The Great Depression Begins Chapter 14

1. The Great Depression BeginsChapter 14 Section 1 – The Nation’s Sick Economy Section 2 – Hardship and Suffering During the Depression Section 3 – Hoover Struggles with the Depression http://history1900s.about.com/library/photos/blyindexdepression.htm

2. Ch. 14 Sec. 2 Objectives • To describe how people struggled to survive during the Depression. • To explain how the Depression affected men, women, and children. • To analyze the effect the Dust Bowl had on farming and farm families.

3. Hardship and Suffering During the DepressionSection 2The Depression in the Cities • Shantytowns (Hoovervilles) • Soup Kitchens • Bread Lines • Digging in Garbage • Foreclosures and Evictions • Layoffs • Wage Reductions Squatter's Camp, Route 70, Arkansas, October, 1935.Photographer: Ben Shahn http://history1900s.about.com/library/photos/blygd27.htm Hooverville in New York Unemployed workers in front of a shack with Christmas tree, East 12th Street, New York City. December 1937. Photographer: Russell Lee. Relief line waiting for commodities, San Antonio, Texas. March 1939. Photographer: Russell Lee. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/photoessay.htm

4. Hardship and Suffering During the DepressionSection 2The Depression in Rural Areas • One advantage over city living is that farmers could grow their own food and so usually had something to eat • Poor Prices for Farm Products • Foreclosures • Many farmers turned to tenant or migrant farming • Many families move west to California looking for farm jobs • Lack of Rain • Dust Bowl http://history1900s.about.com/library/photos/blyindexdepression.htm

5. Okies and Arkies Head West Migratory white cotton pickers stopped by engine trouble alongside the road. Related family groups frequently travel like this, in pairs or in caravans of three or four. • Many families from Oklahoma and Arkansas move to California to work as Migrant Workers. They live in extreme poverty in squatter’s camps and make-shift shacks. Some live in their cars. Squatter camp, California, November 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. In one of the largest pea camps in California. February, 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. A migratory family living in a trailer in an open field. No sanitation, no water. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/photoessay.htm

6. Check out video @ http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_02.html Dust Bowl Days http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/dustbowl.htm • 5 State Area that suffered from extreme wind erosion. • Top soil was blown as far as ships in the Atlantic Ocean. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/maps/index.html

7. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/dust_storms.shtmlhttp://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/dust_storms.shtml More Dust Bowl Pictures Dust storm approaching Elkhart, Kansas, May 1937 Goodwell, Oklahoma, June 4, 1937 Liberal, Kansas, 14 April 1935

8. Effects on the American Family • In most instances it brought families together. • People stayed home and entertained themselves with board games and the radio • Monopoly (1933) • In some cases it had disastrous effects on the family structure • Men became discouraged with their joblessness and abandoned their families • Some became Hobos Unemployed men vying for jobs at the American Legion Employment Bureau in Los Angeles during the Great Depression. Part of the daily lineup outside the State Employment Service Office. Memphis, Tennessee. June 1938. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/photoessay.htm

9. Listen to former Hobo tell about his experiences @ http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_07.html Hobos Hit the Road http://www.hobo.com/ Toward Los Angeles, California. 1937. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. Perhaps 2.5 million people abandoned their homes in the South and the Great Plains during the Great Depression and went on the road. Man in hobo jungle killing turtle to make soup, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Sept. 1939. Photographer: John Vachon.

10. Effects of Depression on Women • Many women canned their own food and made clothes for their families • Some women had jobs outside the home but received less pay than men • Women became the targets of resentment if they had a job because some felt they were stealing it from a man that need to support their family • Some viewed women as having it easier because they weren’t seen in breadlines, but in reality they hid a lot of their hardships because of shame. (See personal voice page 476) http://history1900s.about.com/library/photos/blygd5.htm Farm Security Administration: "Suppertime" for the westward migration. (Circa 1936) http://history1900s.about.com/library/photos/blygd34.htm Young Oklahoma mother; age 18, penniless, stranded in Imperial Valley, California. (Circa March 1937)

11. Watch Video: http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl/videos#migrant-mother-photo Dorothea Lange • 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 http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/lange/index.html

12. Effects of Depression on Children • Malnutrition • Poor diets led to health problems like rickets, a softening of bones in children potentially leading to fractures and deformity. Caused by Vitamin D deficiency. • Lack of Health Care • Shortened Schooling • Families Destroyed • Families sometimes couldn’t support their children so they farmed them out to relatives or turned them over to the state. • Teens become “Hoover Tourists” and take to the road • Very dangerous (See Page 476 for statistics)

13. Children During the Depression Wife and children of a sharecropper in Washington County, Arkansas. (Circa 1935) Farm Security Administration: School in Alabama. (Circa 1935) Farm Security Administration: Children of Oklahoma drought refugees near Bakersfield, California. (Circa June 1935) Children of rehabilitation clinic in Arkansas. (Circa 1935) http://history1900s.about.com/library/photos/blyindexdepression.htm

14. Social and Psychological Effects • Suicide Rates rose 30% from 1928 to 1932 • 3 times as many people were admitted to State Mental Hospitals as in normal times • People had to compromise and sacrifice • Adults stop going to the Doctor / Dentist • Youth gave up going to college • Some couples put off marriage and family • Lifelong Habits • People scrimp and save / Habit of Thrift • Hoard • Throw nothing away • Don’t waste food • Financial Security becomes extremely important • Charitable Giving • People would help others less fortunate than themselves