Breadline: waiting to receive free food

“Migrant Mother” 1936 by Dorothea LangeEmployed by the U.S. Farm Security Administration to document the lives and conditions of impoverished farmers

Hooverville: NYC

“Depression Street” in NYC

Consequences of the Great Depression

1. What groups of people would you predict are the hardest hit by the Great Depression?

2. Analyze the photos of the breadline and “Migrant Mother.” What groups are the hardest hit per these photos? Why?

3. During the Great Depression, unemployment would rise to nearly 1/3 of the American population. In 1932, Fortune Magazine reported that 34 million people belonged to families with no, full-time wage earner. There were two million homeless people migrating around the country. Homeless families, lacking shelter, used cardboard and packing crates to create encampments called Hoovervilles. This name was meant to cast criticism on President Hoover and his handling of the economic crisis.

In what areas would you most likely find these encampments and why this particular location?

4. The Dust Bowl originated in the southern plains of the United States. Farmers first arrived in the region at the end of the 19 th century. What piece of legislation drew people west at this time and offered land cheap, so long as they were willing to remain and farm it?

5. What do you notice about the Dust Bowl from the images?

6. Using the excerpt below, answer the question that follows:

“Dust storms in the southern Great Plains, and indeed, in the Plains as a whole, were not unique to the 1930s . . . Many factors contributed to the creation of the Dust Bowl – soils subject to wind erosion, drought which killed the soil-holding vegetation, the incessant wind, and technological improvements which facilitated the rapid breaking of the native sod. The nature of southern Plains soils and periodic influence of drought could not be changed, but the technological abuse of the land could have been stopped. This is not to say that mechanized agriculture irreparably damaged the land – it did not. New and improved implements such as tractors, one-way disk plows, grain drills, and combines reduced plowing, planting, and harvesting costs and increased agricultural productivity. Increased productivity caused prices to fall, and farmers compensated by breaking more sod for wheat. At the same time, farmers gave little thought to using their new technology in ways that would conserve the soil.”

Source: Excerpt from Professor R. Douglas Hurt’s book titled, The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History, published in 1981.

Cite 4 reasons the above excerpt provides for the causes of the Dust Bowl.

7. Utilize the following excerpt from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath to answer the question below. Note: The excerpt describes Okies, migrant farm workers who left their central farms and settled in the California farming region. Without money, many worked the vegetable, fruit and cotton harvests of the west coast.

“And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift , to push, to pull, to pick, to cut anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land.

We ain’t foreign. Seven generations back Americans, and beyond that Irish, Scotch, English German. One of our folk in the Revolution an’ they was lots of our folks in the Civil War--both sides. Americans.”

Why were the Okies drawn west and what conditions did they live under?

8. Primary Source: The Lyrics of "This Land is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie Woody Guthrie, a famous folk singer from Oklahoma, wrote this song in 1940.

This Land Is Your Land This land is your land, this land is my land From California to the New York island; From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway, I saw above me that endless skyway: I saw below me that golden valley: This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts; And all around me a voice was sounding: This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling, And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting: This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." But on the other side it didn't say nothing, That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, By the relief office I seen my people; As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me, As I go walking that freedom highway; Nobody living can ever make me turn back This land was made for you and me.

The sixth verse describes conditions during the Great Depression. What does Woody mean when he says "the shadow of the steeple?"

9. Why are people gathering at the church and the relief office? Why does this make Woody wonder if "this land is made for you and me?"