Putting a human face on the Depression

Years before the Stock Market and the overall economy crashed in late 1929, millions of Americans struggled to make ends meet. The prosperity of the "Roaring Twenties" did not reach most farm families or industrial workers or miners. Most economic historians estimate that the richest one percent owned forty-five percent of the country's wealth by 1929. Only eight percent of families had annual incomes above $5,000. Farm families eked out a bare subsistence on an average of $1,000. What this meant is that most Americans did not participate in the consumer economy of the 1920s. They could not afford the new radios in their handsome wood cabinets that sold for hundreds of dollars. They did not own telephones. Those in rural areas usually lacked electricity. If they owned cars, they were jalopies, "tin heaps" in the terminology of the day. They had no chance to purchase a Tin Lizzie, Henry Ford's new Model A that replaced his Model T. Urban workers typically did not drive. They rode trolleys or they walked.

These were the Americans hardest hit by the Great Depression. They were the farm families who, already in debt, defaulted on their mortgages and watched hopelessly as the local sheriff auctioned off their possessions. They were the antracite miners — most home heating relied on hard coal — whose hours were cut by half or two-thirds. They were the assembly-line workers at Ford or General Motors who were laid off, never to be recalled. On average, these families saw their real income fall by half. Farmers did worst of all. Their income fell from $1,000 in 1929 to $350 by 1932.

A farm wife feeding chickens, c. 1935, Farm Security Administration photograph. If we did not have the source of the photograph, it would be virtually impossible to date it. The dress and bonnet could easily have been from the 1900s or 1910s.

Nature made a bad situation worse. During World War I farmers on the Great Plains brought more and more land under cultivation as wheat prices soared. War's end meant falling commodity prices and falling farm income. Farmers coped by trying to raise even more grain, but succeeded only in driving down prices even more by increasing supply. By planting on the treeless plains stretching from Oklahoma north through the Dakotas, farmers unwittingly created an American desert. Several years of drought accompanied by wind storms literally blew the land away. Dust covered everything, even dishes inside cupboards. More crucially, dust covered farm equipment, barns and other out buildings, and the fields themselves. This was the Dust Bowl. Farmers who had managed to avoid foreclosure for debt lost their farms to the wind and had little choice but bundle their remaining possessions on the tops of their jalopies and join the exodus to California, Oregon, and Washington. Their welcome was rarely warm. California stationed state troopers along its border to turn the "Okies" back.

Thousands of others took to the road in search of work, any work. Young people, still in their teens, left home. If they could not contribute to the family's income, many said, the best thing to do was ride the rails, i.e., hitch a ride on a freight train. At least that way there was one less mouth to feed at home. Few found steady work. Instead they found "hobo jungles," improvised camps near railroad yards where men on the bum, and some women, gathered around a fire and contributed ingredients for a "Mulligan" stew. There were vegetables stolen from gardens and fields and food begged from sympathetic housewives. Hoboes shared information about soft touches in the vicinity. And they warned each other about particularly fierce "bulls," railroad police whose job it was to keep them off the freight trains they relied on to get to their next destination.

Illustration from The Grapes of Wrath drawn by Thomas Hart Benton

Some, especially families, built "Hoovervilles" on vacant land. They constructed shacks out of whatever materials they could find (or steal). These shanty towns had no plumbing, no streets. Residents had no address. School districts often made no effort to reach the children. Existence was hand-to-mouth.

Millions of others stayed put, especially if they lived in or near a big city. There was a better chance of getting work in New York, Chicago, and similar places. But the unskilled, the young, and people of color found the going tough no matter where they were.