1. Life during the Depression
Dust Bowl, Public Works, & Bonus
Army

2. The Dust Bowl
• When farmers began plowing the Great Plains,
their plows uprooted the wild grass that
helped hold the soil’s moisture.
• When the depression hit, crop prices fell and
many of the Plains farmers had to leave their
fields behind…uncultivated.

3. Origins of the Dust Bowl
• Making matters worse, a drought struck the
Plains and caused the soil to dry to dust.
• The wheat fields from the Dakotas to Texas
became one massive Dust Bowl.
• The wind caused the sky to be blackened for
hundreds of miles.
• In the aftermath, farmers found both crops
and livestock buried under the dust.

4. The Dust Bowl

5. Dust Bowl photos

6. Car buried under dust

7. Dust Bowl
• Dust filled the lungs of both animals and
people who were caught outside during these
wind storms.
• Death by suffocation was extremely common.
• Most farmers were unable to keep their lands
without the income from the fields. If they
were mortgaged, the banks repossessed.

8. Check for Understanding

9. Let’s Check your Understanding!!!
• Drought and _________
brought about the
conditions that caused
the Dust Bowl.
A. Overgrazing at large
cattle farms.
B. The near extinction of
the buffalo
C. Famine
D. Poor farming practices

10. Great Depression photos

11. See the Irony?

12. Hollywood
• During the Great Depression, more than 60
million viewers went to the movies each
week.
• Comedies gave viewers a way to escape the
reality of their current situation.

13. Comic books hit the scene in the 1930s

14. King Kong was first released in 1933. It was the
first movie with special effects.

15. Walt Disney

16. 1939-Wizard of Oz & Gone with the Wind

17. Soap Operas
• Soap Operas gave
listeners an opportunity
to listen to others with
illnesses and family
conflict.
• Millions of people
listened to the radio
daily.

18. Literature & Art
• Writers and artists used
the homeless and the
unemployed as their
subjects in pictures and
articles.
• Author John Steinbeck
wrote The Grapes of
Wrath about a family
who moved to CA after
losing their farm during
to the Dust Bowl.

19. Let’s Check for Understanding!!!
• What subjects did
artists,
photographers,
and writers
emphasize during
the 1930s?

20. Hoover’s Response
• Hoover did not believe
that it was the
government’s
responsibility to provide
relief to individuals hurt
by the depression.
• Other countries hurt by
the depression embraced
a form of socialism.
• Hoover believed that
socialism was responsible
for their financial decline.
• He had even written a
book called American
Individualism that argued
that individualism made
America’s economic
system the best in the
world.

21. Check for Understanding

22. Herbert Hoover

23. Behind Closed Doors
• Although publicly
Hoover declared that
the economy was on its
way to recovery, he was
really concerned.
• He met with leaders of
banks, railroads, and
other big businesses.
• He even met with labor
leaders and govt.
officials.
• Industrialists agreed to
stop cutting wages and
keep their factories
open and workers
agreed to accept
existing wages and
conditions.
• The industrialists did
not Keep Their
Promise.

24. Herbert Hoover

25. Production shuts down
• Americans were
reluctant to buy
because production had
been cut and workers
were being laid off
everyday.
• The lack of spending
caused production to
come to a grinding halt.
• The result was even
more layoffs.

26. Unemployment

27. Public Works Projects
• Hoover asked Congress for $420 million to
start government-funded building projects in
an effort to create jobs.
• Although this provided some of the
unemployed with jobs, it wasn’t enough to
pull the country out of the depression.

28. Public Works Projects

29. To tax? or not to tax?
• Hoover was against
raising taxes to pay for
public works projects.
• He felt that if he raised
taxes, people would have
less money in their checks
to spend.
• On the other hand, If he
tried to fund the projects
without raising taxes, he
would have to borrow
money.
• Hoover believed that
borrowing money would
increase the deficit and
prolong the depression.
• Meanwhile, Americans
continued to blame
Hoover and the
Republicans for the rising
unemployment.
• When the elections rolled
around, the Republicans
lost the majority of their
seats.

30. Trickle down Economics

31. Trickle-down economics
• Trickle- down theory-
pump $ into the
economy to the people
at the top, and
eventually the money
will trickle down and
benefit the people at
the bottom.
• This method proved
ineffective for Hoover.
• Money seldom trickled
down to the people
who were really in need
of the assistance.
• People began to
request relief from the
federal government.

32. Let’s Check for Understanding!!!
• Hoover was slow to
respond to the
economic crisis because
he opposed
A. All public works
projects
B. Deficit spending
C. Investing in stocks
D. Private charities

33. No relief in sight
• Hoover was adamantly
opposed to providing
direct federal aid to the
needy.
• He saw that as being to
close to Socialism in
England.
• He also thought that it
would ruin the
unemployed’s desire to
work.

34. Henry Ford

35. Working-Class Militancy
• Members of the working-
class (the poorest tier)
suffered the worst during
the depression.
• Their frustrations soon
gave way to protest.
• Thousands of
unemployed auto-
workers protested in front
of Henry Ford’s( creator
of the Model-T car)
factory to demand work.
• They were met by Ford’s
own private security
force.
• After the workers began
throwing rocks at the
security guards, they
unleashed gunfire.
• 4 demonstrators were
killed.
• The public was so
incensed by the deaths
that > 40,000 people
attended the funeral.

36. Rise of Communism
• Americans suffering
from the depression
began to embrace
Communism.
• The Communist Party
was at its strongest in
American history during
the depression.
• It had a following of
100,000+ Americans.
• It appealed to people
from every walk of life--
-workers, intellectuals,
and college students.
• Communists wanted to
completely overthrow
the current system--
Capitalism.
• They saw it as the only
way to provide relief to
those suffering.

37. Communists
• Although members of
the Communist Party
were regularly attacked
and generally viewed as
enemies of America,
they continued their
protests in support of
American workers.
• They were also unafraid
to fight against racism
in the South.

38. “Scottsboro Boys”
• The Communist Party
was also the party that
obtained a lawyer for a
group of poor black
men who were falsely
accused of rape in
Scottsboro, AL in 1931.
• It would be 20 years
before the last one was
released from prison.

39. The Bonus Army
• In 1924, Congress promised to pay WWI
veterans $1 for everyday they had been ikn
uniform, plus extra for time spent overseas.
• When it was time to pay up, Congress decided
to hand out promissory notes that the
veterans could not cash in until 1945.
• Veterans across the country began to organize
in an effort to get what was rightly theirs.

40. The Bonus Marchers

41. The President Reacts
• Although some in
Congress agreed with
the Bonus Army, Hoover
did not.
• He said that paying the
bonuses would require
the government to go
into debt.
• He refused to even
meet with their
representatives.
• To add insult to injury,
he labeled them as
“Communists” and
“bums”.
• More than 20,000
Bonus Marchers
convened in
Washington determined
to get Hoover to see
things their way.

42. Attack on the Bonus Marchers
• Hoover commanded
General Douglas
MacArthur to evict the
Bonus Marchers from
the city without going
into their camp.
• MacArthur and 500
army soldiers released
tear gas grenades on
the Bonus Marchers.
• They then torched their
camps.
• The Bonus Marchers
were forced to run
away.
• MacArthur was never
disciplined for directly
disobeying Hoover’s
orders.

43. The End for Hoover
• The attack on the Bonus Marchers was the last
nail in the coffin for Hoover.
• People saw him as unsympathetic and out of
touch with the needs of most Americans.

44. FDR & The New Deal