Constance Gist's Life During The Great Depression

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

Life during the great depression was very harsh for many people especially when they lost their job. They lost all of their savings so people had to wait in bread lines to get food. People could not afford to stay in their homes so they had to literally make houses of what every they could find. These houses were called hoovervilles

The Great Depression was a very influential era in American history, affecting many future generations. One of the most prevalent impacts it had on society was the extreme poverty that swept across the nation, affecting both people in cities and in the country. The main cause for this poverty was the mass loss of jobs among the middle class. Millions lost their jobs and consequently their homes. Families lived out of tents and cars in shanty towns or Hoovervilles. In these camps, many people didn’t have their basic human needs met, children and adults alike starved. They lived in clothes that were caked in dirt and tattered, too small for growing children and too cold for the frail elderly. Government relief programs attempted to help but offered little support to the now impoverished families of the millions that lost everything.

“Growing up in a time when all you worry about is if your family will be able to make it through to the next day is definitely a very scary and difficult time to live in” (Vonder Haar). My great-grandpa had this to say to my grandpa about growing up during the great depression. For many people in America from the 1930s to 1940s, life was a constant struggle. The people living in the Midwest, especially St. Louis, knew much too well how difficult it was to live through the great depression. When great-great grandpa first came to St. Louis from Germany he purchased a farm. From that point on, my family struggled to maintain the farm that would still exist today. Many people were affected by the great depression. Throughout the time period before

Life during the Great Depression was very different from life today. Many people were living on the streets in shanties, which were houses made of cardboard and scraps of wood. Milk and sugar were luxuries; you couldn’t buy them unless you were very wealthy. Often, men tried to sell apples in the street, just to make a few cents. Unemployment was a giant problem during the 30s. By 1933, Canada’s unemployment rate was at 30%. One in five Canadians were dependent on government relief to sustain their lives.

Farmers where Some of the main people who were affected by not only the great depression , but the dust bowl as well. Farmers were getting paid by AAA to reduce the land used to raise livestock and to produce products such as corn, wheat, tobacco, etc,these were just some of the problems that farmers suffered. Another reason why this event affected the farmers is because of the fact that farmers over farmed their land trying to get it to grow which made it worse and all these dried up crops turned to dust layering their houses so they had to abonden their lifes to head west. Companies paid farmers to plant clover and alfalpha instead of cotton and wheat to reduce not only land usage, but under priced products. Last but not least one of

Lastly, farmers were probably the most damaged during the Great Depression. When WWI hit, America started producing more food than usual to send over to Europe. Once the War was concluded, farmers had plenty of goods left over; this caused the price of these foods to decrease dramatically and made it unable for farmers to pay their rent and mortgage. Along with farmers receiving no payment for their food, in 1933 a swarm of chinch invaded crops that the farmers grew leaving nothing to spare. In 1934, a tremendous drought hit the plains, making it quite problematic to replace crops that the chinch bugs destroyed the previous year. The drought

The Great Depression had many effects on people in America. If you lived in the 1930s you would have a tough time.

Farmers also became unemployed. The clients would not buy from him because either the prices were too high due to there being not as much crops or due to there being no crops at all because of the money needed to plant. The farmers usually lived in the plains due to more to harvest crops. There was a problem though. The weather was usually not as good. There were droughts and windstorms and severe weather conditions, That did not cooperate with the great depression either. Both put together

“At one point in the Depression, the cupboard was literally bearing of money.” What effect did the Great Depression have on the people who lived through it? The jobs they had, how they had to use their money, and the help they had to get.

The people who lived on the Great Plains suffered greatly and this in turn changed America. Since there was too much dust everywhere this time period was called the “dirty 30s”. Farm families usually did not have an indoor bathroom, heat, or electricity like the people who lived in town. All of the farmers worked with each other through these rough times because they believed it would get better. Although, whenever the crops were destroyed by the drought; farmers were left with no one to buy food or make payments on their farm loans. “Yet, a majority ‘toughed it out’ and stayed. And millions continue to stay, despite decades economic pressure to leave”(Reinhardt and Ganzel). This quote shows how people believed it could get better. The government started programs to hook up electricity to make farm life easier. “The Great Depression changed the lives of people who lived and formed on the Great Plains, and in turn changed America”(Reinhardt and Ganzel). The Great Depression changed millions of lives. Farm life was very difficult during the Great

Arguing that the majority of farmers during the Great Depression benefitted from the government policies produced through President Roosevelt’s New Deal is an inaccurate claim. While history textbooks highlight the improvement of finances for people in rural areas in the United States of America, the personal experiences of family farmers contradict those textbooks. Writers of textbooks about American history should consider looking further into the delicate topic of how the Great Depression effected common farm families. In the West, farmers endured the Dust Bowl. In the North, people in rural areas competed to make a profit. Although statistics show the most economic damage of the Great Depression beginning at the end of 1929, small farm families refer to the effects of the Depression dating back as early as 1925 since government policies mostly benefitted large farm industries as small farms were forced to foreclose.

The farmers in America had a very difficult time when the Great Depression occurred. “People who grew up during the Depression said, ‘No one had any money. We were all in the same boat.’ Neighbors helped each other through hard times, sickness, and accidents” (Bill Ganzel). Because no other profession gave enough money at the time, buying much of a farmer’s produce was not in their price range. Farmers would have to either lower their prices or make no profit at all. Though a wide variety of issues made a farmer’s job difficult in the 1930s, the problems mainly all arose as a result of tenant farmers (people who rented land to farm). Tractors became available, though expensive, and many landowners would buy one which ended up causing problems (Bill Ganzel). Due to the lack of money, affording a tractor for each tenant farmer on a landowner’s

The way of life before World War I (WWI) and the way of life after greatly differ. This new way of living is the indirect cause of every direct cause of the Great Depression. During the Industrial Revolution, or time before WWI, people all over the country worked, not only men but also boys, because “the Industrial Revolution transitioned the United States from a rural to an urban society” (The Industrial Revolution in the United States, 2014). They worked long hours and had low pay. According to statistics, “most workers in the worked over 10-hour a day, yet earned between 20 to 40 percent less than the minimum pay necessary for a decent life” (The Industrial Revolution in the United States, 2014). These people’s lives revolved around having very few money and only having necessities. People already had a hard time coming across food, so when WWI began, obtaining food became a big problem. This was not only because they need to feed soldiers, but also their allies’ soldiers. During this time, farming had to expand to feed the citizens of the Unite States and of the Allies. Farming expanded, but a lot of the crops and food went to away from US citizens and there became a need for rationing. Food had to be rationed by the government. The rationing was called “Food Will Win the War” (Food Will Win the War: On the Homefront in World War I, 2014) to encourage voluntary food conservation. It was said to have been voluntary because the government did not want to force businesses

Family pressure during the great depression was unlike any the U.S. has ever seen. Everything about families changed in the 1930s. Couples during the depression delayed marriage, and at the same time the divorce rates dropped because people could not afford to pay for two households. Birthrates also dropped and for the first time in American history below the replacement level. Income was closed to none in all families; regular income had dropped by 35% just in the years Hoover was in office. Families had a lot of stress; some pulled together and made do with what they had others pushed away. People turned to who ever they had, family, friends, and after all else the government. Although there were rich people in the depression as well