Across the southern plain, the response was overwhelming; the farmers tore up more grass. They had debts for new tractors, plows, combines, and land purchased” (59).
Against the backdrop of the wheat price decline, Egan brings to the forefront George Ehrlich, and his description dominates the rest of the chapter. Ehrlich is not as discouraged by the wheat prices plunging as other farmers. Ehrlich had lived through the torching of his people's villages on the Volga River in Russia by a Tartar tribe, the czar's revocation of Catherine the Great's Manifesto (which protected him and his family), and a near fatal boat crash on his journey to America. Ehrlich learns English in the fields from cowboys, and struggles to maintain his culture: “In church they [the German Russians] sang “Golt es de Liebe” and made such a month-long fuss over Christmas that customs in America changed as well” (62).Egan brings to light another interesting contribution of the German Russians to America:“Without them, it is possible that wheat never would have been planted on the dry side of the plains. For when they boarded ships for America, the Germans from Russia carried with them seeds of turkey red–a hard winter wheat–and incidental thistle sewn into the pockets of their vests” (62). The thistle that they sewed into their vests becomes the origin of American tumbleweed.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Last of the Great Plowup”
Egan opens Chapter 5 with the 1929 Stock Market Crash and how it affects the book’s central figures. Farmers assume they won't be affected by the crash since most of them don't own stock, but wheat is a commodity and it falls with the equities market. Fred Folkers and the widow of Carlie Lucas are stunned when wheat falls to 24 cents a bushel. Farm foreclosures are everywhere. In 1929, Doc Dawson doesn't receive a bank statement for months, and when he finally gets one, the bank has drained his savings. Hazel Lucas accepts a job as a school teacher, but the school can't pay her because now that farmers aren't paying their taxes, the school can't afford to. Instead of a salary, Lucas accepts paper scrip (a promise to pay), but when she goes to the banks, the banks won't cash them.
The chapter ends with a description of first citing of a black duster on September 14, 1930. Egan closes with the following paragraph:
The weather bureau people in Lubbock didn't know what to make of it, or how to define it. Wasn't a sandstorm. Sandstorms were beige, off-white, and not thick like this thing [...] The strange thing about it, the weather observers said, was that it rolled […]and it was black [...] [and] carried static electricity enough to short out a car. And it hurt, like a swipe of coarse-ground sandpaper on the face […]a curiosity, nothing else. The weather bureau observers wrote it up, and put it in a drawer (88).
Chapter 6 Summary: “The First Wave”
After the citing of the first duster in 1930, Egan shifts back to Dalhart, Texas, where “two years into the Depression, the town was taking on a meaner edge, more desperate, like the rest of the country, and there was “‘a domino of mistrust’” (91). The U.S. government promised the homesteaders prosperity, and encouraged the farmers to produce, and they had done just that. In fact, the Dust Bowl wheat farmers had produced more grain than any other region in America's history. Yet, they are now making no profit.
By 1931, High Plains settlers have heard the news that 4.5 million people are out of work, and that the Bank of the United States in New York has lost 853 million dollars’ worth of deposits. The newspaper editor of the Dalhart Texan, John McCarty, is angry that businesses like his, “Doc” Dawson's, and the clothier, Levi Herzstein are struggling, while Dalhart's Number 126 whorehouse is thriving. McCarty begs his advertisers to stick with him, and he tries a new strategy: printing only good news. McCarty writes articles about how a storm can be enjoyable, and sentences like “A bank collapse was an opportunity. A store closing was a competitive edge” (96).
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Two more central figures are introduced in these chapters: Hazel Lucas Shaw and George Ehrlich. They are both described as last chancers. Ehrlich is described as a last-chancer because he is fleeing the Russian czar: “Oklahoma was their [the Ehrlich family's] last chance, as Dalhart was to the cowboy Bam White, as No Man's Land was to the Lucas and Folkers families” (68).Hazel Lucas Shaw is depicted as a last-chancer because she comes back to the Boisy City area after realizing she doesn't like city life in Cincinnati. Egan describes Shaw (along with Ike Osteen and Bam White) as “bound, each in their way to the High Plains […] because they knew this was the only roll of the dice left” (88).
By 1931, the High Plains is in environmental and economic crises, and Egan describes the region as taking on a meaner edge. As an example of the meaner edge, Egan presents Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum, a gang leader, who robs Levi Hertzstein’s clothier store in Dalhart. Hertzstein seeks justice by organizing a posse to find the bandit, and when Hertzstein’s posse overtakes Ketchum, he surrenders. As Hertzstein moves forward to disarm him, however, Ketchum shoots all the members of the posse, leaving them bleeding on the ground. Egan also states the heat waves make people mean.
When the economy spirals downwards, as presented in these three chapters, High Plains citizens scramble to find other ways to make money. Many turn to bootlegging (prohibition began in 1920);however, most choose to over-plow the land. One character who capitalizes on over-plowing is young Ike Osteen, who hires himself and his tractor out making one dollar per acre, so he can bring in some money for his widowed mother. Egan comments on Osteen's actions and again weaves in the contrast between the ranchers' philosophy versus the farmers' philosophy: “A decade earlier Ike [Osteen] would have been cussed at or ridiculed the thought of pulverizing Baca [County's] grass being the stupidest idea a person could come up with” (81).
Chapter 6 opens the second section of The Worst Hard Time (“Betrayal, 1931-1933”). The High Plains farmers feel betrayed by the government that once promised them wealth when the wheat prices crash. To make things worse, President Hoover tells the farmers not to worry about the crash:“‘Americans had simply lost their confidence,’ and “'the worst effects of the crash [...] will have passed during the next sixty days’” (95). When proud farmers beg President Hoover for relief to buy their wheat to at least feed it to hungry families, Hoover refuses, “but congratulations, the government men said. You [the High Plains] grew seven times as much wheat as you did a dozen years ago. A new national record” (87).
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