During the height of the Great Depression, around fifteen million people sent letters to the President and his first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. The Great Depression was a tough time in the 1930s when the economy in the United States and other countries started to deteriorate from many factors, one being the stock market crash in 1929. While the crashing of “the stock market was a major cause of the Great Depression, there were many more contributions, and it simply opened the curtain to show all the other structural problems” (Barbero Lecture Notes 4/1/24). It caused widespread unemployment, poverty, and financial and emotional hardships for many people. Unemployment skyrocketed, and after the stock market crashed there was an undeniable decline in business investment and consumer spending. In …show more content…
With little to no income, people face difficulties in meeting their basic needs. The loss of jobs and income also led to emotional distress, as people struggled with the uncertainty of their future and the challenges of providing for themselves and their families. A twelve-year-old boy from Chicago, Illinois wrote in his letter about catching his father crying, “I told him why are you crying daddy, and daddy said why shouldn’t I cry when there is nothing in the house” (Document). Due to all the New Deal programs implemented throughout the Great Depression, some of the financial burdens were reduced. While some people benefited from the New Deal, others were faced with limited access to these programs. Women were often seen as secondary earners or homemakers, and their participation in the workforce was undervalued. African Americans faced racial discrimination, which limited their access to employment opportunities and government assistance. While the Great Depression ended, the racial discrimination and perspectives that women were less than men