Depression, the New Deal & Hope in New Mexico

1. Depression, the New Deal & Hope in New Mexico A Look at the 30s, 40s and 50s in New Mexico

2. A little history….

3. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • The economic prosperity of the 1920s ended with an economic disaster. We have come to refer to that disaster as the Great Depression. • By 1933 production in American factories and plants had fallen, thousands of banks, with no money to lend and no cash on hand, closed their doors.

4. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • In the end, millions of American workers found themselves without work and without even the hope of work. As people looked into the future and so only more hardship to come, hope began to fade. • The Depression would jolt many out of the American Dream forcing them to look at the realities of widespread poverty.

5. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM

6. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM

7. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM

8. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM

9. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • IN A NUT SHELL WHAT HAPPENED WAS...

10. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • During the economic boom of the Roaring Twenties, the traditional values of rural America were challenged by the Jazz Age, symbolized by women smoking, drinking, and wearing short skirts. • The average American was busy buying automobiles and household appliances, and speculating in the stock market, where big money could be made. 

11. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • Those appliances were bought on credit, however. Although businesses had made huge gains — 65 percent — from the mechanization of manufacturing, the average worker’s wages had only increased 8 percent.

12. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • The imbalance between the rich and the poor, with 0.1 percent of society earning the same total income as 42 percent, combined with production of more and more goods and rising personal debt, could not be sustained.

13. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • On Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed, triggering the Great Depression, the worst economic collapse in the history of the modern industrial world. It spread from the United States to the rest of the world, lasting from the end of 1929 until the early 1940s.

14. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM And KABOOM! Everything—the lives that most had known—was simply gone!

15. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • With banks failing and businesses closing, more than 15 million Americans (one-quarter of the workforce) became unemployed!!!

16. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • Videos #1 and 2

17. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM

18. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • Hooverville?????

19. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • During the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted approximately a decade, shantytowns appeared across the U.S. as unemployed people were evicted from their homes. As the Depression worsened in the 1930s, causing severe hardships for millions of Americans, many looked to the federal government for assistance. 

20. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • When the government failed to provide relief, President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) was blamed for the intolerable economic and social conditions, and the shantytowns that cropped up across the nation, primarily on the outskirts of major cities, became known as Hoovervilles.

22. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • Video #3

23. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • The highly unpopular Hoover, a Republican, was defeated in the 1932 presidential election by Democrat Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945), whose New Deal recovery programs eventually helped lift the U.S. out of the Depression. In the early 1940s, most remaining Hoovervilles were torn down.

24. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM THE BONUS MARCH: World War I veterans block the steps of the Capital during the Bonus March, July 5, 1932. 

25. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • In the summer of 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, World War I veterans seeking early payment of a bonus scheduled for 1945 assembled in Washington to pressure Congress and the White House.

26. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • Hoover resisted the demand for an early bonus. Veterans benefits took up 25% of the 1932 federal budget. Even so, as the Bonus Expeditionary Force swelled to 60,000 men, the president secretly ordered that its members be given tents, cots, army rations and medical care.

27. The dust bowl • The dust bowl

28. Dust Bowl

29. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • Video #4 • Questions….See handout

30. Franklin Delano Roosevelt

31. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • Videos #5 and #6

32. Fdr’s new deal • Video #7

33. The new deal • Taking office in March 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal relief measures were sent to Congress and within months, most of the acts the president wanted were passed. New Mexicans welcomed New Deal programs of all kinds.

34. The new deal • Some of the New Deal programs, such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA), put people to work in varying jobs: writers, artists, and musicians practiced their trades as employees of WPA projects, while others who worked for the WPA built schools and other public buildings, including the library and the administration building at the University of New Mexico.

35. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM

36. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • Here in New Mexico one of the hardest hit segments of economy during the depression was farming. In 1931, the state’s most important crops were worth only about half of their 1929 value. Dry farmers were especially devastated as they suffered from both continually high operating costs and a prolonged drought that dried up portions of New Mexico so badly that they became part of the Dust Bowl.

37. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • From Oklahoma to eastern New Mexico, winds picked up the dry topsoil, forming great clouds of dust so thick that it filled the air. On May 28, 1937, one dust cloud, or “black roller,” measuring fifteen hundred feet high and a mile across, descended upon the farming and ranching community of Clayton, New Mexico.

38. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM

39. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • The dust blew for hours and was so thick that electric lights could not be seen across the street. Everywhere they hit, the dust storms killed livestock and destroyed crops. In the Estancia Valley entire crops of pinto beans were killed, and that once productive area was transformed into what author John L. Sinclair has called “the valley of broken hearts.”

40. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • In all parts of New Mexico, farmland dropped in value until it bottomed out at an average of $4.95 an acre, the lowest value per acre of land in the United States. Many New Mexico farmers had few or no crops to sell and eventually, they were forced to sell their land contributing in the process to the overall decline in farmland values.

41. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • The depression also hurt New Mexico’s cattle ranchers, for they suffered from both drought and a shrinking marketplace. As grasslands dried up, they raised fewer cattle; and as the demand for beef declined, so did the value of the cattle on New Mexico’s rangelands.

42. Depression, the New deal & hope in NM • Like the farmers, many ranchers fell behind in their taxes and were forced to sell their land, which was bought by large ranchers.

43. The New Deal Comes to New Mexico Clyde & carrie tingley!

44. The New Deal Comes to New Mexico • So, the new deal (at least part of it, anyway) was about getting Americans and new Mexicans back to work. Clyde tingley would bring fdr’s program home to new mexico!

45. The New Deal Comes to New Mexico Backed by Gov. Clyde Tingley and the WPA, the Albuquerque Municipal Airport opened in 1939. It had two runways. Pictured behind the plane, in 1950, is a Pueblo-style terminal designed by Ernest Blumenthal.

46. The New Deal Comes to New Mexico Construction workers building Conchas Dam in northeastern New Mexico. Conchas Dam was the first project the Albuquerque District completed thanks to the New Deal

47. The New Deal Comes to New Mexico Governor Clyde Tingley would appoint DENNIS CHAVEZ Senator. The two men would recognize the need to work together to bring federal NEW DEAL dollars to the state of New Mexico. In the end, their partnership would produce far-reaching benefits to the state.

48. The New Deal Comes to New Mexico • By 1936 more than thirteen thousand New Mexicans had found jobs thanks to new deal programs.

49. The New Deal Comes to New Mexico • A person of interest: pablitavelarde

50. The New Deal Comes to New Mexico A monumental mural by PablitaVelarde: Green Corn Dance.