1. The Great Depression and the New Deal (1928-1941)
Lesson 2 Americans Suffer

2. The Great Depression and the New Deal (1928-1941)
Lesson 2 Americans Suffer
Learning Objectives
Examine the spread of unemployment in America’s cities.
Analyze the effects of the Great Depression on farmers.
Analyze the impact of human and geographical factors that created the Dust Bowl.
Describe how the Great Depression affected family life and the lives of African Americans and Mexican Americans.

3. The Great Depression and the New Deal (1928-1941)
Lesson 2 Americans Suffer
Key Terms
bread line
Hoovervilles
tenant farmers
Dust Bowl
Okies
repatriation

4. Economic Hardship Shakes the Cities
The stock market crash signaled the end of boom times and the beginning of hard times. As investors mourned their losses, Americans watched the economy stagger into the Great Depression. In the cities and on the farms, desperate poverty gripped the nation. Even after prosperity returned, those who lived through the crisis would remember the pain and worries of the depression. Tested by extreme hardship, this generation of Americans forged a character and will strong enough to overcome economic ruin and restore prosperity.

5. Economic Hardship Shakes the Cities
Unemployment Leaves Families Struggling
Poverty Becomes a Reality for Many
The Challenges of Homelessness

6. Economic Hardship Shakes the Cities
Imagine the fear and shame of losing your home.
1933 – 25% unemployment
Many kept jobs but had to take 30% pay cuts
Bread line – food handouts from charities or public agencies
Sold or pawned stuff
Hoovervilles – makeshift shantytowns of tens and shacks
Central Park NY city
Hoover blankets – newspapers

7. Economic Hardship Shakes the Cities
Unemployed men gathered outside a busy New York City unemployment office during the 1930s. New York police officers stood guard. Draw Conclusions Why do you think this unemployment office required guarding?

8. Economic Hardship Shakes the Cities
Analyze Graphs How many millions of people lost their jobs between 1928 and 1933? During which years did unemployment increase the most?

9. Rural America Struggles with Poverty
In cities and towns across the nation, Americans faced a terrible plight. The numbers of the unemployed, homeless, and hopeless increased like a casualty list in some great war. In rural America, people fared no better. In fact, sometimes their condition was even worse. Farmers had been suffering even before the Great Depression. Falling commodity prices and accumulating debt had made it a struggle for farmers to keep their heads above water. Many failed to stay afloat and sank so deep that they lost their farms.

10. Rural America Struggles with Poverty
Crop Prices Fall
Losing the Family Farm
The Dust Bowl
Moving Wherever Work Can Be Found

11. Rural America Struggles with Poverty
Falling prices and debt ment many farmers lost their farms
1930 – 1934 – 1 million farmers lost their farms
Tenant farmers – stayed on and rented instead
Farmers had plowed up the great plains
Low rainfall anyway
Drought
No grass to hold topsoil –
Dustbowl – drought and major soil erosion in the middle 30’s.
Put more farmers out of business
A ship docking in New York would have over an inch of dirt on their deck.
Okies – farmers that left farms and just drifted
Small farms disappeared and we commercial farms got bigger
Federal government started damming rivers for irrigation

12. Rural America Struggles with Poverty
Draw Conclusions Why did commodity prices fall after 1919, even though the Great Depression was years away?

13. Rural America Struggles with Poverty
Dairy farmers poured out their milk as part of a 1932 protest. Infer What can you infer about the price farmers received for milk in 1932?

14. Rural America Struggles with Poverty
Analyze Maps Which two states appear to have been hardest hit by erosion? What is unusual about California's location compared to other destinations?

15. Rural America Struggles with Poverty
Combined with the severe drought, how did the planting of wheat lead to the loss of topsoil and the dust storms?

16. Hard Times Hit Most Americans
One of the ironies of the depression was the word itself. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an economic slump was called a “panic” or a “crisis.” President Hoover used the word depression to describe the state of affairs because he thought it sounded less severe than the other terms. But before long, Hoover’s “depression” gave way to the “Depression” and then the “Great Depression.” The term described not only a state of mind, but also an economic reality. It showed a despondent America, filled with people overwhelmed by seemingly inescapable poverty. Not only did the depression make victims of the men and women who lost jobs, it also was an economic and emotional crisis that profoundly affected U.S. society.

17. Hard Times Hit Most Americans
Families Suffer During the Depression
Poor Minorities Suffer Disproportionately

18. Hard Times Hit Most Americans
Hoover didn’t like crisis or panic so he used depression
Men or “breadwinners” looked for jobs, sank into shame and despair, or left their family.
Birthrate plummeted – many children left family
African Americans – first to be fired and last to be hired
Unemployment was 50%
Repatriation – effort to get other minorities to go back to home country
We stopped all immigration to our country
Including German Jews fleeing Germany

19. Hard Times Hit Most Americans
Wealthy individuals often had to accept menial jobs to make a living. After losing his wealth in the stock market crash, former millionaire Fred Bell sold apples on a street corner.

20. Quiz: Economic Hardship Shakes the Cities
What does it mean to say that factory workers sometimes went “from unemployed to unemployable”?
A. They started off wanting to work but changed their minds.
B. They took on a ragged appearance that kept employers from hiring them.
C. They physically broke down and were no longer able to handle difficult work.
D. They rejected the reduced hours and shortened workweeks offered by their employers.

21. Quiz: Rural America Struggles with Poverty
Which region experienced the most severe effects of the Dust Bowl?
A. the Midwest
B. the Pacific Coast
C. the southern Great Plains
D. the Appalachian Highlands

22. Quiz: Hard Times Hit Most Americans
Why did some Americans push for Mexican American and Asian American repatriation?
A. Housing in the Southwest was extremely limited.
B. Some white people wanted to eliminate minority competition for jobs.
C. Mexican Americans and Asian Americans mostly came from Oklahoma, so they were outsiders in the Southwest.
D. Mexican Americans and Asian Americans were mostly sharecroppers who were thrown off the land they had been farming.