Resources on the Great Depression

Source 1[Oil City, Penna. December 15, 1930]Col Arthur WoodsDirector, Presidents Committee

Dear Sir:... I have none of these things [that the rich have], what do they care how much we suffer, how much the health of our children is menaced. Now I happen to know there is something can be done about it and Oil City needs to be awakened up to that fact and compelled to act.Now that our income is but $15.60 a week (their are five of us My husband Three littlechildren and myself). My husband who is a world war Veteran and saw active service in the trenches, became desperate and applied for Compensation or a pension from the Government and was turned down and that started me thinking.... [There should be] enough to pay all world war veterans a pension, dysabeled or not dysabeled and there by relieve a lot of suffering, and banish resentment that causes Rebellions and Bolshevism. Oh why is it that it is allways a bunch of overley rich, selfish, dumb, ignorant money hogs that persist in being Senitors, legislatures, representitives Where would they and their possessions be if it were not for the Common Soldier,the common laborer that is compelled to work for a starvation wage. for I tell you again the hog of a Landlord gets his there is not enough left for the necessaries if a man has three or more children. Not so many years ago in Russia all the sufferings of poverty (and you can never feel them you are on the other side of the fence but try to understand) conceived a child, that child was brought forth in agony, and its name was Bolshevism. I am on the other side of the fence from you, you are not in a position to see, but I, I can see and feel and understand. I have lived and suffered too. I know, and right now our good old U. S. A. is sitting on a Seething Volcano.In the Public Schools our little children stand at salute and recite a "rig ma role" in which is mentioned "Justice to all" What a lie, what a naked lie, when honest, law abiding citizens, decendents of Revilutionary heros, Civil War heros, and World war heros are denied the priviledge of owning their own homes, that foundation of good citizenship, good morals, and the very foundation of good government the world over. Is all that our Soldiers of all wars fought bled and died for to be sacrificed to a God awful hideious Rebellion? in which all our Citizens will be involved, because of the dumb bungling of rich politicians? Oh for a few Statesmen, oh for but one statesman, as fearless as Abraham Lincoln, the amancipator who died for us. and who said, you can fool some of the people some of the time, But you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Heres hoping you have read this to the end and think it over. I wish you a Mery Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Very Truly YoursMrs. M. E. B

From Suri, Jeremi. University of Wisconsin. Depression Era Letters. 15 Dec. 2009 <http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/depression_letters.pdf>.

Source 2[Phila., Pa. November 26, 1934]Honorable Franklin D. Roosevelt.Washington, D. C.

Dear Mr. President:I am forced to write to you because we find ourselves in a very serious condition. For the last three or four years we have had depression and suffered with my family and little children severely. Now Since the Home Owners Loan Corporation opened up, I have been going there in order to save my home, because there has been unemployment in my house for more than three years. You can imagine that I and my family have suffered from lack of water supply in my house for more than two years. Last winter I did not have coal and the pipes burst in my house and therefore could not make heat in the house. Now winter is here again and we are suffering of cold, no water in the house, and we are facing to be forced out of the house, because I have no money to move or pay so much money as they want when after making settlement I am mother of little children, am sick and losing my health, and we are eight people in the family, and where can I go when I don't have money because no one is working in my house. The Home Loan Corporation wants $42. a month rent or else we will have to be on the street. I am living in this house for about ten years and when times were good we would put our last cent in the house and now I have no money, no home and no wheres to go. I beg of you to please help me and my family and little children for the sake of a sick mother and suffering family to give this your immediate attention so we will not be forced to move or put out in the street.

Waiting and Hoping that you will act quickly.

Thanking you very much I remainMrs. E. L.

From http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/depression_letters.pdf

Source 3[Lincoln, Nebraska. May 19, 1934]Mrs. Franklin D. RooseveltWashington, D. C.

Dear Mrs. Roosevelt;

Will you be kind enough to read the following as it deals with a very important subjectwhich you are very much interested in as well as my self.In the Presidents inaugral adress delivered from the capitol steps the afternoon of hisinaugration he made mention of The Forgotten Man, and I with thousands of others amwondering if the folk who was borned here in America some 60 or 70 years a go are thisForgotten Man, the President had in mind, if we are this Forgotten Man then we are stillForgotten.We who have tried to be diligent in our support of this most wonderful nation of oursboath social and other wise, we in our younger days tried to do our duty without complaining.We have helped to pay pensions to veterans of some three wars, we have raised thepresent young generation and have tried to train them to honor and support this our home country.And now a great calamity has come upon us and seamingly no cause of our own it hasswept away what little savings we had accumulated and we are left in a condition that is imposible for us to correct, for two very prominent reasons if no more.First we have grown to what is termed Old Age, this befalls every man.Second as we put fourth every effort in our various business lines trying to rectify andreestablish our selves we are confronted on every hand with the young generation, taking our places, this of corse is what we have looked forward to in training our children. But with the extra ordinary crisese which left us helpless and placed us in the position that our fathers did not have to contend with.Seamingly every body has been assisted but we the Forgotten Man, and since we for 60 years or more have tried to carry the loan without complaining, we have paid others pensions we have educated and trained the youth, now as we are Old and down and out of no reason of our own, would it be asking to much of our Government and the young generation to do by us as we have tried our best to do by them even without complaint.We have been honorable citizens all along our journey, calamity and old age has forced its self upon us please donot send us to the Poor Farm but instead allow us the small pension of $40.00 per month and we will do as we have done in the past (not complain)I personly Know of Widows who are no older than I am who own their own homes anddraw $45,00 per month pension, these ladies were born this side of the civil war the same as I, therefore they never experianced war trouble.Please donot think of us who are asking this assitsnce as Old Broken down dishonorable cotizens, but we are of those borned in this country and have done our bit in making this country, we are folk in all walks of life and businesse.

For example I am an architect and builder I am not and old broken down illiterate

dishonorable man although I am 69 years old, but as I put forth every effort to regain my prestage in business I am confronted on every side by the young generation taking my place, yes this is also the case even in the effort of the government with its recovery plan, even though I am qualifyed to suprentend any class of construction but the young man has captured this place also, What are we to do since the calamity has swept our all away,? We are just asking to be remembered with a small part as we have done to others $40,00 a month is all we are asking.Mrs. Roosevelt I am asking a personal favor of you as it seems to be the only meansthrough which I may be able to reach the President, some evening very soon, as you and Mr. Roosevelt are having dinner together privately will you ask him to read this. and we American citizens will ever remember your kindness.

Yours very truly.R. A. [male][February, 1936]

From http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/depression_letters.pdf

Source 4Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt.Wash. D. C.

Dear Mr. President:

I'm a boy of 12 years. I want to tell you about my family. My father hasn't worked for 5months. He went plenty times to relief, he filled out application. They won't give us anything. I don't know why. Please you do something. We haven't paid 4 months rent, Everyday the landlord rings the door bell, we don't open the door for him. We are afraid that will be put out, been put out before, and don't want to happen again. We haven't paid the gas bill, and the electric bill, haven't paid grocery bill for 3 months. My brother goes to Lane Tech. High School. he's eighteen years old, hasn't gone to school for 2 weeks because he got no carfare. I have a sister she's twenty years, she can't find work. My father he staying home. All the time he's crying because he can't find work. I told him why are you crying daddy, and daddy said why shouldn't I cry when there is nothing in the house. I feel sorry for him. That night I couldn't sleep. The next morning I wrote this letter to you. in my room. Were American citizens and were born in Chicago, Ill. and I don't know why they don't help us Please answer right away because we need it. will starve Thank you.

God bless you.[Anonymous]

From http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/depression_letters.pdf

Source 5[Chicago, Ill. Dec. 14, 1937.]Mrs. F. D. Roosevelt,Washington, D. C.

Mrs. Roosevelt:

I suppose from your point of view the work relief, old age pensions, slumclearance and all the rest seems like a perfect remedy for all the ills of this country, but I would like for you to see the results, as the other half see them.We have always had a shiftless, never-do-well class of people whose one and only aim in life is to live without work. I have been rubbing elbows with this class for nearly sixty years and have tried to help some of the most promising and have seen others try to help them, but it can't be done. We cannot help those who will not try to help themselves and if they do try a square deal is all they need, and by the way that is all this country needs or ever has needed: a square deal for all and then, let each one paddle their own canoe, or sink.There has never been any necessity for any one who is able to work, being on relief in this locality, but there have been many eating the bread of charity and they have lived better than ever before. I have had taxpayers tell me that their children came from school and asked why they couldn't have nice lunches like the children on relief.The women and children around here have had to work at the fields to help save the crops and several women fainted while at work and at the same time we couldn't go up or down the road without stumbling over some of the reliefers, moping around carrying dirt from one side of the road to the other and back again, or else asleep. I live alone on a farm and have not raised any crops for the last two years as there was no help to be had. I am feeding the stock and have been cutting the wood to keep my home fires burning. There are several reliefers around here now who have been kicked off relief, but they refuse to work unless they can get relief hours and wages, but they are so worthless no one can afford to hire them.As for the clearance of the real slums, it can't be done as long as their inhabitants areallowed to reproduce their kind. I would like for you to see what a family of that class can do to a decent house in a short time. Such a family moved into an almost new, neat, four-room house near here last winter. They even cut down some of the shade trees for fuel, after they had burned everything they could pry loose. There were two big idle boys in the family and they could get all the fuel they wanted, just for the cutting, but the shade trees were closer and it was taking a great amount of fuel, for they had broken out several windows and they had but very little bedding.There were two women there all the time and three part of the time and there was enough good clothing tramped in the mud around the yard to have made all the bedclothes they needed. It was clothing that had been given them and they had worn it until it was too filthy to wear any longer without washing, so they threw it out and begged more. I will not try to describe their filth for you would not believe me. They paid no rent while there and left between two suns owing everyone from whom they could get a nickels worth of anything. They are just a fair sample of the class of people on

whom so much of our hard earned tax-money is being squandered and on whom so much sympathy is being wasted.

As for the old people on beggars' allowances: the taxpayers have provided homes for allthe old people who never liked to work, where they will be neither cold nor hungry: much better homes than most of them have ever tried to provide for themselves. They have lived many years through the most prosperous times of our country and had an opportunity to prepare for old age, but they spent their lives in idleness or worse and now they expect those who have worked like slaves, to provide a living for them and all their worthless descendants. Some of them are asking for from thirty to sixty dollars a month when I have known them to live on a dollar a week rather than go to work. There is many a little child doing without butter on its bread, so that some old sot can have his booze and tobacco: some old sot who spent his working years loafing aroundpool rooms and saloons, boasting that the world owed him a living.Even the child welfare has become a racket. The parents of large families are gettingdivorces, so that the mothers and children can qualify for aid. The children to join the ranks of the "unemployed" as they grow up, for no child that has been raised on charity in this community has ever amounted to anything.You people who have plenty of this worlds goods and whose money comes easy, have no idea of the heart-breaking toil and self-denial which is the lot of the working people who are trying to make an honest living, and then to have to shoulder all these unjust burdens seems like the last straw. During the worst of the depression many of the farmers had to deny their families butter, eggs, meat etc. and sell it to pay their taxes and then had to stand by and see the deadbeats carry it home to their families by the arm load, and they knew their tax money was helping pay for it. One woman saw a man carry out eight pounds of butter at one time. The crookedness, shelfishness, greed and graft of the crooked politicians is making one gigantic racket out of the new deal and it is making this a nation of dead-beats and beggars and if it continues the people who will work will soon be nothing but slaves for the pampered poverty rats and I am afraid these human parasites are going to become a menace to the country unless they are disfranchised. No one should have the right to vote theirself a living at the expense of the tax payers. They learned their strength at the last election and also learned that they can get just about what they want by "voting right." They have had a taste of their coveted life of idleness, and at the rate they are increasing, they will soon control the country. The twentieth child arrived in the home of one chronic reliefer near here some time ago.Is it any wonder the taxpayers are discouraged by all this penalizing of thrift and industry to reward shiftlessness, or that the whole country is on the brink of chaos?

M. A. H. [female]

From http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/depression_letters.pdf

Source 6[Columbus, Ind. Jan. 18, 1937]Dear Mrs. Roosevelt

I... was simply astounded to think that anyone could be nitwit enough to wish to beincluded in the so called social security act if they could possibly avoid it. Call it by any name you wish it, in my opinion, (and that of many people I know) is nothing but downright stealing....Personally, I had my savings so invested that I would have had a satisfactory provision for old age. Now thanks to his [FDR's] desire to "get" the utilities I cannot be sure of anything, being a stockholder, as after business has survived his merciless attacks (if it does) insurance will probably be no good either.... [She goes on to complain about the lack of profits.]

Then the president tells them they should hire more men and work shorter hours so thatthe laborers, who are getting everything now raises etc. can have a "more abundant life." That simply means taking it from the rest of us in the form of taxes or otherwise....Believe me, the only thing we want from the president, unless or if you exceptCommunists and the newly trained chiselers, is for him to balance the budget and reduce taxes.That, by the way, is a "mandate from the people" that isn't getting much attention.I am not an "economic royalist," just an ordinary white collar worker at $1600 per. Please show this to the president and ask him to remember the wishes of the forgotten man, that is, the one who dared to vote against him. We expect to be tramped on but we do wish the stepping would be a little less hard.Security at the price of freedom is never desired by intelligent people.

M. A. [female]

From http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/depression_letters.pdf

Source 7[Washington, D. C.]Dear Mr. Hopkins:

Will you please investigate the various relief agencies in many cities of the United States.The cities where there are a large foreign and jewish population. No wonder the cities are now on the verge of bankruptcy because we are feeding a lot of ignorant foreigners by giving them relief.And, they are turning against us every day. I would suggest to deport all foreigners and jews who are not citizens over the United States back to any land where they choose to go and who will admit them. As America is now over crowded with too much immigration and it can not feed even its own citizens without feeding the citizens of other foreign nations. I have found out after careful investigation that we are feeding many foreigners who send out their wives to work and who have money in the bank. While the men drink wine and play cards in saloons and cafes. I have spoken to one Italian whom I met. And I ask him what he was doing for a living. He said medrinka da dago red wine and play cards and send the wife out to work. Isn't a very good thing for us to support them. No wonder the taxpayers are grumbling about taxes. Most of them are a race of black hands murders boot leggers bomb throwers. While most of the sheeney jews as they are called are a race of dishonest people who get rich by swindling, faking and cheating the poor people. Besides the jews are responsible by ruining others in business by the great amount of chisling done. And selling even below the cost prices, in order to get all the others business. The foreigners and jews spend as little as they can to help this country. And, they live as cheap as they can. And, work as cheap as they can, and save all the money they can. And when they haveenough they go back to their country. Why don't we deport them under the section of the United States Immigration Laws which relates to paupers and those who become a public charge. The Communist Party is composed mostly by foreigners and jews. The jews are the leaders of the movement and urge the downfall of this government....

A Taxpayer

From http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/depression_letters.pdf

Source 8[Hornell, New York, March 7, 1934]

My Dear Senator:

It seems very apparent to me that the Administration at Washington is accelerating it'space towards socialism and communism. Nearly every public statement from Washington is against stimulation of business which would in the end create employment.Everyone is sympathetic to the cause of creating more jobs and better wages for labor;but, a program continually promoting labor troubles, higher wages, shorter hours, and less profits for business, would seem to me to be leading us fast to a condition where the Government must more and more expand it's relief activities, and will lead in the end to disaster to all classes.I believe that every citizen is entitled to know the policy of the Government, and I am soconfused that I wish you would write me and advise me whether it is the policy of thisAdministration, of which you are a very important part, to further discourage business enterprise, and eventually set up a program which eliminates private industry and effort, and replaces it with Government control of industry and labor, —call it what you will: socialism, facism, or communism, or by any other name.I am not addicted to annoying public office holders with correspondence, but if there areany private rights left in this country, then I would appreciate an early reply to this letter, so that I may take such action as is still possible, to protect myself and family.

With kindest personal regards,

Yours truly,W. L. C. [male]

From http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/depression_letters.pdf

Source 9

Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange, 1936

Source: “Migrant Mother, 1936.” Eyewitness to History.com. 15 Dec. 2009 <http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/migrantmother.htm>.

Source 10

During the Depression, life was very difficult for farmers, but it wasn’t much better in the cities, where fourteen million people lived in crowded, unheated, unsanitary tenements. In a letter to Harry Hopkins, the director of the Civil Works Administration, Martha Gellhorn described the unemployed workers and their families:

“This picture is so grim that whatever words I use will seem hysterical and exaggerated. And I find them all in the same shape - fear, fear driving them into a state of semi-collapse cracking nerves; and an overpowering terror of the future.... They can't pay rent and are evicted. They are watching their children grow thinner and thinner; fearing the cold for children who have neither coats nor shoes; wondering about coal.”

As the Depression deepened, cities attracted beaten people from all parts of the country. Farmers whose livelihoods had been foreclosed packed up their families and moved into the cities. Hoboes and other itinerants sought shelter in cities during harsh winters. City dwellers themselves were not immune to the rails of the nation. Thousands of unemployed residents who could not pay their rent or mortgages were evicted into the world of public assistance and bread lines. At the peak of the Depression, seventeen thousand families were put out on the street each month. Although residents were given priority over newcomers for local aid, there were too many other residents standing in the same lines waiting for a check or a bowl of soup. Municipal resources were overwhelmed quickly, and city agencies resorted to thinning relief payments to below the cost of living and watering down the soup to help more people over a longer time.

Many cities just ran out of money and were even forced to pay city employees in scrip (a temporary voucher, redeemable for food and other products). At the height of the Depression Chicago had half a million unemployed, and in New York the jobless figure topped a million. With so many taxpayers both jobless and homeless, American cities lost a major source of income. Relief budgets meant to last a year were spent in several months.

At President Hoover's beckoning, charities had stepped in to help ease the burden on municipal resources. Hoover was a firm believer in volunteerism. Feeling that each community was responsible for aiding people in distress, Hoover created programs that bolstered morale and encouraged charity. But the charities were themselves in trouble because they depended on contributions from a public who could not give any more. In many cities philanthropic groups of businessmen mounted relief drives, but the funds collected dwindled quickly as conditions worsened. 

In 1930 the International Apple Shippers Association was faced with an oversupply of fruit and came up with a unique solution to a national problem: to clear out their warehouses and give the unemployed a way to make a little money, they sold apples on credit. The ploy worked. Months later a shivering apple vendor could be found standing over a fruit crate on the corner of every major American city. By the end of November there were six thousand people selling apples in New York alone. The trend spread, and suddenly there were pitchmen of all persuasions standing alongside the apple sellers, handling everything from patent medicines to gaudy neckties. There were even chalk artists who drew figures of women on the sidewalks for passersby to appreciate with a few coins. Many cities soon passed ordinances, however, which banned the street vendors as a nuisance to the public.

Crowded living conditions were not uncommon in the working-class home. Extended families were formed who shared the same space, food costs, rent, and even bedding: the "hotbed- was a living arrangement in which night workers slept during the day and day workers used the same beds at night. Furnishings in working-class apartments were sparse. There were a few chairs, tables, and boxes that served as dressers. There was rarely any carpeting, and not all homes had hot water. In older buildings heat was provided through coal grates, which forced tenants to scour the neighborhood for coal or other fuel. Many people planted subsistence gardens in vacant lots or rooftops to feed themselves when grocery money was really scarce. Twenty thousand of these gardens were reported in Gary, Indiana, alone.

When they could no longer pay the rent and were evicted from their apartments, city dwellers used scraps of lumber and cardboard boxes to build shacks that they could live in. These new shantytowns on the edges of the cities were called Hoovervilles, for President Herbert Hoover, since many blamed him for causing the depression. In public parks, homeless men slept on benches, covering their bodies with "Hoover blankets," or newspapers. "Hoover hogs" were jackrabbits or gophers caught and cooked to replace the traditional Sunday ham. "Hoover villas" were public latrines used for overnight stays. "Hoover flags" were empty pockets turned inside out. Probably unfairly, Americans made the president accountable for their situation, and he became the fall guy-the focus of the abuse.

Hoovervilles had no electricity or running water but were usually built near rivers or fireplugs. They were not supported by the city or government in any way, so moving into such an encampment required no registration or security deposit. Prospective residents simply looked around and picked a spot. City dumps, construction sites, and trash bins provided materials for constructing shelters. The gutted husks of old cars made acceptable homes, as did stacks of fruit boxes and worn tires. If a shelter was built well enough, a resident could sell it. There was always turnover, since people continually came and went. A good pre-built home could easily be worth as much as $50. Despite zoning violations and health hazards, many Hoovervilles were allowed to exist. Some cities even lent tracts of public land for the cultivation of small gardens. Not everybody was tolerant, however. Many Hoovervilles were raided and burned down by sheriffs and vigilante groups.

By 1933 millions of Americans (we'll never really know how many) were desperate. Out of work and with his family depending on him, the breadwinner, the patriarch, the father/husband bore the brunt of the despair. When he couldn't provide for his family, he felt ashamed and humiliated. Many of these men abandoned their families and became what one has called "a generation of wanderers," vagabonds, or hobos. Unable to find work and seeing that each job they applied for had hundreds of seekers, these shabby, disillusioned men wandered aimlessly without funds, begging, picking over refuse in city dumps, and finally getting up the courage to stand and be seen publicly - in a bread line for free food. To accommodate these shamed, idle, and malnourished legions, charities, missions, and churches began programs to feed them.

Resembling "a gray, black human snake," bread lines often formed as early as 4 a.m. on cold wintry days when men lined up six across to wait as long as two to three hours before they could sit down inside a soup kitchen and partake of the meager fare offered. (In January 1931, 82 bread lines in New York City served 85,000 "meals" daily!) Men who experienced the waiting in line recall the personal shame of asking for a handout, unable to care for oneself or to provide for others. Most men found it difficult to look into the eyes of other men in line, who, if asked, had similar stories to tell. 

What was it like to be in a 1933 soup kitchen (the term is used synonymously with bread line, although there is a slight difference)? Piecing together recollections, it seemed to resemble an experience at summer camp, with obvious distinctions. First, the men might be "asked" to listen to a sermon for 10-20 minutes before being served any food. Once the speech was over, the men got back in a shorter line and, cafeteria style, were served a cup or bowl of soup or stew. They then sat down at community tables where hunks of stale bread awaited them (but never soda crackers, writes historian William Manchester) on large plates. Sometimes coffee was served. Most men described the soup as tasteless, thin, watery, lukewarm, and rarely with any vegetables. Some recall never being offered a second bowl or having bread to accompany the soup. Others, though a smaller number, remember second helpings, bread, cheese sandwiches, and oatmeal. After several minutes, some authority figure from the mission or church came up to the men who had been eating and asked them to leave, to make room for the others still outside. At this point the departing men went over to another bread line to begin their wait for another meal. This process would be repeated until the third day when familiar "chronic deadbeats" were evicted from the long lines.

Humiliating as it was to wait and get into a soup kitchen in 1931, it was nearly a universal experience for urban people of all classes, or at least it was a metaphor for what most Americans were caught up in during the "hard times" of the early 1930s. Now you will re-create this experience with your classmates. Play your role to the hilt and, as you do, feel some empathy for an earlier generation's struggle to survive, cope, and hang on to some dignity in the winter of 1933, amidst personal calamity no doubt unique in our history.

Source: City Life During the Great Depression. University School of Milwaukee. 15 Dec. 2009 <http://middle.usm.k12.wi.us/faculty/taft/Unit7/citylife.htm>.

Source 11

Farm Life in the 1930s

Great Depression changed the lives of people who lived and farmed on the Great Plains and in turn, changed America. The government programs that helped them to live through the 1930s changed the future of agriculture forever. Weather touched every part of life in the "Dirty 30s": dust, insects, summer heat and winter cold. York County farm families didn't have heat, light or indoor bathrooms like people who lived in town. Many farm families raised most of their own food – eggs and chickens, milk and beef from their own cows, and vegetables from their gardens.

People who grew up during the Depression said, "No one had any money. We were all in the same boat." Neighbors helped each other through hard times, sickness, and accidents. Farm families got together with neighbors at school programs, church dinners, or dances. Children and adults found ways to have fun for free – playing board games, listening to the radio, or going to outdoor movies in town.

When the dryness, heat, and grasshoppers destroyed the crops, farmers were left with no money to buy groceries or make farm payments. Some people lost hope and moved away. Many young men took government jobs building roads and bridges. By 1940, normal rainfall returned, and federal programs helped to boost farm prices and improve the soil. About the same time, a new government program started to hook up farmhouses to electricity, making farm life easier and safer

[L]arge numbers of people were driven out of Nebraska and the Great Plains because of the Depression. Yet, a majority "toughed it out" and stayed. And millions continue to stay, despite decades of economic pressure to leave. Those live here, like former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser , have developed a love affair with their home states. In his poem "So This Is Nebraska," Ted explains part of what it feels like to live here.

Written by Claudia Reinhardt and Bill Ganzel, the Ganzel Group. First written and published in 2003.Source: http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/life_01.html

Source 12

The Great DepressionThe Great Depression did not affect everyone the same way. Many rich people felt no impact at all, and were oblivious to the suffering of others. Up to forty percent of the country never faced real hardship during those years. But most were touched by it in some way. By the time of Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933, the unemployment rate hovered close to twenty-five percent. Fluctuating during the 1930s, it never fell below 14.3% until 1941.

The Depression changed the family in dramatic ways. Many couples delayed marriage - the divorce rate dropped sharply (it was too expensive to pay the legal fees and support two households); and birth rates dropped below the replacement level for the first time in American history. Families suffered a dramatic loss of income during Herbert Hoover's term in office, dropping 35% in those four years to $15M. This put a great deal of stress on families. Some reacted by pulling together, making due with what they had, and turning to family and friends for help. Only after exhausting all alternatives would they reluctantly look to the government for help. Other families did not fare as well, and ended up failing apart.

Traditional roles within the family changed during the 1930s. Men finding themselves out of work now had to rely on their wives and children in some cases to help make ends meet. Many did not take this loss of power as the primary decision maker and breadwinner very well. Many stopped looking for work, paralyzed by their bleak chances and lack of self-respect. Some became so frustrated that they just walked out on their families completely. A 1940 survey revealed that 1.5 million married women had been abandoned by their husbands.

On the other hand, women found their status enhanced by their new roles. Left with little choice, they went against the historic opposition to married women working outside the home to help support their families. Black women especially found it easier to obtain work than their husbands, working as domestic servants, clerks, textiles workers and other occupations. This employment increased their status and power in the home, gaining them a new voice in domestic decisions.

Most minorities, though, benefited little from FDR's New Deal programs. Minorities, long considered the "last hired, first fired" before the depression, were the first ones hurt by the job layoffs. In order to keep the Democratic Party together and pass New Deal legislation through a Southern-dominated Congress, most of the programs targeted unemployed white males. Black males were either shut out completely or had to settle for separate and lower pay scales. A shortage of jobs in the Southwest led to the illegal deportation of 400,000 Mexican-Americans so that whites could get more jobs or government relief. Native Americans, though, received their own New Deal, bringing economic relief and some political recognition to this most beleaguered group.

Source: The Great Depression. Eyewitness to History.com. 15 Dec. 2009 <http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/snprelief1.htm>.

Source 13

My father was probably a millionaire. In 1929, James San Jule's father was a successful businessman in Tulsa, Oklahoma. San Jule graduated from Tulsa Central High School and had been accepted at Amherst college in Massachusetts, planning to go on to Harvard Law School. Because of his youth, his father wanted him to wait a year and arranged for him to work as an office boy in the Exchange National Bank at Tulsa.

"I didn't think much of money in those days. It was just something we had," said San Jule. "My father was probably a millionaire. We owned fancy cars, a fancy house, fancy everything. I led the ordinary life of a wealthy kid, nothing spectacular." He was working in the bank in October 1929, when the debacle began.

"Of course, you didn't believe it. 'This is something that happens,' you thought. 'It will pass.' "The Crash of 1929 wiped out San Jule's father financially and physically."It was a horrible, horrible period, about which I understood little. What's a kid to do? You have no worries about anything. You're going to Amherst and Harvard. All of sudden your life is blasted out of existence. It felt like being de-princed."

In the winter of 1930, San Jule ran away from home, not quite sure where he was going or even why he was leaving. It just seemed the thing to do.

Between 1929 and 1941, 4,000,000 Americans desperate for food and lodging roamed the land. Of this number, 250,000 were teenagers who rode the rails and grew up fast in speeding boxcars, living in hobo jungles, begging on the streets and running from the police and club-wielding railroad guards.

Source: Uys, Errol Lincoln. “What was life like during the Great Depression.” 15 Dec. 2009 <http://www.erroluys.com/WhatLifeWasLikeintheGreatDepression.htm>.

Source 14

I used to beg for food

Arvel "Sunshine" Pearson began work as a waterboy in an Arkansas strip mine at the age of nine.  By 1929, he had already been working underground for 18 months, when the mine closed. He was 16 when he first rode the rails in 1930 and would continue to hop freights until 1942 as a migrant farm worker in summer and working in coal mines in winter.

"I thought the Depression was going to go on forever. For six or seven years, it didn't look as though things were getting better. The people in Washington DC said they were, but ask the man on the road? He was hungry and his clothes were ragged and he didn't have a job. He didn't think things were picking up.

'I'm going to keep going,' I said. 'Someday I will be able to face people I used to beg for food.' If I didn't have hope I would have starved to death by the time I was 17," said Pearson.Clarence Lee was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in July 1913, the son of a sharecropper. When Lee was 16, his father could no longer support him. "Go fend for yourself," he told Lee.For 18 months, Lee hoboed throughout Louisiana riding freight trains up and down the state in what was essentially a search for food to save him from starving. In 1931, he found work on a dairy farm at a wage of 10 cents an hour. With his earnings he was eventually able to buy his parents out of sharecropping servitude for an amount he remembers precisely: $111.40.

"When I was riding the freight trains I didn't feel like an American citizen," said Lee. "I felt like an outcast. I was nothing but dirt as far as whites were concerned. If you asked for something to eat, some would give you a piece of bread at the back door and tell you to get off the premises. Some would sic the dogs on you. It was hurtful to be treated like that. I felt very, very down."

Source: Uys, Errol Lincoln. “What was life like during the Great Depression.” 15 Dec. 2009 http://www.erroluys.com/WhatLifeWasLikeintheGreatDepression.htm

Source 15

It was a terrible way to live

"It was a terrible way to live. It was rough and dangerous but there was also a mystical quality," recalled Don Snyder of Toledo, Ohio, who rode the rails for three years from 1933 when he was 15. "The sound and moan of a whistle in the silent darkness echoing through the hills. The smell of the cars and the clicking of the rails. The ding, ding, ding at the crossings. The excitement of avoiding the bulls and brakies. The open prairies, the mountains and the clear skies above you. For all the hardships you feel a faint longing to hit the road again."

Grinding poverty and shattered family relations were the reasons most kids left home. Other factors, too, drove them onto the road. In 1934, schools had 25,000 fewer teachers than in 1930, with a million more pupils. Terms had been shortened in one out of every four American cities, and five thousand schools had closed altogether. By 1935, of ten million youths of high school age, four million were out of school.

"I have moments of real terror, when I think we may be losing this generation," said First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who made the youth problem a personal crusade.

How many girls rode with the army of boys on the loose was difficult to determine because the majority traveled in disguise for their safety. One estimate put the number of transient females at one in ten or 25,000.

Some traveled with young children, as happened with Harold Kolima's mother, who had three boys, ages five, seven and nine when she rode the rails. Harold, the youngest, recalled a haunting scene: "My mom, three little boys, with bed rolls and a large suitcase, and a puppy dog tagging along, walking through the railyards at Omaha, Nebraska. Looking for a freight headed west."

For four years, the family lived a "Grapes of Wrath" existence in hobo jungles and harvest camps, taking boxcars from Nebraska to follow the harvests in California.

Source: Uys, Errol Lincoln. “What was life like during the Great Depression.” 15 Dec. 2009 http://www.erroluys.com/WhatLifeWasLikeintheGreatDepression.htm

Source 16

35 Cents for Three Weeks' Work

Following the harvests provided backbreaking work at starvation wages, and sometimes no wages at all. For three weeks in 1934, Burton Williams, 16, and his brother, Vic, 14, picked cotton for a grower in Elk City, Oklahoma.

"When we told the farmer we were quitting and going home, Burton said, 'You have 35 cents each coming.' That's all we got for three weeks' work."

The Civilian Conservation Corps set up by the Roosevelt government in summer 1933 gave refuge to thousands of boxcar boys in 1,500 forest camps. On a much smaller scale, the National Youth Administration established 50 training camps for girls.

"I begged for dimes on the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans," said James San Jule, who became a union organizer in San Francisco. In 1937, he co-authored a pamphlet with John Steinbeck on the plight of migrant workers in California. "I was angry half the time and when I wasn't angry I was sad. Why was this happening to me?

" It was more than a lack of understanding. It was an aimless, discombobulated feeling, as though the world had disappeared. The same feeling you have during an earthquake that's beyond your control.

"You were searching for something and didn't even know what the hell you were looking for. The thought that something was wrong must've crossed my mind but those days I didn't think of it in political terms. I spent so goddamn much time just staying alive."

The era of the boxcar boys and girls passed with the coming of World War II and the end of the Great Depression.

Riding the rails was a rite of passage for a generation of young people and profoundly shaped the rest of their lives. Self-reliance, compassion, frugality, a love of freedom and country are at the heart of the lessons they learned. Their memories are a mixture of nostalgia and pain; their late musings still tinged with the fear of going broke again.

At journey's end, the resiliency of these survivors is a testament to the indomitable strength of the human spirit.

Source: Uys, Errol Lincoln. “What was life like during the Great Depression.” 15 Dec. 2009 http://www.erroluys.com/WhatLifeWasLikeintheGreatDepression.htm

Source 17

Dust Bowl by Alexandre Hogue, 1933

Source: http://20thcenturyart.suite101.com/article.cfm/portraits_of_the_great_depression

Source 18

Oct 29 Dies Irae ("Days of Wrath") by James N. Rosenberg, 1929

Source: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/goldstein/48.jpg

Source 19

The Park Bench by Reginald Marsh, 1933

Source: http://sheldon.unl.edu/HTML/ARTIST/Marsh_R/ParkBench_AS.html

Source 20

The Lord Provides by Jacob Burke, 1934

Source: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/goldstein/9.jpg

Source 21:

"Nipomo, Calif. March 1936. Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children and their mother, aged 32. The father is a native Californian." By

Dorothea Lange, 1936

The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience: 

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).

Source: Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" Photographs in the Farm Security Administration Collection: An OverviewPrints and Photographs Reading Room. 15 Dec. 2009 <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html>.

Source 22:

Strikers guarding window entrance to Fisher body plant number three. Flint, Michigan, by Sheldon Dick, Jan.-Feb. 1936

Source: A Photo Essay on the Great Depression. Modern American Poetry. University of Illinois. 15. Dec. 2009 <http://www.english.illinois.edu/MAPS/depression/photoessay.htm