Effects of the Great Depression

The Human Effect

City Laborers

Many lost jobs Became homeless Lived in Poverty “Hoovervilles”

“Hoovervilles”

Sit-Down Strikes

Unemployment

Farmers

Couldn’t afford farms Dust Bowl Forced to migrate

elsewhere

Dust Bowl

Farm Industry Declines

Women

First to lose their jobs Couldn’t find work Left to fend for the

family

Women/Families

Children

Horrid health conditions

Lack of food Could not go to

school Couldn’t be supported

by parents

Children’s Soup Line

Children

Men

Psychologically damaged; felt like failures

Abandoned families

Men

Bank Failure

Racial Minorities

Discrimination increased

Work harder to find Hispanics and Asian

Americans deported Lynchings increase in

South

Great Depression Statistics

National Income 1929: $81 Billion 1932: $41 Billion

Business Failures 1929-1932: 85,000

Bank Failures 1929-1932: 9,000 failures & 9,000,000 accounts wiped

out

Per Capita Income 1929: $681 1932: $495

What would you do to cure the Great Depression?

Americans Pull Together

Farmers Stick Together Penny Auctions

Young People Ride the Rails

Political Solutions Communism Socialism

Signs of Change

Prohibition Repealed (1933) 21st Amendment Failed social experiment

The Empire State Building (1930) $41 million costs (half) Symbol of hope

Herbert Hoover

Hoover’s Limited Strategy

Confidence is Key Voluntary Action

Asked wages stay up Volunteering Fails

Government Acts Agricultural Marketing

Act Fails to fix prices

Hoover Dam

Hoover’s Limited Strategy

Government Acts Hawley-Smoot Tariff

Highest import tax in history

Fails!! Reconstruction Finance

Corporation Gov’t credit to

businesses

Hoover’s Unpopularity

State and Local governments should handle relief

Appeared Cold hearted Bonus Army

20,000 WWI vets march on Washington

Wanted pension bonus early

Used force to drive marchers out of Wash.

Election of 1932

Republican Herbert Hoover

Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt

NY Governor Promised a “New Deal”

for America Results

472-59 FDR Wins “The only thing we have

to fear is fear itself.”