THE DEPTHS OF THE GREAT

DEPRESSION

How bad was it really?

By 1932 things were pretty bad according to the newspaper headlines:

U.S STEEL LAYS OFF ANOTHER 10,000 GENERAL MOTORS STOCK DOWN FROM $500 A

SHARE TO $10 A SHARE CHICAGO TEACHERS FEED 11,000 HUNGRY

CHILDREN IOWA CORN WAY DOWN IN PRICE SALE-SALE-SALE SUITS AND COATS FOR $15 KENTUCKY COAL MINERS FOUND LIVING ON

DANDELIONS N.Y.C. COPS TO CARRY LIST OF CHARITIES TO

DIRECT THE HELPLESS 110 CHILDREN IN N.Y.C. DIE FROM MALNUTRITION

How did things get so bad?How bad was it?

They didn’t call it the “Great Depression” for nothing…

The Stock Market Crash On Black Tuesday, October

29th, the market collapsed. In a single day, sixteen million shares were traded--a record--and thirty billion dollars vanished into thin air.

Westinghouse lost two thirds of its September value. DuPont dropped seventy points.

The "Era of Get Rich Quick" was over. Jack Dempsey, America's first millionaire athlete, lost $3 million.

The market lost $30 billion by the end of November, 1929

Cynical New York hotel clerks asked incoming guests, "You want a room for sleeping or jumping?"

The trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange just after the crash of 1929.

How the Crash effected the Economy Only 9 million Americans (7.3% of

the population) played the market But, the crash sparked doubts

about the health of the economy As a result, some consumers pulled

back on their spending, especially on more expensive items like cars, washing machines, etc.The health of the economy had

become dependent on spending on such items

The Stock Market was back “up and running” during the 1930s

Bank Runs Not only did bank runs wipe

out people's savings, they also undermined the ideology of thrift & saving.

Above: A bank run—where many people want to withdraw their money from any single bank at the same time

Below: Police stand guard outside the entrance to New York's closed World Exchange Bank, March 20, 1931.

Bank Runs → Bank Failures People needed money &/or didn’t feel

confident that it was safe in a bank Either way, they withdrew their accounts Banks went out of business because

they didn’t have enough in reserves Over 9,000 banks failed, 1929-1933 Less banks meant less money in

circulation Even people who had “played it safe”

and not played the stock market were effected

This meant there was less money for loans & borrowing Even fewer people could afford

expensive consumer goods like cars & washing machines

Workers’ Wages Since businesses were

no longer selling as many products, they had two choices:Lay-off or let go of workersLower workers’ wages

Over time, they did bothThis just led to even less

people having money with which to purchase products

This led to even lower wages & fewer jobs

Fighting over Fewer Jobs Above: Unemployed

men vying for jobs at the American Legion Employment Bureau in Los Angeles during the Great Depression

Below: Billboard telling people that the town had no jobs

Fewer Jobs Above: Typical picture

capturing the number of people who were unemployed and looking for a job. (Circa 1935)

Below: Part of the daily lineup outside the State Employment Service Office. Memphis, Tennessee. June 1938.

These are typical scenes; they reflect the large population of unemployed in desperate need of work and looking for jobs. (Circa 1935)

Business Failures Ultimately, many

businesses couldn’t stay in operation They had to cut prices to

match what buyers were willing and able to spend

They couldn’t stay in business selling at such low prices

It’s estimated that around 85,000 businesses failed between 1929-1932

Workers went on Strike Right: Strike pickets, New York, New

York. Dec. 1937. Businesses who did survive the

Great Depression tried to get as much work as possible from their employees for the lowest possible wage.

Workers were upset with the speedup of assembly lines, working conditions and the lack of job security. Seeking strength in unity, they formed unions

Due to favorable laws in the 1930s, union membership skyrocketed from under 3 million in 1933 to over 8 million in 1941

The GM Strike Automobile workers organized the U.A.W.

(United Automobile Workers) in 1935. General Motors would not recognize the U.A.W. as the workers' bargaining representative. Hearing rumors that G.M. was moving work to factories where the union was not as strong, workers in Flint, Michigan began a sit-down strike on December 30, 1936.

The sit-down was an effective way to strike. When workers walked off the job and picketed a plant, owners could bring in new workers to break the strike. If the workers stayed in the plant, owners could not replace them with other workers.

Above: Broken windows at GM Flint Fisher Body Plant during the sit-down strike of 1936-37.

Below: Strikers guarding window entrance to Fisher plant #3, Jan.-Feb. 1936.

Even Veterans Strike: The Bonus Army

WWI veterans seeking early payment of a bonus scheduled for 1945 assembled in DC to pressure Congress and the White House. At the time, veterans benefits took up 25% of the 1932 federal budget, but as the Bonus Expeditionary Force swelled to 60,000 men, the president secretly ordered that its members be given tents, cots, army rations and medical care.

In July, the Senate rejected the bonus 62 to 18. Most protesters went home via Hoover's offer of free RR passage, but 10,000 remained, including many communists. On the morning of July 28, forty protesters tried to claim an evacuated building in downtown DC. The city's police chief, sympathetic to the marchers, was knocked down by a brick and his assistant suffered a fractured skull. When rushed by a crowd, two other policemen opened fire and two marchers were killed. 1,000 soldiers were called in, armed with tear gas, tanks and machine guns to drive the veterans from their encampment and burned it to the ground.

WWI veterans block the steps of the Capital during the Bonus March, July 5, 1932.

But those who had jobs (even bad ones) were the lucky ones….

Unemployment During the 1930s industrial

unemployment reached as high as 25%It was as high as 33% if you

counted unemployment of farmers

In some Ohio cities it was even more direCleveland 50%Akron 60%Toledo 80%

Public Charities were overrun

Soup Kitchens In the absence of substantial

government relief programs during 1932, free food was distributed with private funds in some urban centers to large numbers of the unemployed. (Circa February 1932)

Above: Unemployed men shown at Volunteers of America Soup Kitchen: Washington, D.C. (Circa 1936)

Below: Breadlines: long line of people waiting to be fed: New York City

Soup kitchens For millions, soup

kitchens offered the only food they would eat.

Above: Young boys waiting in kitchen of city mission for soup which is given out nightly. Dubuque, Iowa. April 1940.

Below: Soup kitchen lines, St. Peter’s Mission, New York City

Selling Apples Many tried apple-

selling to avoid the shame of panhandling. In New York City, there were over 5,000 apple sellers on the street.

Above: Selling apples Below: Selling apples,

Jacksonville, Texas. October, 1939.

Shanties Tattered communities of the homeless coalesced in

and around every major city in the country Right:

Unemployed

workers in

front of a shack

with Christmas

tree, East 12th

Street, New York

City. December

1937.

Squatting Many who lost their

homes became squatters—living on someone else’s land

Above: Squatters in Mexican section in San Antonio, Texas. House was built of scrap material in vacant lot in the Mexican section of San Antonio, Texas. March 1939.

Below: Squatter's Camp, Route 70, Arkansas, October, 1935.

Homelessness President

Hoover was blamed for it all

People lived in Hoover-villes, slept under Hoover blankets, and waved their Hoover flags

Guess where?

All this was in the cities…

Couldn’t people in the cities move to the country and become farmers?

The Dust Bowl Farmers were hit hard

Insects, high temps, draught & wind

Over cropping, over grazing & improper farming

Parts of TX, OK, KS, NE, SD, AR were decimated

Dust Storms

Dust Storms: "Kodak view of a dust storm Baca Co., Colorado, Easter Sunday 1935"; Photo by N.R. Stone (Circa April 1935)

Dry Land Farmer and sons, dust

storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936.

The drought that helped cripple agriculture in the Great Depression was the worst in the climatological history of the country. By 1934 it had desiccated the Great Plains, from North Dakota to Texas, from the Mississippi River Valley to the Rockies. Vast dust storms swept the region.

Farms for Sale Farmers go bankrupt &/or are

forced to sell their farms All: Farm foreclosure sales

(Circa 1933)

Migration City dwellers and farmers both

tried to move to other areas of the country to find work

Above: farmers whose topsoil blew away joined the sod caravans of "Okies" on Route 66 to California. (Circa 1935)

Below: Toward Los Angeles, California. 1937. Perhaps 2.5 million people abandoned their homes in the South and the Great Plains during the Great Depression and went on the road.

Effects of Migration Above: Part of an impoverished refugee Iowa

family of nine on a New Mexico highway who left Iowa in 1932 because of father's ill health. He had been an auto mechanic laborer, painter by trade, but now was tubercular. The family was on relief in Arizona but were refused entry on relief roles in Iowa where they wanted to return. They had no money at all and were about to sell their belongings and trailer for money to buy food. "We don't want to go where we'll be a nuisance to anybody."

The children of migrant workers typically had no way to attend school. By the end of 1930 some 3 million children had abandoned school. Thousands of schools had closed or were operating on reduced hours. At least 200,000 children took to the roads on their own.  Summer 1936.

Below: A Homeless Family Walking Along a Road, 1936

“Exodusters” Top: Families on the road

with all their possessions packed into their trucks, migrating and looking for work in California. (Circa 1935)

Below: "Okies" Driving to California (circa 1935)

California Agricultural Work Right: Filipinos

cutting lettuce, Salinas, California

In order to maximize their ability to exploit farm workers, California employers recruited from China, Japan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Mexico, the American south, and Europe.

California Agricultural Work American migrants also

went to California where there was lots of agricultural workUnfortunately, more people

went to CA than there were jobs available

Above: Migrant pea pickers camp in the rain. California, February, 1936.

Below: In one of the largest pea camps in California. February, 1936

California Agricultural Work

The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration.

In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:  I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).

Migrant Mother Dorothea Lange's

"Migrant Mother," destitute in a pea picker's camp, because of the failure of the early pea crop.

Most of the 2,500 people in this camp were destitute. By the end of the decade there were still 4 million migrants on the road.

Gross National Product, 1929-1932 Overall, the country’s GNP

plummeted by 25%It went from over $104 billion

to $76.4 billion Investment dropped 48X

It went from $16.2 billion to only $333 million

People felt desperate…

1932 Election Hoover was voted out of

officeHe’d tried, but the

depression was too big Franklin D. Roosevelt

promised a “New Deal” for the American peopleHe did anything and

everything (sometimes what he did was contradictory)

The New Deal The Hundred Days

Bank HolidayA Diverse CabinetFireside Chats

The Three RsRelief—getting money

to people by creating jobs or cutting “relief” checks

Recovery—helping businesses & farms

Reform—laws to stop it from happening again

Over the next few days you will research and try to pass, in a Mock Senate, some of the major New Deal laws

You will act in the role that you had during our Stock Market scenario

You can once again gain wealth points (and candy) if your bill passes

Bankers: FDIC & SEC Your goal: for the federal

government to guarantee people’s bank accounts through an insurance program; it would also regulate the stock market to prevent fraud and people making foolish decisions in the future

Businessmen: NRA Your goal: to allow

the federal government to regulate prices, working conditions, and competition between businesses in order to prevent monopolies and unfair practices.

Farmers: The AAA Your goal: for the

federal government to require farmers to give up some individual freedom in order to gain some economic security.

Labor: NLRA Your goal: that the

federal government could regulate wages, hours, and working conditions and mandate collective bargaining on labor contracts in order to ensure laborers are treated fairly by business owners engaged in interstate commerce.

Social Critics: FERA, WPA & CCC Your goal: that the

federal government would give direct relief to the unemployed and make work for them on public projects.

Women’s Rights: SSA Your goal: that the federal

government would set up an insurance program to pay old people a retirement and give supplemental pay to widows, mothers with dependent children, and anyone who is disabled and unable to work. The program will require mandatory payments from workers and employers to pay for the three programs.