Ch. 32 Life During the Depression

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Ch. 32 Life During the Depression
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The Depression Worsens

• By 1933, 9,000 Banks had failed.
• In 1932, 30,000 Companies went out of business.
• 25 Unemployment rate

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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

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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.

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The Dust Bowl

• From the beginnings of homesteading on the Great
  Plains, farmers gambled with nature.
• Uprooted wild grasses that held the Soils
  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, Americas 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.

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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.

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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)