Picturing the Great Depression

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Picturing the Great Depression

• Genoa Shepley

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Picturing the Great Depression

• Agenda
• Introductions
• Overview and Objectives
• Picturing the Great Depression
• Activity Interpreting Images
• Debrief
• Wrap-up and Questions

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Overview and Objectives

• Part One You Can Illustrate (almost) Anything
• We will identify images and other materials
  that fit the performance objectives for the Great
  Depression.
• Part Two Dont Believe Everything You See
• You will have the opportunity to analyze images
  in order to become better consumers of visual
  materials.
• After this workshop, you will be able to
• Effectively incorporate visual media into your
  lesson plans
• Apply new tools and techniques to interpreting
  images
• Guide your students in understanding visual
  materials
• Steal this PowerPoint presentation to use in your
  classroom.

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Picturing the Depression

• When you think of the Great Depression, what are
  the first images that come to your mind?

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Swing Time, 1936
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Seabiscuit, 1938
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Superman Comic, 1938
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Cab Calloway
The Lindy Hop
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Teaching the Great Depression

• Complexity of historical eraschoices
• Our task how to use cultural artifactsespecially
  imagesto help bring history alive
• Also consider other senses
• What did it sound like?
• How did it smell?
• What about taste and touch?

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Engaging the Senses

• How have you used images or sound in your
  classroom?
• How have you engaged other senses in teaching
  history?
• What works well in your classroom?

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Standards for Teaching the Great Depression

• Concept 8
• PO 1. Identify economic policies and factors
  (e.g., unequal distribution of income, weaknesses
  in the farm sector, buying on margin, stock
  market crash) that led to the Great Depression.

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Causes of the Depression Background

• The Roaring Twentiespostwar prosperity
• Growth based on mass production of consumer goods
  (cars, telephones, household appliances)
• Buying on credit
• Increased stock ownership
• Americas valuesbusiness values

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The Prosperity Decade

• Blue Skies,1927
• I was blue, just as blue as I could be
• Ev'ry day was a cloudy day for me
• Then good luck came a-knocking at my door
• Skies were gray but they're not gray anymore
• Blue skies
• Smiling at me
• Nothing but blue skies
• Do I see

Bluebirds Singing a song Nothing but
bluebirds All day long Never saw the sun
shining so bright Never saw things going so
right Noticing the days hurrying by When you're
in love, my how they fly Blue days All of them
gone Nothing but blue skies From now on
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Unequal Distribution of Wealth

• Wealthy acquire greater share of national income
  wealthiest fifth of the country owns 50 percent
  of income pie
• Coolidge lowers taxes on wealthy
• Wealth concentrated at the top slows consumption,
  holds back consumer-oriented industries (cars,
  recreation, appliances)
• Rich spend smaller proportion of income on
  consumption than wage earners
• Goods pile up causing layoffsworkers cant buy
  productsdownward spiral

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Unequal Distribution of Wealth
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Unequal Distribution of Wealth
Kykuit, the Rockefeller Estate, Sleepy Hollow,
New York, built 1913
New Town Colorado Fuel and Oil Company employee
housing, built in the 1920s, Crested Butte,
Colorado
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Weakness in the Farm Sector

• 1920s hard time for farmerswartime demand
  dropped precipitouslyoversupply and depressed
  prices
• Tractor increased productivity flooding market
  with produceprices fall further
• Many sell farms, become tenants
• Rise of large farms and agribusiness
• Pressure on Congress for economic controls
• McNary-Haugen Bill erect high tariffs on foreign
  produce government to buy surplus crops from
  farmers and sell on world market
• Passed Congress in 1927 and 1928 but vetoed by
  Coolidge

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J. N. Ding Darling, William Tell and Family, 1928
Weakness in the Farm Sector McNary-Haugen Bill
J. N. Ding Darling, Off on a Bum Steer, 1927
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Stock Market Problems
The New York Stock Market, 1920s
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Buying on Margin

• Run-up in prices 1928, 1929 Dow Jones doubles
• Investors buying stock on 10 percent margin,
  borrowing rest from brokers and banks, expecting
  to resell at high profit
• Speculation becomes rampant
• Confidence falters creditors demand repayment

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Crash!
Between 1929 and 1933 Stocks fell 80 percent
5,000 banks failed 74 billion of wealth
vanished Industrial production fell 50
percent National income fell 50 percent
People crowd Wall Street after the Stock Market
Crash of 1929. Commissioner Whalen dispatched an
extra detail of 400 police officers to guard the
area.
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Crash!
James N. Rosenberg, Oct 29 Dies Irae (Days of
Wrath), 1929
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Standards for Teaching the Great Depression

• Concept 8
• PO 2. Determine the impact of natural and manmade
  crises (e.g., unemployment, food lines, the Dust
  Bowl, and the western migration of Midwest
  farmers) of the Great Depression.

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Unemployment

• President Hoover helps ailing banks and
  businesses but does not want to provide relief to
  unemployed he thinks it will cause people to
  lose the desire to work and hurt their self-worth
• By the time Roosevelt takes office in 1933,
  unemployment is over 25 percent

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Unemployment
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Unemployment
Unemployed men vying for jobs at the American
Legion Employment Bureau in Los Angeles during
the Great Depression
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Unemployment
Dorothea Lange, Part of the daily lineup outside
the State Employment Service Office. Memphis,
Tennessee. June 1938
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Unemployment
John Vachon, Unemployed Youth, Washington, D.C.,
August 1938.
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Unemployment
Ira Soyer, Employment Agency, 1937
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The Great Depression in Song and Film

• Brother, Can You Spare a Dime, 1931
• They used to tell me I was building a dream, and
  so I followed the mob,
• When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I
  was always there right on the job.
• They used to tell me I was building a dream, with
  peace and glory ahead,
• Why should I be standing in line, just waiting
  for bread?
• Other song titles along these lines Stormy
  Weather, Hard Time Blues, Brother, Can You Spare
  a Dime, Gloomy Sunday, We Sure Got Hard Times
  Now, Mean Low Blues, Hard Luck Okie, Going Down
  the Road Feeling Bad
• But Also Were in the Money, Happy Days Are Here
  Again, Whistle While You Work, Dawn of a New Day,
  Somewhere Over the Rainbow
• Films Little Caesar, Dracula, Duck Soup, Mr.
  Smith Goes to Washington, The Wizard of Oz, Snow
  White, The Grapes of Wrath, Golddiggers, Swing
  Time

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Food Lines
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Food Lines
Dorothea Lange, White Angel Breadline, 1933
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Food Lines
Food line in Chicago sponsored by Al Capone
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The Dust Bowl

• Drought
• Land stripped of native grasses after decades of
  excessive plowing turns to dust
• Dust travels as much as 1,000 miles, covers
  everythingfurniture, clothes, food
• 1935 worst storm moves at speeds of 4570 mph
  through CO, KS, and OK, blackens sky, suffocates
  cattle, deposits thousands of tons of topsoil and
  clay on homes and streets

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The Dust Bowl
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The Dust Bowl
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The Dust Bowl

• Garden City, Kansas at 515 p.m.

Garden City, Kansas at 530 p.m.
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The Dust Bowl
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The Dust Bowl
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Western Migration

• Dust Bowl refugees, tenant farmers and
  sharecroppers who found little relief in New Deal
  programs
• Agricultural Adjustment Act took land out of
  cultivation put many tenant farmers out of work
• Almost 1 million left home by 1935 2.5 million
  after
• Traveled west to California on Route 66
• Known as Okies, because many came from Oklahoma

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Western Migration
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Western Migration
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Western Migration
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Standards for Teaching the Great Depression

• Concept 8
• PO 3. Describe how the following programs
  affected the American people
• Works programs (e.g., WPA, CCC, TVA)
• Farm subsidies
• Social security

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New Deal Works Programs

• Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
• April 1933June 1942 Built on military model
  enrolled 3.5 million menaverage age 1819 lived
  in 4,500 camps across the U.S.
• Built 25,000 miles of roads strung 89,000 miles
  of telephone line built 13,000 miles foot
  trails established soil control on 40 million
  acres farm land fought fires, developed state
  parks
• Total cost3 billion
• Fun Facts Average weight gain of enrollee in
  first three months11.5 pounds agency nicknames
  Roosevelts Tree Army, Colossal College of
  Calluses
• Downsides only men quotas on African Americans
  didnt make much of a dent in unemployment

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CCC
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CCC
Camp Roosevelt, Virginia,1933
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CCC
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CCC
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CCC
Dam at Sabino Canyon
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Works Progress Administration (WPA)

• Founded 1935, provided jobs to 30 percent of
  unemployed
• Security wage two times welfare payments but
  well below union scales
• Two divisions building program and art program
  (5 percent of total )
• Built or improved schools, airports, hospitals
• Together with other agencies, responsible for
  500,000 miles of roads, 100,000 bridges, 600
  airports, 100,000 public buildings
• Public art program gave relief to struggling
  painters, writers, architects, actors, etc.
  created art for ordinary citizensmurals,
  sculptures, helped countrys morale
• Downsides inefficiency, cost 34x private work
  1939 Gallup Poll what do you like best and worst
  of New Dealboth answersWPA

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WPA
President Roosevelt and WPA head Harry Hopkins
did not believe in direct relief payments,
fearing they would be demoralizing. Give a man a
dole and you save his body and destroy his
spirit, said Hopkins, Give him a job and you
save both body and spirit.
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WPA Projects
Triborough Bridge, New York
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WPA Projects
John Steuart Curry, The Oklahoma Land Rush, April
22, 1889 The Department of the Interior Building
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Tennessee Valley Authority

• Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) 1933 to promote
  economic development in vast river basin in parts
  of KY, TN, MI, AL, GA, and NC
• Control flooding on Tennessee River, improve
  navigability, use water for electricity, develop
  industry, ease poverty
• Built dams, hydroelectric generators, became
  countrys largest producer of electricity taught
  farmers soil conservation and fertilization
  techniques
• A big success but not replicated because it
  implied too much government power

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TVA
Alfred T. Palmer, Construction work at the TVA's
Douglas DamTennessee, June 1942
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Farm Subsidies

• Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) passed May 1933
  with idea that cutting production would spur
  economic recovery
• Agricultural Adjustment Administration, set up by
  act, paid farmers to keep part of land out of
  cultivation and to destroy certain livestock
• Program was controversialpay more for less work?
  Americans starving?
• Not enough for Dust Bowl farmers Soil
  Conservation Service established 1935 to help
  them plant soil-preserving crops and to slow
  water run-off with contour lines

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AAA
Slaughter of the pigs for the hog reduction
program
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Farm Subsidies

• 1936 Supreme Court rules that these limits were
  an illegal restraint of trade
• Congress passes Soil Conservation and Domestic
  Allotment Act, which justifies pulling land for
  conservation rather than economic reasons
• End result agricultural stability and
  prosperity, but agriculture becomes heavily
  subsidized
• Rural poor never get fair share, eventually
  forced off land

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Social Security

• Social Security Act of 1935
• Required states to disburse funds to elderly
  poor, unemployed, unmarried mothers with
  children, disabled set up pension program for
  working Americans
• Some groups of workers excluded agricultural
  workers, domestic servants, clerical workers, and
  others (most men of color and women not added
  until 1960s and 1970s)
• Criticized by conservatives as socialism
  criticized by reformers as not enough

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Social Security
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Lesson Plans on the Great Depression

• http//www.getty.edu/education/for_teachers/curric
  ula/dorothea_lange/lange_lesson05.html
• http//artsedge.kennedy-center.org/content/2191/
• http//www.gilderlehrman.org/teachers/module18/ind
  ex.html
• http//newdeal.feri.org/classrm/classdmr.htm
• http//newdeal.feri.org/magpie/index.htm
• http//memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/97/depress/ove
  rview.html
• http//memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/99/dus
  t/intro.html
• http//memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/99/migrant/int
  ro.html
• http//www.archives.gov/education/lessons/depressi
  on-wwii.html
• http//www.archives.gov/education/lessons/fdr-inau
  gural
• http//www.archives.gov/education/lessons/fdr-fire
  side
• http//edsitement.neh.gov/tab_lesson.asp?subjectAr
  ea3subcategory23
• http//edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id
  526

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Great Depression Websites

• http//www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/us3
  4.cfm
• http//memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/community/cc_g
  reatdepression_kit.php
• http//memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/features/timel
  ine/depwwii/depwar.html
• http//memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsowhome.html
• http//memory.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/tshome.html
• http//lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/collections/wp
  a
• http//memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaposters/wpahome.htm
  
• http//memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/collections/po
  ster/history.html
• http//www.historymatters.gmu.edu

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Image Analysis

• What is the first thing you notice about the
  image? Where does your eye go next?
• How does the picture make you feel?
• Where is the photographer in relation to the
  subjectabove below near far? Is the camera
  eye-level? Is it pointing down? Is it pointing
  up? What is the effect of the photographers
  position? Would we see the subject differently if
  the photographer had taken it from a different
  position or angle, from closer, from further
  away?
• What is included in the image? How do the
  elements contribute to the mood or meaning of the
  image? What might be excluded?
• What do you think is the purpose of this
  photograph? What does it tell you about the
  values and beliefs of the period?

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• Questions for Teaching
• What can you say about the people in this
  picture? How can you tell that the people in
  this picture are moving rather than just taking a
  trip somewhere? Can you identify any of the
  things tied to the car? What kind of trip do
  you think this group has just had? Describe how
  one day of their journey might have gone. Pick
  one person in the photograph and try to imagine
  what, if anything, he or she most regretted
  leaving behind in order to move to California.
  Pick one person in the photograph and try to
  imagine what he or she was thinking at the moment
  that Lange took the picture. What do you think
  these people might have done after they arrived
  in California? Block out the parts of the
  photograph as indicated by the crop lines. Does
  it look any different to you? Does it change the
  mood or message of the picture? Do you think
  this is a good picture to illustrate the story of
  people fleeing the Dust Bowl? What other scenes
  might a newspaper have used to show the situation
  of Dust Bowl refugees? Why do you think that
  this image did not spark the same concern and
  outrage that Migrant Mother did among viewers?

http//www.getty.edu/education/for_teachers/curric
ula/dorothea_lange/lange_lesson05.html