Life during the Depression

Dust Bowl, Public Works, & Bonus Army

The Dust Bowl

• When farmers began plowing the Great Plains, their plows uprooted the wild grass that helped hold the soil’s moisture.

• When the depression hit, crop prices fell and many of the Plains farmers had to leave their fields behind…uncultivated.

Origins of the Dust Bowl

• Making matters worse, a drought struck the Plains and caused the soil to dry to dust.

• The wheat fields from the Dakotas to Texas became one massive Dust Bowl.

• The wind caused the sky to be blackened for hundreds of miles.

• In the aftermath, farmers found both crops and livestock buried under the dust.

The Dust Bowl

Dust Bowl photos

Car buried under dust

Dust Bowl

• Dust filled the lungs of both animals and people who were caught outside during these wind storms.

• Death by suffocation was extremely common.• Most farmers were unable to keep their lands

without the income from the fields. If they were mortgaged, the banks repossessed.

Check for Understanding

Let’s Check your Understanding!!!

• Drought and _________ brought about the conditions that caused the Dust Bowl.

A. Overgrazing at large cattle farms.

B. The near extinction of the buffalo

C. FamineD. Poor farming practices

Great Depression photos

See the Irony?

Hollywood

• During the Great Depression, more than 60 million viewers went to the movies each week.

• Comedies gave viewers a way to escape the reality of their current situation.

Comic books hit the scene in the 1930s

King Kong was first released in 1933. It was the first movie with special effects.

Walt Disney

1939-Wizard of Oz & Gone with the Wind

Soap Operas

• Soap Operas gave listeners an opportunity to listen to others with illnesses and family conflict.

• Millions of people listened to the radio daily.

Literature & Art

• Writers and artists used the homeless and the unemployed as their subjects in pictures and articles.

• Author John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath about a family who moved to CA after losing their farm during to the Dust Bowl.

Let’s Check for Understanding!!!

• What subjects did artists, photographers, and writers emphasize during the 1930s?

Hoover’s Response

• Hoover did not believe that it was the government’s responsibility to provide relief to individuals hurt by the depression.

• Other countries hurt by the depression embraced a form of socialism.

• Hoover believed that socialism was responsible for their financial decline.

• He had even written a book called American Individualism that argued that individualism made America’s economic system the best in the world.

Check for Understanding

Herbert Hoover

Behind Closed Doors

• Although publicly Hoover declared that the economy was on its way to recovery, he was really concerned.

• He met with leaders of banks, railroads, and other big businesses.

• He even met with labor leaders and govt. officials.

• Industrialists agreed to stop cutting wages and keep their factories open and workers agreed to accept existing wages and conditions.

• The industrialists did not Keep Their Promise.

Herbert Hoover

Production shuts down

• Americans were reluctant to buy because production had been cut and workers were being laid off everyday.

• The lack of spending caused production to come to a grinding halt.

• The result was even more layoffs.

Unemployment

Public Works Projects

• Hoover asked Congress for $420 million to start government-funded building projects in an effort to create jobs.

• Although this provided some of the unemployed with jobs, it wasn’t enough to pull the country out of the depression.

Public Works Projects

To tax? or not to tax?

• Hoover was against raising taxes to pay for public works projects.

• He felt that if he raised taxes, people would have less money in their checks to spend.

• On the other hand, If he tried to fund the projects without raising taxes, he would have to borrow money.

• Hoover believed that borrowing money would increase the deficit and prolong the depression.

• Meanwhile, Americans continued to blame Hoover and the Republicans for the rising unemployment.

• When the elections rolled around, the Republicans lost the majority of their seats.

Trickle down Economics

Trickle-down economics

• Trickle- down theory- pump $ into the economy to the people at the top, and eventually the money will trickle down and benefit the people at the bottom.

• This method proved ineffective for Hoover.

• Money seldom trickled down to the people who were really in need of the assistance.

• People began to request relief from the federal government.

Let’s Check for Understanding!!!

• Hoover was slow to respond to the economic crisis because he opposed

A. All public works projects

B. Deficit spendingC. Investing in stocksD. Private charities

No relief in sight

• Hoover was adamantly opposed to providing direct federal aid to the needy.

• He saw that as being to close to Socialism in England.

• He also thought that it would ruin the unemployed’s desire to work.

Henry Ford

Working-Class Militancy

• Members of the working-class (the poorest tier) suffered the worst during the depression.

• Their frustrations soon gave way to protest.

• Thousands of unemployed auto-workers protested in front of Henry Ford’s( creator of the Model-T car) factory to demand work.

• They were met by Ford’s own private security force.

• After the workers began throwing rocks at the security guards, they unleashed gunfire.

• 4 demonstrators were killed.• The public was so incensed

by the deaths that > 40,000 people attended the funeral.

Rise of Communism

• Americans suffering from the depression began to embrace Communism.

• The Communist Party was at its strongest in American history during the depression.

• It had a following of 100,000+ Americans.

• It appealed to people from every walk of life---workers, intellectuals, and college students.

• Communists wanted to completely overthrow the current system--Capitalism.

• They saw it as the only way to provide relief to those suffering.

Communists

• Although members of the Communist Party were regularly attacked and generally viewed as enemies of America, they continued their protests in support of American workers.

• They were also unafraid to fight against racism in the South.

“Scottsboro Boys”

• The Communist Party was also the party that obtained a lawyer for a group of poor black men who were falsely accused of rape in Scottsboro, AL in 1931.

• It would be 20 years before the last one was released from prison.

The Bonus Army

• In 1924, Congress promised to pay WWI veterans $1 for everyday they had been ikn uniform, plus extra for time spent overseas.

• When it was time to pay up, Congress decided to hand out promissory notes that the veterans could not cash in until 1945.

• Veterans across the country began to organize in an effort to get what was rightly theirs.

The Bonus Marchers

The President Reacts

• Although some in Congress agreed with the Bonus Army, Hoover did not.

• He said that paying the bonuses would require the government to go into debt.

• He refused to even meet with their representatives.

• To add insult to injury, he labeled them as “Communists” and “bums”.

• More than 20,000 Bonus Marchers convened in Washington determined to get Hoover to see things their way.

Attack on the Bonus Marchers

• Hoover commanded General Douglas MacArthur to evict the Bonus Marchers from the city without going into their camp.

• MacArthur and 500 army soldiers released tear gas grenades on the Bonus Marchers.

• They then torched their camps.

• The Bonus Marchers were forced to run away.

• MacArthur was never disciplined for directly disobeying Hoover’s orders.

The End for Hoover

• The attack on the Bonus Marchers was the last nail in the coffin for Hoover.

• People saw him as unsympathetic and out of touch with the needs of most Americans.

FDR & The New Deal