Sections 2 & 3 Hard Times and Hoover Chapter 21 The Main Idea The Great Depression and the natural disaster known as the Dust Bowl produced economic suffering on a scale the nation had never seen before. Sections 2 & 3 Hard Times and Hoover

Great Depression by the Numbers After the stock market crash, economic flaws helped the nation sink into the Great Depression, the worst economic downturn in history.

Farm Failures By 1933, with farmers unable to sell food they produced, farm prices had sunk to 50 percent of their already low 1929 levels.

Unemployment Help for the Unemployed Although city governments and charities tried to provide assistance to poor people, they simply could not meet the needs of the unemployed. New York City, for example, spent $79 million on relief in 1932—an amount that totaled only one month’s wages for the city’s unemployed. In 1931 Chicago spent $100,000 a day on relief in an effort to replace lost wages that totaled some $2 million per day. Unemployment Unemployment reached a staggering 25 percent, and among some groups the numbers were even higher. In the African American neighborhood of Harlem, for example, unemployment reached 50 percent in 1932.

The Human Impact of the Great Depression Who Provided relief to the poor during the Great Depression? The Human Impact of the Great Depression Local charities and some municipal and state governments. Some who lost their homes lived in shantytowns, or Hoovervilles, named after President Hoover who many blamed for the Great Depression. How did the Great Depression affect the minds and spirits of Americans? Many felt that they had failed as individuals; widespread felling that the nation had failed its citizens.

Hoboes Hoboes were mostly men, but included teens and women.

Devastation in the Dust Bowl What was the Dust Bowl? Devastation in the Dust Bowl Parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas that were hardest hit by drought. During the Decade the area from North Dakota to Texas became known as the DUST BOWL. This exhausted the land through overproduction of crops and destroyed the natural protection to a dust bowl. The dust could travel for hundreds of miles before it would fall down. Dust could be taken to cities on the east coast. Even a few ships in the Atlantic noticed dust settling on their decks. Thousands of farmers had to abandon their land and more on to other places. The headed west following route 66 to California. What caused the Dust Bowl? Drought; agricultural practices that led to severe erosion.