{"id":277,"date":"2015-08-21T18:07:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T18:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/ushistory2os2xmaster\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=277"},"modified":"2022-09-21T03:57:38","modified_gmt":"2022-09-21T03:57:38","slug":"everyday-life-during-the-great-depression","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/chapter\/everyday-life-during-the-great-depression\/","title":{"raw":"Everyday Life During the Great Depression","rendered":"Everyday Life During the Great Depression"},"content":{"raw":"<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-highlight\">\r\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Explain the impact of the Great Depression on family life, including on children and women<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Describe how people survived during the Great Depression despite the government\u2019s initial unwillingness to provide assistance<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<h2 id=\"fs-idm34903088\">Introduction<\/h2>\r\nFrom industrial strongholds to the rural Great Plains, from factory workers to farmers, the Great Depression affected millions. In cities, as industry slowed, then sometimes stopped altogether, workers lost jobs and joined breadlines, or sought out other charitable efforts. With limited government relief available, private charities tried to help, but they were unable to match the scale of the demand. In rural areas, farmers suffered in ways unique to their livelihoods. In some parts of the country, prices for crops dropped so precipitously that farmers could not earn enough to pay their mortgages, losing their farms to foreclosure. In the Great Plains, one of the worst droughts in history left the land barren and unfit for growing even the most basic sustenance crops.\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm24021184\">The country\u2019s most vulnerable populations, such as children, the elderly, and those subject to discrimination, like Black Americans, were the hardest hit. Most White Americans felt entitled to what few jobs were available, leaving Black Americans unable to find work, even in the jobs once considered their domain. In all, the economic misery was unprecedented in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\r\n<h3>Watch It<\/h3>\r\nDue to the poverty families faced during the Great Depression, new clothes were unaffordable and many women began to make clothing out of cotton flour sacks. Flour companies saw this and they began creating the sacks with colorful patterns which often included instructions for sewing ideas on the package as well as how to remove the text from the bags.\r\n\r\n<center><iframe src=\"\/\/plugin.3playmedia.com\/show?mf=8197317&amp;p3sdk_version=1.10.1&amp;p=20361&amp;pt=375&amp;video_id=UDbtHeyIYtI&amp;video_target=tpm-plugin-9qyvjbsz-UDbtHeyIYtI\" width=\"800px\" height=\"450px\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0px\" marginheight=\"0px\"><\/iframe><\/center><center>You can view the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/course-building.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/US+history+II\/WhyFlourSacksDuringTheGreatDepressionWereSoImportant.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">transcript for \u201cWhy Flour Sacks During The Great Depression Were So Important\u201d here (opens in new window)<\/a>.<\/center><\/div>\r\n<section id=\"fs-idp2656608\" data-depth=\"1\">\r\n<h2 data-type=\"title\">Starvation and Homelessness<\/h2>\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"593\"]<img src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/f\/f1\/US_Unemployment_from_1910-1960.svg\/512px-US_Unemployment_from_1910-1960.svg.png\" alt=\"This graph shows the unemployment rate from 1910-1960. The highlighted portion of the Great Depression reaches over 20%, a rate significantly higher than the rest of the graph.\" width=\"593\" height=\"393\" \/> <strong>Figure 1.<\/strong>\u00a0U.S. Unemployment rates from 1910-1960. The highlighted portion shows the years of the Great Depression.[\/caption]\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp1920528\">By the end of 1932, the Great Depression had affected some sixty million people, most of whom wealthier Americans perceived as the \u201cdeserving poor,\u201d or those whose losses had occurred through no fault of their own. Yet, federal efforts to help those in need were extremely limited, and national charities had neither the capacity nor the will to elicit the large-scale response required. The American Red Cross did exist, but Chairman John Barton Payne contended that unemployment was not an \u201cAct of God\u201d but rather an \u201cAct of Man,\u201d and therefore refused to get involved in widespread direct relief efforts. Clubs like the Elks tried to provide food, as did small groups of individually organized college students. Religious organizations remained on the front lines, offering food and shelter. In larger cities, breadlines and soup lines became a common sight. At one count in 1932, there were as many as eighty-two breadlines in New York City.<\/p>\r\nDespite these efforts, however, people were destitute and ultimately starving. Families would first run through their savings, if they were lucky enough to have any. Then, the few who had insurance would cash out their policies. Cash payments for individual insurance policies tripled in the first three years of the Great Depression, with insurance companies issuing total payments in excess of $1.2 billion in 1932 alone. When those funds were depleted, people would borrow from family and friends, and when they could get no more, they would simply stop making rent or mortgage payments. When evicted, they would move in with relatives, whose situation was likely only a step or two behind their own. The burden of additional people in the household would speed along that family\u2019s demise, and the cycle would continue. Even as late as 1939, a decade into the Great Depression, over 60 percent of rural households and 82 percent of farm families were classified as \u201cimpoverished.\u201d In larger urban areas, unemployment levels exceeded the national average, with over half million unemployed workers in Chicago, and nearly a million in New York City. Breadlines and soup kitchens were packed, serving as many as eighty-five thousand meals daily in New York City alone. Over fifty thousand New York citizens were experiencing homelessness by the end of 1932.\u00a0As one New York City official explained in 1932,\r\n<blockquote>When the breadwinner is out of a job he usually exhausts his savings if he has any.\u2026 He borrows from his friends and from his relatives until they can stand the burden no longer. He gets credit from the corner grocery store and the butcher shop, and the landlord forgoes collecting the rent until interest and taxes have to be paid and something has to be done. All of these resources are finally exhausted over a period of time, and it becomes necessary for these people, who have never before been in want, to go on assistance.[footnote]Lester V. Chandler, America\u2019s Greatest Depression, 1929\u20131941 (New York: Harper &amp; Row, 1970), 41.[\/footnote]<\/blockquote>\r\nThese most desperate Americans, the chronically unemployed, encamped on public or marginal lands in \u201cHoovervilles,\u201d spontaneous shantytowns that dotted America\u2019s cities, depending on bread lines and street-corner peddling. One\u00a0doctor recalled that \u201cevery day \u2026\u00a0someone would faint on a streetcar. They\u2019d bring him in, and they wouldn\u2019t ask any questions.\u2026\u00a0they knew what it was. Hunger.\u201d[footnote]Studs Terkel,<em> Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression<\/em> (New York: New Press, 2000), 20\u201321.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"390\"]<img src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23203132\/CNX_History_25_01_Elderly.jpg\" alt=\"A photograph shows an elderly destitute man leaning against a vacant storefront in San Francisco, California. The window is covered with signs indicating various properties that are \u201cto lease.\u201d\" width=\"390\" height=\"377\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/> <strong>Figure 2.<\/strong> Because there was no infrastructure to support them should they become unemployed or destitute, the elderly were extremely vulnerable during the Great Depression. As the depression continued, the results of this tenuous situation became more evident, as shown in this photo of a vacant storefront in San Francisco, captured by Dorothea Lange in 1935.[\/caption]\r\n<h2>Family Life and Childhood<\/h2>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm26308688\">The hardships of the Great Depression threw family life into disarray. Both marriage and birth rates declined in the decade after the crash. The most vulnerable members of society\u2014children, women, minorities, and the working class\u2014struggled the most. Children, in particular, felt the brunt of poverty. Parents often sent children out to beg for food at restaurants and stores to save themselves from the disgrace of begging. Many children dropped out of school, and even fewer went to college. By one estimate, as many as 200,000 children moved about the country as vagrants due to familial disintegration. Childhood, as it had existed in the prosperous twenties, was over.<\/p>\r\nMany children in coastal cities would roam the docks in search of spoiled vegetables to bring home. Elsewhere, children begged at the doors of more well-off neighbors, hoping for stale bread, table scraps, or raw potato peelings. Said one childhood survivor of the Great Depression, \u201cYou get used to hunger. After the first few days it doesn\u2019t even hurt; you just get weak.\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd yet, for many children living in rural areas where the affluence of the previous decade was not fully developed, the Depression was not viewed as a great challenge. School continued. Play was simple and enjoyable. Families adapted by growing their gardens, canning, and preserving, and wasting little food. Home-sewn clothing became the norm as the decade progressed, as did creative methods of shoe repair, often utilizing at-hand materials such as cardboard. Yet, one always knew of stories of the \u201cother\u201d families who suffered more, including those living in cardboard boxes or caves.\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-size: 1rem; text-align: initial;\">By the time Hoover left office in 1933, the poor survived not on relief efforts, but because they had learned to be poor. A family with little food would stay in bed to save fuel and avoid burning calories. People began eating parts of animals that had previously been considered waste. They scavenged for scrap wood to burn in the furnace, and when electricity was turned off, it was not uncommon to try and tap into a neighbor\u2019s wire. Family members swapped clothes; sisters might take turns going to church in the one dress they owned. As one girl in a mountain town told her teacher, who had said to go home and get food, \u201cI can\u2019t. It\u2019s my sister\u2019s turn to eat.\u201d<\/span>\r\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\r\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\r\nhttps:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/7efa6894-42aa-4f13-81e4-083eed878bbd\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/db4d2425-a4a6-4bce-bf0c-a5b87f166b50\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\r\n<h3>Link to learning<\/h3>\r\nFor his book on the Great Depression, <em data-effect=\"italics\">Hard Times<\/em>, author Studs Terkel interviewed hundreds of Americans from across the country. He subsequently selected over seventy interviews to air on a radio show that was based in Chicago. Visit <a href=\"http:\/\/studsterkel.matrix.msu.edu\/results.php?keywords=depression&amp;startdate=&amp;enddate=&amp;title=&amp;summary=&amp;nameI=&amp;gallery=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Studs Terkel: Conversations with America<\/a> to listen to those interviews, during which participants reflect on their personal hardships as well as on national events during the Great Depression.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section><section id=\"fs-idp35729888\" data-depth=\"1\">\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"648\"]<img class=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.loc.gov\/service\/pnp\/ppmsca\/58200\/58266r.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;Forgotten women,&quot; unemployed and single, in job demand parade\" width=\"648\" height=\"539\" \/> <strong>Figure 3.<\/strong>\u00a0Unemployed, single women protest in New York in 1933 demanding job priority over married women who they claimed did not need the income because they had spousal support.[\/caption]\r\n<h3>Women in the Workforce<\/h3>\r\nAmerican views about family structure meant that women suffered disproportionately from the Depression.\u00a0Since the start of the twentieth century, single women had increasingly joined the workforce, but married women, Americans were likely to believe, only took a job because they wanted to and not because they had to. Once the Depression came, employers were therefore less likely to hire married women and more likely to dismiss those they already employed.[footnote]Claudia Dale Goldin, Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 34.[\/footnote]\r\n\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[footnote]Mrs. M. H. A. to Eleanor Roosevelt, June 14, 1934, in Robert S. McElvaine, ed., <em>Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man<\/em> (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 54\u201355.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nWomen on their own and without regular work suffered a greater threat of sexual violence than their male counterparts; accounts of such women suggest they depended on each other for protection.[footnote]William H. Chafe, The Paradox of Change: American Women in the 20th Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 71.[\/footnote]Some wives and mothers sought employment to make ends meet, an undertaking that was often met with strong resistance from husbands and potential employers. Many men derided and criticized women who worked, feeling that jobs should go to unemployed men. Some campaigned to keep companies from hiring married women, and an increasing number of school districts expanded the long-held practice of banning the hiring of married female teachers.\r\n\r\nDespite the pushback, women entered the workforce in increasing numbers, from ten million at the start of the Depression to nearly thirteen million by the end of the 1930s. This increase took place in spite of the twenty-six states that passed a variety of laws to prohibit the employment of married women. Several women found employment in the emerging \"<span class=\"no-emphasis\" data-type=\"term\">pink-collar\"<\/span> occupations, or those viewed as traditional women\u2019s work, such as telephone operators, social workers, and secretaries. Others took jobs as maids and house cleaners, working for those fortunate few who had maintained their wealth.\r\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\r\n<h3>Watch It<\/h3>\r\nIn this video, two individuals,\u00a0Dorothy Womble and William Hague, who survived the Great Depression as children recall the challenges their families faced and the extent of the widespread poverty they saw around them.<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">\r\n<\/span>\r\n\r\n<center><iframe src=\"\/\/plugin.3playmedia.com\/show?mf=8197318&amp;p3sdk_version=1.10.1&amp;p=20361&amp;pt=375&amp;video_id=aPi9A07HqWg&amp;video_target=tpm-plugin-tx76auj0-aPi9A07HqWg\" width=\"800px\" height=\"450px\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0px\" marginheight=\"0px\"><\/iframe><\/center><center>You can view the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/course-building.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/US+history+II\/DiscussingTheGreatDepression.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">transcript for \u201cDiscussing the Great Depression\u201d here (opens in new window)<\/a>.<\/center><\/div>\r\n<h2>\"The Deserving Poor\" and Relief Efforts<\/h2>\r\nAs the effects of the Great Depression worsened, wealthier Americans had particular concern for <strong>the deserving poor<\/strong>\u2014those who had lost their money due to no fault of their own and thereby deserved assistance. This concept gained greater attention beginning in the Progressive Era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when early social reformers sought to improve the quality of life for all Americans by addressing the poverty that was becoming more prevalent, particularly in emerging urban areas. By the time of the Great Depression, social reformers and humanitarian agencies had determined that the \u201cdeserving poor\u201d belonged to a different category from those who had speculated and lost. However, the sheer volume of Americans who fell into this group meant that charitable assistance could not begin to reach them all. Some fifteen million \u201cdeserving poor,\u201d or a full one-third of the labor force, were struggling by 1932. The country had no mechanism or system in place to help so many; however, Hoover remained adamant that such relief should rest in the hands of private agencies and volunteers, not with the federal government.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"390\"]<img src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23203133\/CNX_History_25_01_Mission.jpg\" alt=\"A photograph shows a line of men being served soup in front of St. Peter\u2019s Mission in New York City.\" width=\"390\" height=\"342\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/> <strong>Figure 4.<\/strong> In the early 1930s, without significant government relief programs, many people in urban centers relied on private agencies for assistance. In New York City, St. Peter\u2019s Mission distributed bread, soup, and canned goods to large numbers of the unemployed and others in need.[\/caption]\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm3476384\">Unable to receive aid from the federal government, Americans turned to private charities, churches, synagogues, and other religious organizations, as well as to state-level assistance. But these organizations were not prepared to deal with the scope of the problem. Like for-profit enterprises, private aid organizations also showed declining assets during the Depression, with fewer Americans possessing the ability to donate. Likewise, state governments were particularly ill-equipped. Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first to institute a Department of Welfare in New York in 1929. City governments had equally little to offer. In New York City in 1932, family allowances were $2.39 per week, and only one-half of the families who qualified actually received them. In Detroit, allowances fell to fifteen cents a day per person, and eventually ran out completely. As one Detroit city official put it in 1932,<\/p>\r\n\r\n<blockquote>Many essential public services have been reduced beyond the minimum point absolutely essential to the health and safety of the city.\u2026 The salaries of city employees have been twice reduced \u2026\u00a0and hundreds of faithful employees \u2026\u00a0have been furloughed. Thus has the city borrowed from its own future welfare to keep its unemployed on the barest subsistence levels.\u2026 A wage work plan which had supported 11,000 families collapsed last month because the city was unable to find funds to pay these unemployed\u2014men who wished to earn their own support. For the coming year, Detroit can see no possibility of preventing wide-spread hunger and slow starvation through its own unaided resources.[footnote]Chandler, <em>America\u2019s Greatest Depression<\/em>, 44.[\/footnote]<\/blockquote>\r\nIn most cases, relief was only in the form of food and fuel; organizations provided nothing in the way of rent, shelter, medical care, clothing, or other necessities. There was no infrastructure to support the elderly, who were the most vulnerable, and this population largely depended on their adult children to support them, adding to families\u2019 burdens.\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm8674224\">During this time, local community groups, such as police and teachers, worked to help the neediest. New York City police, for example, began contributing 1 percent of their salaries to start a food fund that was geared to help those found starving on the streets. In 1932, New York City schoolteachers also joined forces to try to help; they contributed as much as $250,000 per month from their own salaries to help needy children. Chicago teachers did the same, feeding some eleven thousand students out of their own pockets in 1931, despite the fact that many of them had not been paid a salary in months. These noble efforts, however, failed to fully address the level of desperation that the American public was facing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\r\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\r\nhttps:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/581c5202-8337-4d5d-9a0e-9cbd81b6b311\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section><section>\r\n<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\r\n<h3>Glossary<\/h3>\r\n<strong>the deserving poor<\/strong>: those who had lost their money through no fault of their own\u00a0but were unable to work because of circumstances. They were considered more \"deserving\" of assistance than the \"undeserving poor\" who were seen by society as having behaved recklessly, perhaps overindulging in speculation, or who were considered simply lazy.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/section>","rendered":"<div class=\"bcc-box bcc-highlight\">\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Explain the impact of the Great Depression on family life, including on children and women<\/li>\n<li>Describe how people survived during the Great Depression despite the government\u2019s initial unwillingness to provide assistance<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h2 id=\"fs-idm34903088\">Introduction<\/h2>\n<p>From industrial strongholds to the rural Great Plains, from factory workers to farmers, the Great Depression affected millions. In cities, as industry slowed, then sometimes stopped altogether, workers lost jobs and joined breadlines, or sought out other charitable efforts. With limited government relief available, private charities tried to help, but they were unable to match the scale of the demand. In rural areas, farmers suffered in ways unique to their livelihoods. In some parts of the country, prices for crops dropped so precipitously that farmers could not earn enough to pay their mortgages, losing their farms to foreclosure. In the Great Plains, one of the worst droughts in history left the land barren and unfit for growing even the most basic sustenance crops.<\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idm24021184\">The country\u2019s most vulnerable populations, such as children, the elderly, and those subject to discrimination, like Black Americans, were the hardest hit. Most White Americans felt entitled to what few jobs were available, leaving Black Americans unable to find work, even in the jobs once considered their domain. In all, the economic misery was unprecedented in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\n<h3>Watch It<\/h3>\n<p>Due to the poverty families faced during the Great Depression, new clothes were unaffordable and many women began to make clothing out of cotton flour sacks. Flour companies saw this and they began creating the sacks with colorful patterns which often included instructions for sewing ideas on the package as well as how to remove the text from the bags.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/plugin.3playmedia.com\/show?mf=8197317&amp;p3sdk_version=1.10.1&amp;p=20361&amp;pt=375&amp;video_id=UDbtHeyIYtI&amp;video_target=tpm-plugin-9qyvjbsz-UDbtHeyIYtI\" width=\"800px\" height=\"450px\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0px\" marginheight=\"0px\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\">You can view the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/course-building.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/US+history+II\/WhyFlourSacksDuringTheGreatDepressionWereSoImportant.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">transcript for \u201cWhy Flour Sacks During The Great Depression Were So Important\u201d here (opens in new window)<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<section id=\"fs-idp2656608\" data-depth=\"1\">\n<h2 data-type=\"title\">Starvation and Homelessness<\/h2>\n<div style=\"width: 603px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/f\/f1\/US_Unemployment_from_1910-1960.svg\/512px-US_Unemployment_from_1910-1960.svg.png\" alt=\"This graph shows the unemployment rate from 1910-1960. The highlighted portion of the Great Depression reaches over 20%, a rate significantly higher than the rest of the graph.\" width=\"593\" height=\"393\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 1.<\/strong>\u00a0U.S. Unemployment rates from 1910-1960. The highlighted portion shows the years of the Great Depression.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"fs-idp1920528\">By the end of 1932, the Great Depression had affected some sixty million people, most of whom wealthier Americans perceived as the \u201cdeserving poor,\u201d or those whose losses had occurred through no fault of their own. Yet, federal efforts to help those in need were extremely limited, and national charities had neither the capacity nor the will to elicit the large-scale response required. The American Red Cross did exist, but Chairman John Barton Payne contended that unemployment was not an \u201cAct of God\u201d but rather an \u201cAct of Man,\u201d and therefore refused to get involved in widespread direct relief efforts. Clubs like the Elks tried to provide food, as did small groups of individually organized college students. Religious organizations remained on the front lines, offering food and shelter. In larger cities, breadlines and soup lines became a common sight. At one count in 1932, there were as many as eighty-two breadlines in New York City.<\/p>\n<p>Despite these efforts, however, people were destitute and ultimately starving. Families would first run through their savings, if they were lucky enough to have any. Then, the few who had insurance would cash out their policies. Cash payments for individual insurance policies tripled in the first three years of the Great Depression, with insurance companies issuing total payments in excess of $1.2 billion in 1932 alone. When those funds were depleted, people would borrow from family and friends, and when they could get no more, they would simply stop making rent or mortgage payments. When evicted, they would move in with relatives, whose situation was likely only a step or two behind their own. The burden of additional people in the household would speed along that family\u2019s demise, and the cycle would continue. Even as late as 1939, a decade into the Great Depression, over 60 percent of rural households and 82 percent of farm families were classified as \u201cimpoverished.\u201d In larger urban areas, unemployment levels exceeded the national average, with over half million unemployed workers in Chicago, and nearly a million in New York City. Breadlines and soup kitchens were packed, serving as many as eighty-five thousand meals daily in New York City alone. Over fifty thousand New York citizens were experiencing homelessness by the end of 1932.\u00a0As one New York City official explained in 1932,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When the breadwinner is out of a job he usually exhausts his savings if he has any.\u2026 He borrows from his friends and from his relatives until they can stand the burden no longer. He gets credit from the corner grocery store and the butcher shop, and the landlord forgoes collecting the rent until interest and taxes have to be paid and something has to be done. All of these resources are finally exhausted over a period of time, and it becomes necessary for these people, who have never before been in want, to go on assistance.<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"Lester V. Chandler, America\u2019s Greatest Depression, 1929\u20131941 (New York: Harper &amp; Row, 1970), 41.\" id=\"return-footnote-277-1\" href=\"#footnote-277-1\" aria-label=\"Footnote 1\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These most desperate Americans, the chronically unemployed, encamped on public or marginal lands in \u201cHoovervilles,\u201d spontaneous shantytowns that dotted America\u2019s cities, depending on bread lines and street-corner peddling. One\u00a0doctor recalled that \u201cevery day \u2026\u00a0someone would faint on a streetcar. They\u2019d bring him in, and they wouldn\u2019t ask any questions.\u2026\u00a0they knew what it was. Hunger.\u201d<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (New York: New Press, 2000), 20\u201321.\" id=\"return-footnote-277-2\" href=\"#footnote-277-2\" aria-label=\"Footnote 2\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[2]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23203132\/CNX_History_25_01_Elderly.jpg\" alt=\"A photograph shows an elderly destitute man leaning against a vacant storefront in San Francisco, California. The window is covered with signs indicating various properties that are \u201cto lease.\u201d\" width=\"390\" height=\"377\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 2.<\/strong> Because there was no infrastructure to support them should they become unemployed or destitute, the elderly were extremely vulnerable during the Great Depression. As the depression continued, the results of this tenuous situation became more evident, as shown in this photo of a vacant storefront in San Francisco, captured by Dorothea Lange in 1935.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Family Life and Childhood<\/h2>\n<p id=\"fs-idm26308688\">The hardships of the Great Depression threw family life into disarray. Both marriage and birth rates declined in the decade after the crash. The most vulnerable members of society\u2014children, women, minorities, and the working class\u2014struggled the most. Children, in particular, felt the brunt of poverty. Parents often sent children out to beg for food at restaurants and stores to save themselves from the disgrace of begging. Many children dropped out of school, and even fewer went to college. By one estimate, as many as 200,000 children moved about the country as vagrants due to familial disintegration. Childhood, as it had existed in the prosperous twenties, was over.<\/p>\n<p>Many children in coastal cities would roam the docks in search of spoiled vegetables to bring home. Elsewhere, children begged at the doors of more well-off neighbors, hoping for stale bread, table scraps, or raw potato peelings. Said one childhood survivor of the Great Depression, \u201cYou get used to hunger. After the first few days it doesn\u2019t even hurt; you just get weak.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And yet, for many children living in rural areas where the affluence of the previous decade was not fully developed, the Depression was not viewed as a great challenge. School continued. Play was simple and enjoyable. Families adapted by growing their gardens, canning, and preserving, and wasting little food. Home-sewn clothing became the norm as the decade progressed, as did creative methods of shoe repair, often utilizing at-hand materials such as cardboard. Yet, one always knew of stories of the \u201cother\u201d families who suffered more, including those living in cardboard boxes or caves.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 1rem; text-align: initial;\">By the time Hoover left office in 1933, the poor survived not on relief efforts, but because they had learned to be poor. A family with little food would stay in bed to save fuel and avoid burning calories. People began eating parts of animals that had previously been considered waste. They scavenged for scrap wood to burn in the furnace, and when electricity was turned off, it was not uncommon to try and tap into a neighbor\u2019s wire. Family members swapped clothes; sisters might take turns going to church in the one dress they owned. As one girl in a mountain town told her teacher, who had said to go home and get food, \u201cI can\u2019t. It\u2019s my sister\u2019s turn to eat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"assessment_practice_7efa6894-42aa-4f13-81e4-083eed878bbd\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/7efa6894-42aa-4f13-81e4-083eed878bbd?iframe_resize_id=assessment_practice_id_7efa6894-42aa-4f13-81e4-083eed878bbd\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:300px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"assessment_practice_db4d2425-a4a6-4bce-bf0c-a5b87f166b50\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/db4d2425-a4a6-4bce-bf0c-a5b87f166b50?iframe_resize_id=assessment_practice_id_db4d2425-a4a6-4bce-bf0c-a5b87f166b50\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:300px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\n<h3>Link to learning<\/h3>\n<p>For his book on the Great Depression, <em data-effect=\"italics\">Hard Times<\/em>, author Studs Terkel interviewed hundreds of Americans from across the country. He subsequently selected over seventy interviews to air on a radio show that was based in Chicago. Visit <a href=\"http:\/\/studsterkel.matrix.msu.edu\/results.php?keywords=depression&amp;startdate=&amp;enddate=&amp;title=&amp;summary=&amp;nameI=&amp;gallery=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Studs Terkel: Conversations with America<\/a> to listen to those interviews, during which participants reflect on their personal hardships as well as on national events during the Great Depression.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"fs-idp35729888\" data-depth=\"1\">\n<div style=\"width: 658px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.loc.gov\/service\/pnp\/ppmsca\/58200\/58266r.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;Forgotten women,&quot; unemployed and single, in job demand parade\" width=\"648\" height=\"539\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 3.<\/strong>\u00a0Unemployed, single women protest in New York in 1933 demanding job priority over married women who they claimed did not need the income because they had spousal support.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h3>Women in the Workforce<\/h3>\n<p>American views about family structure meant that women suffered disproportionately from the Depression.\u00a0Since the start of the twentieth century, single women had increasingly joined the workforce, but married women, Americans were likely to believe, only took a job because they wanted to and not because they had to. Once the Depression came, employers were therefore less likely to hire married women and more likely to dismiss those they already employed.<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"Claudia Dale Goldin, Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 34.\" id=\"return-footnote-277-3\" href=\"#footnote-277-3\" aria-label=\"Footnote 3\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[3]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p>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<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"Mrs. M. H. A. to Eleanor Roosevelt, June 14, 1934, in Robert S. McElvaine, ed., Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 54\u201355.\" id=\"return-footnote-277-4\" href=\"#footnote-277-4\" aria-label=\"Footnote 4\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[4]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Women on their own and without regular work suffered a greater threat of sexual violence than their male counterparts; accounts of such women suggest they depended on each other for protection.<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"William H. Chafe, The Paradox of Change: American Women in the 20th Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 71.\" id=\"return-footnote-277-5\" href=\"#footnote-277-5\" aria-label=\"Footnote 5\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[5]<\/sup><\/a>Some wives and mothers sought employment to make ends meet, an undertaking that was often met with strong resistance from husbands and potential employers. Many men derided and criticized women who worked, feeling that jobs should go to unemployed men. Some campaigned to keep companies from hiring married women, and an increasing number of school districts expanded the long-held practice of banning the hiring of married female teachers.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the pushback, women entered the workforce in increasing numbers, from ten million at the start of the Depression to nearly thirteen million by the end of the 1930s. This increase took place in spite of the twenty-six states that passed a variety of laws to prohibit the employment of married women. Several women found employment in the emerging &#8220;<span class=\"no-emphasis\" data-type=\"term\">pink-collar&#8221;<\/span> occupations, or those viewed as traditional women\u2019s work, such as telephone operators, social workers, and secretaries. Others took jobs as maids and house cleaners, working for those fortunate few who had maintained their wealth.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\n<h3>Watch It<\/h3>\n<p>In this video, two individuals,\u00a0Dorothy Womble and William Hague, who survived the Great Depression as children recall the challenges their families faced and the extent of the widespread poverty they saw around them.<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/plugin.3playmedia.com\/show?mf=8197318&amp;p3sdk_version=1.10.1&amp;p=20361&amp;pt=375&amp;video_id=aPi9A07HqWg&amp;video_target=tpm-plugin-tx76auj0-aPi9A07HqWg\" width=\"800px\" height=\"450px\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0px\" marginheight=\"0px\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\">You can view the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/course-building.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/US+history+II\/DiscussingTheGreatDepression.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">transcript for \u201cDiscussing the Great Depression\u201d here (opens in new window)<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h2>&#8220;The Deserving Poor&#8221; and Relief Efforts<\/h2>\n<p>As the effects of the Great Depression worsened, wealthier Americans had particular concern for <strong>the deserving poor<\/strong>\u2014those who had lost their money due to no fault of their own and thereby deserved assistance. This concept gained greater attention beginning in the Progressive Era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when early social reformers sought to improve the quality of life for all Americans by addressing the poverty that was becoming more prevalent, particularly in emerging urban areas. By the time of the Great Depression, social reformers and humanitarian agencies had determined that the \u201cdeserving poor\u201d belonged to a different category from those who had speculated and lost. However, the sheer volume of Americans who fell into this group meant that charitable assistance could not begin to reach them all. Some fifteen million \u201cdeserving poor,\u201d or a full one-third of the labor force, were struggling by 1932. The country had no mechanism or system in place to help so many; however, Hoover remained adamant that such relief should rest in the hands of private agencies and volunteers, not with the federal government.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23203133\/CNX_History_25_01_Mission.jpg\" alt=\"A photograph shows a line of men being served soup in front of St. Peter\u2019s Mission in New York City.\" width=\"390\" height=\"342\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 4.<\/strong> In the early 1930s, without significant government relief programs, many people in urban centers relied on private agencies for assistance. In New York City, St. Peter\u2019s Mission distributed bread, soup, and canned goods to large numbers of the unemployed and others in need.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"fs-idm3476384\">Unable to receive aid from the federal government, Americans turned to private charities, churches, synagogues, and other religious organizations, as well as to state-level assistance. But these organizations were not prepared to deal with the scope of the problem. Like for-profit enterprises, private aid organizations also showed declining assets during the Depression, with fewer Americans possessing the ability to donate. Likewise, state governments were particularly ill-equipped. Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first to institute a Department of Welfare in New York in 1929. City governments had equally little to offer. In New York City in 1932, family allowances were $2.39 per week, and only one-half of the families who qualified actually received them. In Detroit, allowances fell to fifteen cents a day per person, and eventually ran out completely. As one Detroit city official put it in 1932,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Many essential public services have been reduced beyond the minimum point absolutely essential to the health and safety of the city.\u2026 The salaries of city employees have been twice reduced \u2026\u00a0and hundreds of faithful employees \u2026\u00a0have been furloughed. Thus has the city borrowed from its own future welfare to keep its unemployed on the barest subsistence levels.\u2026 A wage work plan which had supported 11,000 families collapsed last month because the city was unable to find funds to pay these unemployed\u2014men who wished to earn their own support. For the coming year, Detroit can see no possibility of preventing wide-spread hunger and slow starvation through its own unaided resources.<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"Chandler, America\u2019s Greatest Depression, 44.\" id=\"return-footnote-277-6\" href=\"#footnote-277-6\" aria-label=\"Footnote 6\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[6]<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In most cases, relief was only in the form of food and fuel; organizations provided nothing in the way of rent, shelter, medical care, clothing, or other necessities. There was no infrastructure to support the elderly, who were the most vulnerable, and this population largely depended on their adult children to support them, adding to families\u2019 burdens.<\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idm8674224\">During this time, local community groups, such as police and teachers, worked to help the neediest. New York City police, for example, began contributing 1 percent of their salaries to start a food fund that was geared to help those found starving on the streets. In 1932, New York City schoolteachers also joined forces to try to help; they contributed as much as $250,000 per month from their own salaries to help needy children. Chicago teachers did the same, feeding some eleven thousand students out of their own pockets in 1931, despite the fact that many of them had not been paid a salary in months. These noble efforts, however, failed to fully address the level of desperation that the American public was facing.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"assessment_practice_581c5202-8337-4d5d-9a0e-9cbd81b6b311\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/581c5202-8337-4d5d-9a0e-9cbd81b6b311?iframe_resize_id=assessment_practice_id_581c5202-8337-4d5d-9a0e-9cbd81b6b311\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:300px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<section>\n<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\n<h3>Glossary<\/h3>\n<p><strong>the deserving poor<\/strong>: those who had lost their money through no fault of their own\u00a0but were unable to work because of circumstances. They were considered more &#8220;deserving&#8221; of assistance than the &#8220;undeserving poor&#8221; who were seen by society as having behaved recklessly, perhaps overindulging in speculation, or who were considered simply lazy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\t\t\t <section class=\"citations-section\" role=\"contentinfo\">\n\t\t\t <h3>Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t <div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <div id=\"citation-list-277\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <div class=\"licensing\"><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Original<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>Modification, adaptation, and original content. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Caileigh Abente for Lumen Learning. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Lumen Learning. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Shared previously<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>US History. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: OpenStax. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history\">http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Access for free at https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/1-introduction<\/li><li>US Unemployment from 1910-1960. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Pharexia. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Wikimedia Commons. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:US_Unemployment_from_1910-1960.svg\">https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:US_Unemployment_from_1910-1960.svg<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em><\/li><li>The Great Depression. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: The American Yawp. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/text\/23-the-great-depression\/\">https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/text\/23-the-great-depression\/<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">All rights reserved content<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>Why Flour Sacks During The Great Depression Were So Important. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Winkgo. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UDbtHeyIYtI&#038;t=90s\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UDbtHeyIYtI&#038;t=90s<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em>All Rights Reserved<\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Standard YouTube License<\/li><li>Discussing the Great Depression. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: The Wall Street Journal. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aPi9A07HqWg\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aPi9A07HqWg<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em>Other<\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Standard YouTube License<\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">Public domain content<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>Forgotten women: unemployed and single, in job demand parade. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Library of Congress. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/loc.gov\/pictures\/resource\/ppmsca.58266\/\">http:\/\/loc.gov\/pictures\/resource\/ppmsca.58266\/<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/about\/pdm\">Public Domain: No Known Copyright<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t <\/section><hr class=\"before-footnotes clear\" \/><div class=\"footnotes\"><ol><li id=\"footnote-277-1\">Lester V. Chandler, America\u2019s Greatest Depression, 1929\u20131941 (New York: Harper &amp; Row, 1970), 41. <a href=\"#return-footnote-277-1\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 1\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><li id=\"footnote-277-2\">Studs Terkel,<em> Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression<\/em> (New York: New Press, 2000), 20\u201321. <a href=\"#return-footnote-277-2\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 2\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><li id=\"footnote-277-3\">Claudia Dale Goldin, Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 34. <a href=\"#return-footnote-277-3\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 3\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><li id=\"footnote-277-4\">Mrs. M. H. A. to Eleanor Roosevelt, June 14, 1934, in Robert S. McElvaine, ed., <em>Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man<\/em> (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 54\u201355. <a href=\"#return-footnote-277-4\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 4\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><li id=\"footnote-277-5\">William H. Chafe, The Paradox of Change: American Women in the 20th Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 71. <a href=\"#return-footnote-277-5\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 5\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><li id=\"footnote-277-6\">Chandler, <em>America\u2019s Greatest Depression<\/em>, 44. <a href=\"#return-footnote-277-6\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 6\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"author":19,"menu_order":10,"template":"","meta":{"_candela_citation":"[{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"US History\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"OpenStax\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by\",\"license_terms\":\"Access for free at https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/1-introduction\"},{\"type\":\"copyrighted_video\",\"description\":\"Why Flour Sacks During The Great Depression Were So Important\",\"author\":\"Winkgo\",\"organization\":\"\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UDbtHeyIYtI&t=90s\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"arr\",\"license_terms\":\"Standard YouTube License\"},{\"type\":\"original\",\"description\":\"Modification, adaptation, and original content\",\"author\":\"Caileigh Abente for Lumen Learning\",\"organization\":\"Lumen Learning\",\"url\":\"\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by-sa\",\"license_terms\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"US Unemployment from 1910-1960\",\"author\":\"Pharexia\",\"organization\":\"Wikimedia Commons\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:US_Unemployment_from_1910-1960.svg\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by\",\"license_terms\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"The Great Depression\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"The American Yawp\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/text\/23-the-great-depression\/\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by-sa\",\"license_terms\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"copyrighted_video\",\"description\":\"Discussing the Great Depression\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"The Wall Street Journal\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aPi9A07HqWg\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"other\",\"license_terms\":\"Standard YouTube License\"},{\"type\":\"pd\",\"description\":\"Forgotten women: unemployed and single, in job demand parade\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"Library of Congress\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/loc.gov\/pictures\/resource\/ppmsca.58266\/\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"pd\",\"license_terms\":\"\"}]","CANDELA_OUTCOMES_GUID":"786bbefe-027c-479e-a6fc-dbbdc76e6ef1,b22351b5-8775-498f-a745-cf02e998866c,f3cfd726-4898-450a-9423-407e55dccae5","pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-277","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":258,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"version-history":[{"count":42,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9511,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/277\/revisions\/9511"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/258"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/277\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}