Causes of the Great Depression and the Great Depression (Chapter 22)
The great depression
45
The 20’s • During the economic boom of the "Roaring Twenties," the traditional values of rural America were challenged by the Jazz Age, symbolized by women smoking, drinking, and wearing short skirts.
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Intro to history/time period before reading Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men
Transcript of The great depression
The 20’s• During the economic
boom of the "Roaring Twenties," the traditional values of rural America were challenged by the Jazz Age, symbolized by women smoking, drinking, and wearing short skirts.
What is the nickname for the 1920’s?
A. Roaring
B. [thrilling]
C. [boring ]
What is the nickname for the 1920’s ?
a. The roaring twenties
b. The raging twenties
c. The boring twenties
The 20’s • The average American was
busy buying automobiles and
household appliances, and
speculating in the stock market,
where big money could be made.
The 20’s• Although
businesses had made huge gains -- 65 percent -- from the mechanization of manufacturing, the average worker's wages had only increased 8 percent.
The Great Depression
The carefree 20’s turned into
Mabel Dwight, In the Crowd (1931)
• The Great Depression was an economic slump in North America, Europe, and other industrialized areas of the world that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939.
• It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world.
Joe Jones, Wasteland (1937)
• When the stock market crashed in 1929, the world lost faith in the monetary systems.
• By 1933 the value of stock on the New York Stock Exchange was less than a fifth of what it had been at its peak in 1929.
• President Hoover felt that the economy was fundamentally sound, but had been shaken by the repercussions of a worldwide depression -- whose causes could be traced back to the war.
Squatter's Camp, Route 70, Arkansas, October, 1935.
Photographer: Ben Shahn
• Business houses closed their doors, factories shut down and banks failed.
Banks
• By 1933, 11,000 of the United States' 25,000 banks had failed.
Almost ½ of the banks failed – there was no FDIC
• Police stand guard outside the entrance to New York's closed World Exchange Bank, March 20, 1931. Not only did bank failures wipe out people's savings, they also undermined the ideology of thrift.
Roosevelt won election in 1932
• Roosevelt was prepared to use the federal government's authority for bold experimental remedies.
• By 1933 millions of Americans were out of work. Bread lines were a common sight in most cities.
•Hundreds of thousands roamed the
country in search of food, work and
shelter. "Brother, can you spare a dime?" went the refrain of a
popular song.
Unemployment
• African Americans suffered more than whites, since their jobs were often taken away from them and given to whites. In 1930, 50 percent of blacks were unemployed.
Unemployed men vying for jobs at the American Legion
Employment Bureau in Los Angeles during the Great Depression
Unemployment
• unemployment had risen to between 12 and 15 million workers, or 25-30 percent of the work force.
• By 1932 approximately one out of every four Americans was unemployed.
Philip Evergood, Sorrowing Farmers (1938)
bindle
• Farm income fell some 50 percent.
Philipinos cutting lettuce, Salinas, California, 1935. Photographer:
Dorothea Lange.In order to maximize their ability to exploit farm workers, California
employers recruited from China, Japan, the Philippines, Puerto
Rico, Mexico, the American south, and Europe.
The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made in February or March of
1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then
the Resettlement Administration.
Kitchen in house of Floyd Burroughs, sharecropper, near Moundville,
Hale County, Alabama. Summer 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans.
Manufacturing
• by 1932, U.S. manufacturing output had fallen to 54 percent of its 1929 level
Strikers guarding window entrance to Fisher body plant number three. Flint, Michigan, Jan.-Feb. 1936. Photographer: Sheldon Dick.
Roosevelt put men to work.
One project was the Empire State
Building
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was also built in the 1930’s
Movies about the Depression• Cinderella Man
• Seabiscuit
• Grapes of Wrath
• Places in the Heart
• Bonnie & Clyde
• Great Gatsby
• The Untouchables
• Gusmorino, Paul A., III. "Main Causes of the Great Depression." Gusmorino World (May 13, 1996). Online. Internet: http://www.gusmorino.com/pag3/great_depression/index.html. TODAY'S DATE.
