magine being in a position where you had no money and were unemployed for an excessive amount of time. This is what life was like, during the Great Depression. There was a tremendous amount of grief during the 1930s and continued into the early 1940s. Americans started to struggle from the lack of paychecks and jobs, that they could not meet their basic needs. Throughout the years, they learned to be resourceful and later, programs were created to help economic problems. The lack of employment was one of the many effects that occurred during the 1930’s. Businesses chose to fire and not hire, and therefore maintained to do so. Businesses did not have any confidence in the economy and planned not to expand their businesses. They had postponed …show more content…
It was difficult to get around, that they began to depend on other things. If they did not have a certain household item, they would substitute it. According to “Digging In”, his family used their own resources, “A partial list would include toothpaste (we used soda), toilet paper (we used the catalog)” (Hastings). In the same way, natural lighting is what they relied on to complete their daily tasks. Keeping one light on in a room at a time was important because they did not want to pay more, “After supper we ‘turned off the light in the kitchen’ and moved to the dining-sitting room, where another light was switched on, if we wanted to read on winter afternoons, we sat as near a window as possible, with the curtains pinned back, to save the lights it was nearly dark” (Hastings). This clever method helped homeowners cut back on paying extra money. In addition, there were programs created by the government to resolve the problems within the economy. The most successful program was the Civil Conservation Corps. It fixed the amount of unemployment and helped men get jobs. They began by sending 3 million men, 17 to 23 years of age, into the forest to work. They began digging ditches, building reservoirs, and planting trees.