A PIONEER in the science of soil conservation, Ralph Schwartz studied the 1930s Dust Bowl up close and personal. At right is a photo he took during one of the dust storms that defined that era.

Ralph Schwartz Recalls Work
On Soil Survey In Dust Bowl

By Colleen Schreiber

ABILENE, Texas — Ralph L. Schwartz was a member of the one and only survey team to evaluate the damage done during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. At 92, he is also the oldest living member of the Soil Conservation Service, today titled the Natural Resources Conservation Service. He joined the ranks only a month after the new organization was born.

Schwartz himself was born in October 1906 in southeastern Ohio. His folks moved to Grand Prairie, Texas, after he was born, and then in 1907 to Holly, Colorado, 25 miles east of Lamar, where they homesteaded 160 acres and built a two-room buffalo sod house. Buffalograss was about all that grew in this low rainfall, flat prairie land. It was durable and suitable for this 17 to 18-inch rainfall area. Since there was no lumber, homesteaders built their houses of its sod.

Schwartz recalls that it was difficult to break out the ground with a horse and plow. His father raised broom corn, used to make brooms in those days, and because little else would grow in this arid region, it was their cash crop.

It didn't take long for his father to realize there was no way to make a good living there, so the family was on the move again almost as soon as he "proved it up," this time to a small oilfield town, an "oil camp," Schwartz called it, in Oklahoma. It was the fall of 1910.

Tragedy struck the family when Schwartz's mother died. He was only four and a half, his younger brother only 18 months old. The brothers moved back to Ohio, where Schwartz lived with his grandfather on his mother’s side for about four years and then his grandmother on his father’s side for another four years. He's been on his own since he was 14.

Schwartz took a job with an English family who owned a small dairy. It was farm labor for a $1 a day keeps, Schwartz says.

"Butter was their cash crop. It wasn't a big dairy, 10 to 12 cows, but we churned butter twice a week," he recalls. "I took the butter to town and sold it to individual families. We got about 10 cents a pound more that way."

This English family came to southeastern Ohio in 1803, not long after the area was settled. The couple with whom Schwartz lived were only second, possibly third generation. They didn't have any children.

"It was my home, really, for eight years through high school and college."

Schwartz worked his way through college, living on the dairy farm, milking cows in the mornings and evening and waiting tables at the university hospital by day. He graduated in 1929 from Ohio State University with a degree in ag chemistry and agronomy.

He then took a job on the state campus staff at College Station, Texas. He was under the supervision of the Experiment Station, doing primarily analytical work on soils, crops, feeds, fertilizers, etc. During the time he was there, Schwartz figures he ran analyses on some 50,000 samples.

It was hard work, and as the Depression dragged on, Schwartz' salary was cut by 25 percent; after three years he was making less than when he started.

Farming was modernized beginning in the 1920s when tractors came on to the scene. Good or bad, that allowed the flat, treeless country of the Southern Great Plains to be broken by the steel plow. It was promoted to those who didn't have a better place to go as the "Garden of Eden," a place where a farmer could take advantage of fresh, fertile land. A new variety of winter wheat, Turkey Red, was introduced, which Schwartz said also helped increase prospects on the southern Plains.

Wheat was in great demand, and farmers planted it fencerow to fencerow. In 1931, the nation reported a record-breaking wheat crop. Still, demand exceeded supply and farmers received record high prices for their crop.

Schwartz remembers running analyses in 1930-31 on the wheat grown in this fertile new ground of the Southern Great Plains. The protein content, he says, ran as high as 11 to 12 percent. In other places it averaged 8.5 to nine percent. He attributed the difference primarily to the virgin soil and the fact that it had not yet lost much of its organic matter.

The high protein wheat, Schwartz notes, was used for pretzels, and because of that it brought a 20 percent premium. Thus what would have been 25 cent per bushel wheat became 30 cent per bushel wheat.

"Suitcase farmers" came by the droves to the Plains, Schwartz says. These were city folk from Wichita, St. Louis and the like, speculators who didn't operate the land themselves. They contracted out the farming and only came out sometimes in the fall during planting and on occasion at harvest to reap the rewards of a crop they did nothing to make. None knew the first thing about conservation, Schwartz adds.

A severe drouth, not only more predictable today than it was then, enveloped much of the country and set the stage for what was to come. From about 1932 through 1935, Schawrtz says, the southern plains received only five to six inches of rain. The wind began to blow, and it blew for the better part of a decade. In no time this "Garden of Eden" turned into a vast stretch of barren soil.

The area most severely affected encompassed 100 million acres in five states, including the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado, and Eastern New Mexico. Some called the area an American Sahara. Journalists dubbed it the Dust Bowl.

For those like Schwartz, who lived through it, it was the "Dirty 30s." Many were convinced and feared that these "black blizzards" that became part of their everyday life as the drouth ensued signaled the end of the world.

In 1932 historians recorded 14 dust storms; in '33 there were 38 such storms, and with each year it worsened. Farmers got to where they could pinpoint the origin of the storm by the color of dust: red for Oklahoma, black for Kansas and gray for Colorado and New Mexico.

The spring of 1935 was the worst of the worst. Historical accounts record that the wind blew for 27 days and nights, and beginning in April there were 47 days when visibility was limited to six miles; the majority of the time it was less than one mile. April 14, 1935, went down in the history books as the worst day of all. It was called "Black Sunday."

Schwartz remembers that day because he was en route to Texas when the storm hit. He stopped to pick up a soldier who was hitchhiking. They made it to Raton before getting stuck right in the middle of the asphalt road. The GI got out to push while Schwartz maneuvered the car. Schwartz could barely see headlights from an oncoming car and the other car apparently didn't see Schwartz's lights. The two vehicles barely missed each other. It was 2:30 in the afternoon.

It was a terrible time, Schwartz says. Many families had very little to eat. Many lived on cornbread and beans, and it almost always had a gritty taste. School children had to wear masks to school to help keep the dust out of their respiratory system. Many schools closed altogether.

Hospitals were overflowing with patients suffering from dust pneumonia. Many died. Schwartz remembers when 40 out of 160 of his men were sick with dust pneumonia. Four were in the hospital, including Schwartz; two died.

"You just couldn't breathe and you ran a temperature," Schwartz recalls. "The doctor treated me with what he called a pneumonia jacket. It was heated."

Some people tried home remedies, including skunk grease. Others tried rubbing kerosene and lard on their throats.

Crop after crop failed. One county in western Kansas had harvested a record-breaking five million bushels of wheat in 1931. In 1935 that same county reported a mere 5000 bushels.

Livestock were malnourished because there wasn't any native vegetation and no extra byproducts to feed them, either. In 1934 the government paid farmers $16 per cow and $3 for their calves.

Another indication of the lack of vegetation came from one historical account which reported that someone found a crow's nest made entirely of barbed wire.

Farm families hung on for as long as they could, but in the end many deserted their homes. By some accounts the exodus ran as high as a quarter of the population in the Dust Bowl region. Most of them moved west to California, where they worked as migrant labor.

Washington bureaucrats originally saw the problems plaguing the southern Great Plains as simply another crisis of the Depression. But Hugh Bennett saw the crisis for what it was, and he set out to make lawmakers understand the significance of it all. He ardently promoted the concept of employing conservation techniques on the southern Plains. His most effective lobbying aid was a terrible dust storm that passed over Washington as he was testifying before the Senate Public Lands Committee.

The end result was the Soil Conservation Act of April 17, 1935, which transformed SCS from temporary status to permanent. Hugh Bennett became the father of the SCS.

The SCS became official on April 20, 1935, and one month later, on May 20, Schwartz went to work as a soil scientist for the new organization for $2000 a year. In November he became part of a 21-member team, the one and only of its kind, directed to evaluate and survey damages in the Dust Bowl area.

The purpose of the survey was to analyze and evaluate erosion. The team evaluated 25,000 square miles in 20 counties. A map was prepared for each county. Three counties were mapped in Colorado; Kansas had six counties, Oklahoma three and Texas eight. Schwartz worked mostly in Southern Colorado and the Panhandle of Texas.

The men used ownership maps to help draw up their maps. Soils were examined on two sides of every section. The team recorded the kind of soil, how much erosion they thought had occurred, the slope, etc.

"The soil maps were crude compared to what they do now," Schwartz remarks.

The team started in November 1935 and finished up the latter part of April 1936. Baca County in southeastern Colorado, Schwartz says, was considered one of the worst hit. The Oklahoma Panhandle was considered bad. Oldham County in Texas had "medium" damage, he recalls.

"In Deaf Smith County the soil profile was predominantly a very smooth hardland. The type of erosion here was different. It didn’t move off, just stacked up," Schwartz says.

The scientist has a copy of the survey he helped conduct. Entitled the Soil Conservation Reconnaissance Survey of the Southern Great Plains Wind-Erosion Area, it was published in January 1937.

The drouth did finally end, and it was decided that the nation couldn’t allow farmers to fail. Conservation practices were put into place. However, Schwartz says, many of the oldtimers wouldn't follow them, so the government began paying them to do the practices. In time the country healed over. Today a large majority of what was considered the Dust Bowl area is now back in native pasture.

Water erosion, Schwartz, notes, can be just as severe as wind erosion when there's nothing to break the impact of the raindrop.

"People don't realize the force of rain," he says. "Water is heavy. On a square foot, 12 inches square, an inch of water weighs 5.1 pounds; multiply that by the number of square feet in a mile, 43,560, and that figures out to about 110 tons of water. It’s unreal what a pounding the surface takes, so if you can keep it covered you cut down on erosion."

Schwartz says today's producers do a better job of conservation, but "probably still not enough."

Schwartz has been in Abilene since 1948. He retired from the SCS in 1965 but remained as the executive director for the soil conservation district there for 19 years.

Schwartz was in the Air Force for 49 months but never got off the ground. Since his retirement he has traveled extensively, visiting North and South America, China, Europe, Singapore, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

"I’ve known poverty, and I worked like hell till I retired," he says.