1. The Great Depression: just do SOMETHING!
CANADA IN THE 1930s
The Great Depression:
just do SOMETHING!

2. Outline The reasons for the Crash The beginning was the worst
Mackenzie King’s vs. R.B. Bennett’s response
Herbert Hoover’s vs. F.D. Roosevelt’s response
Birth of new political parties in Canada
The people take action

3. 1) Reasons for the Crash and other factors that led to depression
The stock market was a relatively new thing - stocks vs. gold (traders and buyers were inexperienced)
Buying on margin - a license to print money
Panicked selling over almost a week caused the Wall St. market to collapse on Black Tuesday, Oct 29, 1929
The crash did not cause the Depression - it did make the suffering worse.

4. Other economic problems
The price of wheat had been falling since 1927: over-production didn’t drop so prices did - farmers’ mortgages suffered: no cash means no new tractors
Manufacturers were over-producing consumer goods = few consumers = layoffs = less spending money = fewer consumers
USA protectionist tariffs = trade barriers for all
Germany’s inability to pay reparations affected the Allies’ ability to repay loans to USA

5. 2) The Beginning was Worst
Canada’s economy was very closely connected to the USA - trading/branch plants/investors:
Wheat (40% of world supply)
Newsprint (65% of world supply)
As the economy failed people lost their jobs and the ability to pay rent: vagrancy meant jail time
To collect POGEY or the “DOLE” (Relief vouchers) one had to publicly declare her poverty: why would so may do without relief?
Private charity/soup kitchens

6. Women and their children suffered as men looked for work, often “riding the rods”
Laissez Faire - let it be

7. Data source: Counterpoints, p. 80

8. Percentage of Canadian National Income Spent on Relief: 1930 - 1937
Data source: Counterpoints, p. 80

10. Dust Bowl: Drought

11. Poverty across the Nation
In 1929, a terrible drought began that lasted nearly 10 years.
Crops dried up and the soil turned to dust; the wind then blew away the dry soil.
Storms of dust occurred often leading parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan to be referred to as the “Dust Bowl”.
Nearly 14,000 farms were abandoned during the depression.
In the Maritime Provinces fishing families and industries found a significant drop in demand for their product. This meant less profits and many workers were laid off.

12. Western farmers in Canada were also unable to survive because of the failing economy in the U.S., less demand for their products.
Finally, in the first swarms of grasshoppers began destroying wheat fields across the prairies.
Many men left their small rural farming towns (especially in the prairie provinces) and moved from city to city (towards Ontario) in hopes of finding work.

13. The Dust Bowl

14. 3) King vs. Bennett
King thought the Depression would be short-lived. He did little.
Bennett promised action, but as a millionaire, he didn’t understand the plight of the people.
Bennett did answer letters and give charity but he looked down on government “handouts.” As a businessman he dismissed Keynes’ economics as illogical.

15. Mackenzie King’s Liberals fall very short
Federalism: why didn’t King give money to the provinces?
See the quotation about Tory governments on pg. 81.
KING LOST THE ELECTION: Bennett’s Tories won a MAJORITY
Poster = Don’t allow the links of the chain welded by “the blacksmith” to rust
“A nation like an individual, to find itself must lose itself…to those of this government, I would not give them a five-cent piece.”

16. A nice house warming gift from Mackenzie-King to the incoming PM

17. Government Initiatives
The government created basic jobs for the unemployed in order to get men off the streets.
These jobs ranged from building much needed city infrastructure to building roads that led nowhere.
In some cases people felt there was no way out of the despair of the depression and suicide rates increased.

18. Government Response to Depression
Relief Camps
In 1932, the federal government set relief camps for unemployed men. The workers cleared bush, built roads, planted trees, erected public buildings in return for room, board, medical care and 20 cents a day.

20. Dark Depression Humour
Bennett barnyard
Bennett blanket
Bennett buggy
Bennett coffee
eggs Bennett
abandoned prairie farm
newspaper
engineless car
roasted wheat
Abandoned prairie farm, newspaper,engineless automobile, roasted wheat used for a hot drink, broiled chestnuts
broiled chestnuts +
How could Bennett’s wealth be a political handicap in a depression?

21. 5) New Political Parties
In Canada it was we saw the birth of the CCF, Social Credit, and Union Nationale
In Germany and Spain, fascists came to power and joined Italy in the creation of a new world order
Italian Fasci - bundle of sticks with axe - Roman judicial symbol of power and strength
Swastika
Nationalist symbol of arrows and _____________.

22. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation
Some Progressives
Regina Manifesto
July, 1933
J.S. Woodsworth
Tommy Douglas

23. J.S. Woodsworth Minister in Gibson’s Landing, 1917
Pacifist/anti-conscription
1921 MP: Indep Labour Party of Cda
Anti-violence (thus not Comm Party)
Sat with Progressives, 1925 (helped enact Old Age Pension, 1927
Lost favour when he wouldn’t support Cda going to war in 1939

24. Tommy Douglas Premier of Saskatchewan, 1944-1961
Scottish-born Baptist minister
1st socialistic gov’t in North America
INTRODUCED UNIVERSAL MEDICARE
Fable of Mouseland
1st leader of NDP, (when CCF joined with Cdn Labour Congress
In 2004, voted “Greatest Canadian” in national CBC poll
Fable: first mice voted for black cat = Tories;next white cat = Liberals; eventually a mouse to run the gov’t. The mouse leader was called a Bolshevik and imprisoned. The speech ends by saying you can lock up people and mice, but not ideas!

25. “What! The kids and Missus and I have to get out…after no crops and no prices, where shall we go?”
Which two parties were the “old” parties?

26. Major James Coldwell MP
Grab all
Major James Coldwell MP
Leader of CCF from
Coldwell and farmer labor assures: we hold title; thank God, my fear of losing home gone

27. CCF Social Credit Union Nationale
Led by JS Woodsworth; supported farmers, labourers,socialists, intellectuals,discontent-ed Liberals; its politics included public ownership of KEY industries, social programs for the needy, government spending on public works
Led by “Bible Bill” Aberhart; it appealed to many voters in Alberta, where he was elected in 1935; its policies included citizens receiving a $25 monthly dividend to buy goods. The additional money was intended to simulate the economy.
Led by Maurice Duplessis; supported by people in rural areas and nationalists; its policies included the belief that the English minority controlled Quebec’s economy

28. 6) The People Take Action
“On to Ottawa Trek”
Dissatisfaction with 1932 Relief Camps - designed to keep potential trouble makers out of the cities - think Winnipeg ironically, the camps concentrated large groups of men who were easily organized.
20¢/day = slave labour
Young men were mobile - concentrated in Vancouver (why would 1/3 of 150 camps be in BC?): history of unrest - Vancouver 1932
BC had a warmer climate

29. On to Ottawa: Kamloops 3 June, 1935

30. On July 1st a meeting was called at Market Square
Only about 300 strikers attended - but almost 2000 people gathered.
Most strikers stayed at the exhibition grounds
Bennett had ordered the protest stopped - he didn’t want trouble in Ottawa.
Strikers at the exhibition grounds

31. Regina Riot: 1 July, 1935
The RCMP hid in 3 vans and the Regina Police hid in a garage. At 8 p.m. a whistle blew and they charged, beginning hours of hand-to-hand fighting. In the end 1 plain clothes policeman was dead strikers were arrested.
City’s tar boiler/ havoc in the streets after the riot/ rioters converge on a man being grabbed by police

32. Outcome:
The next day the RCMP surrounded the stadium with machine guns - strikers were cut off from food and water.
The strikers called the Premier for a meeting - they were arrested but released to meet
National newspapers reported the police initiated riot
Premier Gardner blamed Bennett for the trouble. He ordered the men be fed and negotiated a disbandment to the strike.
The men boarded trains an returned west.
Bennett said, the Trek was "not a mere uprising against law and order but a definite revolutionary effort on the part of a group of men to usurp authority and destroy government." - the Tories were defeated that year in the 1935 federal election.