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Essay about the social impact of the Great Depression
The great depression: social, psychological, and cultural effects
The affect of the great depression
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“Morey Skaret: On the Road During the Great Depression” In pop culture a hobo is usually portrayed as either a murderous villain on the run from the law or a naive youth running away from home. In “on the Road During the Great Depression” Morey Skaret gives readers an insight on how hobos of the 1930’s survived life on the bum. A hobo is a homeless man who jumps trains from city to city looking for work, unlike tramps who don’t look for work (American Firsthand 186). Skaret and his best friend Charlie Shellfish were hobos and there adventure gives a great account of the dangers hobos faced.
After staying in high school for an extra year, Skaret decided that he wasn’t going to college or getting a job so took off and went on the road with
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Skaret left town after high school and didn’t return till after his 20th birthday. He was born in 1913, so his adventure took place around 1932-1933(American Firsthand 187). Seattle, like the rest of the country was deep into the Great Depression by this time and Skaret family would have most likely been feeling the effects of it like many other Americans, so it wasn’t very uncommon for men to hit the road in search of employment and to decrease the number of mouths their family had to feed (American Firsthand 186-187). Skaret hitting the road after high school isn’t all that unpredictable, like his family leaving Norway to come to America, probably in search of a better life, he leaves Seattle to search for a better life for himself.
“On the Road During the Great Depression” takes place during the height of the Great Depression. The depression started on October 28, 1929, today known as Black Tuesday, where $10 Billion vanished from the market in 5 hours (Give me Liberty 799). In 1930, the stocks recovered a little, but then began falling till 1933. The Market would not return to normal till 1954 (lecture 10). The crash left 15 million American out of work, which led to as many as 5 million American to go out on the bum (lecture 10). Traveling city to city just like Skaret
Cinderella Man came out in the year 2005, it is a non fiction movie directed by Ron Howard. It is based on the story of a boxer during the Depression, James J. Braddock. Braddock had to over come many adversities such as the economical and societal conditions. Another adversity he had to overcome was living in the Depression and all the things that go along with that. Braddock’s character traits shown in the movie are all important and appropriate due to the harshness of those times.
The Great Depression tested America’s political organizations like no other event in United States’ history except the Civil War. The most famous explanations of the period are friendly to Roosevelt and the New Deal and very critical of the Republican presidents of the 1920’s, bankers, and businessmen, whom they blame for the collapse. However, Amity Shlaes in her book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, contests the received wisdom that the Great Depression occurred because capitalism failed, and that it ended because of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Shlaes, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a syndicated financial columnist, argues that government action between 1929 and 1940 unnecessarily deepened and extended the Great Depression.
The end of the Civil War brought a whole new era of economy, political control, and Presidential intervention. The economy emerged from its agriculturally based economy into a flourishing big business dominated world and eventually in 1929 came crashing down. I agree only partially with the quote " The Civil War saw the beginning of an 80-year decline of real individual economic opportunity; nonetheless, the vast majority of Americans continued to profess their belief in individualism as evidenced by the Presidents they elected. Thus, between 1865 and 1939, the majority of Americans accepted big business dominance and rejected all forms of government interference and regulation contrary to individualism."
One of Horatio Alger’s books was called Ragged Dick or Street Life in New York, this book featured a young boot black named Dick Hunter and his friend Henry Fosdick. Dick in the beginning is living on the street and is never sure where he will sleep from one night to the next. He is fairly happy but wishes to be respectable. One day he offers Mr. Whitney, a businessman, to show his nephew, Frank, around New York City because Mr. Whitney is too busy to do it himself. After this day Dick’s life begins to change from a boot black with an uncertain life to a clerk who rents a room and earns ten dollars a week.
McElvaine, Robert S, ed. Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1983.
“The Stock Market Crash was the most devastating in history. After World War I it was a period of peace and the crash interrupted it.” (“The Wall Street”). The public demanded deposits from the banks and as they were handing the cash over little did they know it was leading to less money in circulation. Companies closed down because of deflation and low demand while others laid off over half of their workers. As the unemployment levels increased, properties were repossessed and citizens started mortgaging their houses and selling everything just to get through the depression with their own home. Post war time the United States was booming, with the trade from Germany and Europe. The 1920’s turned out to be a decade, which lead America into the depression. As more and more people invested their money, the stock prices raised. “A multitude of large bank loans that could not be liquidated, and an economic recession that had begun earlier in the summer.” (“American
The 1930’s were a decade plagued by the colossus economic downturn known as the Great Depression. With unemployment levels surpassing 20%, people did anything to earn money. This included riding the rail lines in order to look for work in other cities. In the American South, the problems of economic downturn and the problems of racial tension met in 1931 during the court case of the Scottsboro Boys.
A hobo is defined as a migratory worker who is usually unskilled. Although a tramp is basically defined in the same manner, a certain distinction exists. It is often said that the difference lies in the fact that a hobo wandered and worked, a tramp wandered and didn’t work, while a bum, another similar term, neither wandered nor worked. Becoming widespread in the depression of the 1890’s, the term hobo may have come from the slogan for farmhand, “hoe-boy,” or the phrase for “good man,” “homo bonus,” or from simply yelling “Ho! Boy!” while on the road.[1]
The years berween 1929 and 1933 were trying years for people throughout the world. Inflation was often so high money became nearly worthless. America had lost the prosperity it had known during the 1920's. America was caught in a trap of a complete meltdown of economy, workers had no jobs simply because it cost too much to ship the abundance of goods being produced. This cycle was unbreakable, and produced what is nearly universally recognized as the greatest economic collapse of all times. These would be trying years for all, but not every American faced the same challenges and hardships. (Sliding 3)
Exam #2 October 29, 1929, a date that will never be forgotten in the United States for it was the day that the “Great Depression” began, also known as “Black Tuesday—when the American stock market–that had previously been moving swiftly upward for about ten years suddenly crashed, causing the U.S to plummet into the most severe economic downturn known to this date. In 1931, the rate of unemployment was at its lowest as almost a third of the population was jobless. Until Franklin Roosevelt also known as FDR campaigned for office in 1933 and became the thirty second President. FDR quickly began to alleviate the horrendous economy. His plan was to provide stable jobs and assist the many suffering people in the economy.
These are the events that led up to the crash. Furthermore, a narrative of the Depression: "It was always cold in the house; the only warmth was a wood burning stove in the corner. We used to sit and listen to Gracie and Burns on the 7 o'clock show. Dinner was watered down onion stew with a slice of bread. We worked in the fields, maybe 9, 10, hours per day, maybe more.
James Baldwin tells a story about an African American man named Sonny. The setting of the story takes place in the projects of Harlem New York during the nineteen fifties. The story is narrated by Sonny’s brother and in this story the narrator describes the hardships of growing up in the projects. Sonny was the family screw up for he fell into the life of crime and drug uses. Sonny fell into the life of crime for he grew up in Harlem where he “turned hard... the way kids can… in Harlem” (Baldwin 49). Sonny was especially into heroin or referred to as horse in this story. Because of his drug use he was always in and out of jail “He had been picked up, the evening before, in a raid on an apartment downtown, for peddling and using heroin” (49). Harlem and the society had and impact on the African Americans for they never had the same opportunities to succeed before the civil rights act. Even the narrator who was the good and smart kid who had a college education and who was sober could not afford to live outside of the projects. It seems as if nothing would work for every escape lead them back to the projects. Sonny tried every thing to escape poverty, but never could escape it. Sonny said “I don’t want to stay in Harlem no more, I really don’t… I want to join the army or the navy, I don’t care” (60). Sonny was so desperate to escape poverty that
As with many disasters, the effect on individuals was varied, although with unemployment at 28% (not including eleven million struggling farm workers (Clements, page 74)), it is doubtful that anyone totally escaped the effects of the Depression. Amongst the worst affected were men who became known as Hoboes- migrants who travelled the USA frantically searching for work. According to a testimony by Louis Banks (Cements, page 74), many men were so in need they regularly risked their lives hitching on trains to try and find employment- if they didn’t fall, there was always the chance of being shot by the train police. This sense of mortal desperation is apparent in much of the evidence- “A man over forty might as well go out and shoot himself”
Have you ever heard about the hippie who had to go to a Middle School after living on a remote farm in the novel Schooled by Gordon Korman? Well, Capricorn Anderson is a flower child who lives at Garland Farms until his grandmother, Rain, falls out of a plum tree, which changes this hippie’s life. Now, Cap has to go to a public middle school and live with Mrs.Donnelley, a social worker, which he is not prepared for.He is just a hippie with a soul of good, who is not prepared for physical fights, cursing, and even video games! He doesn’t understand this modern world; he’s as lost as a kit who couldn’t find her mother.
The Great Depression was the deepest and longest-lasting economic downfall in the history of the United Sates. No event has yet to rival The Great Depression to the present day today although we have had recessions in the past, and some economic panics, fears. Thankfully the United States of America has had its shares of experiences from the foundation of this country and throughout its growth many economic crises have occurred. In the United States, the Great Depression began soon after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors ("The Great Depression."). In turn from this single tragic event, numerous amounts of chain reactions occurred.