October 29th, 1929, coined Black Tuesday, was the most devastating day in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which to this day is the worst stock market crash in United States history.
View of
crowds of people on Wall Street during the stock market crash, known as
Black Tuesday, New York, New York, October 29, 1929. Photoquest / Getty Images
The Crash marked the start of a decade long economic depression which has become famously known as The Great Depression.
City
council man, Mr. Barlow, and Treasury Secretary, Mr. Jil Martin, burning
100,000 dollars of “scrip money” (after the banks’ closure), April
1933, United States, National archives. Washington. Photo 12 / Getty Images
As employers began to lay off workers to meet financial demands, the national average unemployment rate jumped from just 3% to 25%.
Employment office full of men looking for work, c.1930, United States, National archives. Washington. Photo 12 / Getty Images
Robley D.
Stevens, 30-year-old victim of the Depression, wears a sign that reads:
“I am for sale. I must have work or starve,” while standing on a
sidewalk in Baltimore, Md., in Aug. 1931.
AP
Fred Bell, a
one-time millionaire and now unemployed, sells apples at his stand on a
busy street corner in San Francisco, Ca., on March 7, 1931 during the
Great Depression. Bell, known as “Champagne Fred” in the earlier days,
has nothing left of his share of the Theresa Bell fortune as a result of
the stock market crash in 1929.
AP
With few available jobs, workers sought out any opportunity for pay, despite safety hazards.
With
the Chrysler Building to his left, a steel worker rests on a girder at
the 86th floor of the new Empire State Building during construction in
New York City, in this Sept. 24, 1930 file photo. AP
Birth rate fell as families held off from raising additional children and women entered the labor force.
Unemployed women learning typewriting in a house for employment in Berlin in the Thirties. Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
Meanwhile in the Mid-U.S., agricultural industries suffered as drought and poor farming methods caused uncontrollable dust storms which destroyed farmlands. This period became known as The Dust Bowl.
Postcard showing an approaching dust storm somewhere in the midwest, ca.1930s. Transcendental Graphics / Getty Images
View of the roof of a house, which has been buried by a dust drift from a Dust Bowl storm in Dallas, South Dakota. American Stock Archive / Getty Images
Three
girls modelling various dustbowl masks to be worn in areas where the
amount of dust in the air causes breathing difficulties, circa 1935. Bert Garai / Getty Images
The Dust Bowl forced countless workers out of the midwest in search of agricultural work in more prosperous areas.
Vegetable workers, migrants, waiting after work to be paid. Near Homestead, Florida. History Archiv / History Archiv/REX Shutterstock
Map of California showing proposed rural rehabilitation camps. History Archiv/REX Shutterstock
At this time, over one million farms were lost and two million homeless people were migrating throughout the country.
Arthur
Rothstein photograph of a migrant female worker picking cranberries,
Burlington County, New Jersey, 1938 during the American Great
Depression.
History Archiv / History Archiv/REX Shutterstock
Housing for migrant fruit workers in a tourist and trailer camp near Belle Glade, Florida.
Universal History Archiv/REX Shutterstock
Perhaps the most iconic and symbolic image of the time period is this photo of Florence Owens Thompson, Migrant Mother.
Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California. Dorothea Lange / Library of Congress
Migrant workers typically resorted to living out of vehicles or in tented camps.
The only home of a depression-routed family of nine from Iowa. Universal History Archiv/REX Shutterstock
As the homeless population escalated uncontrollably, shantytowns known as Hoovervilles, named after then-president Herbert Hoover, began popping up near urban areas.
Central Park Hooverville with Central Park West in the background. New York Daily News Archive / Getty Images
This is
the Sleeping quarters of the municipal lodging house at the foot of
26th Street and East River in New York City on Nov. 27, 1931 during the
Great Depression. AP Photo
The Great Depression was not limited to the U.S. alone–economic depression was simultaneously being experienced in all of the industrialized Western world.
Ouse, Tasmania. The Pearce family at their house at the height of the Depression. Newspix / Newspix/REX Shutterstock
January 1932: Clutching her handbag a homeless, elderly woman huddles on a doorstep in London, a sack by her side. General Photographic Agency / Getty Images
A woman who has been injured in an unemployment demonstration during the Depression in Bristol. Hulton Archive / Getty Images
Low employment caused turmoil between the U.S. government and the working immigrant population in the U.S. which at this time saw more emigrants leaving the country than immigrants arriving to it.
Migrants, family of Mexicans, on road with tire trouble. Looking for work in the peas. California. Dorothea Lange / Library of Congress
Despite relief efforts during the Hoover administration, the reforms needed to completely resolve these economic hardships did not arrive until Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency in 1934.
President
Herbert Hoover signs the unemployment and drought relief bills
providing a total of $161,000,000 for providing work for the jobless and
seed fertilizer and, possibly, food for farmers of the drought area,
Dec. 20, 1930. The unemployment bill creates an emergency fund of
$116,000,000 to be expended on the construction of federal buildings,
road and waterways. The $45,000,000 carried in the drought relief bill
is for loans to farmers. AP Photo
Depression Housewife dispairs at lack of food and money. Newspix / Newspix/REX Shutterstock
Gertrude
Haessler, 38, put up a battle with police in Washington, Nov. 24, 1932,
when they tried to arrest her for creating a disturbance along with
others, near the White House on Thanksgiving Day. She was one of four
adults and a half dozen children who were taken into custody when they
tried to force an entrance to the White House to present a petition to
the president. No one was injured, but Haessler was escorted away by two
officers by picking her up bodily. AP Photo
Thousands of
unemployed workers, who marched from Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C.,
are gathered in front of the Capitol to ask the Congress and the U.S.
President for aid, in January 1932, during the Great Depression in the
United States.
AP Photo
A mother and
children rest as they and over 40 men, women and children camp out at
City Hall in St. Louis, Mo., April 29, 1936. When a St. Louis alderman
took no action to increase relief appropriations, protesters descended
upon City Hall and threatened to stay “‘til hell freezes over or we get
relief.” They started their second day in the building today.
AP Photo
In this
Feb. 13, 1932, file photo a long line of men wait along Broadway for
their ration of a sandwich and a cup of coffee in Times Square, New York
City during the Great Depression. AP Photo
During
the great depression, rioting farmers dumped cans of milk rather than
sell for two cents a quart. In this image babies and small children of
relief workers in Kansas City, United States, protest cuts in funds in
the Wyandotte county court house on August 7, 1930. During this dark
period in American history, millions of people could not afford butter
at 39 cents a pound or roast at 21 cents. AP Photo
Amongst many of the programs FDR introduced in the New Deal, the Works Progress Administration enabled artists to be paid by the government in exchange for distributing public service announcements.
Library Of Congress
With expensive entertainment out of the question, people found solace in local gatherings and viewing cheap movies also funded by the WPA.
A segment from the popular song “Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?” from The Three Little Pigs. Disney
Library Of Congress
After controversial political shifts in response to the Depression, World War II begins, effectively recruiting the unemployed population and ending the 10 years of economic strife.
16th October 1942: A World War II pilot gives the thumbs up sign from the cockpit of his aeroplane. Fox Photos / Getty Images
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