<Dd> Capital - intensive agribusiness had transformed the scene; deep wells into the aquifer, intensive irrigation, the use of artificial pesticides and fertilizers, and giant harvesters were creating immense crops year after year whether it rained or not . According to the farmers he interviewed, technology had provided the perfect answer to old troubles, such of the bad days would not return . In Worster's view, by contrast, the scene demonstrated that America's capitalist high - tech farmers had learned nothing . They were continuing to work in an unsustainable way, devoting far cheaper subsidized energy to growing food than the energy could give back to its ultimate consumers . </Dd> <P> In contrast with Worster's pessimism, historian Mathew Bonnifield argued that the long - term significance of the Dust Bowl was "the triumph of the human spirit in its capacity to endure and overcome hardships and reverses ." </P> <P> The crisis was documented by photographers, musicians, and authors, many hired during the Great Depression by the federal government . For instance, the Farm Security Administration hired numerous photographers to document the crisis . Artists such as Dorothea Lange were aided by having salaried work during the Depression . She captured what have become classic images of the dust storms and migrant families . Among her most well - known photographs is Destitute Pea Pickers in California . Mother of Seven Children, which depicted a gaunt - looking woman, Florence Owens Thompson, holding three of her children . This picture expressed the struggles of people caught by the Dust Bowl and raised awareness in other parts of the country of its reach and human cost . Decades later, Thompson disliked the boundless circulation of the photo and resented the fact she did not receive any money from its broadcast . Thompson felt it gave her the perception as a Dust Bowl "Okie ." </P> <P> The work of independent artists was also influenced by the crises of the Dust Bowl and the Depression . Author John Steinbeck, borrowing closely from field notes taken by Farm Security Administration worker and author Sanora Babb, wrote The Grapes of Wrath (1939) about migrant workers and farm families displaced by the Dust Bowl . Babb's own novel about the lives of the migrant workers, Whose Names Are Unknown, was written in 1939 but was eclipsed and shelved in response to the success of the Steinbeck's work, and was finally published in 2004 . Many of the songs of folk singer Woody Guthrie, such as those on his 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads, are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression when he traveled with displaced farmers from Oklahoma to California and learned their traditional folk and blues songs, earning him the nickname the "Dust Bowl Troubadour". </P>

What happened to bring the issue of the dust bowl to national attention
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