What was life like in the early years of the depression?
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Figure false: An Unemployed Youth
Figure false: Joblessness was frightening and humiliating. Brought up to believe that if you worked hard, you got ahead, the unemployed had difficulty seeing failure to find work as anything other than personal failure. We can only imagine this young man’s story. Utterly alone, sitting on a bench that might be his bed, his head in his hands, he looks emotionally battered and perhaps defeated. Library of Congress.
IN 1930, SUFFERING on a massive scale set in. Men and women hollow-eyed with hunger grew increasingly bewildered and angry in the face of cruel contradictions. They saw agricultural surpluses pile up in the countryside and knew that their children were going to bed hungry. They saw factories standing idle, yet they knew that they and millions of others were willing to work. The gap between the American people and leaders who failed to resolve these contradictions widened as the depression deepened. By 1932, America’s economic problems had created a dangerous social and political crisis.
CHRONOLOGY
1931
- – Scottsboro Boys are arrested.
- – Harlan County, Kentucky, coal strike.
1932
- – River Rouge factory demonstration.
- – National Farmers’ Holiday Association is formed.