158 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



the range, man has speeded up the process. In half a century 

 he has created artificial types of erosion such as gullying 

 and wind erosion which were very rarje when the range be 

 longed to the Indian and the buffalo. The blame for the 

 destruction of the range must be laid to the white man and his 

 civilization. 



THE COLLAPSE OF RANGE ECONOMY 



In 1934 there was a collision of the three most powerful 

 forces that controlled the use of the range. These were drought, 

 economic depression, and man-made erosion. The result was 

 disaster: no crops, no money, wasting land, and a stranded 

 population. 



For the dry farmer, retreating since 1920, there was prac 

 tically no help. Various federal agencies created to make it 

 easier for those who depended on agriculture had helped the 

 rancher somewhat. But by the time this help was ready, many 

 of the ranchers had already gotten hopelessly in debt. The 

 age-old solution, which has always been proposed to solve 

 agricultural problems before give up the land and move west 

 was useless. There wasn't any more West to go to as free 

 settlers. For the dispossessed farmer today pioneering in the 

 West has simmered down to a miserable existence in the mi 

 gratory farm labor camps in California and the Southwest. 



Here was a problem too big for individual farm land users 

 to solve. It was necessary for government to step in. One of 

 the first governmental agencies to heed the call of the range 

 users was the state government of Montana, and with good 

 reason. Not only were the range farmers and ranchers in dis 

 tress; Montana was the only state in the Union which had in 

 1930 a smaller population than it had had in 1920. Statistics 

 may often be meaningless, but there was a statistic that be 

 lievers in the "go west" theory could well consider. 



