Life in the Great Depression

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Basic accounts from BBC Bitesize

FSA photos

Studs Terkel interviews

Memories of the Depression era

  Essay: In what ways were the lives of women in America impacted by the 1930s Depression?

  Essay: In what ways were the lives of African Americans impacted by the 1930s Depression?

Giles Hill's podcast on the Great Depression

YouTube

Great Depression - simple overview

Stories from the Depression - excellent

AQA-suggested Interpretation of the Great Depression:

Studs Terkel, Hard Times

Those who suffered  [AWFUL, MUM]

It is really important here, amidst the fascinating facts, to appreciate the massive scale and emotional cost of the personal and societal suffering of the event Studs Terkel christened a 'holocaust'; the Great Depression was one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century.

1. African Americans

   • lost their unskilled work to white unemployed because there were no longer any jobs that white workers refused to do (96% of black workers in the South were unskilled)

   • lay-offs were discriminatory – African Americans were ‘last hired, first fired’ (being white doubled your chances of finding work)

   • on average African Americans earned about three quarters of a white worker

   • low wages meant that even African Americans families with someone working were in poverty

   • African Americans found it hard to get housing; landlords took advantage to charge higher rents

   • banks and businesses in African-American and Immigrant areas disproportionally failed (of 134 black banks, only 12 survived in 1936). 

 

2. Women were “the first orphans in the storm”

   • Women who went to work to ‘save the family’ worked longer hours (up to 50 hours a week) for lower wages. 

   • Unattached women – and particularly those from minority groups – were a disgraced part of society; a study of unattached women in Chicago found most were over 40, 15% had a mental illness. 

   • Those who went on the road faced more dangers than men.

 

3. Farmers

   • The depression was particularly fierce in agriculture, and things were made worse by the ‘dust bowl’ caused by over-farming

   • Tenant farmers and sharecroppers of the South “suffered more than other classes of people” (esp. in Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta) – 100,000 sharecroppers were forced off the land altogether

   • ‘Okies’ and ‘Arkies’ going to California faced the ‘bum blockade’ (LA police at California border turning them back); if they got there, they found they were competing for work with Mexican Chinese, Japanese and Filipino immigrants = starvation wages. 

 

4. Unemployed

   • Crowds of people seeking work at the docks and outside the factory gates. 

   • People from rural areas and the South flocked into the towns

   • Municipal charities were overwhelmed – councils went bankrupt

   • Breadlines/ soup centres

   • Life was particularly harrowing for mothers with children

 

5. Lost everything

   • More than a million people had lost everything the Wall Street Crash, and were left with nothing but debts

   • Many more had lost everything in the bank failures

   • Many of these people had no other income, were too old to work, and there was no welfare state

 

6. Mine workers

   • The mining industry had been in trouble before the Depression – miners lived in company-built towns called ‘patches’, in company-constructed ‘shotgun homes’ build from wood used in packing explosives, and had to buy from company-owned ‘pluck-me’ stores at inflated prices.  They faced ‘yellow dog’ company police and were paid in ‘scrip’ (credit notes, exchangeable at the company store). 

 

7. Union Activists were hounded by the police:

   • When African-American Angelo Herndon organised a cross-race unemployment protest in Atlanta in 1932, he was arrested under an old slave law for “attempting to incite insurrection” and sentenced to 18 years on a chain gang. 

   • When African-American Communist Ned Cobb led a sharecropper group trying to prevent the local sheriff seizing a man’s property there was an armed gunfight leaving three black men dead, and Cobb served 13 years in prison.

 

8. Many others faced hardship and despair:

   • People who did not lose their jobs were forced to accept a pay cut (in average, by a third) or reduced hours. 

   • People, generally the middle class, too proud to ask for relief, suffered perhaps worst of all.

   • Many families fell apart – fathers, who had been the breadwinner, lost status and often ‘went to seed’; mothers were expected to go out to work AND come home and care for the children, cleanng etc.; children had to grow up quickly and take jobs.

Source A

This photo is arguably the defining photograph of the Depression.  It was taken by Dorothea Lange, who had been employed by the Farm Security Administration to document the experience of Americans in the Depression.  It shows Florence Thompson, aged 32, mother of seven, a migrant pea-picker in California and refugee of the dust bowl.

The FSA vetted Lange's photos – i.e. this photo is government propaganda.

What was your first thought on seeing this image?

Source B

Photos the FSA rejected were punched through with a hole, to make them unreproducable.  This 'hole punch photo' shows Mrs Hallett, wife of a resettled farmer in Tompkins County, New York state.

Agency: how did people cope?  [MAMS R FAB]

It is vital that you do not portray people caught up in the Great Depression as passive victims only.  It is important to give them 'agency'; most people tackled the Depression heroically, and what they DID is at least as important an aspect of their experience of the depression as what they suffered.

1. Mutual Support

   • Some towns set up bread and soup kitchens and groups like the Salvation Army (and even Al Capone) organised charity hand-outs. 

   • There were many protest marches and riots.  When banks tried to re-possess some farms, local farmer banded together and drove them off with pitch-forks.

   • African Americans in Harlem in New York shared accommodation, clothes and even 'hot-bedding', and held rent-parties to raise this week's rent.  Harlem had more than 2,000 social, political and mutual aid societies.

   • In some places unattached women formed mutual support groups and shared resources.

   • Homeless people built shanty towns called ‘Hoovervilles’ (as an insult to President Hoover).  The Hooverville in Seattle had a mayor and a council and basic sanitation rules.  The Hooverville in Oklahoma was next to a stockyard (which allowed residents to steal milk).

   • Some farmers arriving in California rented plots (at $5 down and $3 a month) from developers unable to complete their plans and built ‘Okievilles’. 

 

2. Activism

   • The Daily Worker reported 702 marches, protests and rent actions across the entire country, 103 in New York alone.

     • In 1930, 10,000 went on a Communist-organised marched in Washington DC (the march was broken up by police with tear gas and clubs.

     • In 1932, a crowd of 60,000 assembled to greet a Hunger March on Washington DC (the march was prevented from entering the capital by police with machine guns).

   • Although unions struggled during the peak of the depression 1929-33:

     • The Highlander Folk School was founded in 1932 to train union and civil rights organisers/activists.

     • By 1933, the Sharecroppers Union had 5,500 members, and organise strikes by cotton pickers and farm workers.

   • The 'Harlan County War' began in 1931 when the Mining Company cut scrip from 80c in the dollar to 40c; violence continued until 1935.  The night after company thugs had ransacked her house seeking her Union leader husband, Florence Reece wrote the famous protest song: Which Side Are You On? 

   • The Communist Party grew rapidly: speakers like the African-American Hosea Hudson blamed the capitalist system (provoking violent confrontations with the police in every city he visited).

   • (Also see the sections on Farmers, African Americans and the Bonus Army below).

 

3. Moving Out

   • 200,000 midwest farmers ‘Okies’ (from Oklahoma) and ‘Arkies’ (from Arkansas) abandoned their farms and took to Route 66 to go fruit-picking in California (the famous novel The Grapes of Wrath is about this). 

   • Itinerant workers – 'hoboes', 'tramps', 'bums' and 'yeags', – travelled round, riding the railroad.

   • The famous protest singer Woodie Guthrie left his wife and family to take migrant work in California, eventually making a living as a performer; his song Hard Travelling describes his experiences. 

 

4. Scrimping

   • Wives and children worked where they could.

   • They took the most dangerous and unpleasant jobs.

   • Apple-sellers and other street vendors/ street entertainers.

   • Taking in lodgers.

   • Scouring the rubbish heaps for food, slag heaps for coal.

   • Begging (cf the song ‘Brother, can you spare a dime’).

   • Rooftop gardens/ pigeon crees (for food).

   • Recipes of the Great Depression such as ‘edible weed stew’ and (eggless, butterless) ‘depression cake’.

   • Never throwing things out. 

   • Hung onto their cars – last thing to go!

 

5. Relaxing (vitally important for mental health):

   • Radio.

   • Books: such as Gone with the Wind and How to Win Friends and Influence People … and comic strips and pulp fiction.

   • Movies: only 30c for ticket.

   • Church, social clubs, pool halls, dances, baseball games.

   • ‘Fads’ such as pole-sitting, marathon dancing.

   • Harlem had a very lively social and cultural scene (and rent parties).

 

6. Farmers

   • During the ‘farm strike’ in Iowa 1932–1933, out-of-work farmers and labourers attacked food trucks and burned bridges; in one town they kidnapped a judge and threatened to hang him if he did not stop farm foreclosures. 

   • In Nebraska farmers organised ‘Penny Auctions’.  They turned up at a foreclosure auction of a local farmer.  The first bid was for 5 cents.  Nobody else was allowed to bid, the auction raised almost nothing and the possessions were given to the farmer at the end. 

 

7. African Americans

   • African-Americans leaders such as Philip Randolph (Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids, 1925) and Frank Crosswaith (Negro Labor Committee, 1935) organised black workers to campaign for better wages and conditions. 

   • Harlem became the national centre of the movement for racial equality.  They ran a 'Don't Buy Where You Can't Work' campaign and switched to voting Democrat.  By 1935, the Communist Party in Harlem had 1,200 members.  In 1935 a riot resulted in injury to 57 civilians and 7 policemen. 

 

8. Bonus Army

   • In 1932, 20,000 unemployed ex-soldiers set up a Hooverville in Washington to ask for their war pension (‘bonus’) to be paid early. 

Those who prospered [SELF-MADE]

Not everyone in America suffered in the Great Depression; for some, life was good, many others survived relatively unscathed. 

1.  Successful investors

• who had not lost in the Crash or a bank failure, plus those in-work (75% of the workforce) and the comfortably off were BETTER off, because prices were much lower. 

 

2.  Efficient companies

• which were able to cut costs (e.g. Decca reduced the cost of a record from 75c to 35c) could make a profit even at low prices.  Chain stores like Woolworths, J.C.  Penney, and Sears benefited from their ability to offer low prices due to economies of scale. 

 

3.  Large Corporations

• were able to buy up bankrupt factories and farms [e.g. like the fictitious banker Henry Potter in the 1946 film: It's A Wonderful Life]. 

 

4.  Finance

• The Bank of Italy (later Bank of America) grew by offering small loans and helping the average consumer.  Insurance Companies like Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MetLife) grew as people tried to insure themselves against future hardships.  Pawnshops thrived, as did the non-profit Provident Loan Co., which offered loans for assets. 

 

5.  Modern sectors

• of the economy thrived.  The ‘new industries’ (electrical goods, chemicals) continued to grow rapidly.  The Empire State Building was finished in 1931, and the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge was started in 1932. 

 

6.  Advertising

• kept many firms afloat and even allowed them to grow (e.g. Coca-Cola). 

 

7.  Domstic essentials

• Firms like Procter & Gamble (household products) and utility companies like Consolidated Edison in New York thrived because people HAD to buy their products. 

 

8.  Entertainment Industry

• Hollywood Studios like MGM, Warner Bros., and Paramount Pictures; Radio Companies like RCA and networks such as NBC and CBS.