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Social Impacts of Great Depression

Dorthea Lange’s “Migrant Mother”

Hoovervilles

• Makeshift shelter of the homeless during the early years of the Great Depression

• “Hoover Flags”

• “Hoover Blankets”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOdJIYFl5J0&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1

Dust Bowl• Region in the Great Plains where drought and

dust storms took place for much of the 1930s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNkMaTruiEg&feature=related

Poverty and Society

*Impact on Health-Poor diet and medical care

*Stresses on Families

-living conditions declined as families moved in together

-men felt like failures

-women worried about feeding families

-working women were accused of taking jobs

Poverty and Society (continued)

*Discrimination increases

-African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans suffered as white laborers began to demand the low-paying jobs usually filled by minorities

Bonus Army

• WWI vets promised bonus after 1940

• In 1932 15,000 veterans poured in to Washington, D.C. demanded their bonus

• Congress rejected the payment

• Many went home, some stayed to protest, camped in “Hoovervilles”

Bonus Army

• Remaining veterans were driven out by the U.S. military

• Americans were outraged

• Blamed President Hoover

Government during the Great Depression

VS

President Herbert Hoover

• Laissez Faire-did not want to increase government role

• Felt it was not governments role to assist the needy

• Encouraged churches and charity to aid people in need

• Persuaded business leaders to maintain wages

Herbert Hoover

Hoover

• Realizes it is not enough!

• Reconstruction Finance Corporation-gave loans to banks and RRs

• Public works projects-gov’t funded construction

– Gave jobs!

Hoover Dam

The Election of 1932

Herbert Hoover(Republican)

• Government should not get involved in the economic and social affairs of its citizens (laissez faire).

• Government should not expand the size of the Federal Bureaucracy. This is too expensive.

• Voluntary aid should be given by business and the wealthy to relieve the Depression.

Franklin D. Roosevelt(Democrat)

• Government has an obligation to provide for the welfare and well being of its citizens.

• Government should not economize at the expense of starving citizens.

• Promised a NEW DEAL for the American people.

• The Federal Government needs to get involved and be active to bring us out of Depression.

Electoral results-1932 election