Topic 13 - Prosperity and Depression (1919 - 1939)

Lesson 7 - Life During the Depression

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The Great Depression ruined the lives of numerous Americans who lost their jobs, their homes, and their savings. Hundreds of thousands of farmers and others on the Great Plains suffered the additional burden of having to flee the land that had sustained them. Many would never return.

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Look at the photograph of a family struggling with the effects of the severe drought that turned a large area of the Great Plains into the Dust Bowl. Write a brief diary entry that a farmer in this region might have written concerning his or her future.

Guiding Questions

What caused the Dust Bowl, and what effects did it have?
What impact did the Depression have on women, African Americans, and other groups?
How did the arts reflect life during the Depression?

Vocabulary

Academic Vocabulary

The Dust Bowl

During much of the 1930s, states from Texas to the Dakotas suffered a severe drought. One region in the central Great Plains was especially hard hit. The topsoil dried out. High winds carried the soil away in blinding dust storms. As a result, this area became known as the Dust Bowl.

Causes of the Dust Bowl

Dust storms buried farmhouses, fences, and even trees over large areas of the plains. People put shutters over doors and windows, but the dust blew in anyway. Even food crunched when it was chewed. One storm blew dust from Oklahoma to Albany, New York. A Kansas farmer sadly reported that he sat by his window counting the farms going by.

What caused the disaster? Years of overgrazing by cattle and plowing by farmers destroyed the grasses that once held the soil in place. The drought of the 1930s and high winds did the rest.

Effects of the Dust Bowl

Hardest hit by the drought and dust storms were poor farmers in Oklahoma and other Great Plains states. Thousands of these “Okies” packed their belongings into cars and trucks and headed west. They became migrant workers—people who move from one region to another in search of work. They hoped to find jobs in the orchards and farms of California, Oregon, or Washington.

Once they reached the West Coast, the migrants faced a new hardship—they were not wanted. Local citizens feared that the newcomers would take away their jobs. Sometimes, angry crowds blocked the highways and forced the migrants to go elsewhere. Those migrants who did find work were paid little.

GEOGRAPHY SKILLS

The center of the nation was most affected during the Dust Bowl.

Place Identify the states most severely affected.
Infer What challenges would Dust Bowl migrants face when they moved west?

READING CHECK

Identify Cause and Effect What caused the Dust Bowl?

How Did the Depression Affect Women?

Traditional roles took on added importance during the Depression. Homemakers had to stretch family budgets to make ends meet. Some women took in laundry to earn extra money. Others took in boarders to help pay the rent. Wives also found that unemployed husbands sometimes needed more nurturing to feel worthwhile.

Working women faced special problems during the Depression. If jobs were available, employers hired men before they would hire women. In order to spread jobs around, the federal government refused to hire a woman if her husband had a job.

Working Women

Despite such obstacles, millions of women earned wages in order to support themselves and their families. During the 1930s, the number of married women in the workforce increased by 52 percent. Educated women took jobs as secretaries, schoolteachers, and social workers. Other women earned livings as maids, factory workers, and seamstresses.

Some women workers struck for better pay. In San Antonio, Texas, at least 80 percent of the pecan shellers were Mexican American women. When employers lowered their pay, a young worker, Emma Tenayuca, organized the shellers and led them off the job. Tenayuca said later, “I had a basic faith in the American idea of freedom and fairness. I felt something had to be done.”

The First Lady Takes a Stand

Eleanor Roosevelt created a new role for the First Lady. Acting as the President’s “eyes and ears,” she toured the nation. She visited farms and American Indian reservations and traveled deep into a coal mine. She talked to homemakers, studying the condition of their clothing on the wash line to measure how well they were doing. In this way she became a spokesperson for Americans all over the country.

The First Lady did more than just aid the President. She used her position to speak out for women’s rights, as well as other issues. In her newspaper column, “My Day,” she called on Americans to live up to the goal of equal justice for all. By speaking out on social issues, Eleanor Roosevelt angered some people. However, many other Americans admired her strong stands.

Analyze Images First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt became an advocate for Americans all over the country.

Cite Evidence How was the First Lady an important part of the administration?
Notebook
READING CHECK Identify Main Ideas How did the Depression affect women’s lives?

African Americans Face Hard Times

When the Great Depression hit, African American workers were often the first to lose their jobs. By 1934, black workers were suffering a 50 percent unemployment rate, more than twice the national average. Often, they were denied public works jobs. Some charities even refused to serve African Americans at centers giving out food to the needy.

Eleanor Roosevelt and advocates urged the President to improve the situation of African Americans. The President responded to their needs. For example, thousands of young African American men learned a trade through the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).

Analyze Images The Civilian Conservation Corps gave an opportunity to work to African Americans.

Use Visual Information How did their CCC jobs make a difference to these women?

In aiding African Americans, Roosevelt won their support for the Democratic Party. The President invited African American leaders to the White House to advise him. These unofficial advisers became known as the Black Cabinet. They included Robert C. Weaver, a Harvard-educated economist, and Mary McLeod Bethune, a well-known Florida educator. Roosevelt appointed Bethune to head the National Youth Administration’s Division of Negro Affairs. She was the first African American to head a government agency.

Often, Roosevelt followed the advice of the Black Cabinet. However, when African American leaders pressed the President to support an anti-lynching law, he refused. He feared that by doing so he would lose the support of southerners in Congress for his New Deal programs.

Many black leaders called on African Americans to unite to obtain their civil rights—the rights due to all citizens. African Americans used their votes, won higher-level government jobs, and kept up pressure for equal treatment. Slowly, they made a few gains. However, the struggle for civil rights would take many more years.

Analyze Images African American educator Mary McLeod Bethune, standing at the center of this photo, promoted the interests of African Americans across the country and served as advisor to President Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s.

Infer How did having advisers like Bethune make Roosevelt a better President?

READING CHECK

Draw Conclusions What was the purpose of Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet”?

How Did Other Americans Weather the Depression?

The hard times of the Great Depression created fear and insecurity among many Americans. These feelings sometimes erupted in discrimination and hostility toward Americans with different ethnic backgrounds.

Mexican Americans

By the 1930s, Mexican Americans worked in many cities around the country. A large number, however, were farmworkers in the West and Southwest. There, they faced discrimination in education and jobs and at the polls.

In good times, employers had encouraged Mexicans to move north and take jobs in factories or on farms. When hard times struck, however, many Americans wanted Mexicans to be sent back to their original country. More than 400,000 people were rounded up and sent to Mexico. Some of them were American citizens.

Asian Americans

Some Americans resented Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino workers who competed with them for scarce jobs. Sometimes, violence against Asians erupted. Responding to pressure, the government sought to reduce the number of Asians in the United States. In 1935, FDR signed a law that provided free transportation for Filipinos who agreed to return to the Philippines and not come back.

Analyze Images Dorothea Lange took this 1935 photo of Filipino immigrants harvesting lettuce in California.

Draw Conclusions How might jobless Americans have viewed immigrants at this time?

American Indians

In 1924, Congress had granted all American Indians citizenship. Still, most Indians continued to live in deep poverty. President Roosevelt encouraged new policies toward American Indians.

In the 1930s, Congress passed a series of laws that have been called the Indian New Deal. The laws gave Indian nations greater control over their own affairs.

The President chose John Collier, a longtime defender of American Indian rights, to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Collier ended the government policy of breaking up American Indian landholdings. In 1934, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA). It protected and even expanded landholdings of Indian reservations. The Roosevelt administration also strengthened American Indian governments by letting reservations organize corporations and develop their own business projects.

To provide jobs during the Depression, the government set up the Indian Emergency Conservation Work Group. It employed American Indians in programs of the control of topsoil erosion, irrigation, and land development.

READING CHECK

Identify Supporting Details What was the purpose of the Indian New Deal?

The Arts During the Depression

Creative artists powerfully portrayed the hardships of Depression life. Many writers depicted the hard times Americans faced across the country. In his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck told the heartbreaking story of the Okies streaming over the mountains trying to build new lives in California.

Many painters turned to familiar themes. The huge murals of Thomas Hart Benton brought the history of the frontier to life. In American Gothic, Grant Wood painted an Iowa farmer and his daughter who look determined enough to survive any hardship.

The government sent out photographers to create a lasting record of American life during the Great Depression. The vivid photographs of Dorothea Lange showed the suffering of Dust Bowl farm families. Margaret Bourke-White photographed poor tenant farmers in the South.

Analyze Images Grant Wood completed his painting American Gothic in 1930.

Use Visual Information In what ways might the painting have reflected the attitudes of people living through the Depression?

Entertainment on the Radio

Americans found ways to escape the hard times of the 1930s. Listening to the radio and going to the movies were among their favorite pastimes.

Every night, millions of Americans tuned in to their favorite radio programs. Comedians, such as the husband-and-wife team of George Burns and Gracie Allen, made people forget their troubles for a time. With so many people out of work, daytime radio shows became popular. People listened to dramas like “Ma Perkins” that told the story of families weathering the Depression. Because soap companies sponsored many of these serials, the programs became known as soap operas.

Perhaps the most famous broadcast took place in 1938. On Halloween night, actor Orson Welles presented a “newscast” based on a science fiction novel, The War of the Worlds. Welles grimly reported the landing of invaders from the planet Mars. People who tuned in late mistook the program for a real newscast. Thousands of terrified people ran into the streets, seeking ways to escape the Martian invasion.

Going to the Movies

In the 1930s, movie makers tried to restore Americans’ faith in the future. Movies told optimistic stories about happy families or people finding love and success. Shirley Temple became a hugely popular star at the age of five. When Temple sang “On the Good Ship Lollipop,” her upbeat spirit cheered up audiences.

One of the most popular movies was Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was the first full-length animated film. In 1939, Judy Garland won American hearts in The Wizard of Oz. The movie told of a young girl’s escape from a bleak life in Depression-era Kansas to the magical land of Oz.

The most expensively made and most popular movie of the 1930s was Gone With the Wind. It showed the Civil War in a romantic light. For more than three hours, many Americans forgot their worries as they watched the story of love and loss in the Old South. The movie also encouraged many Americans. They had survived hard times before. They would do so again.

Analyze Images Movies now had both sound and color, and moviegoers enjoyed both as they watched two of 1939’s most popular films, The Wizard of Oz andGone with the Wind.

Infer Why do you think people enjoyed movies so much during this time?

READING CHECK

Identify Main Ideas What purposes did the arts serve during the Depression?

Lesson Check

How did the Dust Bowl expand the number of migrant workers?
How did the Indian New Deal restore some pride to American Indians?
Identify Cause and Effect How did the Great Depression affect how Dust Bowl migrants were treated after they reached the West Coast?
Compare and Contrast How did President Roosevelt both help and hurt the struggle of African Americans for their civil rights?
Writing Workshop: Use Technology to Produce and Publish Soon you will use your notes to write your New Deal research paper. To produce and publish a thoroughly researched and clearly presented paper, take advantage of available technology.

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