i found this quite interesting

The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock (Part 1)
By Errol Morris
SKULLDUGGERY HERE

The first of a seven-part series.

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Republican editors throughout the land were soon rubbing their hands over a dispatch which, on quick reading, seemed to convict the New Deal’s cherished resettlement Administration of photographic fakery and bad faith.
— Time Magazine

Summer of 1936. One of the worst droughts in American history. On June 7, North Dakota’s Republican governor, Walter Welford, proclaimed a day of prayer. The citizens of North Dakota would kneel en masse to pray for rain. “Only Providence,” the governor declared, could avert “another tragedy of tremendous proportions.” Devil’s Lake, N.D., recorded .16 of an inch.

The drought continued.

On June 21, Gov. Welford flew to Washington to ask President Roosevelt for aid. On June 23, Roosevelt ordered Dr. Tugwell, head of the Resettlement Administration, to make a survey of the needs in Dakotas and Montana. A million dollars in aid had been requested.

Within a week, a heat wave spread across the Western plains. Newspapers reported it was 111 degrees in North Dakota. By July 7, it was a record 119 degrees in parts of the state. Fields were scorched brown and black. The range country seemed to be covered with a tan moss so close to the ground that the hungry cattle could not reach it; so dry was the covering that it was useless for sheep..........

pic: Library of Congress