The Invisible Scar of the Great Depression

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The Invisible Scar of the Great Depression
Becker US History
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The Great Depression

• October 24,1929
• Black Tuesday, after year of instability
• Stock market crashes
• WHY?
• Caused by overspeculation
• Also, drastically overvalued stocks
• Banks closed, people lost everything
• Foreclosures and unemployment set in

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Black Tuesday

• In one day, 14 billion loss
• Two weeks later 26 billion
• By July 1932, 47 billion had vanished.

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The Great Depression Worsens

• Bread lines become increasingly common
• Foreclosures and late rent causes evictions
• Eventually, 1/4 of the workforce out of work.
• In cities like Detroit, as high as 50.
• For African Americans and Mexican Americans,
  unemployment rates are higher.

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UNEMPLOYMENT
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BREADLINES
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Shantytowns ? Hoovervilles

• Homeless people begin building shacks
• On public land outside towns
• Called Hoovervilles (President is blamed)
• Hobos wandered around looking for work

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HOOVERVILLES
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Farmers in Depression

• Farmers especially hard-hit
• Additionally, a drought begins on the plains
• Farmers have no money to plant
• Empty fields begin to erode
• Dust Bowl results with terrible dry duststorms
• Migration to California begins- little improvement

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DUST BOWL
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Although Many Suffer, Some Prosper

• Joseph Kennedy, JFKs father
• Turns 4 million into 100 million (1929-1935)
• J. Paul Getty, oil tycoon
• Buys good oil companies
• Amasses oil empire from 1930-1935

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Depression Does Not Go Away

• Officials continued to predict a good future
• January 1930, Department of Labor predicts "a
  splendid employment year"
• March 1930, Hoover announces the worst will be
  over in 60 days
• 60 days later, he predicts that business will be
  normal in the fall
• Hoover tries a do-nothing strategy

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People Lost their Savings
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Bonus Army

• Veterans march on Washington
• Demand their bonus to be paid in 1936
• Congress refuses to pay early bonus
• Finally Hoover orders them evicted
• Army kicks Bonus Army out
• Burns their shanties to the ground

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BONUS ARMY
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People Lost their Jobs
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Hoovervilles Began to Dot the Urban Scene
Central Park, New York
Seattle
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Poverty an important issue

• Local private charity systems overwhelmed
• Harlan County KY, people live on dandelions and
  blackberries
• Dysentery bloats stomachs of starving babies
• Children are so famished that they begin chewing
  up their own hands
• People attempted to plant vegetables but ate
  plants before they could produce fruit

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Poverty an important issue

• First savings accounts
• Then insurance
• Then borrow from family and friends
• Then stop paying rent
• Then get evicted
• Then move in with relatives
• Then run up more bills for food

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A New York City Breadline
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Government Does Not Respond

• Still little official recognition of serious need
• "Don't emphasize hard times, and everything will
  be all right."
• No department of welfare exists
• Finally, NY forms one in 1929
• Hoover kept insisting that no one starved
• Newsreel shows him feeding his dog a steak
• 1933, 29 people starved to death in NYC
• An additional 110 children die of malnutrition

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Starvation becomesan Issue
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Starving Times Christmas Dinner
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Workers treated shabbily

• Skilled workers laid off from factories
• Glut of workers ?employers took advantage
• In Detroit- men stood outside auto plants all
  night to be first in hiring line
• Seeking jobs, many told
• "Get lost. You are too black, or too Jewish or
  too old or the wrong sex to work here."

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Workers treated shabbily

• Immigrants told-"Move on. Why don't you go back
  where you came form."
• Mexicans are fired,sent back to Mexico
• Women are told
• "Stay home. Don't take a job from a man.
• Baby Bust Generation You better not have a baby
  either. You cant afford to feed the ones you
  have.

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The Government Advises

• Men told- "Keep a way from women. Don't get
  hooked.
• Keep away from your wife. You don't need
  children."
• Hoover chose the word depression because it
  sounded less frightening than panic or crisis.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt the New Deal

• Great Depression produces desperation
• Hoovers do-nothing attitude sweeps Franklin D.
  Roosevelt into the White House in 1932
• FDRs first task is to restore faith in the
  financial system
• Solution is the New Deal

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Franklin D. Roosevelt
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The Three Rs

• Relief
• Recovery
• Reform

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Hundred Days

• FDR makes many promises for 1st 100 Days in
  office
• Banking Holiday
• Glass-Seagall Banking act- 1933
• More powerful Federal Reserve
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
• Securities Act
• regulated the stock exchanges truth telling
• SEC created to oversee

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Franklin D. Roosevelt the New Deal

• Create employment to revive the economy
• Federal Emergency Relief Administration
• FERA funds for jobs for the unemployed
• Civilian Conservation Corps
• CCC temp work for young men in conservation
• Civil Works Administration
• CWA 4M employed in road building and repair
• Public Works Administration replaces the CWA
• Works Progress Administration
• Largest New Deal agency 8M jobs
• Art, theatre, construction, aid distribution
• Women are excluded from most programs
• Assumption that men are the breadwinners

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Civil Conservation CorpsSequoia National Park
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Works Progress Administration
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Assistance for agriculture

• Agricultural Adjustment Act
• AAA - raised farm prices
• paid farmers not to grow crops
• funds mainly large-scale farmers
• Farm Security Administration
• Moves tenant farmers/sharecroppers
• Relocates onto fertile land in group farms
• Critics say socialization of agriculture

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Assistance for Industry

• National Industrial Recovery Act
• NIRA - creates National Recovery Administration
• system of business self-regulation
• regulate market, raise prices, raise wages
• guaranteed right of collective bargaining

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Housing Issues

• Federal Housing Administration created (FHA)
• Improve housing conditions in urban areas
• Makes home loans available to the poor
• HOLC Home Owners Loan Corporation
• USHA creates low-cost housing projects
• HUD Housing and Urban Development runs projects

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Additional Programs

• Rural Electrification Act of 1936
• Creation of jobs bringing electricity to backward
  areas
• Primarily involves Tennessee Valley Authority
• Social Security Administration (SSA)
• 1st national program to provide relief for the
  elderly
• National Youth Administration
• Education/jobs for youth

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Franklin D. Roosevelt the New Deal

• Still despite the New Deal things got worse
• Roosevelt Recession occurs
• 1934 is particularly bad causing major strikes
• Akron OH
• San Francisco, CA
• Minneapolis, MN
• 1936-37 General Motors workers go on strike
• Flint, MI and all around the country
• Workers sat-down in GM plants
• 1937, steel industry begins rioting
• Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago
• Several strikers are shot by police

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A Pennsylvania Steel Strike, 1933
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The Minneapolis General Strike, 1934
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The San Francisco Strike, 1934
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The Flint Sit-down Strike, 1936-37
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The Flint Sit-down Strike, 1936-37
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The Sit-down Strike Mania, 1937
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Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago, 1937
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Franklin D. Roosevelt the New Deal

• The result of these and other strikes
• Congress of Industrial Organizations formed
• New and aggressive form of unionism
• Organized on an industrial basis
• Other unions organize along craft lines
• Willing to admit women, African-Americans, and
  other disadvantaged groups

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Steelworkers Organizing Poster
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Roosevelt would join a union.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt the New Deal

• Still no real economic recovery.
• No real improvement until war broke out in Europe
  in 1939
• Economy finally recovered with US involvement
  World War II in 1941