Hoover and Hard Times: 1929-1833

1. Hoover and Hard Times: 1929-1833 Brianna Souza

2. Rough Times • In West Virginia and Kentucky, hunger was so widespread and resources were limited. • American Friends Service Committee distributed food only to those who were at least 10 percent below the normal weight for their height. • By November 1932, it was said that one-sixth of the American population risked starvation over the coming winter. • Families unable to pay rent were evicted from houses apartments and homeless moved into shantytowns called “Hoovervilles.”

3. Rough Times • With uncertain futures, many young couples delayed marriage. • Married people put off having children, and in 1933 the birth rate sank below replacement rates. • More than 25 percent of women who were between the ages of twenty and thirty during the Great Depression never had children.

4. Farmers • Farmers were hit especially hard by the economic crisis. • Individual farmers tried to make up for lower prices by producing more, thus adding to the surplus and lowering prices even further.

5. Industrial Workers • America’s industrial workers had seen a slow but steady rise in their standard of living during the 1920s, and their spending on consumer goods had supported the nation’s economic growth. • As Americans had less money to spend, sales of manufactured goods plummeted and factories closed. • Almost a quarter of industrial workers were unemployed, and those who managed to hang onto a job saw the average wage fall by almost one-third.

6. Marginal Workers: African Americans • Marginal workers are workers who were discriminated against. • South: • In 1930, an organization, the Black Shirts, was formed and recruited forty thousand members. • They believed that no blacks should have a job until every white person had one. • North: • As industry cut production, African American were the first fired.

7. Marginal Workers: Mexican Americans • Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals also felt the impact of economic depression and racism. • Throughout the Southwest, Anglo-Americans claimed that foreign workers were stealing their jobs. • In 1931, the Labor Department announced that the United States would deport illegal immigrants in order to free jobs for American citizens. • The U.S. government officially deported eighty-two thousand Mexicans between 1929 and 1935.

8. Marginal Workers: Women • As male unemployment increased, it was easy to believe that women who worked took jobs from men. • In 1936 a Gallup poll was asked whether wives should work if their husbands had jobs: • 82 percent of the respondents answered no. • These beliefs became policy. • Of fifteen hundred urban school systems surveyed by the National Education Association in 1930 and 1931, 77 percent refused to hire married women as teachers, and 63 percent fired female teachers who married while employed. • By 1940, only 15.2 percent of married women worked outside the home.

9. Middle-Class Workers and Families • Many middle-class families “made do” with less. • Women cut back on household expenses by canning food or making their own clothes. • Though most families’ incomes fell, the impact was cushioned by the falling cost of consumer goods, especially food. • Also, the psychological impact of the depression was inescapable. • Suffering was never equal, but all Americans had to struggle with years of uncertainty and with fears about the future of their families and their nation.