GREAT DEPRESSION
LIFE
By Jasmine Barboa
“These were the
wanderers from town
to town, the riders of
freight trains, the
thumbers of rides on
highways, the
uprooted, unwanted
male population of
Men had difficulty coping with unemployment
America. They…
gathered in the big
–  Accustomed to working and supporting families
cities when winter
Men were discouraged and humiliated
came, hungry,
defeated, empty,
–  Some were so discouraged they gave up and would abandon their families
hopeless, restless…
As many as 300,000 “hoboes” wandered the country- mostly men
always on the move,
looking everywhere
Family values were put on hold
for work, for the bare
–  Males waited to marry until they could provide for their family
crumbs to support
their miserable lives,
–  “Poor man’s divorce” option- men ran away from their marriages
and finding neither
work nor crumbs.” –
You Can’t Go Home
Again
Psychological Impact on Men
■ 
■ 
■ 
■ 
Psychological Impact on Men
■  Many men felt a great sense of despair and loss
–  Suicide rates rose by thirty percent
–  Three times as many people were admitted to mental hospitals
■  Being poor remained with this generation of men
–  Being careful with their money
–  Rugged individualism
–  Strong devotion to blue-collar work and manual labor
“A man over forty might as well go out and shoot himself” –Chicago
Resident in 1934
Women
■  Woman became head of the family
–  Carefully managed household budgets
–  Canned food and sewed clothes
–  These were thought of as “woman’s work”
■  Woman were forced to work which caused tension in society
–  Many people believed woman had no right to work when there were men who
were unemployed
–  Married women were often fired
–  1930s- some people refused to hire women as schoolteachers
–  Single woman received less pay
Women
■  Birth rates fell sharply during the Depression
–  More Americans used birth control to avoid the added expenses of unexpected
children
■  Woman were often too ashamed to reveal their hardship
–  “I’ve lived in cities for many months, broke, without help, too timid to get in
bread lines. I’ve known many women to live like this until they simply faint in
the street…. A woman will shut herself up in a room until it is take away from
her, and eat a cracker a day and be as quiet as a mouse….[She] will go for
weeks verging on starvation,… going through the streets ashamed, sitting in
libraries, parks, going for days without speaking to a living soul, shut up in the
terror of her own misery.” –America in the Twenties
Children
Orphans
■  Difficult working conditions meant
that many children were orphaned
■  Orphans had to fend for themselves
at young ages
■  Hundreds of thousands of teenage
boys and some girls would abandon
their family to tour the country
aboard freight trains
–  “Hoover tourists”
–  “Wild boys”
Child Labor
■  Most families had no choice but to
put their children to work
■  Failing tax revenues caused school
boards to shorten the school year or
close schools
–  Thousands of children went to
work instead
–  Most children who left school
never went back, even with the
new stable economy
■  Children labored in horrendous
conditions for long hours
–  Sweat shops
–  Factories
■  Children could reach in small
places to fix machines
■  Caused many injuries to small
children
Malnutrition in Children
■  Most children were ill or malnourished
–  Visiting the doctor and dentist was reserved for only the direst of
circumstances
–  Most kids suffered from tooth decay at young ages
■  The food most families could receive lacked in the necessary vitamins and minerals
children needed to grow properly
–  Rickets- diet related disease is caused by a vitamin D deficiency and results in
defective bone growth
Children- Displacement
■  Some children were sent away by their families to live with other relatives or friends
in different locations
–  Done out of hope for a better life for the child or one less mouth to feed
–  Most children did not understand the situation and resented their family for
sending them away
Minorities
■  Minority groups suffered the most
■  They did not receive equal opportunities for relief and recovery programs
African Americans:
Indian Reorganization Act of 1934:
■  A quarter of a million African
Americans were employed in the
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
–  Only 10% of the jobs
■  Tried to
–  restore the Indian culture and
heritage
–  Address communal land base
and land purchase issues
–  Regenerate tribal selfgovernment
■  CCC members were forced to serve
in segregated units
■  African American tenant farmers
suffered from the policies of the
Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)
■  John Collier brought a new hope to
the Native American country
The Roosevelts Fight Against Negativity
Franklin D Roosevelt:
■  Seen as a strong religious leader
■  The new deal and the election of 1936 created a Black Cabinet
–  76% of African Americans voted for FDR
■  Created political awareness by blacks and minorities
■  Gave African Americans hope for future
–  This caused a drop in black illiteracy
■  Executive Order- 7046: banned discrimination on projects of the WPA (Works
Progress Administration )
The Roosevelts Fight Against Negativity
Eleanor Roosevelt:
■  Created a movement for immediate aide and relief such as homeless, hungry,
unemployed etc.
■  Created the National Youth Administration
–  The administration provided grants to high school and college students in
exchange for work
–  for young people who were both unemployed and not in school, the NYA aimed
to combine economic relief with on-the-job training in federally funded work
projects designed to provide youth with marketable skills for the future
The Dust Bowl
■  An extreme drought that began in the early 1930s
–  Wrecked havoc on the Great Plains (west of the
Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains)
–  Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and New
Mexico
■  The Dust Bowl was caused by the exhaustion of the land by
farmers through the overproduction of crops and the
grasslands becoming unsuitable for farming
The Dust Bowl
■  When the drought and winds began in the early 1930s, little
grass and few trees were left to hold the soil down
■  Wind scattered the topsoil exposing sand and grit
underneath
■  Topsoil was carried from barren fields across hundreds of
miles of plains throughout the driest regions of the country
The Dust Bowl
■  Black Sunday
–  April 14, 1935
–  Winds reached top speeds of 60 miles per hour
–  An AP reporter coined the term “Dust Bowl” for the first time
■  The agricultural depressions was a major factor in the Great Depressions
–  Bank loans went bad
–  Credit dried up
–  Banks closed across the country
The Dust Bowl
■  More than a million acres of land were affected
■  Thousands of farmers lost their property and livelihoods
■  Mass migration patterns began as farmers and sharecroppers left their land behind
in search of work in urban areas
■  By the end of the 1930s hundreds of thousands of farm families had migrated to
California and other Pacific Coast states
–  This migration added to the Great Depressions unemployment rates
■  The New Deal programs formed during the Great Depression included five major
farm laws that were designed to get farmers back on their feet
–  Many of these programs still exist today
■  Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 (AAA), Commodity Credit Corporation of 1933
(CCC), Farm Service Agency of 1935 and 1937 (FSA), Soil Conservation Service of
1935 (SCS), and Rural Electrification Administration (REA)
OPCVL
Origin
Purpose
■  A song by Lester Hunter Shafter in
1938
■  To reveal the truth behind life during
the Great Depression and the true
feelings of men during the harsh
times
“We go around all dressed in rags
While the rest of the world goes neat,
And we have to be satisfied
With half enough to eat.
OPCVL
Value
Limitation
■  Allows people to understand what
most men were feeling during the
Great Depression and understand
the severity of the situation they
were in
■  This was written at the very end of
the Great Depression and contains
only broad ideas of the feelings and
events of the Depression
“We don’t ask for luxuries
Or even a feather bed,
But we’re bound to raise the dickens
While our families are underfed.”
“The migratory workers
Are worse off than a bum.
We go to Mr. Farmer
And ask him what he’ll pay;
He says, “You gypsy workers
Can live on a buck a day.”
Bibliography
"Counseling Someone Suffering From a Severe Depression." PsycEXTRA Dataset (2005):
n. pag. Web. 21 Dec. 2015.
<http://www.mrlocke.com/US_History/
book_files/14.2.pdf>.
Library of Congress. "I'd Rather Be Home." PsycEXTRA Dataset (1997): n. pag. Library of
Congress. Web. 21 Dec. 2015.
<http://www.loc.gov/teachers/
classroommaterials/primarysourcesets/dust-bowl- migration/pdf/relief.pdf>.
McElvaine, Robert S. The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941. New York: Times,
1993. Print.
"Social and Cultural Effects of the Depression." Ushistory.org. Independence Hall
Association, n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2015. <http://www.ushistory.org/us/48e.asp>.