Volume 12 , Issue 18

The Great Depression of 1930s

I am too young to know anything about the Great Depression of the 1930's, except by reading about it in books and searching for more information about it online.

They say the start of the Great Depression was pegged to the stock market crash, "Black Tuesday," October 29, 1929. The day Dow Jones Industrial Average fell almost 23% -- the market lost between $8 billion and $9 billion in value.

That was just "one in a series of losses during a time of extreme market volatility that exposed those who had bought stocks "on margin" with borrowed money," as The New York Times gives about "A Short History of the Great Depression." The stock market continued to decline; unemployment rose; wages fell for those who continued to work; and use of credit for purchase of homes, cars, furniture and household appliances resulted in foreclosures and repossessions.

The New York Times article states that President Herbert Hoover, a Republican, believed the government should monitor the economy, encourage counter-cyclical spending to ease downturns, but not directly intervene. The jobless population grew, President Hoover resisted calls from Congress, governors, and mayors to combat unemployment by financing public service jobs. Hoover encouraged creation of such jobs, but said it was up to state and local governments to pay for them. Hoover believed that relieving the suffering of the unemployed was solely up to local governments and private charities.

In 1932 -- The unemployment rate soared past 20%. Thousands of banks, businesses failed. Millions were homeless. Especially in the Great Plains of Nebraska, Kansas, the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, southeastern Colorado, Eastern New Mexico. Many of those homeless loaded what vehicles they owned and headed West towards where they believed jobs were in California, Oregon and Washington. They drifted from town to town looking for non-existent jobs. Other homeless citizens lived at the edges of cities in makeshift shantytowns called Hoovervilles. People foraged in dumps and garbage cans for food.

The 1932 presidential campaign between Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was run against the backdrop of the Depression. Roosevelt won the Democratic nomination and campaigned on a platform of "The forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid."

Hoover continued to insist it was not the governments job to address the growing social crisis. Roosevelt won in a landslide. He took office on March 4, 1933, with the declaration that "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

The Civilian Conservation Corps(CCC or parks and forests program), was the first work relief program that provided federally funded jobs. Roosevelt later created a large-scale temporary jobs program during the winter of 1933 thru 1934.

The Civil Works Administration (CWA), established by the New Deal during the Great Depression created jobs for millions of unemployed. It employed more than four million men, women at jobs from building and repairing roads and bridges, parks, playgrounds and public buildings to creating art.

With unemployment still persisting at high levels, the administration created a permanent jobs program called the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) which began in 1935 and lasted until 1943. It employed 8.5 million people and spent $11 billion transforming the national infrastructure, making clothing for the poor, and creating landmark programs in art, music, theater and writing.

Maybe you have seen signs of the WPA projects in your neighborhoods. The buildings would have plaques designating built by the WPA and the year built. Northwest Oklahoma has many of those projects still standing today.
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