Hard Times: The Great Depression
Charlie Chaplin in City Lights (1931)
"Destitute Pea Pickers in California "Destitute Pea Pickers in California." Nipomo, California, February 1936. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.
"Migratory family traveling across the desert in search of work "Migratory family traveling across the desert in search of work..." Dorothea Lange.
Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm. Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936. Photograph by Arthur Rothstein.
“Toward Los Angeles, California” Dorothea Lange (1937)
Russell Lee, “The Faro Caudill family eating dinner in their dugout” Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940
Russell Lee, “Jack Whinery, homesteader, and his family”, Pie Town, NM, October 1940
Russell Lee, “Garden adjacent to the dugout home of Jack Whinery, homesteader” Pie Town, NM, September1940
Causes of the Great Depression Structural weaknesses of the banking system? Unequal distribution of wealth? Changing nature of economy? Fiscal orthodoxy? Economic nationalism? Fall in money supply?
“We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.” Herbert Hoover(1928)
Bonus Army March (1932)
Hoovervilles Squatters’ shacks along the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon. Arthur Rothstein (1936)
1928 Presidential Election
1932 Presidential Election
FDR’s First Inaugural Address, 1933
The New Dealers Henry Wallace Harold Ickes Francis Perkins Harry Hopkins Raymond Moley Rexford Tugwell William Woodin Lewis Douglas
Eleanor Roosevelt
The New Deal Coalition Southern Whites African Americans Organised Labour Midwestern farmers