Wide Spread Depression

The Great Depression of 1929-33 was the most severe economic crisis of modern times. Millions of people lost their jobs, and many farmers and businesses were bankrupted. Industrialized nations and those supplying primary products (food and raw materials) were all affected in one way or another. In Germany the United States industrial output fell by about 50 per cent, and between 25 and 33 per cent of the industrial labour force was unemployed.

The Depression was eventually to cause a complete turn-around in economic theory and government policy. In the 1920s governments and business people largely believed, as they had since the 19^th century, that prosperity resulted from the least possible government intervention in the domestic economy, from open international relations with little trade discrimination, and from currencies that were fixed in value and readily convertible. Few people would continue to believe this in the 1930s.

THE MAIN AREAS OF DEPRESSION

The US economy had experienced rapid economic growth and financial excess in the late 1920s, and initially the economic downturn was seen as simply part of the boom-bust-boom cycle. Unexpectedly, however, output continued to fall for three and a half years, by which time half of the population was in desperate circumstances (map1). It also became clear that there had been serious over-production in agriculture, leading to falling prices and a rising debt among farmers. At the same time there was a major banking crisis, including the "Wall Street Crash" in October 1929. The situation was aggravated by serious policy mistakes of the Federal Reserve Board, which led to a fall in money supply and further contraction of the economy.

Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1895 and studied photography in New York City before the First World War. In 1919, she moved to San Francisco, where she earned her living as a portrait photographer for more than a decade. During the Depression's early years Lange's interest in social issues grew and she began to photograph the city's dispossessed. A 1934 exhibition of these photographs introduced her to Paul Taylor, an associate professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, and in February 1935 the couple together documented migrant farm workers in Nipomo and the Imperial Valley for the California State Emergency Relief Administration.Copies of the reports Lange and Taylor produced reached Roy Stryker, who offered Lange a job with the Resettlement Administration in August 1935. Lange returned to the Imperial Valley in early 1937 for the Resettlement Administration. The valley was in a state of crisis, and on February 16 Lange reported on the situation to Stryker:

I was forced to switch from Nipomo to the Imperial Valley because of the conditions there. They have always been notoriously bad as you know and what goes on in the Imperial is beyond belief. The Imperial Valley has a social structure all its own and partly because of its isolation in the state those in control get away with it. But this year's freeze practically wiped out the crop and what it didn't kill is delayed--in the meanwhile, because of the warm, no rain climate and possibilities for work the region is swamped with homeless moving families. The relief association offices are open day and night 24 hours. The people continue to pour in and there is no way to stop them and no work when they get there.

Copies of the reports Lange and Taylor produced reached Roy Stryker, who offered Lange a job with the Resettlement Administration in August 1935.

As many as six thousand migrants arrived in California from the Midwest every month, driven by unemployment, drought, and the loss of farm tenancy. In An American Exodus, which he co-authored with Lange, Taylor wrote that the Okies and Arkies had "been scattered like the shavings from a clean-cutting plane." Many drifted to the Imperial Valley after the completion of Boulder (Hoover) Dam in 1936, which guaranteed the valley a supply of water for irrigation. But the migrants, who competed with Mexicans and other immigrants for work, were offered "not land, but jobs on the land."The land was held by relatively few owners. In 1935 one-third of the farm acreage in the six hundred square miles of the Imperial Valley consisted of operations in excess of five hundred acres; seventy-four individuals and companies controlled much of the cropland.

Hardworking Pay

When people talk about the Great Depression and how hard of a time it was, I think that they underestimate the reality of how hard thing really were. During the Great Depression the entire country was at a loss for money. If you were rich you lost money, if you were middle class you lost money, and even if you were poor and had no money already; you still lost money. The problem with the Great Depression was that when people lost money, there were no jobs available to make any money. People did have jobs though, but the jobs they had were nowhere good enough to support a family or even themselves.

Following the harvests provided backbreaking work at starvation wages, and sometimes no wages at all. For three weeks in 1934, Burton Williams, 16, and his brother, Vic, 14, picked cotton for a grower in Elk City, Oklahoma.

"When we told the farmer we were quitting and going home, Burton said, 'You have 35 cents each coming.' That's all we got for three weeks' work."

The Civilian Conservation  Corps set up by the Roosevelt government in summer 1933 gave refuge to thousands of boxcar boys in 1,500 forest camps. On a much smaller scale, the National Youth Administration established 50 training camps for girls.

"I begged for dimes on the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans," said James San Jule, who became a union organizer. in San Francisco. In 1937, he co-authored a pamphlet with John Steinbeck on the plight of migrant workers in California. "I was angry half the time and when I wasn't angry I was sad. Why was this happening to me?

" It was more than a lack of understanding. It was an aimless, discombobulated feeling, as though the world had disappeared. The same feeling you have during an earthquake that's beyond your control.

"You were searching for something and didn't even know what the hell you were looking for. The thought that something was wrong must've crossed my mind but those days I didn't think of it in political terms. I spent so goddamn much time just staying alive."

The era of the boxcar boys and girls passed with the coming of World War II and the end of the Great Depression.

Riding the rails was a rite of passage for a generation of young people and profoundly shaped the rest of their lives. Self-reliance, compassion, frugality, a love of freedom and country are at the heart of the lessons they learned. Their memories are a mixture of nostalgia and pain; their late musings still tinged with the fear of going broke again.

At journey's end, the resiliency of these survivors is a testament to the indomitable strength of the human spirit.

Errol Lincoln Uys

Women During The Depression

An Oklahoma migrant family in California, 1935, by Dorothea Lange. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

In 1933 Eleanor Roosevelt’s It’s Up to the Women exhorted American women to help pull the country through its current economic crisis, the gravest it had ever faced: “The women know that life must go on and that the needs of life must be met and it is their courage and determination which, time and again, have pulled us through worse crises than the present one.” While women as a group could not end the Depression (mobilization for World War II deserves that credit), the country could never have survived the crisis without women’s contributions.“We didn’t go hungry, but we lived lean.” That expression sums up the experiences of many American families during the 1930s: they avoided stark deprivation but still struggled to get by. The typical woman in the 1930s had a husband who was still employed, although he had probably taken a pay cut to keep his job; if the man lost his job, the family often had enough resources to survive without going on relief or losing all its possessions. Still, Eleanor Roosevelt noted, “Practically every woman, whether she is rich or poor, is facing today a reduction of income.” In 1935–1936 the median family income was $1160, which translated into $20–25 a week to cover all their expenses, including food, shelter, clothing, and perhaps an occasional treat like going to the movies. Women “made do” by substituting their own labor for something that previously had been bought with cash or by practicing petty economies like buying day-old bread or warming several dishes in the oven to save gas. Living so close to the edge, women prayed that no catastrophic accident or illness would swamp their tight budgets. “We had no choice,” remembered one housewife. “We just did what had to be done one day at a time.”
In many ways men and women experienced the Depression differently. Men were socialized to think of themselves as breadwinners; when they lost their jobs or saw their incomes reduced, they felt like failures because they couldn’t take care of their families. Women, on the other hand, saw their roles in the household enhanced as they juggled to make ends meet. Sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd noticed this trend in a study of Muncie, Indiana, published in 1937: “The men, cut adrift from their usual routine, lost much of their sense of time and dawdled helplessly and dully about the streets; while in the homes the women’s world remained largely intact and the round of cooking, housecleaning, and mending became if anything more absorbing.” To put it another way, no housewife lost her job in the Depression.

by Susan Ware

Changing Lives

In 1929, James San Jule's father was a successful businessman in Tulsa, Oklahoma. San Jule graduated from Tulsa Central High School and had been accepted at Amherst college in Massachusetts, planning to go on to Harvard Law School. Because of his youth, his father wanted him to wait a year and arranged for him to work as an office boy in the Exchange National Bank at Tulsa. "I didn't think much of money in those days. It was just something we had, my father was probably a millionaire. We owned fancy cars, a fancy house, fancy everything. I led the ordinary life of a wealthy kid, nothing spectacular." This young man was really wealthy growing up. He was used to having what he wanted as a kid and he had nothing to worry about. He thought that money was just given to everyone. "It was a horrible, horrible period, about which I understood little. What's a kid to do? You have no worries about anything. You're going to Amherst and Harvard. All of sudden your life is blasted out of existence. It felt like being de-princed." Once the Great Depression hit America everything he had was taken from him. His life was deleted and he had to start his life over from the beginning. His dad lost his businesses and the family was getting no more income but they still had to pay all of their heavy bills. Luckily for him he went on to Harvard and it was hard for him, but he graduated and became a lawyer. Because of the increasing crime rate he found lots of work and his family was at the top of the ranks by the end of the Great Depression.

My Life

Life during the Great Depression was hard. Waking up every morning in a new place, alone, with no food or water to go to. Living during that time I always remember having to go from person to person looking for a simple small job, just for a small meal. Nothing was for certain for me or the other 75% of the country living in poverty. Everyone was trying to do the same thing; find work, which made that task a whole lot harder. I remember riding the rails to get from town to town and city to city looking for someplace that will get me some work. Me living as a hobo was no choice, I had no money and was forced to have no place to live, but some found the idea as a good one, and chose to be that way. Some people however did have money and were considered rich, but the problem was that those people were the ONLY ones with money. Those are the people I tried asking for work, because they tended to be the ones looking for some help. I had kids too, older ones, so they were told to go off on their own and do what I was doing; try to find work. I lived doing the same thing everyday for years, but thankfully one day the New Deal was established and I was able to find a steady paying job.

Signed

James Williams