Economy During The Great Depression

When the Depression began, there was no federal relief for the unemployed or assistance for families facing starvation. Some states operated relief programs but curtailed them due to declining tax revenues. Religious and charitable organizations provided relief in many urban areas; however, in many of these organizations operating in the North as well as the South, there was a lot of discrimination and racism, which excluded African Americans from their "soup kitchens." In communities where relief work was offered through state agencies, African Americans were given less in monthly aid than white applicants. The reason I am referring to African Americans is because I have recently read a book that dealt mostly with the great depression and welfare programs. This book is called "There are no children here" and it is written by Alex Kotlowitz. This is not about a fictional story of hardships and struggles but rather it is a harsh reality that exists in this country, one to which we turn our backs and close our eyes to daily. This book is touching only if you understand and acknowledge the facts that perpetuate poverty and welfare dependency in the United States. Although I learned a lot from this book I

Many consider the Great Depression a tragedy but few actually know the ways in which it actually affected the people who lived through it. One way it affected the people of the time is the hopelessness it brought. During the early 1920's many men returned from the "Great War" jaded and angry. The same effect was seen in most people during the depression. It was this hopelessness that spawned modernist literature and thought. Another way the depression affected the everyday man was the loss of homes. Many homes were foreclosed during the depression and this left many homeless. In fact the "Okies" were people left homeless after farm foreclosures. The last way the depression affected people was the broken homes it caused. The number of father's leaving their families rose dramatically during

People lost the ability to pay for things they once owned. People bought many things on margin in the years before the depression, they soon found this to be a rather unwise practice as they could no longer afford these purchases once the depression hit. Millions were out a job, and soon their homes followed; foreclosed on by the banks, the items they once purchased sold back. This left many families with little possessions and even fewer places to turn to and many ended up in shanty towns and Hoovervilles. There they lived out of cars and in makeshift tents like the family in picture 5. These places were overrun with undernourished people that rarely had their basic human needs

The thousands of people trying to get their money back at the same time caused the banks to malfunction resulting in the closing of many banks. The result of closing banks causing a chain of reactions from people losing their money to factories overproducing. In addition, it also cause an huge increase in unemployment percentage shown in the bar graph in document 1, a primary source, Historical Statistics of the United States. As the years progressed after 1929, the percent of unemployment increased from 3 to high as 24 percent. The problems got worse as more problems began to built such as the election of the Herbert Hoover. Herbert Hoover did very little to help Americans because he thought they would get better just like his childhood. Another problem during the Great Depression is personally explained in document 3, a secondary source, an excerpt about Vera’s life during the Great Depression. Vera faced the problems of the typical American during the Great Depression, which were getting kicked out of her apartment to the inability to afford food. This excerpt describes the life of the average American during the Great Depression. Many

The Depression changed social structure in America forever. “The real story of the 1930’s is how individual families endured and survived, whether battling the despair of hunger and unemployment in the city of the fear of unending drought and forced migration in the dust bowl of the Great plains.” (Press, Petra pg 6)

The Great Depression- The Great Depression was one of the worst times for the Western Industrialized World, when it came to its economy The depression originated in the U.S, after a fall in stock prices that began around September 4, 1929. Cities were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. The Great Depression affected anybody that was indebted. Some countries affected; Canada, Germany, Great Britain. Not everyone was affected in the same way during the Great Depression. Many of the rich weren't affected at all but the poor couldn't do anything about it. Thousands of homeless families camped out on the Green Law in New York City, which was an empty reservoir during the Great Depression. During the 1930s, manufacturing employees earned about $17 per week. Doctors earned around $61

During the decades of the 1920s and 1930s, the United States underwent a series of changes that had a drastic effect on people across the nation. As the economy began to slow to a halt, millions of people were left broke and without jobs. As the country’s farmers were paralyzed with debt, food prices increased radically (McElvaine). During the mid-1930s, a series of droughts coupled with poor agricultural methods led to years of soil erosion and dust storms known as the Dust Bowl, a catastrophe that destroyed farms throughout the Southern Great Plains (Shafer, Low). As a result, many farmers were forced to abandon their land to seek employment elsewhere. These migrant workers, attracted by the fertility and familiarity of the area, traveled to California towns such as Salinas, where they labored tirelessly for wealthy planters (Cayton, Gorn, Williams). The events of the Great Depression Era, following years of difficulty and poverty, paved the way to an entirely new way of life for Americans.

The most searing legacy of the depression was unemployment, which mounted steadily from the relatively low levels experienced between 1922 and 1929. The percentage of the civilian labor force without work rose from 3.2 in 1929 to 8.7 in 1930, and reached a peak of 24.9 in 1933. The estimates of unemployment amongst non-farm employees, which include the self-employed and unpaid family workers are even higher. These are horrifying figures: millions of American families were left without a bread-winner and faced the very real possibility of destitution.11

In the 1930s, several economic, political, and environmental factors caused Americans to lose hope of a future beyond the extreme circumstances in which they had to survive. America prospered during the roaring ‘20s, but the stock market crash of October 1929 set off a devastating chain of events; banks and factories closed and one out of every four Americans found himself unemployed. The sudden economic collapse began the era of the Great Depression, in which millions were jobless by 1933 and countless others wandered the country in search of work, food and shelter. “The core of the problem was the immense disparity between the country’s productive capacity and the ability of the people to consume” (Nelson). The economic downturn coupled

Through my search process I came across all the answers to my questions simply because the information concerning the Great Depression is plentiful due to its huge impact on our country. During it all I came first upon the answer to my question how the farmers that lived in the 1930's era. I found out that actually farmers had it quite hard if not harder then the citizens who lived in the city. This is because of the fact that when the Depression happened was also the timing of the Dust Bowl unbeknownst to me. Due to the Dust Bowl and one of the longest droughts in American history lasting from 1930 to 1934 while also covering almost 80 percent of the United States farmers had almost an impossible time attempting to grow crops. This was due to the drought. Also as a side affect of the massive drought was that the more farmers tried to plow and till their fields the weaker they made the sod. So as a result this led to the massive Dust Bowl ending in thousands upon thousands of crops getting destroyed.

You think your life is hard and miserable now, think back during The Great Depression.

The Great Depression was the perfect breeding ground for fear and chaos. The United States was drastically impacted, and no one could escape its wrath! The Great Depression not only affected the nation’s economy and way of life, but it also had a huge impression on people’s beliefs and attitudes. Life was a daily struggle, and Americans had to adapt and cope during hard times. People feared the unknown and had to be very resourceful. A landmark trial made headlines because “riding the rails” became a popular means of transportation.

The Great Depression, however inevitable, took people by surprise when the stock market crashed in 1929. At first people did not fully understand the state of the economy, they could not wrap their heads around the transition from popping champagne bottles to eating bread crumbs for dinner. People were expecting a quick fix to the problem, assuming their lives to go back to normal after a few months, ultimately underestimating the situation America was in. As a result, no one was prepared to properly combat the extreme shortage of food, jobs, and money in the years to come.

Unemployment was one of the biggest impacts on the depression. Millions of people lost jobs. Forty percent of factory workers, and sixty-seven percent of construction workers were unemployed in Ohio alone (Stock Market Crash of 1929). In the country, unemployment went up twenty-five percent, wages went down forty-two percent, economic growth went down fifty percent, and world trade went down sixty-five percent. In the cities, factories and businesses got rid of a large number of employees or closed down altogether. Cities were not the only ones who felt the impact of the depression. Farmers faced low prices for their products, and many people still could not afford the farmer’s products, resulting in farm foreclosures across the United States.

Unemployment during the Great Depression was severe. In as early as 1933, the fourth year of the Great Depression, the unemployment rate was almost 25 percent, which means more than eleven million people were out of work. The unemployment rate was lower in states like Michigan and Ohio, which had plenty of jobs dependant on massive industries. However, Washington was hit hard, where one third of Washington was unemployed in early 1933. Some factors that also caused unemployment were the collapse of the stock market, drought conditions which destroyed agriculture, and deflation in prices. Businesses shut down and Government guarantees did nothing, and unemployment increased since alternative job sources were not available.