Your first post will be worth a quiz grade and is due on Thursday. Your journal entry needs to be posted under your name and needs to be the equivalent of 1 page in length. Here is the question:
You are an average American living through the Great Depression. Choose an age, location, job (or unemployment), identity, etc. Describe life in the Great Depression for YOU by using specific evidence and policies in your entries.
Chapter 1
ReplyDeleteTimes are hard for me as a kid living in New York City now a days. Before, my parents would be so happy and well off. My father was a financer in the stock market and my mom always stayed home, cleaning the house and making dinner for the family with my sister, Tammy. Tammy is my younger sister that is the sweetest thing ever, even though at times she gets on my nerves. I worked in a candyshop where I just sat behind the counter and served drinks and candy for all the kids at my school. The money that I make for myself is to save for college, since my father wanted me to save money for anything that I wanted to do. My father even gave me my own piggy bank for me to put my earnings in there and started me off with 5 dollars in the bank. My father even started invested in the stock market and we became even more prosperious than ever before! Life was great in the 1920's, until that one day, when my father came home in a slump, so upset as he sulked on the couch. I asked him what was wrong and he turned on the radio, with news of the stock market crashing more and more. My mother rushed to the bank to take everything out and my father continue to sit on the couch in a sadden haze. Just looking at my father's face, I knew that our lives were about to change dramatically.
Chapter 2
During the Great Depression, times were rougher than ever. More and more people were homeless and service at my job became even more barren. After business was unsuccessful, my boss asked me to quit my job, since he could no longer afford to keep me, and December of 1929 was the last month that I worked. Herbert Hoover was in the news, people talking about how bad of a president he was and how he caused the crash. But I don't believe them. I don't think that the Great Depression was his fault. However, the only thing that Hoover passed was the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, (RFC), in which the government lended money to the banks. This became a big failure for him, since big industries only benefitted from this policy and people criticized him more for his RFC Act. The more I walk on the street, the more people that I saw living in cardboard communities, called Hoovervilles, having hate signs for President Hoover, and babies crying from starvation. My father tried so hard to find a job, along with my mother, as we could no longer afford our house and started lining up for free food in the soup kitchen 6 blocks away. I sacrificed all the money I saved in my piggy bank, $100, to give my parents so they can pay the bills. I know that I might never get my money back, but I know that my family needed it more than I did.
TBC
The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was created in 1932 during the administration of president Hoover. However, like Jara mentioned before, only the giant corporations were the ones who were actually benefited by this policy. Because of that, the RFC policy became one of the many things people used to criticize Herbert Hoover’s presidency. Even though this policy did not do many things for the people during the Great Depression, the RFC was able to accomplish many great things under the New Deal Administrations. At first it only lent money to big businesses, but under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency, this policy’s achievements were much greater. This policy helped with the construction and the operation of war plants and it made loans to foreign governments. During WWII, the RFC intended to be an independent corporation and not interfere with the government, but as this started to happen, people started to dislike it. People were seeking a government with limited involvement in the economy; therefore the RFC had to be declared unconstitutional in 1952. However, some of the RFC remaining and successful functions were given to other agencies to keep doing it.
DeleteA Hooverville or shantytown was a large area built for homeless, unemployed, and desperate people during the early 1930's of the Great Depression. Thousands of people resorted to this due to it being one of the only options to survive. There was such an astonishing amount of people losing their homes, jobs, and money in general that they had no where to go, so these areas were built to shelter the many that were deemed “homeless”. The term “Hoover”ville comes from the president at the time, Herbert Hoover, to emphasize that the crisis was all the Republican party, and Hoover’s fault for the state everyone was in. The number of people who resorted to living in these run-down empty places is unknown, because nearly no documentation was ever kept. However the people populating this area did end up establishing illegitimate mayors, and people in control in order for some form of order. Seattle was one of the very few fortunate enough to keep some documentation on their “Hoovervilles”. Thousands of single room houses were made which were crammed with as many people as a family was able to fit. I thought that it would make sense for many people to institute a place for all these homeless families to where they can live amongst others in an orderly fashion, rather than scattered around the country fighting each other for spots to live or get food.
DeleteAs the juggernaut stated there were many little "villages" like this throughout the country. Places where people were living in card board boxes and sleeping on newspaper. One of the most famous of these little villages was central park in New York. I found this very interesting to see that this beautiful park was filled with thousands of cardboard shanties and boxes that poeple acutally lived in. This catches my attention because New York today is a symbol of power, pride, and the strength of our nation. This city that showed progress and was the door mat for immigrants to the new world was not nothing more than a slum. As depressing as this is, I also however believe that these "Hoovervilles" said alot about the people that lived in this country. People would not give up and would not let this depression take them down. These people had no jobs, money , or food and yet they still do what they can to stay together and to stick it out untill the end. These "Hoovervilles" over all were a great example of how devistating this depression actually was.
DeleteI could find that many pictures unified onto one specific website, so i found a youtube video which shows some good detail
Deletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPQxVmHWsNY
-(This is Cristee BY THE WAY!)
ReplyDeleteJune 18, 1930
Today's my birthday! I'm finally 8! I'm Monte Wittner and I live in NYC with my parents. Mama and Pa told me they had to give me gift later, I mean I was bummed to hear that in the morning, but it's okay -- they promised, and I believe them. I dug up this little journal Mama gave me for Christmas last year and decided to record the things going on. America seemed to be going through a nationwide Depression? I overheard Pa saying something was going awfully wrong in our country. He said just from this year, there were nearly 3 million people unemployed. 3 MILLION! I mean I can't even count that high! He named person after person that was laid off from his job. Mr. President Hoover said he'd start taking 2 billion dollars to start projects to fix the depression and had confidence that this Depression would soon come to an end, Mama didn't seem to agree that these would help as she cried. I didn't like seeing her cry... Today was my birthday, and I wasn't quite happy.
August 2, 1932
It's been a while since I've written in this journal. It's been a while since I've had any time to myself at all really. I'm only 10 and working just as hard as a grown man would in a dirty factory. It's really unfair. I told Mama and Pa I didn't like it, they didn't either, but they told me we had no other choice if we wanted to survive. We hadn't had a nice cooked meal in the longest time, and I'm becoming used to hunger and the growling of my empty stomach. Oh I wish we could have those homecooked huge meals we used to have every Thanksgiving. No one comes over anymore to celebrate, no one has the time and no one has the money. Everyone's a workaholic now trying to work for the least bit of money. With all three of us working, we barely have enough to buy bread. Milk and meat was definitely out of the question as milk consumption declined rapidly day by day. It was just too expensive for any of us to afford. I just wanted to enjoy my life again. I wanted games. I wanted fun. But that wasn't possible anymore. Even my cousin, Bob who only turned 8 the other day, began working at a local factory. Can you imagine? He was a little boy. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm sick and tired of all this working. I wish I could just run away like Hank and Luke and become Box Car Kids living on the railroads, but my family needs me.
March 11, 1933
This year was already beginning off tougher than the others. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse. The prices of goods were continuing to be raised and now it was almost impossible to even get a meal for a single day. It's getting real hard. The Federal Reserve did do its best in trying to keep prices reasonable and interest down so that not only do us Americans, but for other nations so goods could be sold and bought rather than overpriced and overproduced again.
Yesterday, Mama and Pa got into the biggest argument. Mama said something in anger and said that she was tired of this and left. She hasn't returned and I'm quite concerned. I heard some of the kids at the factory's parents had split up because they couldn't stand it anymore, but getting divorced wasn't possible for they couldn't afford to leave anything they owned. People couldn't even get married anymore, they needed to worry about getting money just to survive on their own. Any sense of happiness had already vanished, I'm beginning to see no hope.
"Mama and Pa told me they had to give me gift later, I mean I was bummed to hear that in the morning, but it's okay -- they promised," This line really stood out to me in the beginning of this journal because I thought it carried a lot of weight. This not only showed how the little things in life were bad in the depression but it also showed how it effected everyone. This child,as any child on they're birthday would, wanted a present so badly ! She asked her parents and they promised that they would come up with something for her. However parents had no money to spend and little children like this went without birthday presents all the time, without food all the time. Also letting a child down can be one of the absolute worst feelings for a parent, who never wishes to upset they're children. But through out this depression parents could not provide for themselves, let alone they're children and they stress and embarrassment rose. This line also stuck out to me because at a time like that, a bowl of rice could be just as good of a birthday present as a doll. Many fathers couldnt stand the fact that they could not provide for their children and they're pride over came, just like we see in this case. Simple promises like the one seen in this quote were broken all the time during the depression. "I promise I will find a job" "I promise I will get you food tomorrow" many of these were not and could not be followed through. It was not becase these parents did not want to, it was sadly because very little of them actually could. This depression effected the big and little things in life and hurt children and adults alike. Even birthdays could no longer be joyous. -TheProfessor out
DeleteThe following post and more can be found in this link: http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/snprelief1.htm I highly suggest reading the whole thing.
DeleteThe Great Depression’s bangs rang loud and clear for mostly everyone in America. It affected people in so many ways. In Cristee’s journal entry, Monte wrote about her parents getting a divorce. This was very common during the Great Depression. The costs of the legal fees of marriage were too high for a family to support. Because of the lack of marriage, the birth rate in America dropped under the replacement level for the first time in the country’s history. The depression managed to stress out people even more with side effects like this. However, left to fend on their own without a husband, women became more independent, solidifying the 19th amendment.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJune 12, 1933
ReplyDeleteWe found out Mama's whereabouts after months... She was found in a sewer pipe where about 50 other homeless people resided. They were barely holding on and although Hoover said, "Nobody is actually starving. The hoboes are better fed than they have ever been.", he was false. President Hoover was taking the matter too lightly for 110 lives were already taken caused by just hunger. One of those lives being my mother. My birthday is in 6 days. What a perfect birthday gift. America was plummetting and I see no end to this. Cameroon even pitied us and had to send over some money.
~Love you Mama. R.I.P.
July 15, 1933
National Industrial Recovery Act was passed this past June. It set maximum hours of labor, minimum wages, and more right for labor union members. This was great! .. in the beginning at least. We weren't as overworked, and there was a minimum wage to be met for every worker so it made sure they were being paid. But it soon deemed to be unconstitutional. It was also ineffective because the wages were higher leading to higher prices further leading to the halt of consumers buying. This would then again lead to overproduction, too many products with no one to buy.
Federal Securities Act was passed in May. This regulated the stock market and its purchasing. It required full disclosure of information on stocks so that there were no secrets in the stock market that would lead to another corruption and crash. We don't need another one in our country.
I'm glad our country is finally moving somewhat forward. Or at least trying to, in that matter.
September 9, 1938
Breaking news! The Fair Labor Standards Act was passed which banned child labor and set a minimum wage. After all these years, poor children were put to rest. I'm already 16 and worked my butt off for these past miserable 8 years alongside with my Pa, but I'm glad the upcoming children have an opportunity to enjoy their childhood where they belong and not in dirty factories. They finally passed what was trying to be accomplished during the progressive era. The Laissez Faire obviously was not working, the government needed to do something about it. Leaving it up to the big businesses was the reason for this huge depression.
http://nccgreatdepression.wikispaces.com/file/view/Arkansas-Children.gif/265501774/612x406/Arkansas-Children.gif
The policy that stuck out to me in this entry was the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which was very effective in creating reforms to benefit workers. Although it had a fault, which was the exclusion of black, Mexican American, and female workers from its benefits, the law managed to establish standards for minimum wage and maximum hours, and it even addressed the issue of child labor, banning children under 16 from working. This entry portrayed the reality child labor very well. Because of the depression, the narrator, at the young age of 10, had to begin difficult factory work to help support his family. Even his 8-year-old cousin did the same. During the depression, adults who managed to keep their jobs suffered lower wages because businesses struggled to pay their employees, so it was common for a whole family to work to survive. Children, as a result, suffered. For example, in city sweatshops, children as young as five worked for about 14 hours a day for as little as three cents an hour.
Deletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i3GLi9HrB0&noredirect=1
This video above captures the Child Labor Amendment issue of the 1930s. Since Calvin Coolidge’s presidency, the idea of the government regulating child labor was very controversial. In 1924, under Coolidge, Congress passed an amendment which would grant the government the power to regulate child labor, but only five states ratified it, and over 30 employers--who feared losing cheap labor--rejected it. There were endless reasons behind the objections toward the amendment, including the Conservatives’ fear that it would give the government too much power, infringe on states’ rights, and possibly lead to a fascist dictatorship. However, those who supported the amendment, like the Liberals, acknowledged the fact that children were not being protected in dangerous working environments. However, during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, the New Deal, which called for reform in many areas to restore the economy, encouraged more states to ratify the amendment. Despite some opposition, it was his push to have this amendment ratified that inspired the regulation of child labor in laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
For some reason, reading this made me want things to get better and everything to improve overall. The little one that had been posting was going through a lot of problems at home. The very first thing that I remember was that the father came home after a wonderful, fairytale life in the Roaring 20’s to a terrible slump and into a depression along with the rest of America. With the Federal Securities Act, or the Securities Act of 1933, being passed in May of that year, people could begin to see that there were improvements being made. Progress was being made, no matter how slow. With the Securities Act of 1933, like it was posted, it required full disclosure of information on stocks to avoid corruption and regulated the stock market. It was there to prohibit fraud and proved as one of the stepping stones to improvement by existing as a “truth in securities”, a constitutional, and a beneficial act.
DeleteLooking at how the Securities Act of 1933 showed that violation of the requirements and needs within the registration that is the Securities Act could potentially lead to civil liability. In addition to civil liability being forced, it potentially was able to be led to liability under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as well. With the Exchange Act, the government was even stronger and stricter in its upholding authority against deceit within the market. Instead of an act giving broad protection, the Security Exchange Act of 1934 allowed for specific prohibition against certain demeanor in the public powers.
http://www.sec.gov/about/laws.shtml#secact1933
The policy of the national industrial recovery act stuck out the most to me. I had found a few videos from YouTube this one wasn't as bad. I'll post it before I comment:
Deletehttp://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=US#/watch?v=_xjosM-KEvk
(hopefully this one will come up)
anyway the policy wa authorize the president at the time ability to regulate and even allow monopolies or anything that had been previously ruled out in hopes to get the economy going again. The act was also said to help unions but often left labor unions unsettled. The act brought another into effect. It's argued this act could have been better
(Sam)
DeleteAside from the interpretation of child labor, another key moment that stuck out to me in this passage was Mama’s death. After reading about how she dies in a sewer, I questioned the typical life to death situations of people during the depression. Therefore, I tackled the mortality rate of the Great Depression and the recessions of 1921 and 1938. I received shocking results:
http://www.physorg.com/news173371667.html
After reading the information from various sites, it became clear that the mortality rate actually decreased, meaning that more death was not due to the struggling economy and suffering families. I found this to be shocking because – as Cristee had mentioned – over 110 deaths were caused by hunger. But after giving it some thought, I realized that these deaths could have substituted for the deaths caused by motor vehicle accidents in the 1920’s or something to that effect. Recession could actually benefit people’s lives in that sense. However, the study presented on this site shows an analysis of recession in relation to mortality rate, not accounting for the individual lives of people who lost their jobs. Mama’s death in this passage was certainly caused by hunger and struggle. But as a whole, the recession actually helped increase life spans. This could be due to the fact that people who either lost their jobs or worked less shifts were not put to work as roughly as they would be in a time of booming economics. When there is an expansion, people work long shifts in which employers are very demanding. During the Great Depression, people worked less and were not as physically strained, allowing for less harm to their health.
Overall, I just found this information to be shocking. One would expect that death was everywhere during the thirties. In reality, yes, death was common in Hoovervilles. But what was even more common than death was simply hardship. So many people suffered and struggled to make ends meet, but these difficulties did not always lead to loss of life. Of course, deaths like the one Cristee portrays here were very evident due to sickness and strife. However, these fatalities were, in some respect, few and far in between.
As of right now I am a sixty five year old woman and I can still remember clear as day the time when the Great Depression occurred. To anyone who is reading this I will now take you back to that time:
ReplyDeleteIt was October 29, 1929 when the stock market crashed. I was a thirty six year old with six children, two boys that were nine and ten and four girls. Two newborn twins and the other two were seven and eight. I technically did not have a job, my job was to take care and raise our children. My husband, James worked at a shoe factory. During this time women did not really work much therefore we were seen as the housewives. The only income that was coming in was from my husband.
That same day October 29th, James came home worried. I simply told him not to worry. Two weeks later he came home and said to me "I am now jobless". That man did not know what to do with himself. I once again told him not to worry about it. I was so sure he was going to find another job. A month passed by and James still did not have a job. Our family was on the road to starvation. We had survived that one month with money that James had saved up. The president at the time was Herbert Hoover and he was not helping the country and its people at all, which is why we all blamed him for it.
By 1930, four million Americans were unemployed. This was a serious issue and change needed to happen as soon as possible. Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office in 1932. He created a program called the New Deal that was to combat the Great Depression. It focused on reducing unemployment, assisting businesses and agriculture, regulating banking and the stock market, and provided security for the needy, elderly, and disabled. This was awesome news for the country.
Meanwhile this was happening, our family was barely surviving. James was looking for jobs so desperately. James and I then agreed to have our children take responsibility and find a job to help us out. Our two boys were able to find a job each and James was not able to get one. What our boys were making was what we were living out of. It seems terrible to have your children working and making money for you but our financial struggle gave us no other decision. I couldn’t go out to work because I had two newborns to raise and I knew James was not going to be able to do it on his own. The money our boys were making was not enough for us to pay our mortgage. We were about to lose out home when the Home Owners' Loan Corporation was passed. This refinanced mortgages on non-farm homes. We were able to keep our home but we still needed more money to keep raising a family of eight.
James was now emotionally drained by everything. He felt like a failure because he had his two kids working to keep us alive and he couldn't even get a job. Things began to change when the Civil Works Administration was passed. This program gave temporary jobs to people during the winter, which was the cruelest time on the year. James now had a temporary job and that was helping us with our financial burdens.
The one program I remember that greatly helped us was the Public Works Administration. It provided James with a long term job that included constructing public building, highways and parkways. With this and all of the other programs that were also passed we were able to manage to get passed the Great Depression. We were having three incomes in our household and that was enough to have food, clothes and a shelter.
As time passed I got a job and I was helping James with the money issues and our boys were old enough to work therefore were not struggling to get by. We managed our money wisely and saved some for the future. We did not know if another depression was going to happen again. The Great Depression changed everyone's lives in America. Personally it made me appreciate everything in life. After the great Depression, America had a great recovery from it.
The Public Works Administration (PWA) was a governmental agency that focused on long-term recovery. This program was very effective as it not only helped the nation recover industrially, but it also provided unemployment relief. For instance, it spent about $4 billion on projects like the construction of public buildings, dams, bridges, highways, parkways, and other structures like the Lincoln Tunnel--now used by millions of cars yearly--which required the employment of numerous workers. Construction of these projects that remain today also include the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in the state of Washington, which was built to provide hydroelectric power and irrigation. For this project in particular, although it was more effective with providing jobs for those in need, the government did not consider it necessary in terms of its overall purpose at the time of its construction. For example, because the region lacked industry, it did not have the market to use the electrical power produced by the dam. Plus, the government was trying to reduce farm surpluses, and irrigating farmlands would not help the cause. Interestingly enough, it was not until World War II and the years that followed that the dam was extremely useful because it provided electrical power as well as water for many people who finally needed it. This entry accurately expresses the benefits that the PWA provided, especially for workers. At a time of financial struggle during the depression, the narrator expresses the relief her family felt when her husband finally found a long-term job to support them. This was an improvement from the temporary, short-term jobs he was initially for provided by the Civil Works Administration.
DeleteWell to take where liz left off , The policy that stuck out most to me would be the civil works administration . In my opinion it was very successful and effective for the time period and situation. yes I agree with Liz being that the policy was short term but it allowed people to get on there feet by supplying jobs. At the time people needed a quick fix until something more long term could come along.
DeleteConsidering that Luisa’s main character in the journal is a sixty five year old woman, I believe that I can fairly assume she falls under the elderly category during the Depression. As discussed in class, growing old meant options became scarce. Since the elderly were too old to work and generate revenue, they had the choice to either move in with their children or basically pass away, because they couldn’t afford to maintain their own house and there were no government facilitated housing arrangements to move into during that time period. The Social Securities act that soon came after finally changed that, where welfare was now an option, and money could be received through government institutions. This was such a big act that gave injured or incapable people money to basically get by, which changed everyone’s life for the better. Now the elderly could own their own house to call themselves and not have to rely on children to help them get by, and same goes with incapacitated people.
Delete**As of right now I am a sixty year old woman, and I can still remember clear as day when the Great Depression occured, I lived in Pennsylvania at the time.
ReplyDeleteIt is currently 1936 and this past decade or so has easily been the hardest years of my life. Being a farmer in Missouri with three kids and a wife to support for is extremely stressful and I’m beginning to run out of answers. It was hard enough in the start of the 20’s when the country was run by cities and factories while farmers like me, John Wayde were left in the dust. All of the fancy new machines made farming much easier and faster. Production became so fast, that all of the farmers started using these machines rather than people and it led to over production. This is when me and my family started to struggle. Not only was I affected, my wife Julia was also. She was a part time shoe maker and she made shoes for towns in the radius of where we live in Missouri. This brought a good amount of income to our family and helped supply for food and clothing. When all of these machines were out, shoes were being made faster and cheaper and my wife went quickly out of business. During the early 20’s, this big loss of income led me to borrow money and take loans from the banks to fill my voids. After 1929 when the stocks dropped, the prices of my products dropped also. All of my corn, beans, wheat and other products were virtually worthless which led me to work even harder, longer hours. I tried to produce as many products as possible to repay my debts and to supply my family, but it was impossible to do so and my increase in products fueled overproduction even more. On top of that, the Dust Bowl made it even harder to farm. The conditions were so bad and the land was so dry, it required so much extra work to make products that wouldn’t even sell for much. All of my livestock would suffer more and more every year. The government tried helping by passing laws such as the agricultural adjustment act in 1933. Their intention was to have a part of our land where we didn’t grow anything, hoping this would reduce crop surplus thus making the price go up. It seemed like a good idea, but it didn’t work as planned and was banned this year because Congress claimed it was unconstitutional. Congress just passed the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936, which paid me to plant soil-conserving plants like soybeans. At least I’m getting some money out of it so it’s better than nothing. We’ll see how this plays out, but as of now, I better get back to work and hope for the best.
ReplyDeleteI liked how Dylan demonstrated the life of a farmer during the awful depression. Farmers had been struggling with low prices on crops since the 1920s and when the stock market crashed that just made it even worse for them. The farmers had produced lots of crops in order to sell them all to try to pay their debts at the time but it all resulted in an overproduction. In response to the overproduction, Congress passed the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act in 1935. The act stated that its goal was to provide the control and prevention of soil erosion and to preserve natural resources, control floods, protect public health, public lands and relieve unemployment. The government basically paid farmers to reduce production of surplus crops in order to decrease the overall overproduction. With this act there was a lot of research involved for soil conservation. Farmers were now able to seek financial and technical support from the government. This act was big relief for farmers they were able to survive during the terrible years of the 1930’s.
Deletehttp://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_02.html
DeleteDylan’s mention of the Dust Bowl definitely highlighted the problems that farmers faced during the Great Depression. Agriculture was still a huge part of the economy considering much of the west was inhabited by farmers. The link I posted states that 100 million acres of farmland was harmed from the vast amount of dust storms. They added insult to injury to starving farmers of the Great Depression. The website has pictures of what it was like including a description of each. The 60mph dust winds definitely ravaged the land back then.
It is not talked about much in Dylan’s post, but I did see him mention that his wife was a part time shoe maker and would make shoes for the neighboring towns, but when big businesses came along people who were actually skilled workers got hit the hardest. Being that her job was no longer in use she was not able to contribute to her family anymore. Not only that but Dylan’s farmer was also about to be in financial trouble with the depression about to hit. Something very similar was happening to him, big companies were the ones who could afford to farm now. They could buy big machines and over produce crops, and if they were not bought this would not hurt the companies because they had so much money to begin with. So being that Dylan’s family was struggling as is the depression really hurt families like this. A question I wish I could ask Dylan’s farmer is if because he was over producing was he also asked to burn his crops like other families were?
DeleteMy name is Mike, and I’m here to you my story. I was just turning 18 years old when the stock market crashed on October 29, 1929. I had two younger brothers who had to be raised during that time. My parents were Emily and John Smith. They took really good cared of us. Neither my mother nor father worked at a specific job in the city. We had a farm, in Georgia, and we made money out of it by selling our crops. Everything was going well, until the economy crash.
ReplyDeleteBefore the Great Depression we used to sell our cotton at eighteen cents a pound, but as the economy crashed, we had to sell it at 6 cents a pound. And even though we lowered the prices of our cotton, no one seemed to be trying to buy anything. Many black American families, including mine, did not earn anything and this led us to be in debt. We have no money coming in, and parents still needed to raise us, specially my two little brothers. But this was not only happing to us, our neighbors were suffering too, that they even decided to move to the cities. As many people moved to the cities, many acres of land, homes and fields were being left behind and abandoned. Our family didn’t have the money to move everyone to the city, so my dad had to make the choice of leaving us and going to look for a job in the city. This was a horrible idea.
My dad told that when he got there, many jobs were not hiring, and if they were, they were only accepting white men to work there. He also told me that even the jobs that were usually performed by African Americans were now being done by white men. At that time, our president was Hoover, and he didn’t seem to be doing anything to try to better the situation, especially not for the blacks. Luckily, one day found a job at a factory, he was working there for a couple of days, but then he was fired. The depression had worsened and they had told my father “Last hired, first fired”. During my father’s struggle in the city, my family and I were able to survive thanks to our crops.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in 1932, I thought he was going to help his people. Unfortunately he did, but he only helped the white people. It seemed that in order to pass New Deal policies, FDR needed to support of the southern Democrats. For that reason, not much of his first term was beneficial to us. New Deal programs were discriminating against us. The National Recovery Administration guaranteed more jobs for whites and authorized lower pay scales for blacks. The Federal Housing Authority did not want to guarantee mortgages for blacks who tried to buy houses in a neighborhood were mostly whites lived. The Civilian Conservation Corporation maintained segregated camps, and last but not least, the Social Security Act excluded those jobs that were usually performed by African Americans. By the end of Roosevelt's first term not many things were good for the blacks and this was possible by the efforts of his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt. She was aware of all the injustices that African Americans had to suffer.
However, I cannot say everything was bad. Thanks to Mrs. Roosevelt, the Work Progress Administration of 1939 was anti-racial, and many blacks, in the cities (like my father), were benefited from the work programs the WPA offered. That’s how my father found a job, and he was able to support our family. And even though he was far away from us, we love him very much, and we thanked him for all the sacrifices he made for us.
I really liked the different approach that Jesus took into this journal entry. He had chosen the life of a black family. Life was hard for the middle class and lower class Americans, I can't imagine how much harder life was for the Blacks, who were only recently accepted as a true American. Not long ago, they were being completely discriminated and looked at as property. Blacks were given rights, but definitely were still discriminated. The National Recovery Administration, Federal Housing Authority, and Civilian Conservation Corporation were all in favor of whites, which was unfair. People had high hopes as Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office, but he favored and made policies according to the white Americans, as the Southern Democrats were the reason why he was elected. With the economy's failure, all Americans except the extremely wealthy were effected, yet the whites had all the advantages.
DeleteThe National Recovery Administration was created to manage and regulate industries. As appealing as the abolishment of child labor, minimum wages, and the right for labor unions to collectively bargain with their employers, it proved not to be as effective as many hoped. Businesses under this administration were forced under the "Blue Eagle Code". Their motto was "We do our part". This meant that they do whatever their supposed to under this administration. The administration was evidently superior to these industries and could pretty much depend what they wanted as long as the businesses were still under their wing. Relating to Jesus's journal, most of the time, the NRA used their power to prevent blacks from working in any of their businesses, which was why it was very difficult for Mike's father to find a job in the city. Not only were places were packed with others trying to work to survive, they discriminated against Blacks.
Although, at the end he did mention that things were getting better with Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt on their side as she was aware of the Blacks situation. She obviously had different views from her husband and fought for the Blacks and passed the Work Progress Administration of 1939. With the WPA, Mike's father found a job because it didn't discriminate against any race and was very pro-Black for it included many benefits from its work relief programs. Federal funds were also put into black schools and hospitals in the South.
Oops, typo! Demanded* not depended.
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"The administration was evidently superior to these industries and could pretty much depend what they wanted as long as the businesses were still under their wing."
Jesus I really enjoyed this post I was very captivated. One of the things I found cool about this was how you talked about many of Mike’s neighbors moving to the cities trying to look for work in factories so that they could try and find a way to support their families. I found this interesting because during this time many people did move to the cities looking for work. The only problem they were faced with was many of the people had lost their jobs in the city also, and they were looking for manual labor too. So many people who moved from farms had to take a back seat to those who had lived in the cities. Not only is that but the guy you speak about is also African American and from what we’ve talked about in class African Americans had it hard finding work right before the depression hit, and now that it did the work that was in dire need was going to White Americans. To go along with Cristee said if it was not for Eleanor Roosevelt maybe the injustice being done to the African Americans would have gone unrealized and the 30’s could have been even worse than they were.
DeleteLexy Brown
ReplyDeleteMy name is name is Lucinda o’ Cuinn or Lucy for short, from Ireland. I am a twenty five year old, married woman getting by. Coming to America during a rough patch was not easy. But coming during the great depression is unbearable, people look down upon us immigrants, yet being a woman is a bit easier. When I had first come here at the tender age fourteen work in factories was easy, men were away at war and women were needed. In ways the depression had even given us women a chance for better living seeing as most of us had to leave home in order to take care the family. In ways it allowed us to move up social ladder even if pay was a bit slacking.
I had even taken risk in the stock market in hopes to gain money and store it away for rainy day. I had begun selling off stock when it had began hitting its peak slightly before plummeting causing more wide spread panic. I had gotten married to a man named Timothy Gates whom had been saving his money and well quite profitable, but that had not stopped me from finding work. The rough times could have gotten worse and no would have known. To say finding work I was easy would be a lie, but i managed finding work in a little school in need of a teacher. I chose anywhere, but a farm to many times had I had constantly watched people on farms try for success working their way out of debt into hopes of being financially sound, yet getting nowhere close I felt miserable for them. But I felt worse for the poor farmers who had to let go of the immigrants who worked below them, along with the African Americans who had suffered for none would hire the minorities through hatred that stilled seemed to be afloat. It seemed we as a people would be second class or bottom of the barrel always trying to crawl up. At this moment in time it was eat or be eaten, sink or swim. First class would swim because they had power and money. The second class or people at the bottom would most likely struggle, hoping and praying that we’d get lucky enough to swim and make it through the time. I just happened to be one of those people who got lucky, swimming to the top at all cost.
A very important point that Lexy brings up is African Americans in the Great Depression. Although they were no longer slaves, segregation and racism was not dying down, it was increasing, and increasing dramatically. For some African Americans, poverty had been their lifestyle for a long time before the Great Depression had begun. In rural areas, the conditions of living had become even worse than they were before the depression, people were literally living their lives in the slums. It was not a nice standard of living, not by a long shot. Until now, many African Americans had relyed on subsistnence farming to make a living, but the great depression caused many farmers to lose their propreties and jobs. It was really a hard life for them, even more so due to the fact that everyone else was struggling as well. All of history until MLK ended segregation (for the most part) African Americans have been in worse places than whites. The Great Depression made that seperation all the more obvious, especially in urban areas, where they were given the hard manual labor and little pay. They worked in railroads, mines, and places like foundries. They really had quite a nasty life during the depression.
DeleteI completely agree on what Lexy is saying about immigrant women. During that time, women, especially wives, where the ones who ran the household, the ones who had to be wise on spending their money, and the ones who had to be in charge of making sure that no food was being wasted or lost at their homes. The Great Depression was a time of insecurities, and many American families struggled to survive. Men, who were supposed to be the “rock” of the house, faced some of the worst problems of the recession, since they were the ones being fired from jobs and unable to support their families. Many of them felt useless because of this. Believe or not, this made men to become more depressed, since they had the feeling that they needed to get money quick so their wives would not have to work anymore. A wife supporting her family at the time was supernatural, however, that’s the way it had to be.
Deletehttp://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ruth-greatdepression.wav
On the link above, I hear the story of a lady name Ruth, and she lived during the Great Depression, and she talks about her experiences. She talks about how her family was supported by her mother, a woman who never gave up. She also tells us how her father felt by not being able to support his own family. However, her mother was not making enough money. Ruth had to start working, and she made eight dollars a week. But those eight dollars were not for her, they were for her mother. All this and more showed how women, even if they were immigrant or not, were able to become more active in their society and their homes, like Lexy said.
STEPHEN VAN NESS
ReplyDeleteGenerations of work and sweat and blood and tears. My family has owned this farm for a long time. I cannot believe that it’s come to this, and while I was the owner, no less. I’ve been waiting to be the owner of our farm ever since I was born, eagerly awaiting the day my father would turn over the family business into my (I believed) totally capable hands. He passed away about a year ago of tuberculosis, and I’ve been quietly running the farm with my wonderful wife Jennifer for that entire time. The boom and the bustle of the outside world did not touch us, our product was getting cheaper by the day, and we were worried that if we took a mere ten minutes out of our day for recreational purposes we would lose it all. So we worked hard for a year, and built a bubble around us. Isolated from the rest of the world, we successfully fended off the greedy businessmen who wanted to steal our property.
And then the depression hit. It destroyed us. We were no longer making enough money to keep up the farm and support our living. It seemed all was lost. Then the government started producing programs, like the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, which told us farmers what crops we should plant in order to receive money from the government. My wife and I talked it over for a little while, and decided that we were not going to buy into it. Our government should not have to force us to plant certain crops. In hindsight, I don’t know what we were thinking. That program could have saved us. Soon afterwards, the Farm Security Act was passed, to allow farmers easy access to tractors and that sort of farming equipment. It seemed brilliant and worthwhile, until we realized that large, booming farming businesses got first dibs. Soon enough, we were evicted by our landlord, and moved away from the property that had been in our family for years. I had failed my father and his father. A little while afterwards, we heard that the Rural Electrification Act had been passed, providing farms with electricity. But we were finished already. We were now among the ranks of the unemployed.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a law that Congress passed to fix the agricultural problems that surfaced after World War I. To do this, it created the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, which was to manage subsidies and raise the prices of farm products to support farmers. Farmers had been suffering for years, as mentioned in this entry. For example, it refers to the 1920s, which they did not benefit from because newer machines produced more food and lowered farmers’ prices. During the depression, conditions only worsened for them; they suffered from overproduction, for example, lacking buyers for the amount of products produced. Although the AAA was supposed to help agriculture, it was very controversial. I agree with the way the double-sided nature of the AAA was portrayed in the entry. Although the farmer and his wife decided not to go along with the AAA, it could have benefited them as the AAA set aside millions of dollars to help farmers meet their mortgage payments. On the other hand, the AAA paid farmers to restrict how many crops they could plant in order to prevent further overproduction that resulted in lower prices. This was the reason why that the farmer in the entry as well as other farmers opposed the AAA . It was this negative aspect of the AAA that even increased unemployment--something the farmer fell into despite the fact that he regretted not following the AAA. Either way, he would have risked his job. It was this controversy behind the AAA that caused the Supreme Court to rule it unconstitutional, but the program was later replaced by the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936 and later the Second Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. Another common problem farmers faced as mentioned in the entry was foreclosure. Like the farmer in the entry, many farmers could no longer support their farms and lost their land. Laws like the AAA, although there was a risk for this in particular, tried to help them pay for their mortgages, but it did not always completely fix problems. However, there were also laws like the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, which refinanced the mortgages of only non-farm homes, that did not help farmers at all. Nonetheless, when farmers lost their farms, the potential buyers tried to purchase their land at auctions but were often purposely intimidated by fellow farmers so that the farm could possibly be returned to its original owner. An auction like this is pictured in the link below.
Deletehttp://www.iptv.org/IowaPathways/artifact_detail.cfm?aid=a_000075&oid=ob_000064
At pure curiosity I had read about the rural electrification act which had been passed in 1939 and can be found to be in use today. The act was argued to come at both good timing because it brought electricity into farms ranches and rural places. Which was uncommon for electricity.
DeleteCasey O’Flannagan is the name, I am 42 years young and I have a wife and 3 beautiful children. The year is 1937 now and I can honestly tell you that the past ten years of my life have been a living hell for me. Do you know how embarrassing it was in the late 20’s to come home to my hungry family and tell them that we can’t afford dinner tonight? Having to make clothes out of bed sheets and bags, I hated myself for it but there was nothing I could do! I used to work in one of the factories in the city, it wasn’t much but it got me and my family by. It seemed as though coming to America was the right choice in 1918, and it indeed lived up to everything I imagined. At least it lived up to expectations until 1929 when the American dream turned into the American nightmare for all of us. After the stock market crashed I got fired from the factory and I have been scrapping for jobs anywhere I can. I began to go crazy, I couldn’t afford food, a house, a car, or clothes and I didn’t even see a point of living anymore. All of that changed when I heard from my buddy Rooney about this group called the Works Progress Administration, and they soon became my saviors. The WPA provided jobs for me left and right, it didn’t pay much and the jobs weren’t always good, but I was working again and the sun seemed to shine a little brighter those days. This Mr. FDR wasn’t so bad after all I suppose as he kept trying to help the people like me who were struggling, he always seemed like such a nice guy. What little money I had felt safe in the bank again after the government closed them and healed them up again, they called it the Emergency Bank Act or something like that. The president even passed a social security act that protected me and this made me feel so much safer in this country. My family was still living in a dirty apartment and food was still hard to come by, but the more I worked and the more help this FDR guy gave us, the more my family seemed to smile. My mother always told me “God helps those who help themselves” and my family and I really believed things would get better, we just had to smile and keep working our way out of it. Any little job I could pick up made me have faith in life and gave me a reason to live every day. I would not stop working until my children and wife had a feast on our table and they slept on a full stomach. With FDR behind us, America is on the rise again and getting over this terrible depression. God bless America!
ReplyDeleteThe Social Securities Act not only provide aid to immigrants, but the Social Security offered benefits to the old, the blind, the physically incapable, and the delinquent children of America. A break down of the Social Securities Act is on this video below:
Deletehttp://youtu.be/Aou5PK6_YZc
It may a little on the bad side, but it gives the information on what the Social Security Act is, what it's used for, and how it is effective even today. The Social Security Act worked because it relieved the people who suffered, from the categories above, and kept them out of poverty. It protected individuals or families from income losses due to sickness, old age, medical problems, and loss of jobs, which is why we have Social Security today.
:) Jara B.
With the Works Progress Administration in play as the most influential due to its size of participants and determination to achieve success, it affected the most lives in America compared to all of the other New Deal policies. For a famous administration as such to dig over eight million people out of unemployment, even temporarily, it proved to be a beacon of light to those without hope, such as Mr. O’Flannagan. He was desperate and in a terrible state—he hadn’t enough money to pay for necessities such as a sheltering home or food, let alone enough for a car or clothes other than those on his back. It is very plausible to imagine looking into the year 1937 and finding anyone walking down the street would be struggling, but holding onto their lifeline of the WPA. It seems like a wonderful thing to have when all hope is lost and all motivation is null and void. The WPA gave plenty of jobs and enough pay to get by with an average of a little over forty dollars a month. Building bridges and strong structures was more than a metaphor for improving on America for its population.
DeleteLooking at the WPA, only a little over 13% of those that were employed were women. With a woman like Ellen Woodward to be a director of the women’s programs, the issue of inequality between women and men would be blurred for the sake of necessity. In hard times, women are shown very capable to help just as much as men to get out of problems, eventually relating and leading to the propaganda in the later World War II that encouraged women to stand and take action while their husbands were off at war. And the beginning of the Rosie the Riveter icon was simply a stand for women’s equal part in the projects outside of housework and lower-paying jobs, such as federal art and writers’ projects. The roots of support for women and their independence can branch back to the work in the Depression, calling for an equal to work—rather than just a man.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/dustbowl-wpa/
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20040530&slug=rosie30
To add on to the Wumbo Panda, the WPA not only provided and exceptional amount of temporary relief, but it also has a lot of lasting effects on our country today. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) is the program that kept Mr. O’Flannagan alive during these tough times. This program was considered one of Roosevelt’s most popular programs due to its efficiency. It impacted the lives of so many people (around 9 million) and gave them money to work for. Though it wasn’t much, it still helped citizens boost their self-esteem, put food on the table and clothes on their backs. Not only did it help individual citizens, but it helped the country as a whole economically and structurally. These nine million people were able to spend the little money they made which collectively helped the economy. Structurally, they built roads, buildings, schools, libraries and much more which made our country much more efficient. This administration eventually got banned and there were some critics that believed that Roosevelt was becoming much like a dictator because of this program. Despite the criticism, it still helped millions of people and the effects still show today. Around 18,000 buildings, 280,000 miles of roads and highways, 30,000 new bridges and 27,000 parks and other recreational spots were just a couple of the long lasting impacts the WPA had. The WPA built and improved hundreds of thousands of structures that pushed our country through the Great Depression and which we still use today.
DeleteIn Casey’s passage, his character’s appreciation towards Franklin Roosevelt is very evident. His is grateful for all of FDR’s New Deal programs such as the Social Security Act, the Works Progress Administration, and the Emergency Banking Act. His love of FDR made me question what the actual public opinion was of Roosevelt during his terms. FDR’s triumph over Herbert Hoover during his first presidential election proves his initial popularity. Americans believed that they needed someone like FDR to be the voice and leader of their struggling nation. This was obviously shown in the 1932 election with FDR receiving 472 electoral votes, tromping Hoover’s 59. Evidence of Roosevelt’s popularity was also shown with the success of his first 100 days in office, when Congress gave him permission to almost freely make bills to be passed in order to immediately help repair the Great Depression. In his first 100 days, Roosevelt signed 15 legislations to relieve suffering – some of which Casey described in his piece. These relief, recovery, and reform efforts made Roosevelt a loved president by many suffering Americans. They could see that he was trying to help. FDR’s immediate attention to the poor and the struggling middle class made him an icon during the thirties and forties.
DeleteHowever, despite common public opinion of Roosevelt, which is reflected in Casey’s work, there was some opposition to Roosevelt’s New Deal. Businessmen were heavily taxed, and very few rich people wanted to give up their money to help the poor. In addition, the courts found that many of Roosevelt’s reforms were unconstitutional: the Agricultural Adjustment Act, for example. FDR knew that opposition was fierce, and that’s what led him to his infamous Court-Packing Plan, also known as: his biggest mistake. Roosevelt wanted to fill the courts with new officers that would be on his side and not try not to restrain his power. This desire to avoid being tied down was evident, and even the citizens of America reprimanded Roosevelt for his poor decision.
But overall, Casey was accurate in describing the general public opinion of Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression. Even with enemies within the courts, it was clear that the people had FDR’s back. This was because, in the end, his New Deal policies put millions of people back to work, giving everyone hope. Evidence of this public support is even shown in the ruling of the Tennessee Valley Authority case, in which the people swayed the judges in FDR’s favor. Incidents like these saved his New Deal.
[Note: this post does not begin to describe Roosevelt's continued success and popularity throughout World War Two, it just focuses on his first term or so.]
samantha........ yupp.
ReplyDeleteI was eighteen years old when the stock market crashed in 1929. It was the end of an era, as well as the end of life as I knew it. During the twenties, I lived a life of luxury and freedom. Daddy did more then “make ends meet” with the money that was rolling in from his investments in the stock market. Growing up in an urban town right outside the city, my entire childhood was filled with petty things and I surely never knew the feeling of hunger. Momma and I would go out on the town to buy new clothes. In secondary school, my friends and I idolized the flappers and strived to live like they did.
A life of luxury seems like a distant dream to me now. On October 29, 1929, Daddy lost everything. And by the next morning – with reassurance that our house and cars were sure to be taken away – Daddy committed suicide. Mamma said it was because he didn’t want to live to see himself become a failure – he was too proud. I admire my mother for how she handled the loss of her husband. But she wasn’t the only widow once the Great Depression struck. Many men chose death over poverty; that’s just the way it was.
Soon after my father died, it became clear that Momma and I were not going to have a home much longer. Naturally, I wasn’t able to finish college either. So Momma hid our debt as she struggled to find one of the very few bachelors that were still well off for me to marry. As you can imagine, this was hard seeing as almost a quarter of the nation was unemployed. This obviously proved that Hoover was extremely misguided when he claimed that very few people were really struggling. Nevertheless, Momma found me a husband and I was quickly married to John Lambert. “You’ll be better off with him, Lucy,” I remember my mother saying as she packed her bags to move into Aunt Joan’s house. “Women aren’t meant to work, even in times of struggle. Just stay at home, be a good housewife, and make him happy.” I knew she was right to some degree. Many people believed that it was unfit for women to take jobs while “more deserving” men needed the work. And to be honest, I was happy that I didn’t have to worry for much longer; John would be the “breadwinner” from now on.
By the time I was twenty-two, John and I were definitely feeling the burdens of the Depression. Hoover claimed that it was simply a recession, but the rest of the struggling country knew better. That’s how Franklin Roosevelt came into office. He promised relief, recovery, and reform for the country in his proposed New Deal. Although John and I hated to admit it, some government assistance would be real helpful. John had suffered multiple wage decreases in order to keep his job. We still had a home, but it’s definitely not respectable to be on welfare. I, of course, was already taking a few measures to save money where we could; I would cook multiple dishes at a time to avoid wasting gas, I would buy bread that was a few days old if it meant saving some spare change. But in the end, I was dependent on governmental change to help lift us back up to the life of luxury we’re being deprived of.
By the mid-nineteen-thirties, FDR proved to be helping millions of Americans, including John and I. Paying for our mid-sized house was becoming progressively more difficult. The nineteen thirty-three Home Owner’s Loan Corporation gave us refinancing possibilities and long term loans that greatly assisted our struggling payments. The Federal Housing Administration also helped regulate our mortgage. I know that these programs were even more helpful for less fortunate families, such as ones with unemployed parents. I must admit though, I didn’t have much faith in banks, despite government actions to back them up. It wasn’t until the Security and Exchange Commission came about in nineteen thirty-four that I really began putting my faith back into the banks and stock markets.
ReplyDeleteMomma was doing all right around the time that FDR’s plans were beginning to stabilize John and I. She did express concerns of retirement to me. She knew she was getting old, and I knew that she hadn’t seen happiness in a long time. I wish there was something I could do for her aside from cook her meals that blew away Aunt Joan’s daily stews. Luckily, FDR’s administration had the elderly in mind when the Social Security Act was passed to avoid poverty amongst senior citizens. This act required wage earners and their employers to give a certain amount of pay to the government for the elderly, such as my Momma.
As the dawn of a Second World War nears, I can sense developmental change amongst most American people. Unemployment eventually dropped to fifteen percent – not great, but not terrible. John and I are well off once again. I secretly thank Momma for looking out for me and setting me up with a man much like my father. John is proud and hardworking just like Daddy. I knew that we would be okay at the end of the day, and in the thirties, that’s all anyone could ask for. We are now expecting a little girl. Although I maintain my housewife status – I’ve done as Momma recommended – I also enjoy helping the less fortunate. I volunteer to assist in other New Deal projects much like the ones that helped me at one point. The Public Works Administration, for example, provided public works for the unemployed so that they could get a salary while helping out our society. Likewise, the Works Project Administration impacted millions of Americans by providing a countless number of jobs, while rebuilding roads and buildings. I must say, although I felt hopeless as an eighteen year old in 1929, I am now proud to be an American. Struggle and hard work come hand in hand in our country. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs provided immediate and necessary amounts of relief. I haven’t personally faced terrible hunger, but I have indeed experience a world in which starvation is just around the corner. However, I see a bright future, and I hope that my daughter won’t experience the devastation many of my generation have. I think that with all these new relief, recovery, and reform efforts, she will never have to.
The Social Security Act did indeed help elders, like Momma in Sam's journal. It was signed by FDR on August 14, 1935. This act still applies to America today, of course with the changing economy, the program modifies as well. This act established a general welfare to benefit elders, the blind, the handicapped, delinquent children, and others. It was to benefit people going into retirement and unemployed. The money was gathered up by taxing employees and employers. The money went to those who weren't able to make their own. Although, it didn't provide many benefits for many women and minorities, which was an ongoing controversy. This was to make all Americans feel safe. This was the government reaching out their hand to help in America's time of need and in spite of their desperation. This act also proved to be very effective since it has lasted until today and is being used more precise than ever. It is one of the most popular programs in America then AND today for it provides protection and benefits for Americans, improving one life after another. In 2009, nearly $650 billion were distributed to about 51 million Americans just from benefits from the Social Security program. This was a pleasing number for Americans to see.
DeleteBack during the Great Depression, the Social Security program was arguing that the program would be a great factor in negatively affecting jobs, while today Obama is stating that some benefits may have to be cut or reduced, and critics agree urging for the age of retirement to rise.
Sam mentioned how the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation helped her keep her mid-sized house under control. The HOLC was a very successful program in helping middle-class people living in urban areas keep their homes and prevent foreclosure. It granted long-term mortgage loans to around one million people facing loss of their property. Americans had always held to an ideal of individualism that included a home and a family of one's own. In the years leading up to the New Deal, only four out of every ten Americans managed to attain that status. The key reason this was happening was because of the weak mortgage system. Borrowers would have to make a large down payment as well as a high interest rate for only a short period of time (around 5 to 10 years). After the HOLC was established, the program dispersed billions of dollars and put families back on their feet. This program forever revolutionized the mortgage system. It dropped the down payment percentage by 30% and extended the payback time up to twenty five years. People now felt comfortable taking government loans and it helped prevent them from falling into more debt due to the extended payback time.
Deletehttp://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/04/18/suicide-rates-spike-during-recessions/
DeleteSam’s essay was brought up a few unique qualities in the journal. She expresses how her father in the story, was over encumbered with guilt and a feeling of emptyness that he took his own life. Theres was a massive spike in suicide during the Great Depression, the highest it has ever been in history. On average, 22.1 out of 100,000 took their own lives in 1932. This was a 22.8 percent increase from 1928. Although its sad to admit, it was actually very common to see suicides in the newspapers, or to someone you would have known. I think it was very interesting how Sam brought this up, because it is very accurate. Some people just weren’t able to bear the idea that throughout their entire life, all their achievements have dwindled down to bankruptcy.
Christine Tran
ReplyDeleteI cannot take it anymore. Life has become unbelievably difficult for the wife, family, and me. Looking from a position outside of my own shoes, it is ridiculous to see how life has changed once the Depression hit. Being almost alive for forty-one years, it’s a pain to see life around me struggle. Living in York County, it was a community effort to make ends meet. I remember what my wife Jane said the other day when I was feeling nothing but shame for our family being so poor. “No one has any money. We are all in the same boat.”
A couple of years back, me and the other farmers closest by had put up our land to receive loans so that we could purchase more land. We had invested so much into our agriculture; it’s a pain to see things turn downward this way. My friend Daryl was unable to pay off his loan a few weeks back. I just saw a foreclosure sign on his property when I was heading out into town the other day—Daryl’s farm had been sold. He had lost everything and was thrown off his home. I felt so lucky—my family as in a similar situation, but instead of being evacuated, we rented the farm and continued our way of life. Right now, because of the Farm Security Administration, we are trying to use the loans and reliefs we’ve received to pay off our land and develop other businesses.
Since we are trying to be self-sufficient, we had to support ourselves with our own livestock and crops. Since barely any money was made with left to spare, the children had to find ways to have fun for free, such as playing board games and listening to the radio. It didn’t help that the Agricultural Adjustment Act has been trying to regulate the amount of crops we’ve been supplying, but unfortunately, with the efficient technologies we have now, we cannot help but produce more than we’ve ever had before. It brings hope that things will be fixed soon, but all I feel is a slight discomfort when it comes to the limitations that have been imposed on us. I guess it might just be me.
I like how Christine portrayed the life of the farmers. Their life was really difficult, and Christine’s description was very accurate. However, there is more to tell about the farmers. Farmers were not only affected by the Great Depression, but they were also greatly affected by the Dust Bowl drought. During the beginning of the economic recession, many farmers were trying to recover what they had lost due to the Great Depression by increasing the production of their crops. More products to sell meant lower prices, which forced farmers to keep producing more crops to support their families and farms. However, as soon as the drought hit, farmers were no longer able to produce more crops to pay their debts or to recover for what they had lost. The worst part of this drought was that it lasted almost a decade. The Dust Bowl drought came in three waves of dust in different years (1934, 1936, 1939-1940) making it seem longer. This drought was a cause of the rapid production of crops that farmers were doing to alleviate their economic situation. The soil, which was completely dried up, was easily lifted by the strong winds, creating dark clouds of dirt, also known as “Black Blizzards.” Although this drought was made many Americans suffer, it taught many people new methods of farming, like new cultivation methods that would help control the soil erosion in dry lands. And even though a drought struck again America in the 1950s, the effects of this drought were not as bad as the ones from the Dust Bowl drought in the 1930s.
Deletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2CiDaUYr90
I love you, Jesus.
DeleteThe recent years have been a blur of poverty and dismay as my family and I struggled to stay alive. Tennessee is not the place to live right now, especially on a farm like me, but then again, everyone’s saying that about their home. I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy with old-fashioned ideals and personally, I’m a huge fan of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. My vote for him aided his victory over the worn out, Herbert Hoover. People bash him all the time, but I think he did all he could, given the situation. We’ll never know I suppose. Anyway, FDR was my kind of guy. Despite our poverty, we listened intently on our radio to FDR’s speeches. Man, they were something. I wish I could be right there to watch him, he sounds like a powerful man. He talked about so many reforms, all of which had an acronym. He must’ve used every letter of the alphabet so far. One specifically applied to me and my Tennessee farm. It was called the Agricultural Adjustment Act. We were in a pickle before the AAA showed up. No one bought our food, so we couldn’t pay our mortgage. Over production was sky-high, so we were paid to not produce as many crops, and sometimes we were even paid to burn what we grew. I remember him saying that over production was a big cause of the depression, so I guess the AAA makes sense.
ReplyDeleteFor my friend Jim, it worked for sure. He works on that farm to this day, but for my family and me, we had to move. My wife Linda along with my two kids, Jeremy and Devin were schlepped to New Jersey. For a little, it was not much better here. However, FDR changed my life again with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) which made 3 million jobs country-wide. My two kids, who were 17 and 18 at the time, were forced to get a job with me. The three of us put dinner on the table, thankfully. This wasn’t enough for Linda, though. She left us a couple months later, only to be seen again with her name in the paper for an attempted bank robbery. What a pity. This obviously didn’t settle well with me. I drank excessively to cope. Thank God for the Beer Act; the 18th amendment was not going to last. I guess you could said that drinking made me feel better, but it tore me apart at the same time. I can imagine it brought the government more money though. Everyone spent money on alcohol. Nevertheless, a second great war came upon us during this dark time. My boys went to go fight for America. They both returned, with the war that brought us out of the depression behind them. I stopped drinking after that because of my boys. Hearing them say “Dad, we missed you” is the most hope a proud father can receive.
ReplyDeleteThe Great Depression made a huge impact on everyone in the country. This journal entry shows the struggles that farmers had at the time. They no longer could depend on the sales of their crops to make money or even survive. The Civilian Conservation Corps changed many people’s lives. This policy focused on the conservation of the country’s natural resources and the salvage of young men. It was especially designed for unemployed young men from ages 18 to 25 to work in government camps. The camps were set up all over the United Sates therefore many men were able to get a job with this policy. These men were paid to plant trees, built public parks; drain swamps to fight malaria, work on flood control projects and other projects that helped conserve the environment. An example of one of the projects is the Colossal Cave Mountain Park which is located in Arizona. It now has wonderful headquarters building, great lighting, and walkways. The CCC also laid out the park roads and built restrooms in the park. For the narrator’s sons this program was perfect for them. The program relieved suffering and a sense of financial structure. The men were able to provide for their families and gave a sense of pride, confidence and faith to them. It is clearly shown in this journal entry how the policy helped them put dinner on the table. It gave them the satisfaction that weren’t failing as men, which is what many men felt like during this time. Since they couldn’t provide for their families they felt like failures.
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DeleteOne thing that was mentioned in Sean's story, if only briefly, that I think is worth taking a good look at is crime during the Great Depression. Sean mentioned that his wife left him and her name showed up in a newspaper as a bank robber. Bank robberies became all too frequent in the years of the Great Depression. People like John Dillinger, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and Charles Arthur Floyd committed all sorts of autrocities during this time period. And then on the other side of the spectrum, you have large gangs that participated in all sorts of illigal activities, like bootlegging. Crime really grew quite a lot during the Great Depression- people were desperate back then. However, FDR saw that crime was becoming more rampang and widespread, and, near the middle 1930s, changed the Bureau of Investigation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, now having a government run organization with the sole purpouse of defending our citizens from crime. The FBI was able to knock out big name criminals like Bonnie and Clyde, Dillinger, and eventually Al Capone
DeleteSomething stuck out to me in Sean’s post, the mention of alcohol when his wife left him and discovered that she was arrested. Millions of people sought out to drink their problems away during the great depression. How was this possible? The president passed the Beer-Revenue act on March 22. This allowed to people to legally purchase alcohol. This also led to deaths which include alcoholism and car crashes.
DeleteThe average drinking habit has increased in past 20 years. For example, in 1914 the percentage of males that drank alcohol was at 21.4%, the percentage of females who drank alcohol was 27.9%. In the 1920’s through 1923 when alcohol was illegal the percent dropped by a little bit. For males it was 20.6% for females it was 25.8%. In 1936 through 1937 the percentage increased during the great depression. For males it was 23.9%, females it was 31.7%. So you see? People resorted to drinking during the great depression, mostly to drink their problems away.
I doubt I will ever get over the Roaring ‘20s. After World War I, America’s economy was booming with mass-production of goods and new technologies like radios, and an entire new culture emerged with the arrival of popular sports like baseball and the Jazz Age, which introduced new music and unconventional flappers. Living in New York City, I saw it all. Thanks to credit, stocks were soaring, and people like my father who religiously invested in them took advantage of it. He was able to provide me, my mother, and my younger brother with a comfortable living. At 17, I had graduated high school and was hoping to enter college to someday follow in my father’s footsteps as any proud son would. However, the stock market crash--caused by overproduction and over-speculation--brought distress. My father joined the millions of people who tried selling their shares, but eventually buyers could not be found. Shares became worthless, and the credit used to buy them caused many to plunge into debt. The booming ‘20s suffered a painful death.
ReplyDeleteTrying to pursue my college education in the ‘30s was difficult. We were in debt, and our home was in foreclosure. I feared we would have to move into one of those crowded, shabby Hoovervilles, which popped up during Herbert Hoover’s presidency. My father began looking for jobs to support our family, and I soon found out that I would be doing the same. At times, it was tempting to engage in crime in order to support my family, but luckily, with policies under the new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the stress of the depression started to alleviate. Hoover’s policy, which promoted voluntarism, initially did not involve government programs to handle the depression. However, Roosevelt got the government involved in the economy and sought to relieve the people by decreasing unemployment, recover the industries affected by the depression, and reform any areas that needed change like the banking system.
Now, at age 21, I was eligible for work in the 1933 Civilian Conservation Corps, where I worked side by side with other men ages 18-25 to conserve the nation’s natural resources through jobs like flood control and reforestation. Although I was working, my father still was out of work, but he received unemployment payments, thanks to the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, also established in 1933. This gave many families immediate attention to their financial burdens. Nonetheless, my father eventually started working construction jobs around the city, building new roads and buildings, which was a field he had to get accustomed to.
The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation also saved our family’s home as it refinanced the mortgages of non-farm homes. Nonetheless, combined with living expenses and being a college student, money was still tight. I got a part-time job in 1935 through the Works Progress Administration with construction, building new bridges, roads, and more like my father. The WPA not only employed college students like me in need, but it also gave work to high school students, musicians, writers, and actors.
Finally, acts like the 1938 Wagner Act established benefited workers, putting a restriction on work hours and establishing a minimum wage. By this time, my little brother had just passed the new working age minimum that this bill created as he was 16, so he could work, too, if he wanted. I even began to look at stocks to possibly invest in for the future. The Securities and Exchange Commission that was initially established in 1934 was now supervising the stocks, and the Federal Securities Act required promoters to provide information about stocks and bonds. With additions like these, I knew I would be able to make wiser decisions when it came to investing than my father had during the 1920s. Because of the policies brought by President Roosevelt during the Great Depression, the economy was gradually improving, and I felt more secure about the future of my family and the nation as a whole.
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a temporary relief work program that lasted for nine years that gave employment to usually young unemployed men. Like Liz said, the main objective for this program was to preserve natural resources and to provide jobs for the young and hopeless. The CCC mainly had jobs like reforestation and flood control as well as fire protection and overall public safety. This program was responsible for planting an estimated amount of three billion trees in its nine year span from 1933 to 1942. This had a huge impact on the country especially in the areas that were affected by the Dust Bowl. All of these new trees helped break the wind of the Dust Bowl, it helped soil hold water better and it held soil in place. Aside from jobs regarding natural resources, the program also left a handful of bridges, buildings and roads that are still in effect today. The CCC is recognized as one of the single greatest conservation program in America and it served as a catalyst to develop the very tenets of modern conservation.
Deletehttp://depts.washington.edu/depress/hooverville.shtml
Deletehttp://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/depwwii/depress/hoovers.html
http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=626
Here are websites about the Hoovervilles during the Great Depression. It's crazy how people can go from the richest they have ever been in their lives in the Roaring 20's due to the stock market and fall into the most terrible, dark, lonely pit they could ever conjure up in their minds. The character recording down his opinions about Hooverville and the paranoia of ending up in a shack is very believable. To transition from luxury to barely receiving the necessities, I can’t imagine the intensity of the fear this person must be feeling. This person informs us that he works hard to keep himself and his family up and out of trouble. He graduated high school, planned on college, but because of the Depression, he ended up taking any jobs available to him to keep the economy from hurting him any further.
The shacks were unsanitary and detrimental to a person’s well-being, self-esteem, hope, and health. To attempt at getting a job, only to be rejected day by day would be devastating. To watch families being broken down and spirits torn away from those who had hope, it must have been much more than depressing. Unfortunate things like Hoovervilles made the Depression a much deeper sense of the word rather than an economic failure—it negatively affected its people on a highly personal level.
Liz mentioned in her post that they were facing hardships financially and had a fear of losing their home. This was very common during the great depression. The fear of losing one’s home. But the home owner’s loan act of 1933 was established as a corporation that refinanced one of every five mortgages on urban private residences. This act saved millions of people including farmers..
DeleteThe purpose of the home owners loan act was to refinance homes to prevent foreclosure. This was one FDR’s many ways to help reform America from its depression. It was usually used to extend loans from shorter, expensive payments of 15 year loans to lower payments of 30 year loans. Through its work it granted long term mortgages to over a million people facing the loss of their homes. Home Owners Loan Corporation and its funds were only applicable to nonfarm homes. They also bailed out mortgage-holding banks. In Liz’s case, they were one of the many lucky families who had this opportunity of a brighter future, all starting with the home. A famous quote from FDR, which he said during his inaugural speech in March 4, 1933, he declared that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Zach Patronick
ReplyDeletePeople often ask me “What was it like?” or “How did you make it through?”. I mean, how could I forget the moments where my entire life changed forever? The Depression hit back when I was a teenager, a mere 19 years old. It seems like a lifetime ago, yet it still remains fresh in my mind. You see, back then my parents were the only ones that I could form a relationship with, and they knew me as Zach, but if you were to ask anyone else around me, I would be a nobody, merely another poor kid thrown to the streets through the acts of fate. However, this is not a great way to introduce myself. Back then I was living on the streets of Chicago, with my mother and father at the time.
My papa was a decent stock broker and was able to give our family a good amount of money, and my mama was the sweetest woman ever, and took care of the house while my pa and I were away. I did not have a job, and was intending on working with my pa someday, but that’s when the Depression swooped in, like a hawk in the dark. One morning I woke up to find out that we had almost no money left, and my pa was fired along with every other co-worker of his. We had to survive in the beginning off of the money in our pocket because everyone rushed the banks wanting to withdraw all their money and drove a few banks to go bankrupt and fall under. Eventually the government wanted to step in with acts that closed banks for a certain time to preserve the banks, and insure them for their money, but it was too late since we needed the money months ago and my ma had fallen deathly ill during that time from lack of proper nutrition.
I knew that we needed money any way possible, so I went to the Works Progress Administration where I was set up with a job that payed well enough to get through and keep dinner on the table at least. However, after all of my hard work in finding a job and wanting to supply my family, almost became insignificant, until the Federal Emergency Relief Administration was able to keep our local Relief organization from falling under, and it saved my ma’s life, because if her infection wasn’t caught when it was, she could have passed. Thank god for some of these organizations that really tried to give to all of us in need. This Administration that helped our relief organization also helped thousands of other endangered organization attempting to help out the needy around them.
Soon after, things began to get much better as the stock market rebuilt and peoples money was not only secured, but ensured by the government once inside a legal banking system. The Glass-Steagall Bank Reform act insured all banks which would provide a safety net for the peoples money to not only keep it from depleting like during the depression, but add a sense of security and well-being. Even though the bank reforms were important, I believe the most important act passed was the Federal Securities act, which secured the stock market and regulated it so that they could stop another crash. This one was absolutely necessary I believe because it prevents the tragedy I had to live through not too long ago.
Once our economy was back up and running, I was finally able to become a stock-brocker just like my pa, and carry on the family name. I owe my life to him because he made me want to make something of myself and strive through cold and hot times simply to help out the family.
I agree with Zach when he said that the Glass Steagall Banking reform act provided the people security and well-being. The Glass Steagall Banking Reform Act prohibited commercial banks from engaging in the investment business. It was passed in response to the 5, 000 banks that had collapsed after the depression. It reformed the banking system by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation which protected American’s banking deposits up to $5,000 per deposit. The act forced a separation between the commercial and investment banks. The commercial banks were not allowed to underwrite the sales of stocks and bonds and the investment banks could not take in deposits from customers. This act was very effective until 1999, when it was changed to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. During the time the Glass Steagall Bank Act was in action it gave people confidence and it also prevented banks from other collapses.
DeleteAs luisa previously said the Glass Steagall Act provide not only well being and security but it also provided the banks with great business again. This act restored an enourmous amount of faith once again in the people of America. Now that this act was passed people were no longer scared that the little money they had, would be lost in a bank failure. This meant that almost everyone who scrambled to empty they're money from the bank now went back and gave they're business once again to the bank. Banks began to climb and be more successfull and complete money loss was now one less thing for people of this time to worry about. This was a very successfull act for the amount of time that it was in play
DeleteZach made a good point about The Works Progress Administration, which was instituted by presidential executive order under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of April 1935, to generate public jobs for the unemployed, which in Zach’s case helped him in many ways by putting some food on the table. By 1936 over 3.4 million people, like in Zach’s case, were employed on various WPA programs. Harry Hopkins argued that although the work relief program was more costly than direct relief payments, it was worth it. He stated, "Give a man a dole, and you save his body and destroy his spirit. Give him a job and you save both body and spirit."
DeleteWhile responsibility for such unemployable people as children, the elderly, and the handicapped was remanded to the states, the WPA provided literally millions of jobs to employable people, enrolling on average about two million a year during its eight-year period. Like Zach stated above, he never worked before, but the WPA gave him the opportunity to work for a really low pay. It was sufficient enough to save his mother, and to purchase food.
In relation to what Luisa touched upon, the bank reforms were really one of, if not the biggest, area to secure once the drop in the stock market. Not only does the stock market rely on banking, but the economy as a whole absolutely needs a banking system, which can fundamentally keep currency in place to prevent inflation like seen in other countries at the time. I also believe the GSBR act was the most significant of all acts from the New Deal.
DeleteCommonly, many people in the class wrote about the Great Depression through the eyes of a teenager. Zach discussed living on the streets with his parents (Cristee was a young child, and Liz as well was only 17). I can only assume that many of us chose these ages because they are so relatable. I wanted to investigate the lives of teenagers during the Great Depression.
DeleteAs Zach described in his passage, he had to work and struggle to make ends meet by working for little pay with the upcoming government-provided jobs. He also discussed the mistrust in banks, and a life in which one had to live out of (literally) the money in his pocket. This was very common. Most kids or teenagers dropped out of school and ended up having to work. A lot of older teens were forced to work for WPA of the CCC in order to get money to support the rest of their families. Young children even were forced to work for alarmingly low wages because adults found it more difficult to get jobs. Zach’s father in his story for example, was fired along with all his other coworkers. The life of a teenager during the Depression was extremely hard because many parents ended up relying on their children to keep the family afloat.
Children who left their families – with permission or without – were known as “boxcar children”. They would travel in train boxcars around the country looking for some kind of work. Commonly, these teenagers would be males, although some females would go along as well. This was a risky way of life, many of these kids wouldn’t eat for days. However, if they wanted to make money to survive, many were forced to travel to find the work they needed. In addition, as so many kids were dropping out of school and parents were no longer able to support them, children had very little options. As Zach, and many other classmates, have described: teenage life was full of hard work. It was either stay home with your family and work for them, or run away and find work in order to survive on your own. Either way, all young people during the Depression were dependent on the reforms and policies FDR brought about, in hopes that life would get better as soon as possible. The New Deal did bring about a lot of positive change; although many accounts of teenagers prove that going into the army during the second World War also gave them a lift up: providing a job, money, and eventually, a (somewhat) normal life.
This is Michelle Garcia
ReplyDeleteMy name is Anne-Sophie. I am 30 years old. I came to America in the early 20’s. I was about 15 years old. When I came to America from France, I did not know a bit of English and was very poor. One night I went out with some friends to a club and saw a jazz band playing. I immediately fell in love. I fell in love with the liveliness. Being a singer has always been my dream. In that time I thought I ruled the world with my voice, I was well known in Chicago. I made a lot of money at every club I sang at but on October 29, 1929 the worst has just begun. The stock market crashed and millions including myself were jobless. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had no audience to sing to. My life passion had no meaning. I looked for gigs at thousands of bars and clubs, but they were all out of business. My life was a living hell. It’s like they always said, it’s a tough life for an artist. But I never anticipated it to be this bad; I was basically surviving on a slice of bread a day. All the news I kept hearing was how congress passed laws to relieve the banks, news on how farmers got paid to burn their crops down, news on how mortgages get refinanced, which in fact was great news for me since I lost my home during the great depression. This law as I recall was called The home owners loan corporation.
It’s been months since I’ve heard good news, my friend was talking about how the government was passing the Works Progress Administration act, I was surprised it gave over 9 million Americans jobs including myself. I worked from factory to factory for over 5 years, I never thought I would sing again until I found a part time job musicians. I was so thrilled to even be singing to the public again. I didn’t care how low I was getting paid. My voice was being heard and that’s all that mattered.
Michelle brings up a very good point, looking at the Great Depression through the eyes of someone who is involved in the Arts, whether it be a writer or a actor or in Michelle's case, a singer. The people who built their lives around public opinion during the 20s got hit hard during the 30s, especially if they invested a lot of money into the stock market, which many did. And many of the laws that were passed assisted the likes of farmers and workers, not many helped the person who invested their lives into the entertainment industry. But the Works Progress Administration act really helped all of the unemployed. One of the things that I found online that we didn't go over in class is this: within the Works Progress Administration is four Arts projects, the Federal Writers, Music, Art, and Theatre Acts. Many actors and writers and musicians and artists were able to get a start on their careers durning the depression, or continue them as the case may be. Ralph Ellison and Jackson Pollock are two famous peole who developed their talents durning this time of bankrupcy and panic. One of the programs that could have helped the narrator of this story was the Federal Musicians Act, which provided jobs for thousands of musicians like Michelle during the years of the Great Depression. However, there was a downside to these acts. The Federal Theatre Act was very contriversial, it was accused of being a giant pro-New Deal propaganda project. But as time went on, it becama a cover for Communist ideals to be spread, and rumor had it that many of the people employed by the Theatre at this time were of the Communist legislative party.
Delete"news on how mortgages get refinanced, which in fact was great news for me since I lost my home during the great depression. This law as I recall was called The home owners loan corporation."
DeleteWhen Anne-Sophie lost her home during the Great Depression and was able to refinance on her home, it was called the Home Owner's Loan Corporation. Although, I found a law that we never discussed, nor was it ever discussed in our course notes. Shocking, huh? I found it on this website:
http://syracusethenandnow.org/Redlining/HOLC_Maps.htm
To brief, Franklin Roosevelt passed a bill to Congress to create the Federal Housing Administration. The Federal Housing Administration was the stepping stone into creating the Home Owner's Loan Corp. Nevertheless, it helped create jobs for people to build housing and made the mortgage affordable for the people in the 1930's. Instead of them paying a 50% down payment and after paying a 5-7 interest rate of 6-8 percent to pay off the loan, homeowners now only had to pay 10% down, and have up to 30 years to pay back the loan, having an interest rate of 5.5%. Very big difference in mortgages.
Another "fun" fact about the Home Owner's Loan Corp was that it didn't just refinance ANY household, it had standards like a rich, bratty, teenage girl. They have a neat grading system in which the housing are categorized in four grades, from A-D and colors of green, blue, yellow and red respectively. The First Grade, A, and basically was very able to have a refinanced home, fully, with the maximum amount of money they could be offered. However, those homes were free out African Americans and foreigners, and were the newly-built houses. The Second Grade, B, were good neighborhoods, but were starting to wear away. The lenders gave 10-15% below the maximum amount. The Third Grade, C, were the out of fashion housing that were part of a lower class populations. And the last grade, Grade D, were undesirable housings that people did not want, nor did the mortgage company want to lend out money to these homes.
Michelle brings up an interesting life of something that we have not talked about before which is the life of a musician during the Great Depression. Which in my opinion must have been way harder to have to live through than any other job. Musicians are not used to having to do manual jobs and if the people of the time had no money than clearly no one was going to go and see musicians. That would than mean the Musicians were also making little or no money. It must have created a very hopeless feeling as well. Seeing many other laws passed that would help other professions during the time. Like Steve said until the Federal Musician Act there was nothing that was protecting musicians during the time, and even after those laws were passed it was not like all of the musicians got to go back right to their music careers they had to go and do manual labor. All in all being a musician at this time was very struggling
DeleteTyler Conroy
ReplyDeleteThe roaring twenties is just a vivid dream to me now. At first it all seemed so great money was never a problem and I was living in the greatest place ever New York City. Who would have known what my life was soon going to come too. I was a factory worker making a pretty decent play the only problem was my money was not in the bank it was in the stock market, and when it crashed so did my life. I’m Mike Romano, but you can call me Mikey. When the stock market crashed I was dirt poor lucky for me I was a fit 28 year old who could manage labor. I knew it would not be a problem providing for myself, but rather for my mother who was extremely sick and living in the hospital at the time. I was all she had left, and she was living off the money I was making at the factory. Now that I had no job I did not know what I was going to do. I could no longer pay the rent to my apartment because I had to pay for my mom’s medical bills. I moved into what they called a Hoover home and began looking for work. That’s the problem though everybody was looking for work. It was not only the residents living in New York who needed a job, but all of the farmers who also had lost their jobs and came to the city looking for work. I soon became that guy like a lot of others waiting in bread lines for soup and bread. Every day it was the same water downed soup and the same stale bread. I still did not have a steady job yet, and all of my money was going to my mother. Soon the day I was hoping would never come came and my mother passed away. It destroyed me because I could not even give the woman that raised me a proper funeral. I buried my other and stared my new life in the Great Depression. I found my new life in Marble Hill where I moved into a boxcar camp run by a Sarah Atwood. There she would provide us with a dinner and we would live in the boxcar for only a few dollars a week. I found a job working in the Inwood Hill Park where I was making 15 dollars a week for three days a week. I was one of the lucky ones because most of the men there had families where as I did not. This work that I had in Inwood got me back on my feet and I moved back into the city. I worked for the W.P.A for the rest of my years during the depression. I know president Roosevelt continued his efforts to help us the only problem was the Supreme Court kept shooting him down. Luckily I got through the Great Depression and soon got my apartment back and continued my life working in the factories.
One line that really stood out to me was when the author stated that when the stock market crashed, so did his life. This was a feeling that was spread through out the entire country to people of all levels. A complete loss of faith and the feeling that there was no real reason for life any more. The author also stated that he was taking care of his mother because she had no job and no money. I found this very interesting because many people did have to take care of their elders when they stopped working, that is untill the Social Security Act was passed. The social security act would provide money for his older mother who could not work and Mike Romano can focus on picking up jobs anywhere he could. The WPA was a great program that gave jobs to over 8 million people icluding the less fortunate like Mikey. As he said Mike was one of the lucky ones who could recieve jobs and money, but he also faced the same hard battle as everyone es in America at this time.
DeleteSincerely, TheProfessor
The part of the entry that I thought was interesting was the fact that the author had to live in Hoovervilles during the Great Depression, while his mother was sick in the hospital. Hoovervilles were very poor housing systems, some made of cardboard and other cheap material, named after Herbert Hoover. The people blamed him for the Great Depression and the fact that he barely did anything about it. I found an example of what a Hooverville was on this link:
Deletehttp://depts.washington.edu/depress/images/hoovervilles/hooverville3.jpg
Here, we have housings across a street from a factory, that are built in a hasty and rushed way, not even three feet away from other Hooverville houses. The fact that people had to live in these houses by force, like Mike Romano, is very upsetting. People starved and babies cried during this crisis, and everything wasn't changed until later on during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency.
http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/wpa/wpa_info.html
DeleteAs Tyler stated, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) did, in fact, give many people of the time periods jobs with a staggering 8.5 million by its end. The website I posted informed me that “during its 8-year history, the WPA built 651,087 miles of highways, roads, and streets; and constructed, repaired, or improved 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, 8,192 parks, and 853 airport landing fields.” This fact put in perspective what the government’s plan was. It wanted to combine financial boosts with an aesthetically pleasing country, which ironically, spent a lot of money in the process. The WPA was more of a temporary relief program with a mix of industrial advances, while World War II was the real reason that our economy bounced back.
Chapter 3
ReplyDeleteYear after year, and Hoover could not do a single thing to make anything better. He kept destroying every single thing that needed change, ignoring the peoples' proposals. In Washington D.C., WWI veterans wanted their pensions early since they came out of the war early. However, they were causing riots and it caused Hoover to send military force on our own men. After they were taken into military hands, the whole nation hated him even more than before. We wanted a change to happen, a new leader in office, to help our nation and economy get better. That's where Franklin D. Roosevelt comes into our lives. After becoming elected into office, Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, took the nation by storm by passing Acts to help America economically. One act that they passed was the Home Owner's Loan Corporation. This helped home owners who were not farmers, refinace their homes so they can be able to pay their mortgage without the high expenses they were paying before. This act helped me as well since we could barely afford to pay the mortgage, so refinancing the house was very effective for the economy. Another Act that was passed by Roosevelt was the Securities Exchange and Commissions Act, where they have backup security of stock, just in case the stock market begans to drop. My father told me about the Act one day when he came back from his new job in a different finance firm. But after a while, we began to build up our financial state again and live comfortably. The Great Depression was the worst couple of years of my life, since I could not go to school until it was over.
Jara Boyd
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Delete(I'm sorry for all the deleted comments. I kept replying in the wrong place.)
DeleteDuring the first few years of the Great Depression, the housing industry collapsed. The number of neglected and foreclosing homes were increased to a frightening fifty percent. In response, FDR signed the Homeowners Refinancing Act that created The Home Owner's Loan Corporation. The Home Owner's Loan Corporation was one of the policies that I believe proved to be most effective in the New Deal. It built the foundation for the mortgage loan programs we have today. It was created in order to refinance mortgages so people living in non-farm homes could afford their houses. During the Depression, people were living in "Hoovervilles" moving from place to place, some even desperately resorted to sewer pipes to live in because they couldn't pay off their houses. Mortgages and interests were too high. On top of that, they gave little time to pay off these expenses especially living in such a failing economy. The government was finally stepping in helping people pay off their mortgages, lowering the interest, and rather than allowing them just seven to ten years to pay off, they were now given twenty five to thirty years. Their strategic method of buying existing mortgages and replacing or "renewing" them with new ones, seemed to not only appeal the people, but actually helped them too. They not only gave assistance to individuals and their families, they also gave assistance and lent money to mortgage lenders. The HOLC came to an end nearing 1936, being responsible for about twenty percent of all of the urban mortgages. This included over one million homes and they had lent out about $3.5 million which comes out to be about $750 million today. This was an immense amount of money being lent out which was all being borrowed from the Treasury and capital markets. The HOLC proved to be a success during this time and built a foundation for many mortgage loan programs to build off of.
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