Source: Vera Ruth Woodwall Criswell, Interview from the California Odyssey archive, 1981 “S. J. (Interviewer): Could you tell me a little bit about the storms?

“Criswell: Our cotton would be about five or six inches tall and it looked like a fire had gone over that field of cotton. It would just kill it and then in a few days it would be dead. . . I've seen it take out a whole big field of cotton just like that. We lived on the sandy land. The storms would start up in Kansas or somewhere. These local sand storms could sometimes could ruin your crop. . . They'd come just like a big old black cloud and they soon covered everything. . . A lot of the crops that were older it would just damage. You couldn't start over again. If the cotton was small enough you could start over again. It would just damage it so it wouldn't grow right.”

Which of the following was the most immediate impact of conditions such as those described in the excerpt?

A introduction of legislative measures to increase crop production
B creation of programs to hire former farmers for government jobs in the East
C rise in internal migration from the plains to western states
D transition to an industrial economy as people left agriculture