The Great Depression

1. The Great Depression

2. Vocabulary • The Great Depression • Stock Market • Stocks • Drought • The Dust Bowl • Soup Kitchens • Herbert Hoover • Franklin Roosevelt • Duke Ellington • Margaret Mitchell • Jesse Owens

3. 1929-1939 • What were the causes of “The Great Depression”? • What was the role of the “Roaring 20’S in the Depression? Many found being broke humiliating.

4. The Roaring 20’s • The new concept of “credit” • People were buying: • Automobiles • Appliances • Clothes • Fun times reigned

5. Why was this bad? • Credit system • People didn’t really have the money they were spending • WWI • The U.S. was a major credit loaner to other nations in need • Many of these nations could not pay us back

6. The Stock Market • What are Stocks? • What is the Stock Market? • People bought stocks on margins • If a stock is $100 you can pay $10 now and the rest later when the stock rose • Stocks fall • Now the person has less than $100 and no money to pay back

7. And then…. • With people panicking about their money investors tried to sell their stocks • This leads to a huge decline in stocks • Stocks were worthless now • People who bought on “margins” now could not pay • Investors were average people that were now broke

8. President Hoover • Herbert Hoover was president at the start in 1929. • He thought the best way to help was give aid to businesses. • He also felt that doing nothing to help was the best way.

9. What about the people? • Farmers were already feeling the effects • Prices of crops went down • Many farms foreclosed • People could not afford luxuries • Factories shut down • Businesses went out • Banks could not pay out money • People could not pay their taxes • Schools shut down due to lack of funds • Many families became homeless and had to live in shanties

11. Many waited in unemployment lines hoping for a job.

12. People in cities would wait in line for bread to bring to their family.

13. Soup Kitchens • Soup Kitchens were run by charities. • Thousands would line up just to get soup and bread. • Often the only meal they would have for the entire day!

14. Some families were forced to relocate because they had no money.

15. “Hooverville” • Some families were forced to live in shanty towns • A grouping of shacks and tents in vacant lots • They were referred to as “Hooverville” because of President Hoover’s lack of help during the depression.

16. Hooverville

17. Out of the Dust: The Dust Bowl

18. The Dust Bowl • During the 1930’s, the Great Plains suffered from deadly dust storms.

19. A drought in the Great Plains lead to dust storms that destroyed crops. “The Dust Bowl”

20. The Land Was Buried • Crops turned to dust=No food to be sent out • Homes buried • Fields blown away • South in state of emergency • Dust Bowl the #1 weather crisis of the 20th century

22. Causes of the Dust Bowl: • Overgrazing by cattle and plowing by farmers destroyed the grasses that once held down the soil.

23. The loose soil, a drought, and high winds helped to cause the Dust Bowl. Dust Storms: "Kodak view of a dust storm Baca Co., Colorado, Easter Sunday 1935

24. Dust Storms; "One of South Dakota's Black Blizzards, 1934"

25. Farmer and sons, dust storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936. Photographer: Arthur Rothstein.

26. Two Families During the Depression

27. A Farm Foreclosure

28. Some families tried to make money by selling useful crafts like baskets.

29. Farm Security Administration: farmers whose topsoil blew away joined the sod caravans of "Okies" on Route 66 to California. (Circa 1935)

30. Farm Security Administration: Migrant worker on California highway. (Circa 1935)

31. Toward Los Angeles, California. 1937. (Dorothea Lange.) Perhaps 2.5 million people abandoned their homes in the South and the Great Plains during the Great Depression and went on the road.

32. Migrant family looking for work in the pea fields of California. (Circa 1935)

33. Migrant farmers from Arkansas became known as Arkies. Farm Security Administration:Arkansas squatter for three years near Bakefield, California. Photo by D. Lange. (Circa 1935)

34. Migrant farmers from Oklahoma became known as Okies. Young Oklahoma mother; age 18, penniless, stranded in Imperial Valley, California.

35. Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother," destitute in a pea picker's camp, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Most of the 2,500 people in this camp were destitute. By the end of the decade there were still 4 million migrants on the road.

37. Franklin D. Roosevelt • President in 1932 by defeating Hoover • Introduced the “New Deal” • “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”