The Great Depression by More Content Now / Gannett

. 1929 1939

INSIDE

TABLE of CONTENTS

4 1929: Panic 6 1930: Unemployment 10 1931: Dust Bowl 14 1932: Despair 18 1933: FDR 22 1934: New Deal

26 30 1936: Rural electrification 34 1937: Another hit 38 1938: Fair labor standards 42 1939: War in Europe 1935: Works Progress Administration

COVER PHOTO: “MIGRANT MOTHER” BY DOROTHEA LANGE. ICONIC SHOT OF A DESTITUTE PEA PICKER AND HER CHILDREN. NATIONAL ARCHIVES

STAFF Editors LISA GLOWINSKI MICHAEL TOESET

Scott’s Run, West Virginia. Interior of the Jero WPA nursery. These children are from unemployed miners’ homes, March 1937. [NATIONAL ARCHIVES]

. 1929 1939 AN END TO

THE ROAR

or every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Great Depression was the reaction to 1920s America’s then-unprecedented levels of wealth, corporate expansion and bank lending. “The richest 1% of Americans owned over a third of all American assets,” according to US history.org. “The wealthy tended to save money that might have been put back into the economy if it were spread among the middle and lower classes. Middle class Americans had already stretched their debt capacities by purchasing automobiles and household appliances on installment plans.” On Sept. 3, 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average peaked at 381.17. (For comparison, the index ended 2019 at 28,538.44.) Over four days in October, according to TheBalance.com, the 1929 stock market lost the equivalent of $396 billion today. “The crash followed an asset bubble,” said The Balance. “Since 1922, the stock market had gone up by almost 20% a year. Everyone invested, thanks to a financial invention called buying ‘on margin.’ It allowed people to borrow money from their broker to buy stocks. They only needed to put down 10-20%. Investing this way contributed to the irrational exuberance of the Roaring Twenties.” By July 8, 1932, the Dow was down to 41.22. But nothing lasts forever. By Nov. 23, 1954, the Dow finally regained its September 1929 high, closing at 383. What follows is a look at life in the U.S. during the Great Depression. Family of an Arkansas sharecropper. [PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE]

A solemn crowd gathers outside the stock exchange after the crash in 1929. [WIKIMEDIA]

1929

Graph of the 1929 crash on Wall Street. [WIKIMEDIA PHOTO]

PANIC

A crowd gathers outside the New York Stock Exchange after the crash of 1929. [LIBRARY OF CONGRESS]

ALSO THIS YEAR

w Herbert Hoover is sworn in as president.

he “Roaring ’20s” came to an abrupt end Oct. 24, 1929, as nervous investors sold stock en masse. According to History.com, a record 12.9 million shares were traded that day, known as “Black Thursday.” Trading volume was so high that it delayed the ticker tape reporting of trades by over an hour, creating confusion and anxiety. Some exchanges were so overwhelmed that they closed early. In response, Richard Whitey, then head of the New York Stock Exchange, began buying shares of U.S. Steel and other companies, sparking a bit of a rally. Five days later, on Oct. 29 — or “Black Tuesday” — some 16 million shares were traded. By mid-November, an estimated $30 billion in stock values had been wiped out. On Dec. 3, in his first State of the Union address, President Herbert Hoover told Congress the worst was over from the stock market’s slide. In his memoirs, he wrote of the speech, “I did not wish to add alarms to the already rising fears. Therefore, I gave a guarded discussion of the economic situation arising out of the crash of six weeks previously, and reviewed the steps taken to protect the situation.”

w Seven rivals of Al Capone are murdered in Chicago’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. w The first Academy Awards are presented. w The first color TV, by Bell Labs, is demonstrated in New York City. w New York’s Museum of Modern Art opens to the public.

A solemn crowd gathers after the 1929 stock market crash. [WIKIMEDIA PHOTO]

1930

1930 ALSO THIS YEAR w The Mickey Mouse comic strip makes its first appearance. w The Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in motion pictures for the next 40 years.

An unemployed, destitute man leans against a vacant store in October 1929. [DOROTHEA LANGE / PUBLIC

w Jimmy Dewar invents Hostess Twinkies.

DOMAIN]

w The Chrysler Building is completed, becoming the world’s first man-made structure taller than 1,000 feet. w 3M introduces Scotch Tape.

UNEMPLOYMENT

y 1930, 4 million Americans looking for work could not find it, according to History.com; that number would rise to 6 million in 1931. Bread lines and soup kitchens opened across the country in an attempt to help families who couldn’t make enough money to eat. During the first 10 months of 1930, 744 U.S. banks failed. Some 9,000 would fail over the decade.

Economies across the world felt the effects. As countries moved to protect their goods, tariffs such as the 1930 U.S. Smoot– Hawley act exacerbated the collapse in global trade. This raised tariffs and prices on thousands of imported items, meant to encourage the purchase of Americanmade products. But other nations increased tariffs on American-made goods in retaliation, reducing international trade and worsening the Depression, according to the U.S. Department of State’s archives.

Christmas 1930, Greenville, Ohio. [DON O’BRIEN/FLICKR]

A cartoon by Fred Ellis published in The Daily Worker on March 6, 1930. [WIKIMEDIA]

1930

Over 100 black and white demonstrators linking arms were organized by a local Communist Party to picket the White House on March 6, 1930, as part of a nationwide protest against unemployment held in cities across the country. [LIBRARY OF CONGRESS]

DID YOU KNOW In October 1930, with unemployment rising, Herbert Hoover “created the President’s Emergency Committee for Employment to coordinate state and local relief programs, and to develop methods for increasing employment in the private sector,” according to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. “But with no direct control of funding for relief or jobs, PECE had only limited success. “As the Depression worsened, Hoover requested that the Federal Reserve increase credit, and he persuaded Congress to transfer agricultural surpluses from the Federal Farm Board to the Red Cross for distribution to relief agencies. Hoover asked Congress for even more spending on public works, and he continued to encourage states and private businesses to generate new jobs.”

President Hoover signs a bill on Dec. 20, 1930, to help ease unemployment. This is the first photo taken of Hoover in the White House, and the first telephone to sit on the desk of a president is seen at right. [HERBERT HOOVER PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY]

Emergency

]

ERICAN HISTORY

L MUSEUM OF AM

1930s. [NATIONA money from the

1931

DUST BOWL

1931

s railroads pushed into the Great Plains in the 1860s, so, too, did migrants and immigrants looking for a piece of America. World War I drove up prices for crops, and gas-powered tractors and combines became more common on farms in the 1910s, leading to a boom of cultivation. When drought set in during the 1930s, and strong windstorms picked up the fieldsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; fragile topsoil, Dust Bowl conditions were born. While such storms occurred from South Dakota to Texas, the hardest hit areas included the Oklahoma panhandle, southwest Kansas and southeast Colorado.

ALSO THIS YEAR w The American Federation of Laborâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s National Committee for Modification of the Volstead Act is formed to work for the repeal of Prohibition. w The Star-Spangled Banner is adopted as the U.S. national anthem. w Nevada legalizes gambling. w Construction of the Empire State Building is completed in New York City. w In an attempt to stop the banking crisis in Central Europe from causing a worldwide financial meltdown, President Hoover issues the Hoover Moratorium to temporarily cease payments on war debt. w Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion in Chicago.

Many families headed west to find work and to escape the Dust Bowl. Between 1930 and 1940, more than 50,000 people moved out of South Dakota. [LIBRARY OF CONGRESS]

Dust storms ravaged parts of the country during 1930-1931. [COURTESY OF NOAA/GEORGE E. MARSH ALBUM]

1931

1931 DID YOU KNOW

WHAT IT WAS LIKE

Dorothea Lange of Hoboken, New Jersey, captured many of the most iconic images of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression for the U.S. Farm Security Administration.

Lawrence Svobida, a wheat farmer from Kansas, witnessed the searing drought and relentless winds that crippled the southern Great Plains during the 1930s. His vivid account is taken from his memoir, “Farming the Dust Bowl.”

About the portrait “Migrant Mother,” used on this section’s cover, Lange told Popular Photography in 1960, “I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was 32. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.” In the 1940s Lange photographed the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans on the West Coast after the Pearl Harbor attack, and their subsequent internment.

“... With the gales came the dust. Sometimes it was so thick that it completely hid the sun. Visibility ranged from nothing to fifty feet, the former when the eyes were filled with dirt which could not be avoided, even with goggles.”

This Texas tenant farmer brought his family to Maryville, California, in 1935, and shared his story to Dorothea Lange, saying in 1927 they made $7,000 in cotton, in 1928 broke even, in 1929 went to the hole, in 1930 went in still deeper, in 1931 lost everything and in 1932 hit the road. [DOROTHEA LANGE/FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION]

“... At other times a cloud is seen to be approaching from a distance of many miles. Already it has the banked appearance of a cumulus cloud, but it is black instead of white, and it hangs low, seeming to hug the earth. Instead of being slow to change its form, it appears to be rolling on itself from the crest downward. As it sweeps onward, the landscape is progressively blotted out. Birds fly in terror before the storm, and only those that are strong of wing may escape. The smaller birds fly until they are exhausted, then fall to the ground, to share the fate of the thousands of jack rabbits which perish from suffocation.” “... So the Dust Bowl had taught us another lesson, namely that bare ground exposed to the sun will transform warm breezes into fiery blasts. ... This was my first experience of a wind that caused my face to blister so that the skin peeled off.”

Children are attired in goggles and homemade masks in order to avoid the dust. [SHEBOYGAN COUNTY HISTORICAL RESEARCH CENTER]

From PBS.org

1932

American Union Bank, New York City. April 26, 1932. [WIKIMEDIA]

DESPAIR

ith the world now mired in economic chaos, it was hard to get a foothold on any kind of progress. By 1932 U.S. unemployment had reached 23.6% — still not at its peak of 25%, to come the next year. More than 5,000 banks had failed. Drought continued, and hundreds of thousands of homeless found themselves living in “Hooverville” shanty towns. The president did what he could, establishing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in January to make emergency loans to businesses in danger of default, and the Federal Home Loan Bank Act in July, to spur construction and stop foreclosures. Also in July the Emergency Relief and Construction Act was passed to stimulate public works programs and create jobs. This was expanded as part of FDR’s New Deal. In the Midwest, farmers had had henough. A group called the Farmers’ Holiday Association formed, encouraging farmers to “Stay at Home-Buy NothingSell Nothing.” A popular slogan: “Let’s call a Farmer’s Holiday, a Holiday let’s hold. We’ll eat our wheat and ham and eggs, And let them eat their gold.” In July the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its lowest level of the Great Depression: 41.22.

ALSO THIS YEAR w Hattie W. Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate. w The 1932 Winter Olympics open in Lake Placid, New York. w Charles Lindbergh, Jr., the infant son of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Charles Lindbergh, is kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey. In May, 10 weeks after his abduction, the infant is found dead just a few miles from the Lindberghs’ home. w Amelia Earhart flies from the U.S. to Derry, Northern Ireland, in 14 hours 54 minutes, becoming the first woman — and the only person since Charles Lindbergh — to fly nonstop and alone across the Atlantic. w The 1932 Summer Olympics open in Los Angeles.

Farmers block roads leading to Sioux City, Iowa, during the 1932 Farmers’ Holiday Association strike. [COUNCIL BLUFFS PUBLIC LIBRARY]

1932

1932 AN ELECTION YEAR

“American Madness” is a 1932 American film directed by Frank Capra that starred Walter Huston as a New York banker embroiled in scandal. [WIKIMEDIA]

Americans were not eased by President Hoover’s reassurances during the Great Depression, and they overwhelmingly elected New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.

Bonus Army marchers clash with police in Washington, D.C., in 1932. [NATIONAL ARCHIVES]

ABOUT THE BONUS ARMY On May 29, 1932, the first of approximately 15,000 World War I veterans arrived in Washington, D.C., demanding the immediate payment of their military bonuses. These men became known as the Bonus Army, and their ranks would swell to more than 40,000 as they were joined by families and well-wishers. Like many, these men were out of work. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded them bonuses in the form of certificates they could not redeem until 1948. The demonstrators wanted immediate cash payment of their certificates. On July 28, President Hoover ordered the U.S. Army to forcibly evict the veterans from government property. Scuffles ensued, and two vets later died of their wounds. Troops dispersed the last of the Bonus Army the next day.

A sign from the 1932 presidential campaign, when FDR defeated Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover. [WIKIMEDIA] The marchers, who were demanding wages for their service in World War I, spent the night in front of the U.S. Capitol on July 13, 1932. [LIBRARY OF CONGRESS]

1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt speaks at his inauguration in Washington, D.C., on March 4, 1933. [WIKIMEDIA]

1933

FDR E

lected with a mandate from the people to end the Great Depression, and with the campaign song “Happy Days are Here Again,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to get to work. In his first months as president: • March 5: Declared a bank holiday to freeze all financial transactions until March 13. • March 12: Addressed the nation for the first time as president in a “Fireside Chat,” radio broadcasts that would become his signature mode of communication to the people. • March 15: The Dow Jones Industrial Average rises 15.34%, which remains the largest one-day percentage gain for the index. • April 5: Established by executive order the Civilian Conservation Corps, a voluntary work relief program for unemployed, unmarried men. Also that day, declared a national emergency and issued an executive order making it illegal for U.S. citizens to own gold. • May 18: Signed an act creating the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federally owned corporation designed to provide economic development to the region particularly affected by the Great Depression. • Nov. 8: Unveiled the Civil Works Administration, designed to create jobs for more than 4 million of the 15 million unemployed in the U.S.

Outgoing President Herbert Hoover (left) and Roosevelt on Inauguration Day in 1933.

Here are the NBC microphone used for FDR’s “Fireside Chat” radio broadcasts. [WIKIMEDIA PHOTOS]

FDR’s official campaign portrait from 1944.

1933

1933 FDR wore these distinctive pincenez spectacles on Inauguration Day in 1933. FDR LIBRARY MUSEUM COLLECTION

ALSO THIS YEAR

Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt with their first two children in 1908. [WIKIMEDIA PHOTOS]

Hoover and FDR - The New Yorker Cover March 4, 1933

w Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the U.S. (1923–29), dies.

HERBERT HOOVER

w The 20th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, changing Inauguration Day from March 4 to Jan. 20.

LIBRARY AND

Top left: The Tennessee Valley Authority, part of the New Deal, being signed into law in 1933. Top right: FDR was responsible for the New Deal. Bottom: A public mural from one of the artists employed by the New Deal’s WPA program. [WIKIMEDIA PHOTOS]

PRESIDENTIAL MUSEUM, WEST BRANCH, IOWA

w The Blaine Act ends Prohibition. The 21st Amendment, repealing Prohibition, goes into effect in December. w Frances Perkins becomes Secretary of Labor and the first female member of the U.S. Cabinet. w The Century of Progress World’s Fair opens in Chicago.

1934

NEW DEAL

ALSO THIS YEAR w The Apollo Theater opens in Harlem.

fter a flurry of bills passed the previous year, 1934 saw New Deal programs enacted. But many were for temporary jobs, and workers wanted more. Four major labor strikes this year — by auto workers, textile workers, Teamsters and a general one in San Francisco — got the message across. The National Industrial Recovery Act and National Recovery Administration sought to give more bargaining power for unions, create a minimum wage of between 20 and 45 cents per hour, cap a maximum workweek at 35 to 45 hours and abolish child labor. Also in 1934, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was established to regulate the stock market and prevent the corporate abuses that helped lead to the Great Depression.

w Albert Einstein visits the White House. w In March John Dillinger escapes from jail in Indiana and becomes the FBI’s “Public Enemy No. 1.” He is fatally wounded in a shootout with the FBI in Chicago in July. w Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are caught and killed by police in May. A Works Progress Administration mural by Conrad Albrizio. [NATIONAL ARCHIVES]

A worker carries a message during the 1934 San Francisco General Strike. [JOHN GUTTMAN / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS]

A Civilian Conservation Corps camp was organized and established at South Dakota’s Wind Cave National Park in 1934. [LIBRARY OF CONGRESS]

1934

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Gold Reserve Act on Jan. 30, 1934, requiring that all gold and gold certificates held by the Federal Reserve be surrendered and vested to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. [FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM]

1934

Civil Works Administration workmen clean and paint the gold dome of the Denver Capitol in 1934. [WIKIMEDIA]

“1934: A New Deal for Artists” examined more than 50 paintings from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum created under the auspices of the Public Works of Art. The paintings are a lasting visual record of America at a specific moment in time. [NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM]

1935

ver its eight years of existence, the Works Progress Administration put about 8.5 million Americans to work, according to History.com. Signed May 6, 1935, by executive order, WPA projects still in existence include: • The Hoover Dam. • Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, New York, part of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. • Camp David, Maryland. • New York’s LaGuardia Airport. In total, WPA workers built more than 4,000 school buildings, erected 130 hospitals, laid about 9,000 miles of storm drains and sanitary sewer lines, built 29,000 bridges, constructed 150 airfields, paved or repaired 280,000 miles of roads, and planted 24 million trees, says History.com. When WWII weapons production ramped up in the 1940s, the program was no longer needed to stimulate jobs. Also in 1935, the National Youth Administration was established to provide work and education for those ages 16 to 25; the National Labor Relations Act became law, giving workers the right to organize into unions, engage in collective bargaining and to strike; and President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.

ALSO THIS YEAR w Amelia Earhart becomes the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to New York. w The great Black Sunday dust storm (made famous by Woody Guthrie in his “dust bowl ballads”) hits hardest in eastern New Mexico and Colorado, and western Oklahoma. w Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio. w The first of the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s is passed, showing the U.S.’s noninterventionist stance against tensions in Europe. w The strongest hurricane to strike the U.S. makes landfall in the Florida Keys on Labor Day, killing 423. It is still the most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in terms of pressure, and it’s tied with Hurricane Dorian for the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane by maximum sustained winds. w Mary McLeod Bethune founds the National Council of Negro Women.

WPA workers build Union Terrace Park in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 1935. [WIKIMEDIA PHOTOS]

WORKS PROGRESS

ADMINISTRATION Members of the WPA Federal Art Project art class at the Seamen’s Institute in New York watch their instructor put the finishing touches on a pastel in November 1935.

WPA workers on a road development project. [WIKIMEDIA]

1935

An unemployed man in New York City in 1935. [NATIONAL ARCHIVES]

DID YOU KNOW Federal Emergency Relief Administration administrator and WPA head Harry Hopkins speaks to reporters in November 1935. [WIKIMEDIA]

In addition to its well-known building and infrastructure projects, the WPA also oversaw a group of programs collectively known as Federal Project Number One. These programs employed artists, musicians, actors and writers. President Roosevelt intended Federal One (as it was known) to put artists back to work while entertaining and inspiring the larger population by creating a hopeful view of life amidst the economic turmoil. Artists created motivational posters and painted murals of â&#x20AC;&#x153;American scenesâ&#x20AC;? in public buildings. Sculptors created monuments, and actors and musicians were paid to perform. Federal One also established more than 100 community art centers throughout the country. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt lobbied FDR to sign the executive order establishing Federal One. She later praised the project in columns and speeches and defended it against critics who saw the arts as a waste of money.

Scene from a 1935 class held by the Works Progress Administration. [FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM]

Federal One comprised a small part of WPA expenditures. Roughly $27 million of the nearly $5 billion that had been earmarked for WPA work programs went to the arts. The WPA arts programs led to the later creation of the National Foundation of the Arts.

History.com

1936

1936 Front cover of a Rural Electrification Administration pamphlet.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (center) signs the Rural Electrification Act with Rep. John Rankin (left) and Sen. George William Norris (right). [WIKIMEDIA PHOTOS]

RURAL ELECTRIFICATION

y the 1920s, most cities and towns in the U.S. received electricity from utility companies. It was different story in the country: By 1932, only about 10% of rural America was electrified, and about half of those people had to buy their own country-home power plants, according to the National Museum of American History. Franklin D. Roosevelt made this issue part of his 1932 presidential campaign and established by executive order the Rural Electrification Administration in 1935. Congress passed the initiative the next year. The REA made loans to electric cooperatives that were repaid over 30 years. Rural landowners organized

cooperatives among themselves and provided labor to build the systems they ultimately came to own. Rural electrification was another part of FDR’s New Deal that tried to get Americans working again. World War II interrupted the work of the REA, but act was made permanent in 1944. In fact the most recent amendment to the bill was made by President Barack Obama in 2014, to include a pilot program for a rural gigabit broadband network. Former Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, whose Congress passed the original act, said in 1959 that 90% of farm homes in the U.S. were electrified, compared to 3% in the early 1930s.

DID YOU KNOW Part of the Rural Electrification Administration’s work involved teaching people how to use electrified appliances. Louisan Mamer (1910-2005) of Southern Illinois and her colleagues traveled around the country with what they referred to an “electric circus.” They taught people who had never used electricity how to operate and maintain equipment, cook and do household chores with electricity, and use the system safely.

Rural Electrification Administration representatives speak to farmers in the 1930s. [US DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE]

Mamer grew up on a farm and, after graduating from the University of Illinois College of Agriculture, taught home economics. As one of the first home electrification specialists for the REA, she also wrote training documents and vetted program materials.

1936

ALSO THIS YEAR w Richard Hauptmann, convicted of the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder in 1932, is executed in New Jersey State Prison. w A major heat wave strikes North America; high-temperature records are set and thousands die. w African-American athlete Jesse Owens wins the 100-meter dash at the Berlin Olympics. w Margaret Mitchell’s epic historical romance “Gone with the Wind” is published. w FDR is elected to a second term in a landslide victory over Republican governor of Kansas Alf Landon. w Life magazine begins weekly publication.

A farmer watches a lineman at work in Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, circa 1936. [WIKIMEDIA]

Rural Electrification Administration workers erect telephone lines in a rural area. [NATIONAL ARCHIVES]

Workers string a rural TVA transmission line. [NATIONAL ARCHIVES]

One of the posters designed by Lester Beall in the 1930s to promote the Rural Electrification Administration. [WIKIMEDIA]

1937

t could have been because of decreased manufacturing levels. Perhaps it was because funding for key New Deal programs was cut in the federal budget. Maybe it was just a natural stabilization of the markets. Whatever the cause, 193738 saw an economic downturn after years of gains. By spring, several key economic factors had risen back to early 1929 levels. Wages were rising, but employers were cutting back hours. And likely people were holding on to their money, still scarred by 1929’s fallout. Some said the 1937-38 downturn was caused by New Deal programs that were not friendly to business expansion. Roosevelt and cabinet members reacted by moving against big business, including automaker Henry Ford, steelmaker Tom Girdler and the super rich “Sixty Families” who supposedly comprised “the living center of the modern industrial oligarchy which dominates the United States,” according to David M. Kennedy’s “Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945.” When the United States entered World War II, however, businesses were needed again to quickly produce war supplies.

1937

People wait for relief checks in Calipatria, California, in March 1937. [WIKIMEDIA]

ANOTHER HIT

Texans and Oklahomans, drought-stricken ex-farmers, are fast supplanting Mexican labor in the California harvests. An Oklahoman from Chickasaw in a potato pickers’ camp. Kern County, California.

Drought refugees and Mexicans plant cantaloupe in Imperial Valley, California. [PHOTOS BY DOROTHEA LANGE/PUBLIC DOMAIN]

1937

ALSO THIS YEAR w On Jan. 19, Howard Hughes sets a new record by flying from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. w John Steinbeck’s novella of the Great Depression “Of Mice and Men” is published. w The first issue of Detective Comics is published in the United States. Twentyseven issues later, Detective Comics introduces Batman. w In the worst school disaster in American history in terms of lives lost, the New London School in New London, Texas, suffers a catastrophic natural gas explosion, killing about 295 students and teachers.

ALSO THIS YEAR w On May 6 the German airship Hindenburg bursts into flame when mooring to a mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey. w On May 27 the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, linking San Francisco and Marin County. The next day, President Roosevelt pushes a button in Washington, D.C., signaling the start of vehicle traffic over the bridge. w On July 2 Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappear after taking off from New Guinea during Earhart’s attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world. w Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the first feature-length animated cartoon with sound, opens and becomes a smash hit.

An employment agency in San Francisco. [PHOTOS BY DOROTHEA LANGE/PUBLIC DOMAIN]

Howard Street, called “Skid Row,” the street of the unemployed in San Francisco.

Lettuce workers in California, 1937. [NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY]

A Coast Guardsman transports radio reporters detailing the devastation of the Great Ohio, Mississippi River Valley Flood of 1937. According to the National Weather Service, it’s estimated 350 people died and nearly 1 million were left homeless. [U.S. COAST GUARD]

1938

he recession of 1937 waned this year, “after the Fed rolled back reserve requirements, the Treasury stopped sterilizing gold inflows and desterilized all remaining gold that had been sterilized since December 1936, and the Roosevelt administration began pursuing expansionary fiscal policies,” according to FederalReserveHistory.org. “The recovery from 1938 to 1942 was spectacular: Output grew by 49 percent, fueled by gold inflows from Europe and a major defense buildup.” Also this year, a major law was passed for workers: The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 created the right to a minimum wage, and “timeand-a-half” overtime pay for more than 40 hours of work in a week. It also prohibited most employment of minors in “oppressive child labor.” Though the FLSA has seen several amendments and increases in the minimum wage, its basic tenets remain in force today.

Farm Labor Union in Galena, Kansas, 1938. [GEORGE EASTMAN MUSEUM/FLICKR]

A sharecropper’s wife in Missouri, 1938. [NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY/PUBLIC DOMAIN]

FAIR LABOR STANDARDS

People gather on the street outside the Labor Temple in November 1938 in Bakersfield, California, where a conference called by the Steinbeck Committee was being held. [PHOTO BY DOROTHEA LANGE/BRITT FULLER/FLICKR]

1938

ALSO THIS YEAR w Adolf Hitler makes his muchanticipated closing address at Nuremberg, in which he vehemently attacks the Czech people and president. w On Sept. 21 the New England Hurricane of 1938 strikes Long Island and southern New England, killing over 300 along the Rhode Island shoreline and approximately 600 in total. w The minimum wage is established by law in the United States. w On Oct. 30, Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of “The War of the Worlds” is broadcast, causing panic in various parts of the United States.

ALSO THIS YEAR Holger Cahill, national director of the Federal Art Project, speaks at the Harlem Community Art Center on Oct. 24, 1938.

w The March of Dimes is established by President Roosevelt. w First appearance of comic book superhero Superman (as a backup story), in Action Comics #1. w The last reunion of the Blue and Gray commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. w Haggar debuts a new pant concept, “Slacks,” as the appropriate pant to wear during a man’s “Slack Time.” w President Roosevelt states it is “100% wrong” the U.S. would join a “stopHitler bloc” under any circumstances, and makes it clear that in the event of German aggression against Czechoslovakia, the U.S. would remain neutral.

[WIKIMEDIA PHOTOS]

President Franklin D. Roosevelt with members of the Brazilian Highway Expedition on Jan. 27, 1938, Washington, D.C. The expedition spent 10 years traversing North, Central and South Americas from south to north, selecting and charting the most practical route for the construction of the Pan-American Inter-Continental Highway. The route exists today through 14 countries and includes the U.S. Interstate Highway System. [WIKIMEDIA]

Men sit outside a store near Jeanerette, Louisiana, in October 1938.

1939

WAR IN EUROPE T he Great Depression’s effects were felt worldwide. In some countries, economic instability coupled with lasting effects from World War I led to the rise of political extremism. “Fascist leader Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy in 1922 and almost all aspects of Italian life came under state control,” according to the Imperial War Museums in Europe. Adolf Hitler became German chancellor in 1933 with promises of economic recovery, national revival and a return to international prominence. A totalitarian government soon followed there as well. League of Nations leaders Britain and France sanctioned Italy and Germany over their territorial expansion efforts, but to no avail. Hitler’s threat of war if he couldn’t annex part of Czechoslovakia resulted in a peaceful Munich Agreement. Hitler took Britain’s and France’s wish to abstain from further war as a sign of weakness, and continued German expansion efforts, with sights set on Poland. By summer, new European alliances were being made: Germany with Japan and the Soviet Union, Britain with Poland. Once Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, however, negotiations were done, and war had begun again. The U.S. would remain neutral until the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, but in 1939 began an arms trade with Britain and France. Military production helped with U.S. employment, but the national debt rose from $49 billion in 1941 to almost $260 billion in 1945, according to the Foundation for Economic Education. World War II may not have ended the Great Depression, but it moved the United States — and the world — into a new way of life.

Finnish soldiers gather breakfast from a field kitchen during “additional refresher training” in October 1939.

A Finnish machine gun crew during the Winter War, November 1939 to March 1940. [WIKIMEDIA PHOTOS]

ALSO THIS YEAR w Amelia Earhart is officially declared dead Jan. 5 after her 1937 disappearance. w The 1939 New York World’s Fair opens.

A fire burns in Helsinki, Finland, after Soviet aerial bombing on Nov. 30, 1939. [WIKIMEDIA]

w On May 2 Lou Gehrig, the legendary New York Yankees first baseman, ends his 2,130 consecutive games played streak after contracting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. w The Superman comic book begins publication. w In August, Albert Einstein writes to President Roosevelt about developing the atomic bomb using uranium. This leads to the creation of the Manhattan Project.

1939

From top left: Luftwaffe bombers over Poland; Wehrmacht troops destroying the Polish border post; German tank and armored car formation; German and Soviet troops shaking hands; Bombing of Warsaw. Photos between Sept. 1 and Oct. 6, 1939. [WIKIMEDIA]

ALSO THIS YEAR w On Sept. 5, the United States declares its neutrality in the war in Europe. w On Dec. 15 the film â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gone with the Wind,â&#x20AC;? starring Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland and Leslie Howard, premieres in Atlanta.

Hitler watches German soldiers march into Poland in September 1939. [WIKIMEDIA PHOTOS]

Foreign press gather at Mainila in November 1939, where a border incident between Finland and the Soviet Union escalated into the Winter War.

1939

1939 A Polish Army soldier shows the last remaining part of destroyed German bomber Heinkel He 111 in Warsaw, 1939. [WIKIMEDIA PHOTOS]

The Nazi-Soviet Invasion of Poland in 1939: Red Army soldiers distribute propaganda newspapers to peasants near Wilno (Vilnius) in Poland. [WIKIMEDIA PHOTOS]

A British poster designed by Marek ZuĹ&#x201A;awski.

Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, which directly led to the AngloFrench declaration of war on Germany on Sept. 3. The Soviet Union joined Germanyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s invasion of Poland on Sept. 17.

The German battleship Schleswig-Holstein is attacked at Westerplatte on Sept. 1, 1939.

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