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The Great Depression: Rural America In The 1930's

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The Great Depression After World War I ended, many Americans experienced a period of financial prosperity called the ‘Roaring Twenties.” This era, also known as the Jazz Age, challenged the values of rural America and was characterized by women smoking, drinking, and wearing short skirts (pbs.org). People were buying things such as cars and household appliances with credit and putting money in the stock market (pbs.org). Even though businesses made huge gains of up to 65% from manufacturing, the average worker’s wage only increased 8% (pbs.org). There became an imbalance between the rich and the poor, more and more goods were being produced, and personal debt was rising. Towards the end of the “Roaring Twenties,” companies were entering their …show more content…

Some states started offering help to local communities, and some cities almost went bankrupt trying to help. By 1932, a county in Chicago was firing policemen, firemen, and teachers because they had not paid them in 8 months. The poor and African Americans were being hit the hardest, and by 1932, Harlem’s unemployment rate stood at 50% (www.gwu.edu). Additionally, discrimination continued in the South and many African Americans switched from Republican to Democrat during this time (pbs.org). The gross national product had dropped from $103.8 billion to $55.7 billion. Farmers couldn’t afford to harvest crops, mainly due to drought and falling food prices in the early 1920s. They were forced to leave their food to rot in the fields of their farms, while people elsewhere starved. Forty percent of the farms in Mississippi had been put on the auction block (www.gwu.edu). Other farmers lost their land to foreclosures. Many people had fallen into depression, despair, and hopelessness because they could not find jobs and suicide rates increased from 14% to 17%.
These conditions created a lot of problems and protests and resistance to protests sometimes turned violent. In 1932, four members of a group participating in a hunger march were shot and killed when 1,000 soldiers accompanied by tanks and machine guns evicted veterans living in the Bonus Army Camp in Washington, D.C.

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