Great Depression In America Essay

Unemployment statistics poignantly revealed the impact of the Great Depression on Americans. In 1929, the Labor Department reported 1,499,000 jobless persons, or 3.1 percent of all employables. After the stock market crash, the figure soared. At its peak in 1933, unemployment stood at 12,634,000, more than 1 of every 4 people in the labor force. Some estimates placed unemployment as high as 16 million. By 1933, the annual national income had shrunk from $87.8 billion to $40.2 billion. Farmers, perhaps the hardest-hit economic group, saw their income decline from $11.9 billion to $5.3 billion.

The Depression resulted from a severe decline in aggregate demand. One contributing factor was a massive wave of bank failures. As banks failed, the public

Farmers suffering from drastic price declines tried to reduce the flow of products to market. In August, 1932, for example, Iowa farmers began dumping milk bound for Sioux City. To dramatize their plight, Milo Reno, former president of the Iowa Farmers Union, organized a strike on the northern plains and cut off all agricultural products from urban markets until prices rose. Several farm states passed moratorium laws preventing the foreclosure of farms for debt. Drought aggravated the problems of farm families in the plains states, where the Dust Bowl made life so difficult that whole families packed up and left for the West Coast. Such “Okies” (named for the state where many originated) flooded into California to take jobs as migrant farm workers, as John Steinbeck vividly depicted in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath.

In the summer of 1932, twenty-five thousand World War I veterans, known as the Bonus Army, led by former sergeant Walter W. Waters, staged an organized protest by marching on Washington, D.C., to demand immediate payment of a bonus that was not due until 1945. Congress refused, and Hoover sent troops to disperse the riot that ensued at Anacostia Flats, where the veterans were