Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: Letters from Children of the Great Depression

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Dear Mrs. Roosevelt Letters from Children of the
Great Depression

• Leadership in American History Book Club
• March 5, 2008
• The New-York Historical Society
• Kim Sekel

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Fashion of the 1930s

• Many of the letters children sent to Mrs.
  Roosevelt begged her for money for clothing. The
  next several slides include images of fashion
  from the 1930s, drawn from various catalogs of
  the time.
• Some websites to visit to learn about fashion in
  history include
• http//www.vintageblues.com/history3.htm
• http//www.fashion-era.com/index.htm
• http//www.costumes.org/history/100pages/1930links
  .htm

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Dresses from a catalog, Dated 1933
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Fashion Magazine, 1932
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Sears Catalog, Ladies Loungewear
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Ladies Dresses, Sears Catalog, 1934
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Childrens Clothes, Sears Catalog, 1934
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Teen clothing, much like some of the letter
writers requested. Sears, 1934
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Ladies Shoes, Sears, 1934
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Stockings (pre-nylon) Sears, 1934
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Athletic Shoes, Sears, 1934
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Mens Shoes, Sears, 1934
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Mens Suits, Sears, 1934
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Mens Shoes, Sears, 1935
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Sears, 1938
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The Many-Way Dress, which offered a way to save
money, Sears, 1938
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Economics of the Great Depression

• Prices during the Great Depression seem
  deceptively low to modern students. For example,
  the dress advertisement on page 95 offers
  graduation outfits for a mere 5.95. Today, that
  outfit costs 93.73.
• Source http//data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

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Price ComparisonsThen and Now
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What the world looked like

• The next several slides are pictures taken during
  the Great Depression. Most of them are taken from
  memory.loc.gov.

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An abandoned hotel construction project in
Florida. During the boom of the 1920s, several
construction projects were begun (including the
Empire State and Chrysler Buildings), but many
were abandoned in the 1930s as financing dried
up.
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A family in a Hooverville in Ohio. Hoovervilles
were so named because many people blamed Herbert
Hoover for the Great Depression, and believed
that he had not done enough to alleviate the
suffering caused by the Depression.
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Children in an Ohio Hooverville
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Many families lost their homes as banks called in
mortgages that the families could not afford to
pay off. This family took to the roads, living
out of their car.
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Another family forced to live out of its car.
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As unemployment skyrocketed, the jobless began to
rely on soup kitchens and other charitable
organizations. This food line proves that demand
for such services was high.
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Those families who lost their homes struggled to
find any shelter they could, such as this shanty
in Ohio.