Suffering During the DepressionSuffering During the Depression

How did urban and rural people get by in the Great Depression?

Shantytowns and “Hoovervilles”

•Financial collapse causes people to lose their homes

•People wind up on the streets and made makeshift shelters out of what they could find

“Homeless” towns begin sprouting up in many cities

Soup Kitchens & Bread Lines•To eat, people dug through garbage cans. Charities started setting up soup kitchens & bread lines to feed people

Struggles for African Americans and Latinos

• Unemployment rates up & wages are down, Af-Am unemployment is double that of Euro-Ams

• More competition for jobs, even traditionally low paying ones• 1933: Greatest number of lynchings since Reconstruction• Many Americans demand that Hispanics be deported,

hundreds of thousands relocate to Mexico.

Depression in Rural America & The Dust Bowl

“Migrant Mother”, by Dorothea Lange

•In addition to financial problems, a natural catastrophe hits the midwest

• Because native plants were removed and the land was overused, top soil blew away.

• Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado become the “Dust Bowl”.

• Families unable to pay back debt. to banks, 400k farms foreclosed upon (1929-1932)

• Hundreds of thousands of families forced to migrate West along Route 66 (many to California)

• Migrants collectively known as “Okies” (derogatory) were discriminated against in jobs, housing, etc

Wanderers

“…the riders of freight trains, the thumbers of rides on highways, the uprooted, unwanted male population of America”-Thomas Wolfe, novelist

What is ironic about this picture?

•As many as 300,000 “hoboes” (transients) wandered the country

American Family: Effects on Men

“Men who have been sturdy and self-respecting workers can take unemployment without flinching for a few weeks, a few months, even if they have to see their families suffer; but it is different aftera year…two years…threeyears.”-Frederick Lewis Allen

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•Some men became so discouraged they abandoned their families

American Family: Women Struggle to Survive

Others were too ashamed to face reality:“I’ve lived in cities for many months, broke, without help, too timid to get in bread lines. I’ve known many women to live like this until they simply faint in the street.” – Meridel Le Seuer

•Women tried to stretch food as far as possible, tried to find work outside of the home but couldn’t be hired if a man needed work

American Family: Children of the Great Depression

-Poor diets and lack of health care = malnutrition & disease

-Many schools are closed = uneducated future population

-Many teens jump freight trains to “travel the country” = rampant crime by teens & against teens

Social and Psychological Effects

-From 1928-1932, suicide rate rose more than 30%

-3X as many people were admitted to state mental hospitals

-Achieving financial stability became the main goal in life

“Ever since I was 12 years old there was one major goal in my life…and that was to never be poor again.” - anonymous