Transcript Americans Face Hard Times

Unit 6 Lecture 2:
How were people affected by the
Great Depression?
Lecture Review Questions
1.
How did Hoover’s response to financial
crisis make the great depression worse?
2.
How were Farmers affected before and after
the Dust Bowl?
3.
What was the difference between how life
changed to white Americans (male &
female) and other racial minorities?
What was the Bonus Army & what did
they want?
4.
How did President Hoover respond to the financial
crisis?
Followed hands-off policy
→ natural cycle
 Volunteerism
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Asked the wealthy to donate more
Asked business leaders to keep
employment and wages high
Asked govt to cut taxes
Trickle-down economics:
money poured into the top of
the economic pyramid would
trickle down to the base
How did a large number of Americans lose
their homes in the 1930s?
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Impact of the G.D. touched everyone
Unemployment skyrocketed
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“No Help Wanted Here”
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People got laid off and could not
pay their bills
Clothes began to wear thin
Smaller meals at home
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Water replaced milk
Standing in bread lines/soup
lines
Rise of the Hooverville
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Hoover blamed for
the sudden economic
depression
Hoovervilles: shanty
towns
Hoover blankets
(newspapers)
Hoover flags (out
turned pockets)
What was often the only place a
family could get some food?
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Standing in
Breadlines.
Which groups of people were most
effected by the Great Depression?
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All Levels of society
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During the Great Depression how were
women who worked viewed by society?
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Hardest hit were those at the bottom
Kids forced to quit school
Men felt they were failures
Working women accused of taking jobs from men
How were minorities affected by the Great
Depression?
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Minorities lost their jobs to whites, discriminated
against in relief programs
“last to be hired, first to be fired”
Unemployment rate of 50%
Farmer are hard hit & rural America
becomes poverty stricken.
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Low Crop prices cut Farmer’s
income
As a result many could not pay
their mortgages and lost their
homes to the banks.
In the South Landowners
evicted tenant farmers and
sharecroppers.
Penny auctions: farmers
would bid mere pennies on
land and machines auctioned
by banks in order to help fellow
farmers
1933: 70 foreclosure sales
were blocked by farmers
Led to some states to suspend
auctions
How did the Great Plains become
the Dust Bowl?
Great Plains=America’s Bread Basket
 Over plowing+Drought+Wind Storms
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How did the dust bowl start a mass migration
of people to the West Coast?
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People lost their farms and traveled West to
California looking for work picking fruit.
Americans Protest
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Rejection of capitalism and
acceptance of
socialism/communism rose
Most still held faith in the
American system
Why did the Bonus Army march
on Washington, D.C.?
Bonus Army: WWI vets who demanded
payment of the bonus the government had
promised them
 Riots broke out, military called in by
Hoover to kick them out
 Hoover was doomed in the 1932 election
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