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White Angel Breadline 1933-By Dorthea Lange

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1 White Angel Breadline 1933-By Dorthea Lange
Chapter 14 The Great Depression Begins Section 2: Hardships and Suffering During the Depression White Angel Breadline 1933-By Dorthea Lange During the Great Depression, the destitute stood in breadlines like this one in San Francisco, set up by a wealthy woman known as the "White Angel."

2 One American’s Story Ann Marie Low
Ann lived with her parents on their North Dakota farm when the stock market crashed and the Great Depression struck. In her diary entry of November 2, 1929, she wrote, “There seems to be quite a furor in the country over a big stock market crash that wiped a lot of people out. We are ahead of them.” Like many farm families in the 1920s, Ann’s family had already experienced hard times. Things would get worse during the Great Depression. April 25, 1934 Last weekend was the worst dust storm we ever had. We’ve been having quite a bit of blowing dirt every year since the drouth [drought] started, not only here, but all over the Great Plains. Many days this this spring air is just full of dirt coming, literally, for hundreds of miles. It sifts into everything. After we wash the dishes and put them away, so much dust sifts into the cupboards we must wash them again before the next meal…Newspapers say the death of many babies and old people are attributed to breathing in so much dirt. Ann Marie Low, Dust Bowl Diary

3 The Depression Devastates People’s Lives
In cities as well as rural, the Depression turned people’s lives into a terrible struggle for survival. The Depression in the Cities Many Americans were evicted from their homes because they could not pay their rent or mortgage. Some people slept in parks or sewer pipes, wrapped in newspaper to fend off the cold. Others built makeshift shacks out of scrap metal. Large shantytowns-little towns consisting largely of shacks-sprang up from the outskirts of cities.

4 Shantytowns nicknamed “Hoovervilles” after President Hoover
A Hooverville/Shantytown in Central Park. A Personal Voice: Here were all these people living in old, rusted-out car bodies…There were people living in shacks made of orange crates. One family with a whole lot of kids were living in a piano box…People lived in whatever they could junk together. –Visitor to a shantytown outside Oklahoma City, quoted in Hard Times

5 The Great Depression in the Cities (cont.)
The urban poor would scrounge for food, dig in garbage cans, or beg on the street corners. Soup Kitchens- places where food is offered for free to the needy. Bread Lines- lines of people waiting to receive food provided by charities.

6 City Conditions Were Especially Difficult for African Americans and Latinos
Unemployment rates for both groups were higher Their jobs tend to bring the lowest pay. Increase in racial violence against both groups. Hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican descent were either deported or voluntarily moved back to Mexico.

7 The Depression in Rural Areas
Rural life had one advantage over city life: most farmers could manage to grow some food to feed their families. Farmers continued to lose their land when they couldn’t pay off their debts. Between 1929 and 1932, 400,000 farms were lost through foreclosure.

8 The Dust Bowl

9 Dust Bowl (cont.) The drought that began in the early 1930s caused disaster on the Great Plains. Farmers from Texas to North Dakota (Dust Bowl region) used tractors to break up the grasslands and plant millions of acres of new farmland. The land was exhausted through overproduction of crops, and the grasslands became unsuitable for farming. When the drought and winds began in the early 1930s, little grass and few trees were left on the plains to hold soil down.

10 Oklahoma Dust Storm

11 Dust Bowl (cont.) Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas were hardest hit
thousands of farmers and sharecroppers left their land and headed west, following Route 66 to California. Some of these migrants (aka OKIES) found work as farm hands as others wandered in search of work. By the end of the 1930s, the population of California had grown by more than a million.

12 Effects on the American Family
During the Great Depression, the family stood as a source of strength for most Americans. Most Americans believed in traditional values and emphasized the importance of family unity. Although, some families broke apart under this strain. Since money was tight, many families entertained themselves by staying at home and playing board games (such as Monopoly) and listening to the radio. What is ironic about Monopoly being a popular game?

13 Monopoly Fun Facts Long games:
The longest MONOPOLY game ever played was 1,680 hours - that's 70 straight days! Longest game in a bathtub: 99 hours Longest game underwater: 45 days Longest game played upside-down: 36 hours The MONOPOLY game at War: Escape maps, compasses, and files, were inserted into MONOPOLY game boards and smuggled into POW camps inside Germany during World War II. Real money for escapees was slipped into the packs of MONOPOLY money. Around the World: The MONOPOLY game is published in 26 languages and available in 80 countries around the world.

14 Monopoly Fun Facts The Bank: PARKER BROTHERS prints about 50 billion dollars worth of MONOPOLY money in one year. Ever wonder how much MONOPOLY money comes with a standard set? The total is $15,140. Inflation? Never heard of it. Values on the MONOPOLY game board are the same today as they were in 1935! (But the taxes changed in 1936.) Parlez-vous MONOPOLY? What do they call Boardwalk in?: France? Rue de la Paix Germany? Schlossallee The Netherlands? Kalverstraat The United Kingdom? Mayfair

15 Effects on the American Family
Direct Relief During the early years there was no federal system of direct relief. Direct Relief-cash payments or food provided by the government to the poor. In NYC the weekly payment was just $2.39 per family. This was the most generous relief offered by any city, but it was still well below the amount needed to feed a family.

16 Men in the Streets and on the Rails
Many men had difficulty coping with unemployment because they were accustomed to working and supporting their families. Some men even abandoned their families. Approximately 2 million men wandered the country, hitching rides on railroad boxcars and sleeping under bridges. These homeless men of the 1930s would occasionally turn up at homeless shelters in big cities.

17 Men in Search of Jobs

18 Women Struggle to Survive
Many women helped their families survive by: canning food managing household budgets sewing clothes working outside of the home Women were also the targets of resentment. Many believed that women, especially married women, had no right to work when men were unemployed. Many assumed that women had it easier than men, but many women were starving to death in cold attics and rooming houses.

19 Women and Children during the Depression
Apartment in Chicago, IL. Mother and her children

20 Children Struggle to Survive
Children also suffered from poor diets and a lack of money for health care. Milk consumption declined across the country, and clinics and hospitals reported a dramatic rise in malnutrition and diet related diseases, such as rickets and pellagra. child-welfare programs were slashed as cities and states cut their budgets Children also suffered from poor diets

21 Children Struggle to Survive
Falling tax revenues caused school boards to shorten the school year and even close schools. By 1933, some 2,600 schools across the nation had shut down, leaving more than 300,000 students out school. Many children went to work instead; they often labored in sweatshops under horrendous conditions.

22 Migrant Mother 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).

23 Social and Psychological Effects
Between 1928 and 1932, the suicide rate rose by nearly 30%. Three times as many people were admitted to state mental hospitals as in normal times. The economic problems forced many Americans to accept compromises and make sacrifices that affected them the rest of their lives. Adults stopped going to the doctor or dentist because they could not afford it. Young people gave up their dreams of going to college. Others put off getting married, raising large families, or having children at all. No Work by Blanche Grambs

24 Quiz Tomorrow! Chapter 12:
Postwar Issues (Nativism, isolationism, Red Scare, Communism, KKK, Quota system) Examples of the high standard of living (inventions, buying on credit) Chapter 13: Prohibition, bootleggers, speakeasies, 18th Amendment, The problems Prohibition caused Fundamentalism, Scopes Trial, science v. religion The Twenties Woman—what was she like? How was her life different than before the 1920s? Harlem Renaissance: How did culture in America change as a result of the Great migration? And who were the big people? Chapter 14.1, (14.2 in this packet) Economic troubles, speculation, buying on margin Stock market crash on Black Tuesday Causes of the Great Depression


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