A Struggling Nation
"In other periods of depression, it has always been possible to see some things which were solid and upon which you could base hope, but as I look about, I now see nothing to give ground to hope."
- President Calvin Coolidge, 1932
Leuchtenberg, William "Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal" Harper &Row, 1963 4/12/15
- President Calvin Coolidge, 1932
Leuchtenberg, William "Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal" Harper &Row, 1963 4/12/15
After the stock market crash of 1929 and the collapse of American banks, a Great Depression was ignited across America. Although many countries were hit throughout the world with less severe forms of economic collapse, America was hit hard. It began on what is known as “Black Tuesday” on Oct 29, 1929. In the months after Roosevelt’s inauguration, the economy worsened significantly. Birth, divorce, and marriage rates were declining for the first time in American history. Unemployment had jumped from 3 million to 12 ½ million. In 1932, a quarter of the nation did not have a single employed wage earner. Those fortunate enough to keep their jobs suffered with drastic pay cuts, part time hours, and reduction in hours.Those not so fortunate had to do above and beyond just to survive. Many people were desperate, such as this man from Georgia;
Reidsville. Ga Oct 19th 1935
Hon. Franklin D. Roosevelt.
President of U. S.
Washington D. C.
Dear Mr. President
Would you please direct the people in charge of the releaf work in Georgia to issue the provisions + other supplies to our suffering colored people. I am sorry to worrie you with this Mr. President but hard as it is to believe the releaf officials here are using up most every thing that you send for them self + their friends. they give out the releaf supplies here on Wednesday of this week and give us black folks, each one, nothing but a few cans of pickle meet and to white folks they give blankets, bolts of cloth and things like that. I dont want to take to mutch of your time Mr president but will give you just one example of how the releaf is work down here the witto Nancy Hendrics own lands, stock holder in the Bank in this town and she is being supplied with Blankets cloth and gets a supply of cans goods regular this is only one case but I could tell you many.
Please help us mr President because we cant help our self and we know you is the president and a good Christian man we is praying for you. Yours truly cant sign my name Mr President they will beat me up and run me away from here and this is my home
[Anonymous]
" When I knew that my crop was irrevocably gone i experienced a deathly feeling which, I hope, can affect a man only once in his lifetime. My dreams and ambitions had been flouted by nature, and my shattered ideals seemed gone forever. The very desire to make a success of my life was gone. The spirit and urge to strive was dead within me. Fate had dealt me a cruel blow above which I felt utterly unable to rise"
-Lawrence Svobida
"Farming the Dust Bowl" pbs.org 1996 2/16/15
"One evening when we went down to check on the bank, there were hundreds of people out front yelling and crying and fighting and beating on the locked doors and windows. They had fires built in the street to keep warm and there were people milling around all over the downtown. Anybody that thinks what we are going through now is a depression don’t have a clue of what a real depression is." |
"I finished high school in 1930 and i walked out into this thing.. It got tougher. We didn't know how to make it out in the city. It was terrifying. There were great queues of guys in soup lines. We didn't know how to join a soup line. We- my two brothers and I -didn't see ourselves that way. We had middle class ideas without middle class income." |
"In Chicago [during the Great Depression], a crowd of some fifty hungry men fought over barrel of garbage set outside the back door of restaurant..." |
"True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made" |
"Roosevelt came to office at a desperate time, in the fourth year of a worldwide depression that raised the gravest doubts about the future of Western civilization. "The year 1931 was distinguished from previous years...by one outstanding feature," commented the British historian Arnold Toynbee. "In 1931, men and women all over the world were seriously contemplating and frankly discussing the possibility that the Western system of Society might break down and cease to work."[12] On New Year's Eve 1931 in the United States, an American diplomat noted in his diary, "The last day of a very unhappy year for so many people the world around. Prices at the bottom and failures the rule of the day. A black picture!" And in the summer of 1932 John Maynard Keynes, asked by a journalist, whether there had ever been anything before like the Great Depression, replied: "Yes, it was called the Dark Ages, and it lasted four hundred years" |