1. The Halftime Show Between the Wars: The Depression

2. The Depression
In groups of four, please answer the following questions about the Depression:
What was the GDP of the US prior to the Depression?
At the low point of the Depression, what was the GDP of the US?
What was the highest annual unemployment level during the Depression?
What was the cause(s) of the Depression?
When did it end?

3. State of the Union President Coolidge, Dec 4, 1928:
“No Congress of the United States ever assembled, on surveying the state of the Union, has met with a more pleasing prospect than that which appears at the present time.”

4. Depression
A bad, depressingly prolonged RECESSION in economic activity. The textbook definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of declining OUTPUT. A slump is where output falls by at least 10%; a depression is an even deeper and more prolonged slump.
Source: Economics A-Z Economist.com

5. Stock Market Crash

6. Market Crash
The market crash in 1929 “blighted the fortunes of many hundreds of thousands of Americans.” The Great Crash, 1929 page 302; John Kenneth Galbraith
Although the stock market crash was a momentous event that wiped out the fortunes of many Americans …

7. Market Crash
The stock market crash was not the cause of the Great Depression.

8. Indicators
Total bank failures for 1929 were lower than the same statistic for 1924, 1926 or 1927.
As of Nov 13, 1929 suicides in Manhattan for the previous 4 weeks were less than they had been the same time period in 1928.
Source: The Forgotten Man by Amity Shales, page 88.

9. Industrial Production
July, 1932: steel operations were at 12% of capacity. Pig iron output was at the lowest level since 1896.
Source:, The Great Crash, 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith

10. Causes of the Great Depression
Federal Reserve Policy
Deflation
Excess Capacity

11. Causes of the Great Depression
Increasing Tariffs (Smoot Hawley June 1930)
Increasing Taxes
Bank Failures:

12. Banks and the Money Supply
Bank Failures Cause the Great Depression

13. The Depression
All of these factors led to consumers spending less and less, governments collecting less and less in taxes, and fewer and fewer people being employed.
The depression spread from the United States to the rest of the world.

14. World Impact
What is the potential impact of the US going into a significant economic downturn?
On Germany?
On Europe?
On the debate between isolationism and intervention?

15. Depression Now
What if your families income declined significantly? What would change in your life? What expenses would you cut?
Work with a partner to complete the exercise on spending that I am handing out. You have minutes to determine what you would cut in your budget to reduce your monthly spending from $5400 to $3000.

16. “Migrant Mother”
Photographed by Dorothea Lange.
March,1936
In a pea pickers camp, Nipomo, California.

17. Images of the Depression
Describe the picture on the previous slide
Include not only what you see, but emotions the picture creates.

18. Images
The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California.

19. Images Continued 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 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).

20. Images of the Depression

21. Poem about Unemployment by Florence Converse
What’s the meaning of this queue,
Trailing down the avenue,
Full of eyes that will not meet,
The other eyes that throng the street…
To see a living line of men
As long as round the block, and then
As long again?...”
Source :The Forgotten Man, Amity Shales, page 123

22. Hard Times Unemployment
· By the early 1930’s, approximately 25% of the nation was unemployed.
Families in Crisis
· Marriage and birth rates dropped.
· Fathers and some children left home to find work.
Homelessness
· Homeless families build shacks out of wooden crates and scrap metal.
· These shacks were known as Hoovervilles

23. Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? (1932)
They used to tell me I was building a dream And so I followed the mob. When there was earth to plow or guns to bear, I was always there, right on the job. They used to tell me I was building a dream With peace and glory ahead -- Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread? Once I built a railroad, I made it run, Made it race against time. Once I built a railroad, now it's done -- Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick and rivet and lime. Once I built a tower, now it's done -- Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, gee, we looked swell Full of that Yankee Doodle-de-dum. Half a million boots went slogging through hell, And I was the kid with the drum.
Say, don't you remember they called me Al, It was Al all the time. Why don't you remember, I'm your pal -- Say, buddy, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, ah, gee, we looked swell Full of that Yankee Doodle-de-dum. Half a million boots went slogging through hell, And I was the kid with the drum.
Say, don't you remember they called me Al, It was Al all the time. Why don't you remember, I'm your pal -- Buddy, can you spare a dime?

24. Depression’s Misery 1929: $103.6 B 1930: $91.2 B 1931: $76.5 B
Gross Domestic Product
Gross Domestic Product
1929: $103.6 B
1930: $91.2 B
1931: $76.5 B
1932: $58.7 B
1933: $56.4 B
1934: $66.0 B
1935: $73.3 B
1936: $83.8 B
1937: $91.9 B
1938: $86.1 B
1939: $92.2 B
1940: $101.4 B
1941: $126.7 B
1942: $161.9 B

25. The Job Market

26. Images of the Depression

27. Jobless Recovery 1929: 3.2% 1930: 8.9% 1931: 16.3% 1932: 24.1%
US Unemployment Rate
US Unemployment Rate
1929: 3.2%
1930: 8.9%
1931: 16.3%
1932: 24.1%
1933: 24.9%
1934: 21.7%
1935: 20.1%
1936: 16.9%
1937: 14.3%
1938: 19.0%
1939: 17.2%

28. Government’s Help 1929: $9.4 B 1930: $10.0 B 1931: $9.9 B 1932: $8.7 B
Government Expenditures
Government Expenditures
1929: $9.4 B
1930: $10.0 B
1931: $9.9 B
1932: $8.7 B
1933: $8.7 B
1934: $10.5 B
1935: $10.9 B
1936: $13.1 B
1937: $12.8 B
1938: $13.8 B
1939: $14.8 B
1940: $15.0 B
1941: $26.5 B
1942: $62.7 B

29. The Great Depression
The Great Depression Statistics

30. Images of the Depression

31. Images of the Depression

32. How Did The Depression End
World War II-Employment for men and women
World War II-Need for goods and services
FDIC-Insurance on banks
New Deal-Roosevelt policies to help people
Increasing Money Supply