Download Life During the Great Depression

Life During the Depression
5 January 2017
The Depression Worsens
• By 1933, 9,000 Banks had failed.
• In 1932, 30,000 Companies went out of
business.
• 25% Unemployment rate
Unemployed, Hungry???
• Bread Lines – Where citizens lined up to
receive a free handout of food
• Soup Kitchen – Relied on private charities set
up to give poor people a meal
Homes / Apartments
• Families or individuals who could not pay their rent or mortgages lost their
homes (foreclosures)
• Shantytowns – New communities founded by newly homeless people
put up shacks on unused or public lands.
• Shantytowns were commonly referred to as Hoovervilles.
• Wanders – Unemployed Americans who began to wander around the
country, walking, hitchhiking, or riding the railcars.
• Hobos - Wanderers who would sneak past railroad police to slip into
open boxcars on freight trains for a ride to somewhere else.
• Hobos would camp in “Hobo Jungles” usually situated near rail yards.
The Dust Bowl
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From the beginnings of homesteading on the Great Plains, farmers gabled with
nature.
– Uprooted wild grasses that held the Soil’s Moisture.
• Replaced with Wheat Fields
Crop Prices
farmers leaving their fields uncultivated.
1932, a terrible drought struck the Great Plains.
– With no grass or wheat to hold moisture soil turned to dust.
• From the Dakotas to Texas America’s pastures and wheat fields became
a vast “Dust Bowl.”
• As the drought continued the number of dust storms greatly increased
• Many farmers lost their lands to the bank and headed to California.
Escaping the Depression
• Movies – Walt Disney – Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs;
– MGM - Wizard of OZ
• Books - John Steinbeck – added flesh and blood to
journalists reports of poverty and misfortune. Wrote “The
Grapes of Wrath.”
– Photos – Margaret Bourke-White – photojournalist whose
striking pictures showed the ravages of the drought.
• Radio – Offered entertainment on a more personal level.
– The Lone Ranger and George Burns
– Soap Operas – short dramas allowed listeners to escape into a
world more exciting than their own. Sponsors were often
makers of laundry soaps.
Great Depression vs. Great Recession
Topics
Great Depression
2008 - 2010 Recession
Bank Failures
9,096 – 50% of Banks (Jan.
1930 – Mar 1933
57 – 0.6% of Banks (Dec
2007 – May 2009)
Unemployment Rate
25%
9.8%
Economic Decline
-26.5% (1929 – 1933)
-3.3% (Q2 2008 – Q1 2009)
Biggest Decline in Dow Avg
-89.2% (Sept 1929 – July
1932)
-53.8% (Oct 2007 – March
2009)
Change in Prices
-25% (1929 – 1933)
+0.5% (Dec. 2007 – March
2009)
Emergency Spending
Programs
1.5% of GDP for 1 Year
2.5% of GDP for 2 Years
Government Responses
Raise taxes, cut spending
Bank Bailouts, Stimulus
Plan
Increase in Money Supply
by Fed
17% (1933)
125% (Sept 2008 – May
2009)