American Journey - Chapter 12

Table of Contents

12. Great Depression

Beginning the Journey
The best source within the American Journey Online to locate materials on the era of the Great Depression is the module "The Great Depression and the New Deal." That module contains an excellent collection of documents, visual sources, and multimedia clips covering all of the important aspects of the Depression. Users are advised to begin their search by exploring the "Key Topics" and "Years" of the module. The module's general "Introduction" also yields helpful information and guidance.

"The Great Depression and the New Deal" module is especially strong on images related to the period. Many of those images have been incorporated into the activities that follow. Users would be well served by exploring the module for other images. (A good way to accomplish this is to use the "Images" function. But because it's not always easy to determine what a particular image depicts simply from its title, users should click on most or all of the image titles in order to ensure that they're getting the widest possible exposure to relevant materials.)

Other modules within the database also contain materials relevant to a study of the Great Depression era. Exploring "World War I and the Jazz Age," "Civil Rights," "The African-American Experience," and "The Native American Experience" can yield materials related to this era. Searching by "Years" and "Key Topics" are two good ways to locate materials. So is making use of the "Index" function if a specific topic has been identified.

Activity 1
Although the stock market crash of 1929 is generally considered to be the beginning of the Great Depression, the crash did not cause the Depression. Instead, the Depression was the result of many weaknesses and problems in the American economy that stretched throughout the twenties. (Recall the problems facing farmers addressed in Activity 7 of the preceding unit.)

Some economists and other observers recognized these weaknesses at the time. The American Journey Online contains several sources on contemporary understanding of the nation's economic weaknesses.

Within "World War I and the Jazz Age," go to "The U.S. Economy in 1929." (This document may be located by going to "Contents," then "Years," then "1929," then click on the title.)

Within "The Great Depression and the New Deal," go to "Whither America?" (One way to locate this document is to go to "Contents," then "Documents," then "W," then scroll down to the title.)

Use these documents to answer the following questions.

  1. What specific factors does Wesley Clair Mitchell point to in the first document in claiming that "all is not well" with the American economy in the spring of 1929? How serious does he think the problems he notes are?
  2. How is the second document a direct response to the first? What flaws does Walter Pitkin note with that document? What about it seems to most upset him?
  3. What does Pitkin identify as the biggest problems facing the American economy? How can these problems be remedied? Which of Pitkin's solutions hark to the past? Which seem to look forward to the future?

While not the cause of the Depression, the stock market crash did provide a marker for its beginning. Some contemporary accounts of the Crash may be explored in the American Journey Online.

Within "The Great Depression and the New Deal," go to "Black Tuesday on Wall Street. (You may locate this image by going to "Contents," then "Regions," then "Northeast," then scroll down and click on the title.)

Within "World War I and the Jazz Age," go to "The Stock Market Crash of 1929." (One way to locate this source is to go to "Contents," then "Multimedia," then scroll down to the title.)

Use these sources to answer the following questions.

  1. How do these two sources collectively portray the stock market crash? What emotions would they have stirred up in contemporaries?
  2. How can historians use all of these sources to gain a fuller understanding of the economic health of the country in the lead up to the stock market crash and in its immediate aftermath? Why were the concerns of the two documents not widely circulated at the time? Would people have heeded them even if they had known of them? Why or why not?

Activity 2
When Herbert Hoover was elected president in 1928, the American economy was apparently robust and vibrant. Within a year of Hoover's inauguration, the stock market had crashed and the nation was plunged into unprecedented economic hardship.

Hoover had a coherent philosophy of government that limited the sorts of things he was willing to pursue in order to bring relief. He could not sanction direct government intervention and spurned all calls for coercive measures to bring relief and generate recovery.

Although Hoover did use the government as an agent of exhortation to push private action, his anti-Depression measures were not successful. As a result, his public image suffered and the American people came to revile him.

To get a sense of how ordinary Americans viewed the president, within "The Great Depression and the New Deal," go to "An Anonymous Letter to Herbert Hoover (" and "An Anonymous Letter to Herbert Hoover (2)." (These documents may be located by going to "Contents," then "Documents," then "A," then scroll down to the titles.)

Use the documents to answer the following questions.

  1. What views of government power and responsibility come out in these letters? What authority do the authors of these letters attribute to Hoover? What do they think that he personally can do to help them and all those who are suffering? What do they think he should do?
  2. How do these two letters reveal social class tensions and hatreds? Who do the letter writers blame for the hardships they are experiencing? With what and whom are they frustrated?
  3. How do the letters reveal both a faith in the power of government and distrust of it and those who run it? Use specifics from the documents to answer these questions. How representative of prevailing conceptions were these letters likely to have been?

A sense of the despair that gripped the American people during the early years of the Depression may be gained through first-hand accounts and images as well as letters. The fact that many homeless, out-of-work Americans lived in shantytowns dubbed "Hoovervilles" reflected the blame that they heaped upon the president for their plight.

Within "The Great Depression and the New Deal," go to "Relief and Revolution" and "Young Residents of a 'Hooverville.'" (The first source may be located by clicking on its title from the list of related items that appears at the top of the second letter above; the second may be located by clicking on the list of related items that appears at the top of "Relief and Revolution.")

Use the sources, along with the letters above, to answer the following questions.

  1. What emotions do the document and image bring to the fore? How do they convey the sense of hopelessness and despair expressed in the letters to Hoover studied above? How do these last two sources personalize the blame for the Depression? Is it understandable that people pointed the finger like this? Is it fair? Explain.
  2. Sources like these help to bring home the personal tragedies of the Depression for students and scholars alike, to remind them that there is more to studying the Depression than simply unemployment statistics. Explore the long-term consequences of the Depression experience for Americans. What did it teach them about governmental responsibility? About the nature of the U.S. economy? About shared suffering and personal dignity? Why do you think it became for millions the defining period of their lives?

Activity 3
By the spring of 1932, public criticism of Hoover reached record levels. In the midst of a vain campaign for reelection, Hoover was confronted by a group of World War I veterans demanding early payment of a bonus promised to them in 1924. (The bonus was to be paid in installments beginning in 1945.)

Calling themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force, ten thousand unemployed, homeless veterans marched across the country to Washington to ask Congress to pay their bonuses immediately. Many of the veterans had their families in tow and constructed a shantytown on the outskirts of Washington on the Anacostia River. Hoover's confrontation with the Bonus Marchers in the summer shocked the American people and sealed his fate as a one-term president who many Americans would always blame for the worst economic crisis in the nation's history.

Exploring some of the sources within the American Journey Online related to the Bonus Marchers reveals the magnitude of the hardships people were facing by 1932. It also provides an early example of how publicity of a certain presidential action or policy could traverse the nation and affect political events.

Within "The Great Depression and the New Deal," go to "The Bonus Army" and "Douglas MacArthur during the Bonus March." (These sources may be located by searching for the term "Bonus Army." They are the first two items the search returns.) Within the module "Civil Rights," go to "Bonus Army March." (One way to locate this image is to go to "Contents," then "Years," then "1932," then click on the title.)

Use the sources to answer the following questions.

  1. How do these sources portray the despair that gripped Americans by 1932? How do they and the story of the Bonus Marchers in general reveal a faith in government? A conviction that government is designed to help the nation's citizens?
  2. Compare the story of the Bonus Marchers with that of Coxey's Army explored in Activity 5 of the unit "Prosperity and Crisis." Note both similarities and differences. Be especially careful when discussing how both incidents revealed public sentiments about governmental responsibility.
  3. Given President Hoover's personal philosophy of government, could he have acceded to the demands of the Bonus Marchers? Does his refusal mean that he was cold-hearted and unfeeling, as his critics charged? Or does it simply mean that he was true to his ideals?
  4. What does the public reaction to the treatment of the Bonus Marchers say about the propensity to personalize government action? Why do you think the public was so outraged in the first place?
  5. How does the Bonus March incident reveal the way some events can become so sensationalized as to take on a life of their own? Are open societies such as the United States more susceptible to sensationalized public events than other types of societies? Explain.

Activity 4
Given the depths to which his popularity had sunk by the time of the presidential election of 1932, it is not surprising that Herbert Hoover went down to a stunning defeat to his Democratic challenger, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, Roosevelt promised the American people what he vaguely called a "New Deal" to address the unprecedented economic crisis. Roosevelt's New Deal involved the expansion of governmental power and responsibility on a scale never before seen in American history. It revealed the new president's abiding faith in the power of government to do good and his belief that the American people deserved something from their government in times of need.

Although much of the New Deal was experimental and improvisational in nature, it was guided by some coherent philosophical underpinnings. Exploring some of these underpinnings provides a window into New Deal thinking and makes clear the ideas that lay behind the most extensive expansion of government in U.S. history.

Within "World War I and the Jazz Age," go to "What Is an Economic System For?" and "Excerpt from the Roots of Social Security." (The first document may be located by going to "Contents," then "Documents," then "W," then scroll down to the title. You may locate the second by going to "Contents," then "Authors," then "P," then "Perkins, Frances," then click on the title.)

Study the documents and use them to answer the following questions.

  1. How does Stuart Chase in the first document view the causes of the economic problems facing the nation in 1932? Note especially his thoughts on the relationship between production and distribution/consumption.
  2. How does Chase answer the question of "What is an economic system for?" What does government owe its citizens? Why? What are the implications of beliefs like Chase's?
  3. What does Frances Perkins in the second document identify as the origins of the Social Security Act (which would come in 1935) and the New Deal's efforts to push for social insurance legislation? How does she credit Progressive Era reformers with the accomplishments of the 1930s New Deal? What does her speech say about the continuity of the reformist agenda throughout the first half of the twentieth century? How does it relate to the ongoing debate among historians about whether the New Deal was evolutionary or revolutionary?

Laying out the principles behind the New Deal was largely done in private. Explaining those principles and the way they would be articulated in specific programs was done in public, often through speeches that President Roosevelt made directly to the American people on the radio.

Roosevelt's "fireside chats," as these radio talks were dubbed, proved to be one of the most enduring and endearing components of FDR's presidency, for they brought the president into the homes of ordinary Americans and convinced them that he cared for them personally.

Within "The Great Depression and the New Deal," go to "Fireside Chat Outlining the New Deal" and "Fireside Chat on the Purposes of the Recovery Program." (You may locate these two documents by going to "Contents," then "Documents," then "F," then scroll down to the titles.)

Use the documents to answer the following questions.

  1. How does FDR describe the programs of the New Deal in these speeches? What are the goals of his programs? How does he believe that they will help the American people? How does his approach to the Depression differ from Herbert Hoover's?
  2. Using these sources collectively, what do they reveal about the intent and philosophy of the New Deal? About FDR's desire to retain contact with the American people? About his immense popularity?

Activity 5
One of the most impressive and enduring features of the New Deal was the wide variety of programs and initiatives it undertook.

Virtually no segment of American life went untouched by the New Deal, and some of the changes it effected were life changing.

"The Great Depression and the New Deal" contains many sources that assess the accomplishments of the New Deal. Locate the following:

  • "Electrifying the Countryside"
  • "What REA Service Means to Our Farm Home"
  • "Benefits of the WPA in Connecticut"
  • "National Youth Administration in District 11"
  • "The Colorado Federal Writers' Program."

The first two documents may be located by going to "Index," then "R," then "Rural Electrification Administration (REA)," then click on the titles. The remaining sources may be located by going to "Index," then "W," then "Works Progress Administration (WPA)," then click on the titles.

Use the sources to answer the following questions.

  1. According to the author of the first document, what were the consequences of the lack of electricity in most rural areas of the United States? How has this situation left agriculture behind industry in terms of modernization and development? What has it done to those who live and work on farms?
  2. What benefits does the first document suggest will come to rural areas of the nation as a result of electrification? How do those benefits compare to those enumerated by the author of the second document? What does the second account add to the first about the personal effects of the New Deal for individual Americans?
  3. Assess the kind of activities outlined in the third and fourth documents as having been accomplished by the WPA and NYA. What benefits did society receive from these projects? What did individual participants receive? How long lasting were the results of these activities?
  4. What conclusions about the goals of the WPA's Federal Writers' Project can you draw from its list of publications as related in the last document? What use could be made of the materials on the list? Who would benefit from them?
  5. Collectively, what do these documents tell you about the aims of the New Deal? About the ways it touched the lives of everyday Americans? The legacies it left?

Activity 6
The American people revered Franklin D. Roosevelt during his presidency as no president in American history. Roosevelt assumed office with an air of optimism and confidence, and he retained those qualities even when his New Deal failed to end the Depression.

The popular depictions of Roosevelt at the time say a lot about the way the nation viewed the president--and public figures in general--during the 1930s. They also reveal Roosevelt's own hand in crafting an image of caring approachability that stood in stark contrast to the despised image of Herbert Hoover.

Within "The Great Depression and the New Deal," explore some images of FDR by going to "FDR's First Inaugural Address" (with audio component), "Another Rough Rider on the Job!" and "New Deal Remedies." (The first source may be located by going to "Contents," then "Multimedia," then click on the title. The other sources may be found by going to "Contents," then "Images," then "A" or "N," then the individual titles.)

Use the sources to answer the following questions.

  1. What self-images does Roosevelt project in his inaugural address? What personal appeals does he make to the American people? What promises? How does the crowd respond to his speech? What parts seem to generate the most interest/applause?
  2. How is FDR portrayed in the two editorial cartoons? What skills/strengths does he have? What is he doing in each cartoon to help the nation? What strikes you most about the way the cartoonists portray FDR here? How would these portrayals have shaped the way people viewed FDR?

Roosevelt's popularity with the American people led them to think of him as their friend and protector. American citizens wrote to him in unprecedented numbers; even more wrote to his wife, Eleanor. Exploring some of the letters the Roosevelts received from Americans provides insights into the way they viewed the president and first lady.

In the same module, go now to:

  • "An Anonymous Letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt "
  • "An Anonymous Letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt (2)"
  • "An Anonymous Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt "
  • "An Anonymous Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt (2)"
  • "An Anonymous Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt (3)."

All of these documents may be located by going to "Contents," then "Documents," then "A," then scroll down to each individual title.

Use the documents to answer the following questions.

  1. How would you describe the tone of the letters to FDR? How are they framed? What sort of relationship do they seem to suggest the letter writers have with the president? In other words, what image of Roosevelt do these letters suggest?
  2. What commonalities do you note in the three letters to Eleanor Roosevelt? Keeping in mind that these letters were written by complete strangers, what do you find most remarkable about them? What do they reveal about the way people saw Mrs. Roosevelt?
  3. Historians have used sources like the ones studied here to understand the personal popularity of FDR (and his wife) with the American people. Besides these sources, how else might that popularity be measured and assessed?

Activity 7
Photographs, drawings, and paintings help to provide today's students and scholars with a visual sense of what those who experienced the Great Depression went through. Some visual sources from the Depression period, such as those to be explored in this activity, depict the suffering and hardships of urbanites. (The particular plight of farmers and rural residents is covered in Activity 8.)

Within "The Great Depression and the New Deal" locate "The Rush to Withdraw Savings," "Men Lined Up at the Unemployment Bureau," "The Bread Line," "The Red Cross Dispenses Foodstuffs in Arkansas," and "A Soup Kitchen in Chicago." (The first three images may be located by going to "Contents," then "Key Topics," then "Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Role of Government," then click on the links "bank and business failures," "massive unemployment," and "bread lines." The last two may be selected from the list of related items that appears at the top of "The Bread Line.")

Use these images, and their accompanying commentaries, to answer the following questions.

  1. How do the first two images convey the fear and desperation that gripped Americans during the Depression? What emotions do they impart on viewers? How do they personalize events such as the bank runs?
  2. What sorts of mechanisms for aid are depicted in the last three images? Who sponsors these mechanisms? What specifically can they do for those who visit them? Can they solve problems or merely meet needs? Explain.
  3. Are there pitfalls to using the third source (the painting "The Bread Line")? Are there difficulties with using works of art in general in the study of history? Be as specific as you can in answering these questions.
  4. What strikes you most about these images? What do you think would have most struck viewers at the time?
  5. What can historians and other scholars learn from images like these that cannot be gained through written sources? How important do you believe it is to consider all kinds of sources in order to construct a complete and coherent picture of the past? Explain.

Activity 8
Among the various New Deal programs was an initiative within the government, first undertaken by the Resettlement Administration and then by its successor, the Farm Security Administration, to document the conditions facing rural Americans, particularly farmers who had been displaced from their homes, those serving as migrant workers, and those still eking out a living on the land. Many of these images have become world famous symbols of the depths of the Great Depression. (One, in fact, forms the cornerstone of the title banner to the module "The Great Depression and the New Deal" within the American Journey Online database.)

Examining some of these photographs drives home as no words could the squalor that many rural Americans faced during the Depression, the sense of hopelessness that many experienced, and the wide-ranging, long-term costs that many had to pay.

Within "The Great Depression and the New Deal," locate the following images:

  • "A Destitute Family in the Ozark Mountains"
  • "Two Migrant Families Looking for Work"
  • "A Mother and Children Living in an Abandoned Car"
  • "Migrant Mother"
  • "Waiting for Relief Checks"
  • "Children in a Democracy."

You may locate all of these images by going to "Contents," then "Images," then the first letter of each title, then click on the titles themselves.

Use the images to answer the following questions.

  1. Which of these images do you find most striking? Which has the greatest effect on you? Why?
  2. What feelings and images do the photographs summon up? Are they deliberately emotional in tone or composition? Do they reflect the individual photographers' "agendas"? If so, what might those "agendas" be?
  3. How would you characterize the people pictured in these photographs? Use as many descriptors as you can to paint the widest possible composite of these people. If you had to go to the opposite extreme and choose only one word to describe them collectively, what would it be? Why?
  4. What does the fact that the Roosevelt administration undertook the photography project say about its conception of its own responsibilities to the nation? How might the photographs have been used by the administration at the time? What could photographs do that written reports could not?
  5. How can these photographs serve as sources for historians today? Can they be used to draw wide-ranging conclusions, or is their use limited to information about the specific subjects of the photograph? Explain.

Activity 9
Among the most enduring legacies of the New Deal is a set of interviews conducted by staff of the Works Progress Administration with more than two thousand former slaves. These interviews provide a rich resource for historians and other scholars seeking first-hand recollections of slavery and emancipation.

A sampling of these interviews may be found within "The African-American Experience" module within the American Journey Online database.

To explore those interviews, go to "Contents," then "Years," then "1936," then click on each of the following titles:

  • "A WPA Interview with Jake McLeod"
  • "A WPA Interview with Jim Taylor"
  • "A WPA Interview with Mary Moriah Anne Susanna Jones"
  • "A WPA Interview with Mrs. Hannah Davidson"
  • "A WPA Interview with Rebecca Jane Grant"
  • "A WPA Interview with Sam Polite"
  • "A WPA Interview with Sylvia Cannon."

Read and study the documents and use them to answer the following questions.

  1. What range of experiences do the narrators reveal in their encounters with whites during and after slavery? What examples of whites' humanity do they recall? What depths of cruelty?
  2. What strikes you about the things the narrators chose to emphasize in their interviews? Does anything surprise you about the depth of their memories in certain areas and not others?
  3. Discuss the different ways that the narrators recall being subordinated by whites. What do they recall about how those who tried to escape were treated?
  4. Why do you think the WPA chose to initiate the interview project with former slaves? What does it say about the mindset of the WPA's leadership?
  5. What contributions can the WPA interviews make to the work of students and scholars? What precautions, if any, should be observed when using them?

Activity 0
One aspect of the New Deal that often gets forgotten is its effort to address the problems facing Native Americans. This omission is unfortunate, as the New Deal's Indian Reorganization Act (1934) marked a major change in federal policy toward Native Americans by abandoning the previous allotment policy and admitting the importance of tribal ties and tribal authority for individuals' lives.

Within "The Native American Experience," explore the following sources dealing with the New Deal's Native American policy: "Indian Reorganization Act," "The Debate over the IRA," "Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1935," "Rebuilding Indian Country: 1," and "Rebuilding Indian Country: 2." (All of these sources may be located by going to "Index," then "I," then "Indian New Deal," then click on the individual titles.)

Use the sources to answer the following questions.

  1. What assumptions color the Indian Reorganization Act? What are its individual provisions designed to accomplish? Pay particular attention to the act's provisions concerning tribal government.
  2. What arguments for and against the IRA are outlined in the oral history interviews that comprise the second document? How persuasive a case does each interviewee make? Which makes the better argument?
  3. What does the third document commit the federal government to do? What does it designate as crimes? Why do you suppose the federal government would implement it? Who was it primarily designed to help? What sentiments would likely have motivated it?
  4. What do the two video clips add to the story of the Indian New Deal? How do these films buttress the assumptions that lay behind the Indian Reorganization Act? How did they reflect contemporary attitudes during the 1930s?
  5. Taking these sources collectively, how do they illustrate an abandonment of the allotment policy implemented by the Dawes Act of 1887? How do they reveal a sense of paternalism? A feeling of cultural superiority?