{"id":1555,"date":"2015-08-20T05:43:27","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T05:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/americanyawphist118x15x1\/?post_type=chapter&p=1555"},"modified":"2015-08-20T05:43:27","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T05:43:27","slug":"the-lived-experience-of-the-great-depression-2","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/sanjacinto-atdcoursereview-ushistory2-1\/chapter\/the-lived-experience-of-the-great-depression-2\/","title":{"raw":"The Lived Experience of the Great Depression","rendered":"The Lived Experience of the Great Depression"},"content":{"raw":"
\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_1062\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1000\"]\"A<\/a> \"Hooverville, Seattle.\" 1932-1937. Washington State Archives<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nIn 1934 a woman from Humboldt County, California, wrote to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt seeking a job for her husband, a surveyor, who had been out of work for nearly two years. The pair had survived on the meager income she received from working at the county courthouse. \u201cMy salary could keep us going,\u201d she explained, \u201cbut\u2014I am to have a baby.\u201d The family needed temporary help, and, she explained, \u201cafter that I can go back to work and we can work out our own salvation. But to have this baby come to a home full of worry and despair, with no money for the things it needs, is not fair. It needs and deserves a happy start in life.\u201d\r\n\r\nAs the United States slid ever deeper into the Great Depression, such tragic scenes played out time and time again. Individuals, families, and communities faced the painful, frightening, and often bewildering collapse of the economic institutions upon which they depended. The more fortunate were spared worst effects, and a few even profited from it, but by the end of 1932, the crisis had become so deep and so widespread that most Americans had suffered directly. Markets crashed through no fault of their own. Workers were plunged into poverty because of impersonal forces for which they shared no responsibility. With no safety net, they were thrown into economic chaos.\r\n\r\nWith rampant unemployment and declining wages, Americans slashed expenses. The fortunate could survive by simply deferring vacations and regular consumer purchases. Middle- and working-class Americans might rely upon disappearing credit at neighborhood stores, default on utility bills, or skip meals. Those that could borrowed from relatives or took in boarders in homes or \u201cdoubled up\u201d in tenements. The most desperate, the chronically unemployed, encamped on public or marginal lands in \u201cHoovervilles,\u201d spontaneous shantytowns that dotted America\u2019s cities, depending upon breadlines and street-corner peddling. Poor women and young children entered the labor force, as they always had. The ideal of the \u201cmale breadwinner\u201d was always a fiction for poor Americans, but the Depression decimated millions of new workers. The emotional and psychological shocks of unemployment and underemployment only added to the shocking material depravities of the Depression. \u00a0Social workers and charity officials, for instance, often found the unemployed suffering from feelings of futility, anger, bitterness, confusion, and loss of pride. Such feelings affected the rural poor no less than the urban.","rendered":"
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\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

“Hooverville, Seattle.” 1932-1937. Washington State Archives<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In 1934 a woman from Humboldt County, California, wrote to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt seeking a job for her husband, a surveyor, who had been out of work for nearly two years. The pair had survived on the meager income she received from working at the county courthouse. \u201cMy salary could keep us going,\u201d she explained, \u201cbut\u2014I am to have a baby.\u201d The family needed temporary help, and, she explained, \u201cafter that I can go back to work and we can work out our own salvation. But to have this baby come to a home full of worry and despair, with no money for the things it needs, is not fair. It needs and deserves a happy start in life.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the United States slid ever deeper into the Great Depression, such tragic scenes played out time and time again. Individuals, families, and communities faced the painful, frightening, and often bewildering collapse of the economic institutions upon which they depended. The more fortunate were spared worst effects, and a few even profited from it, but by the end of 1932, the crisis had become so deep and so widespread that most Americans had suffered directly. Markets crashed through no fault of their own. Workers were plunged into poverty because of impersonal forces for which they shared no responsibility. With no safety net, they were thrown into economic chaos.<\/p>\n

With rampant unemployment and declining wages, Americans slashed expenses. The fortunate could survive by simply deferring vacations and regular consumer purchases. Middle- and working-class Americans might rely upon disappearing credit at neighborhood stores, default on utility bills, or skip meals. Those that could borrowed from relatives or took in boarders in homes or \u201cdoubled up\u201d in tenements. The most desperate, the chronically unemployed, encamped on public or marginal lands in \u201cHoovervilles,\u201d spontaneous shantytowns that dotted America\u2019s cities, depending upon breadlines and street-corner peddling. Poor women and young children entered the labor force, as they always had. The ideal of the \u201cmale breadwinner\u201d was always a fiction for poor Americans, but the Depression decimated millions of new workers. The emotional and psychological shocks of unemployment and underemployment only added to the shocking material depravities of the Depression. \u00a0Social workers and charity officials, for instance, often found the unemployed suffering from feelings of futility, anger, bitterness, confusion, and loss of pride. Such feelings affected the rural poor no less than the urban.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t

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