Life During the Great Depression

The Stock Market Crash 1929

• Following World War I, a recession led to a drop in the market price of farm crops and caused Great Plains farmers to increase their productivity through mechanization and the cultivation of more land.

• This increase in farming activity required an increase in spending that caused many farmers to become financially overextended.

• The stock market crash in 1929 only served to exacerbate this already tenuous economic situation.

Hooverisms• President Hoover was

blamed for the misery of the Great Depression which led to new ways of describing the impoverished nature of many ordinary Americans

-Hoover Wagon (Hoover Car- just the horse)

-Hoover Blankets (newspapers)-Hoover flags (empty pockets

turned inside out)-Hooverville

Soup Kitchens

• A soup kitchen, a bread line, or a meal center is a place where food is offered to the hungry for free or at a reasonably low price.

Migrants• Many independent

farmers lost their farms when banks came to collect on their notes, while tenant farmers were turned out when economic pressure was brought to bear on large landholders.

• The attempts of these displaced agricultural workers to find other work were met with frustration due to a 30 percent unemployment rate.

The Dust Bowl

• At the same time, the increase in farming activity placed greater strain on the land.

• As the naturally occurring grasslands of the southern Great Plains were replaced with cultivated fields, the rich soil lost its ability to retain moisture and nutrients and began to erode.

• Soil conservation practices were not widely employed by farmers during this era, so when a seven-year drought began in 1931, followed by the coming of dust storms in 1932, many of the farms literally dried up and blew away creating what became known as the "Dust Bowl."

Migrant camp in California

• Driven by the Great Depression, drought, and dust storms, thousands of farmers packed up their families and made the difficult journey to California where they hoped to find work.

Migrant family in California camp

• Along with their meager belongings, the Dust Bowl refugees brought with them their inherited cultural expressions.

“Okies” in California

• “Okies” was the nickname for people who migrated from the Dust Bowl to California during the Great Depression

Rear view of an Okie's car, passing through Amarillo, Texas, heading west, 1941

The Farm ProblemGets Worse

The Grapes of Wrath• Set during the Great

Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of sharecroppers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in financial and agricultural industries.

• Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they were trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with thousands of other "Okies", they sought jobs, land, dignity, and a future.

The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

Bonnie and Clyde

• Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow were well-known outlaws, robbers, and criminals who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression.

• Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934

Women

• Gained important government positions- Frances Perkins (was the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet)

• Joined work force in greater numbers

• Suffered discrimination in the workplace/received lower wages

Perkins overseeing the signing of the National Labor Relations Act by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Teenagers• During the Great

Depression, more than a quarter of a million teenagers left their homes and hopped freight trains looking for work or adventure.

• At the height of the Great Depression, two-hundred and fifty thousand teenage hobos were roaming America, an army of “wild boys” on the loose.

African Americans

• “Black Cabinet” organized (an informal group of African-American public policy advisors to)

• Southern Tenant Farmers Union Organized

• March on Washington• Segregation persisted in

New Deal Programs • FDR would not support

laws to end lynching or poll taxes

Mexican Americans

• CCC and WPA helped some Mexican Americans

• However, many suffered deportation and discrimination Mexicans voluntarily (in many cases forced)

went to the railway stations where they were given a free trip back to Mexico. It is estimated that up to 2 million Mexicans were deported.

Native Americans

• Indian Reorganization Act- established tribal land ownership and control of education and self-government on reservations

• Individual Native American landowners feared for their rights

Intended to allow Native Americans to resurrect their culture and traditions lost to government expansion and encroachment years earlier.

Hope

• As a part of the New Deal, laws were passed by Congress to increase production and employment

• Americans were going back to work albeit slowly