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How Did The Great Depression Affect Families

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On October 29, 1929 there was a devastating stock market crash known as Black Tuesday that “sent millions of investors into panic and wiped them out” History.com Staff (2009). This stock market crash led the United States to the Great Depression, less than eight months into Herbert Hoover’s Presidency . The Great Depression is known to be the longest economic crisis in the United States history. The Depression had a big impact on Americans, especially those with families to take care of. A great deal of families had to migrate from their homes to find better living and working opportunities. Families were reshaped by the Depression because of the problems they had to deal with such as unemployment, becoming homeless, and deprivation.
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When there were so many bank failures, people would lose all their money and become poor overnight. After a while this resulted in so many families becoming homeless. Many teenagers would leave home because they saw their parents struggling to find jobs and having so many mouths to feed. Some teenagers would leave to look around for work to get cash to send their family back home. Teenagers would even run away and “more than a quarter million teenagers were living on the road in America, many criss-crossing the country by illegally hopping freight trains” Uys, Michael (1997, January) Riding the Rails. Not only did teenagers do this, but farmers as well. Farmers migrating from the Dust Bowl would use the same way to get from place to place or to get to a job they heard of from miles away. People who lived in the railroads were called hobos. Homeless people later started building shanty towns made up of “shacks of wood and scraps of metal” Wild, Chris n.d. These shanty towns were later known as Hooverville because “the government failed to provide relief and President Herbert Hoover was to blame” History.com Staff (2010). Later “Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office and came up with the New Deal recovery programs that eventually helped the United States come out of the Depression” History.com Staff (2010). The Hoovervilles were later torn down in the

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The Great depression sent it affects all through the world. Though millions of Americans lost their jobs and homes. Soon “Hoovervilles” started to take over all over the country which were shacks of improvised housing for people who lost everything. When F.D.R came into office in 1932 he helped Americans and America start to recover with the passing of many laws and regulations . One change was the creating of the FDIC, which insured the peoples savings stayed in the bank.

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The great depression was a time where some people had nothing and the people that had things, had little to nothing. In this time of prosperity nobody had hope for the future and they sent their kids away and sold their belongings to other people who would pay for

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On October 29, 1929 the stock market crashed causing The Great Depression. Factories shut down, and 13 million people then became unemployed (B). 80% of American families lost or didn’t have savings (A,B) and pretty soon, 200,000 children were wandering the country with no shelter or food (A). Farmers lost their farms so they couldn’t pay loans(B). It was officially the longest-lasting economic downturn in history.

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The experience that the majority of urban and rural Americans shared together during the depression was a flat out lack of income. The differences were very few, but in the cities, the depression was more prominently visible because of a higher percentage of the population (Schultz 2014). Besides the lack of income and employment, most Americans underwent periods of time being extremely hungry. In the cities, people spent hours waiting in breadlines and were losing their homes to only end up living on the streets in communities referred to as "Hoovervilles" nicknamed after the president (Schultz 2014). In the country, families suffered because of unusual droughts of the 1930 's that caused crops to fail miserably meant the already indebted farmers commonly lost their properties.

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Zaid Mehmood Professor Brucher Paper 2, Draft 1 3 April 2024 A Time of Economic Disparity The Great Depression’s impact on society for the working-class was profound. Sharp economic downfall has resulted in families across the country experiencing financial hardships. Farmers faced challenges with the agricultural economy declining, leading to falling crop prices, which ultimately led to many losing their farms, because they were unable to make enough money to pay their mortgage and debt.

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The Great Depression was a worldwide economic slump that affected people of all sorts. In the United States, the unemployment rose to an all time high of 25% in 1933. These were desperate times, and desperate measures were taken just so you could get by. Because of these desperate measures, the culture of the country changed. As Lawrence Friedman put it, “Poverty and social disorganization were eating away at the country’s social fabric.”.

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The Great Depression was one of the most devastating economic crises in the history of the United States. It began in 1929 after the stock market crashed, setting off an economic spiral. Lasting for a decade it caused widespread unemployment, poverty, and social unrest. The economic collapse had devastating effects that had impacted everyday American life, including individual families, to the national economy, and even the government. During this period of time the American people faced a range of challenges including, unemployment, homelessness, starvation, and social inequality.

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The Great Depression was a period of an economic disaster that lasted from 1929 to 1939. The effects of the depression varied across the nation and had a significant impact on all the different classes of the society. The following investigation will explore the impacts of Great Depression on the daily lives of middle-class Americans. Middle-class Americans were severely affected by the Depression mostly because they stood in the most convenient place of the societal ladder, they were neither poor nor wealthy. So, when Depression struck, the middle-class almost disappeared from the ladder because the economic crisis was massive and affected their lifestyles drastically.

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The life of American people changed in the Depression-ravaged 1930s because they had to change their living style/standard of living. Most people lost their jobs, houses, and sometimes everything they owned. Some families were separated, where one or both of the parents had to leave. Also, some people thought that this was the end of their freedom in America because the Depression seemed to never end.

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In 1929 all hell broke loose and the stock market crashed sending millions of people into unforeseeable debt. Little did the citizens of the United States of America know then, but their lives were about to change for the worse over the next decade. During the Great Depression families were starving in the sreets and the United States government just did not know what to do. Charities were starting bread lines to try and combat the starving families.

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Extreme poverty was really big during the Great Depression. During the time, there weren't many nice houses like everyone would want to live in. In the second and fifth picture, it illustrates what people had to call "home". Many houses were taken away from them during the Great Depression and was never given back to them. Most of the houses that the people lived in after the Great Depession weren't safe at all.

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The Great Depression was a time of little hope and small dreams. Much of what happened forced young children out of their world out of their world into the adult world. I’ve also had to step up into the vast realm of the adult world. During the Great Depression many kids had to step up and begin acting like adults.

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The majority of people made under 2,000 dollars a year (Document 9) which was considered the bare minimum to live off of, the buy all of the basic essentials. These people didn’t have any money to spend on luxury items and couldn’t buy on credit. During this time, some companies priced their goods at a higher price than the majority of people made in a year, like boats that were priced anywhere from 10,000 dollars to 35,000 dollars (Document 8). With nobody to buy from them, these businesses were left without a profit and began going bankrupt. An average family before the depression with two people working full time jobs only made around twenty dollars a week (Document 7).

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The great depression made a major impact on the lives of the people that lived through it. One group of people that is often overlooked are children that lived during that time period. When the parents lost their jobs the responsibility the parent once held was put on the children of the families to contribute to the income of the home. Because of this in the great depression “two-fifths of children were employed in part time jobs” (Elder 65). In Glen Elder’s book Children of the Great Depression: Social Change in Life Experience he discusses how the depression affected those children in their later lives.

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