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Impact of the great depression worldwide
The effect of the great depression
Impact of the great depression worldwide
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Lasting throughout the entire decade of the 1930s, the Great Depression was the longest and most severe economic downturn in American history. During the 1920s, a decade of prosperity, investing in the stock market became popular, and many Americans engaged in risky practices. On October 29, 1929, billions of dollars were lost when the stock market crashed. This day is known as “Black Tuesday,” and it officially began the Great Depression. Following the Stock Market Crash of 1929, thousands of banks failed, thousands of businesses went bankrupt, and unemployment rose to 25% of the nation’s workforce. The Grapes of Wrath, a novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939, takes place in the 1930s during the Great Depression and the Dust …show more content…
Bowl Era. It follows the Joads, a family of farmers from Oklahoma who are forced off their land and journey to California in search of a better future. There are many parallels that can be made between the events of the Great Depression and The Grapes of Wrath; the novel describes how the Dust Bowl affected farmers, why families migrated to California, and what difficulties migrants experienced. The novel opens with an elaborate description of the Dust Bowl that affected families living in the Midwest.
The Dust Bowl, mainly a result of drought and poor agricultural practices, was a phenomenon where massive clouds of dust battered the Great Plains, particularly throughout western Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle. The severe dust storms killed crops and livestock, which in turn heavily impacted the agricultural industry. The effect of the dust storms on the crops is illustrated in The Grapes of Wrath, when the author writes, “During a night the wind raced faster over the land, dug cunningly among the rootlets of the corn, and the corn fought the wind with its weakened leaves until the roots were freed by the prying wind and then each stalk settled wearily sideways toward the earth and pointed the direction of the wind”(Steinbeck 4). Farmers looked to the federal government for financial aid, which was given to them by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). To help the agricultural industry, the AAA paid farmers to reduce the production of wheat and cotton. Even though the AAA helped to raise farm income, it did little to help tenant farmers, like the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath, and only benefited large farmers. Soon, tenant farmers found themselves evicted off their land, and this happened to the Joads: “And at last the owner men came to the point. The tenant system won’t work anymore. One man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families”(22). As a result of the Dust Bowl, thousands of tenant farmers, like the Joad family, lost all of their money and all of their
land. Furthermore, the Joads became part of the great migration of farmers who left their land in search of work in California. After families of farmers packed their belongings and left their land, many headed for California. At the time, it was widespread that because of California’s fertile land, there were many jobs picking crops. Pamphlets, handed out to areas of high unemployment, advertised plenty of land and an abundance of jobs in California. These flyers enticed many farmers, including the Joads: “‘I seen the han’bills fellas pass out, an’ how much work they is, an’ high wages an’ all; an’ I seen in the paper how they want folks to come an’ pick grapes an’ oranges an’ peaches. That’d be nice work, Tom, pickin’ peaches’”(60). The Joads, believing that California would offer them a better future, packed all they could and left Oklahoma to migrate to California. During the 1930s, around half a million Americans from the Midwest migrated to California. The large amount of people who desperately migrated west in search of work is described in The Grapes of Wrath: “And then the dispossessed were drawn west — from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas...They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless — restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do — to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut — anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land”(158). The Joads traveled west along Route 66, a highway commonly used by migrants heading to California. The Joad family imagined their life in California as perfect; however, as the story progresses, it is clear that California is not the wonderful place that they had dreamed of. When the Joads arrived, they first stayed at a Hooverville. “Hoovervilles” were crowded, impoverished camps where migrants lived in or stayed at until they found work. The camps were named after President Herbert Hoover because he was frequently blamed for the problems that led to the Great Depression. The Joads asked people living in the camp if there was work available nearby; they quickly learned that California had become so jam-packed with migrants that jobs and food were very scarce. In fact, dozens of Hooverville residents died of starvation due to the fact that they could not find any work. Even if migrants were lucky enough to find work, they were not payed decent wages, contrary to what the pamphlets advertised. The pamphlets were designed by landowners as a way to lure thousands of starving family to California so that there was a surplus of labor. They did this to avoid paying migrants proper wages; as explained in The Grapes of Wrath, “‘The more fellas he can get, an’ the hungrier, less he’s gonna pay’”(128). Migrants also faced a lot of hostility from Californians. California was becoming so crowded with migrants that police deputies were sent to the state lines to refuse entry to any migrants who didn’t have any money. Migrants, who were labeled as “Okies” by Californians, were looked down upon because Californians feared that they would steal the land from them: “They were hungry, and they were fierce. And they had hoped to find a home, and they found only hatred. Okies-- the owners hated them because the owners knew they were soft and the Okies strong, that they were fed and the Okies hungry; and perhaps the owners had heard from their grandfathers how easy it is to steal land from a soft man if you are fierce and hungry and armed”(158). These feelings of animosity resulted in tension and conflict between the migrants and the residents of California. Migrants, like the Joad family, had moved to California to improve their lives, but there, they experienced even more hardship. In conclusion, The Grapes of Wrath provides excellent insight into the plight of migrant workers during the Great Depression. With the story of the Joad family, The Grapes of Wrath describes how the Dust Bowl affected farmers, why families migrated to California, and what difficulties migrants experienced. This novel made a significant impact when it was published. It was controversial, but it struck a nerve within people and got them to start talking about the problem. The Grapes of Wrath became so important that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt praised it and came to Steinbeck’s defense when the novel was criticised. Even today, The Grapes of Wrath remains an influential novel that reveals the hardships that migrants had to endure during the Great Depression.
The Dust Bowl was the name given to the Great Plains area in the 1930s. Much of the region was an agricultural area and relied on it for most of their economy. Combined with The Great Depression and the dust storms, farmers in the Great Plains area were severely hurt. These farmers were seeking opportunity elsewhere near the Pacific where they were mistreated by the others already there. The mistreatment is a form of disenfranchisement, by excluding and segregating a group of people from the rest of society. The disenfranchisement of the Oklahoma farmers during the 1930s was caused by a combination of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression which led to the farmers being forced to move west where they were mistreated because there were not enough jobs.
The Grapes of Wrath, a novel is written by John Steinbeck, sets the Great Depression as the background. When Steinbeck was young, he was a ranchman in California. He witnessed the migrant laborers who worked in the farms and he had noticed the social inequalities among different classes of people. The story he wrote is about, during the Great Depression, a poor migrant family, the Joads, encounter all kinds of difficulties when they moved from Oklahoma to California to seek for jobs and their future. Coupled with that, The English Patient , is written by the famous Canadian author Michael Ondaatj...
One of America’s most beloved books is John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. The book portrays a family, the Joads, who leave Oklahoma and move to California in search of a more prosperous life. Steinbeck’s book garnered acclaim both from critics and from the American public. The story struck a chord with the American people because Steinbeck truly captured the angst and heartbreak of those directly impacted by the Dust Bowl disaster. To truly comprehend the havoc the Dust Bowl wreaked, one must first understand how and why the Dust Bowl took place and who it affected the most. The Dust Bowl was the result of a conglomeration of weather, falling crop prices, and government policies.
drop their life and move to a different state. When they arrived in California they were not
John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath in response to the Great Depression. Steinbeck's intentions were to publicize the movements of a fictional family affected by the Dust Bowl that was forced to move from their homestead. Also a purpose of Steinbeck's was to criticize the hard realities of a dichotomized American society.
At the core of understanding the Dust Bowl is the question of whose fault it was. Was it the result of farmers tilling land beyond what the environment could bear, or is it just a natural fluctuation in the atmosphere? These questions have intrigued historians and started a new evolution of theories. The Dust Bowl grazed across the Midwest of the United States, destroying the ecology and agriculture of the United States and Canadian Prairies"1.
The Dust Bowl was a treacherous storm, which occurred in the 1930's, that affected the midwestern people, for example the farmers, and which taught us new technologies and methods of farming. As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land." The early thirties opened with prosperity and growth. At the time the Midwest was full of agricultural growth. The Panhandle of the Oklahoma and Texas region was marked contrast to the long soup lines of the Eastern United States.
(Worster12) but neglects the fact that at the time of the Dust Bowl many of the farmers weren’t fully educated in preventing most of the natural disasters that occurred. The drought has caused a lot of unfavorable conditions for farmers in the southwest. In Worster’s book he says “Few of us want to live in the region now”. There is too much wind, dirt, flatness, space, barbed wire, drought, uncertainty, hard work.”
The area of severe wind erosion, soon known as the Dust Bowl, compromised a section of the wheat belt near the intersection of Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. ”(Gregory, 11). Along with Gregory, John Steinbeck in his book, The Harvest Gypsies, and Debra Weber in her book, Dark Sweat, White Gold, also write about these events, and in particular the people who were affected by it. The Dust Bowl had ruined any chance of farmers in those regions being able to farm, because of that they were forced to relocate to be able to survive.
The Great Depression and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath Though most Americans are aware of the Great Depression of 1929, which may well be "the most serious problem facing our free enterprise economic system", few know of the many Americans who lost their homes, life savings and jobs. This paper briefly states the causes of the depression and summarizes the vast problems Americans faced during the eleven years of its span. This paper primarily focuses on what life was like for farmers during the time of the Depression, as portrayed in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, and tells what the government did to end the Depression. In the 1920's, after World War 1, danger signals were apparent that a great Depression was coming.
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel by John Steinbeck that exposes the desperate conditions under which the migratory farm families of America during the 1930's live under. The novel tells of one families migration west to California through the great economic depression of the 1930's. The Joad family had to abandon their home and their livelihoods. They had to uproot and set adrift because tractors were rapidly industrializing their farms. The bank took possession of their land because the owners could not pay off their loan. The novel shows how the Joad family deals with moving to California. How they survive the cruelty of the land owners that take advantage of them, their poverty and willingness to work.
The Dust Bowl was a brutal time period in Midwestern history; farmers were pushed off their land and forced to find new homes in new states.
Imagine standing outside trying to farm your dying crops. All of a sudden, the sky gets dark. You look up and see a big, black cloud heading straight towards your town. You attempt to seek shelter, but it is too late. Cars come to a complete stop, and people rush to get cover. The cloud of dirt sweeps into your small town, and you can no longer see anything but only feel the gritty dirt blowing against your skin. This occurrence is what people experienced during the Dust Bowl. In the historical fiction book, Out of the Dust, the author, Karen Hesse, describes the hardships that Billie Jo and her family faced during the worst years of the Dust Bowl. Hesse depicts the effects of the dust storms, reasons for the occurrence of the dust storms,
To begin with, the “Dust Bowl” was one of the causes of economic fallout which resulted in the Great Depression. Because the “Dust Bowl” destroyed crops which were used to sell and make profit, the government had to give up a lot of money in order to try and help the people and land affected by the “Dust Bowl”. The “Dust Bowl” refers to a time during the 1930’s where the Great Plains region was drastically devastated by drought. All of the areas (Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico) all had little to no rainfall, light soil, and high winds, which were not a very suitable combination. The drought lasted from 1934 to 1937, most of the soil during the drought lacked the better root system of grass.
And so... The Grapes of Wrath is probably the best book written on the subject of the Great Depression of America. It was a depressing time full of fear for the future as it is now with the attacks. We will hopefully be able to look back on these days as another part of history that only kept us stronger, like we do with the Great Depression. But even in these harsh times there's no need to be scared all of the time, because you can look at the Joads and even while wallowing in the poorest and most depressing situations they were still able to have a good time dancing at the hoe-down. True American spirit.