Searching for a Job and a Meal

1. Searching for a Job and a Meal • 192-1929-annual average employment rates had never risen about 3.7%. • When the depression hit, the rate climbed to 24.9% in 1933. • If they did not lose their jobs, then their wages or hours were cut. • Many workers brought home paychecks that were 10, 20, or even 30% less. • Families ate smaller meals, milk was replaced with water.Meat was a luxury. • Families would line up to receive free meals in public soup kitchens. • Bread lines were common. People lined up for handouts from charities or public agencies.

3. Descending into Poverty • Feeling of loss- “American Dream” betrayed them.

4. Looking For a Place to Live • They sold furniture, pawned jewelry, and moved into cheaper housing-anything to keep food on the table and from being evicted. • Homeless slept on park benches, empty railway cars, cardboard boxes. • Many grouped together in Hoovervilles; makeshift shantytowns of tents and shacks built on public land or vacant lots. • One of the largest Hoovervilles was in Central Park in NYC. • Covered in newspapers-called Hoover blankets. • Empty pants pockets turned inside out- called Hoover flags.

5. Poverty Devastates Rural America • Commodity Prices Plunge • Crop prices fell even further, new debts were added to old ones. • The Great Plains suffered a severe drought that lasted for years. • Many lost their farms and moved. • 1919, a bushel of wheat sold for $2.16 • 1932- sold for $38 cents

6. Farmers Lose Their Farms • 1930-1934, nearly 1 million farmers lost their farms. • Banks foreclosed on their lands and homes and repossessed their farming equipment. • Bankers sold what they could at public auction. • Some farmers remained on the land as tenant farmers-working for bigger landowners rather than for themselves.

7. The Dust Bowl • Normal rainfall seldom exceeded the 20 inches a year that traditional American agricultural prices demanded. • New farming methods made drought conditions worse. • Intensive farming came to prominence throughout the region. • Farmers then had moved onto the plains and plowed under much of the natural grasses in order to plant winter wheat. • The landscape shift tipped the ecological balance of the region. • In the past, plains grasses prevented the topsoil from blowing away during periods of drought. • By the early 1930’s, the dwindling grassy safety net could not do its job.

13. 1932- the combination of drought, loose topsoil, and high winds resulted dust storms. • Gigantic clouds of dust and dirt could rise from ground level to 8,000 feet. • The dust storms moves as fast as 100 miles per hour and blotted out the sun. • Most dust storms started in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, and Colorado. • Nicknamed the “Dirty Thirties.” • People caught in these dust storms were temporarily blinded and choked. • The storms killed cattle and birds, suffocated fish, and blanketed water. • Dirt seeped into houses, coating everything. • Some dust clouds blew east as far as the Atlantic coast, dumping acres of dirt into Boston, New York, and Washington.

14. Desperation Causes Migration • After losing their farms to banks and everything else to dust, families had no choice but to migrate. • Dust Bowl refugees were generally referred to as ‘Okies’, regardless of the state they left. • Okie families headed toward California, Oregon, or Washington. • 800,000 people migrated out of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas alone. • For the farmers able to survive the Depression bought up repossessed land at rock-bottom prices and eventually expanded. • The Dust Bowl motivated the government to help Great Plains farmers with federal projects. • Dammed western rivers which provided irrigation for fields.

15. Few Americans Escape Hard Times • An economic slump was usually referred to as a ‘panic’ or ‘crisis’. • President Hoover used the word ‘depression’ because he thought it sounded less severe than the other terms.

16. The Depression Attacks Family Life • Men who lost their jobs and could not find jobs felt they had betrayed their families or wives because they were supposed to be the “breadwinners”. • Usually two different reactions from men: many labored tirelessly to find a new job, while others sank into shame and despair, with some even deserting their families. • People lived in constant fear that their paycheck could be their last or lived in guilt that they had a job while their friends and family suffered. • Birthrates plummeted to the lowest rates in American history. • Many women sewed clothes, searched for odds and ends jobs. • With parents working constantly, family discipline declined too. • Some children quit school, others ran away from home.

17. Minorities • African-Americans were the last to be hired and the first to be fired. • In the South, many were thrown off the land they had been working. • They migrated to northern cities only to find no work. • 1932- unemployment rate was 50%. “ The Negro was born in depression. It didn’t mean too much to him, The Great American Depression, as you call it. There was no such thing. The best he could be was a janitor or a porter or shoeshine boy. It only became official when it hit the white man.” -- Clifford Burke • Mexican Americans faced competition for jobs as Okies migrated into the SW. • Many white Americans wanted repatriation- or efforts by state, local, and federal governments to encourage Mexican immigrants and their naturalized children to return to Mexico.