1. Life During Depression & Hoover’s Response

2. Recap: causes of the Great Depression  Stock Market Crash was NOT the only cause of the Depression and was NOT enough to cause the Depression on its own!

3. Life During Great Depression

4. Cities… Unemployment 25%; or severe pay cuts Hunger, homelessness
Bread lines
“Brother Can You Spare a Dime?”
“Hoovervilles” & Hoover blankets, Hoover flags
Despite unemployment, millions still able to keep jobs. Those ppl brought home paychecks that were 10-30% less than pre-Dep checks
Eventually laid off, trudging one factory to the next, no one wanting help, unemployed to unemployable
Feeling of loss – sense of “American Dream” betrayed – woven into cultural fabric of Depression
Lost jobs, ran through savings, had to scrounge…. Sold furniture, pawned jewelry, moved to cheaper lodging…. Ran out of money, evicted, ended up on streets
Slept on benches, empty railway cars, in cardboard boxes. Hoovervilles – makeshift shanty towns of tents and shacks, newspapers called Hoover blankets

6. Farms… Prices plunge Huge debt Foreclosure
Tenant farmers: work for bigger landowners instead of selves
Great Plains drought (+ bad technique)
Dust Bowl (KS, NM, CO, OK, TX)
Okies – D.B. refugees migrating West
1919: bushel of wheat was $2…. In 1932, sold for 38 cents
New farming techniques…
Intensive farming came to prominence in Great Plains
Farmers moved onto plains and plowed under natural grasses in order to plant winter wheat. The landscape shifted the ecological balance
In past, plains grasses prevented topsoil from blowing away during periods of drought. By early 1930s, grassy safety net couldn’t do its job.
Called Okies, though few came from Oklahoma. Before the pace slowed, 800,000 people migrated out of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas
Dust Bowl Video

7. Family Life… Minorities… Shame Guilt Low birthrate Discipline declined
bottom felt it worst (often minorities)
1932 unemployment for Af Am  50% {remember H.O.S.?}
Migrants vs. Mexican Americans – pushed to leave

8. Photo Analysis: Life During the Great Depression

9. Human Erosion in California/ Migrant Mother, Nipomo, CA, 1936
Other photos from “Migrant Mother” series
Human Erosion in California/ Migrant Mother, Nipomo, CA, 1936

10. Dust Bowl Refugees Arrive in California, 1936

11. White Angel Bread Line, San Francisco, CA, around 1933

12. Stoop Labor in Cotton Field, San Joaquin Valley, California (1938)

13. Hoover’s Response Fails

14. ‘20s prosperity  Repub. Presidents
1928 election: Herbert Hoover  easy win
“By adherence to the principles of decentralized self- government, ordered liberty, equal opportunity, and freedom to the individual, our American experiment in human welfare has yielded a degree of well-being unparalleled in all the world. It has come nearer to the abolition of poverty, to the abolition of fear of want, than humanity has ever reached before….”
--Hoover, campaign speech, 1928

15. Hoover Tries… Hands-off  business cycles are natural
Volunteerism  industry + gov’t cooperate
Faith in localism state/ local levels)
Opposed public assistance
Trickle-down economics: put $ into top (businessmen, banks) & trickle down to bottom
Asked business & industry leaders to keep employmet, wages, prices at current levels. At same time, called for government to reduce taxes, lower IR, create public-works programs.
Also asked wealthy to give to charities. Voluntarily join forces to combat depression
Failed as a whole – believed he could persuade Americans to act not in their own best interests but in those of the country as a whole. But it didn’t work. People acted in their own best interests.
Local levels did not have resources (human or financia) to successfully combat crisis.
“Rugged individualism”
Money did not trickle down to the people who needed it most
{One success!}
Hoover Dam built during 1930s  employment

16. …Hoover Fails  Communism? Fascism? Bonus Army: 1932
WWI vets promised bonus payment in 1945
Wanted it early  need $$$
Congress passes bill but Hoover vetoes  march on DC
Riots – tear gas – bayonets
Loses 1932 election to FDR
Some Americans thought the answer to the country’s problems was the rejection of capitalism & acceptance of socialism/ communism
Capitalism created great inequalities of wealth and unhealthy atmosphere of competition… depression is sign that capitalism is about to collapse! Looking at Soviet Union, state-run economy is only way out of depression
Hoover had NOT ordered use of such force against veterans. But, photos got out and killed any chance Hoover had for reelection