Great Depression Impact

The Great Depression was the harshest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the United States. It began shortly after the stock market crashed on October 1929. This sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. However, despite all of the relief and reform measures put into place by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that helped lessen the effects of the depression, the economy didn’t fully recover until after 1939, when World War Two came about and kicked the American Industries into full motion. The times of the Great Depression and World World Two were most certainly major events in American history and was arguably the most significant period of the twentieth century.

In the midst of widespread panic,

Along with illegal Black Market activities came things like the constant reminder of America needing to help England and France, American industries kicking into high gear and The New Deal, which Marjorie Hill described as “mutually beneficial” towards everyone. “By creating more jobs, it allowed more money to go into the pot” says Marjorie. Moreover, despite the feeling of The New Deal being mutually beneficial, Marjorie wasn’t quite sure that it necessarily affected her family directly or in a major way due to the facts that her father had a good job and her stay at home mom was just as content with her role as a housewife as any other person in or around her life and the place where she had grown

This comes to no surprise considering the fact that many people including Marjorie Hill and their families on the West coast, California in particular, weren’t necessarily struggling. During the war, California’s large agricultural industry grew dramatically to meet the needs of wartime. The state eventually became a leading manufacturing center. During wartime, California industries also hired many Women, African Americans, and Mexican Americans to replace the men that had left for the war. Thus, giving jobs to many that had never typically been considered to occupy. Even though these industries were hiring minorities such as African and Mexican Americans, it was the Women in particular who were being strongly encouraged by propaganda to occupy the Industrial jobs that had been left by the men. The answer to the question, “Did women have nearly as many jobs during World War Two or after?”, is obvious… Women had much more responsibility in the industrial world during the war than after. Interestingly, when Marjorie Hill was asked, in her opinion, how did she or the women around her felt about leaving these jobs after the war, she said “...I think that everybody wanted to get back to where they were before the war. During that period of time, you(women) married, had kids and stayed home to take