Year: 2011

03/15/11

FDR and the New Deal

From the cartoon, we can see a man was surrounded by a bunch of dancing kids. The man in the middle was President Franklin D. Roosevelt; on the backs of the kids’ shirts were printed WPA, PWA AND AAA, which stand for Works Progress Administration, Public Works Administration (which constructed roads, dams, and public buildings), and Agricultural Adjustment Act (which provided funding to farmers to curtail their production). These were all the programs set up under FDR’s New Deal. There were some other kids facing us, which from the artist’s points should represent the other programs adopted by FDR, such as Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which served to insure deposits in banks, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which provided for navigation, flood control, electricity generation and economic development in the Tennessee River Valley and the National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA), which provided for codes of fair competition to regulate industry, and for the first time in American history guaranteed the rights of labor to bargain collectively, etc. These programs were responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call the “3 Rs”: relief, recovery, and reform. That is, relief for the unemployed and poor; recovery of the economy to normal levels; and reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression.

03/15/11

New Deal- The Trojan Horse

Throughout the history of United States, reforms and new policies have always encountered as invasion of rights by certain skeptics. Due to the political culture of America, politicians are very reserved about letting the federal government to become more powerful. This has remain true even during the Great Depression. Although the entire nation was desperate for solutions to their economics disparity, many citizens were still conscious of their political rights and freedom despite of their poverty.

The political cartoon above has demonstrated this idea perfectly. When Franklin Roosevelt proposed his New Deal as the solution to the Great Depression to the Congress, certain politicians have viewed the reform as an invasion to the Congress. The cartoonist believed that the New Deal was making an attempt to obtain more power than it should by taking advantage of the economic disaster. The cartoon is referring to the policies that expands the power of the federal government, such as the establishment of Civilian Conservation Corps (CVC) and Public-Works Projects (PWA). Those two policies have hired many civilians for the constructions of parks, roads, bridges, and other public buildings, and critics complained that these policies are gaining control of the citizens by creating employment opportunities. Certain critics also considered such policies as a step toward socialism and communism. They believed that such economic policies are Trojan horses that would transform our capitalistic nation to socialistic/communistic country.

03/15/11

Deal Me In

I am not sure when this cartoon was published, but it looks pretty old. It was published in the Pittsburgh Press. This cartoon took a play on the word ‘Deal.’ In this cartoon we see a poker hand of 4 Aces and a King. In poker that is 4 of a kind, a great hand. I think the author is praising the New Deal. He is saying that it is really great, just like the poker hand. The title says “It IS a New Deal,” probably referring to a “new hand” after the Great Depression. This hand is a winner, showing how the author praises the New Deal.

As we see the hand comprises of Protection of Gold, Bank Holiday, Budget Message, Inaugural Address, and Bank Legislation. In Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address he mentioned how he was going to dethrone all the bad bankers, and how he was going to help fix the mess we were in. In 1933 Roosevelt closed all the banks for 3 days. He did this in order to allow certified reviewers to check them. He wanted to make sure banks were running smoothly, and also wanted all his laws to pass. He also did not want everybody rushing to take out their money, and so he closed the banks. He also go rid of the gold standard, a change that still exists today. There were many more components to the New Deal, but this author focuses on the first few. He is in favor of the New Deal, but not all of America was aboard the same ship.

03/14/11

Christmass in NY during Great Depression

Photographer: Russell Lee. Unemployed workers in front of a shack with Christmas tree, East 12th Street, New York City. December 1937.
Alternative take of Migrant Mother by D. Lange taken in March 1936, Nipomo, California

The pictures were taken in very different parts of the US, one in New York City, another in California, the two business centers of the two coasts. Both photos from the both coasts convey the same great deal of hopelessness and insecurity. The scenery is similar: temporary shelters made of various scrap materials in the middle of a field with debris and garbage spread around, and in the middle people, all look haggard, exhausted and depressed. The Christmas Three by the shelter looks very dramatic, as the picture was taken in December. The similarities in the two photos show that Great Depression did not spare either part of the US, including large cities like NYC.

03/14/11

Whose fault is it!

blame game by Nate Collier (ca. 1931 – 1932)

Many say it all started with the stock market crash of 1929, but there were so many other factor that contributed to the Greatest Depression the world has seen.  Was it the bank, lack of international trade, was it capitalism.  Something was definitely unbalanced, and led to extreme poverty.

Dorothea Lange‘s Migrant Mother depicts destitute pea pickers in California, centering on Florence Owens Thompson, age 32, a mother of seven children, in Nipomo, California, March 1936.

When ever I think about the depression, and even during my research of photographs, the picture above seems to carry the greatest effect on me. This woman is carrying her two small children, and a look of pure sadness and lost that one just can’t fake.  She looks poor, and while doing some research found that she had 7 children traveling and looking for work. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.  I can’t imagine how hard that was.  At least now, there are government supports and aids for some of the poor.

I close these two photographs to show how on the large scale of things, that many things may have been responsible for the Great depression, but at the end of the day, many families suffered for it.  The hardship was real even if the real reason isn’t quite clear.

03/14/11

Worse Way to End the 1920’s

People are waiting on line for food. Ironically, they stand under a poster glorifying the American standard of living.

People lined up in London to protest about the Great Depression

The Great Depression not only hit the United States but effected the global economy. In the first picture there are people waiting on a line to get food. During this period, most people couldn’t afford anything and even the wealthy became poor in one day. Ironically, the pictures shows a poster saying how great the standard of living the United States is. It goes to show that it doesn’t matter where they are and how prosperous the country was, the Great Depression was affected globally.  The second picture shows another line of people in London where they protested about the lack of food and to get relief from this disaster. In both pictures, it shows that both countries had obstacles in fighting the Great Depression.

03/14/11

Poverty during The Depression

Both of these pictures convey the tough living conditions poor children had to endure during the time of the depression.  One of the pictures shows homeless children sitting on the street as their father’s were probably out looking for a source of food in order to survive.  The other picture shows a family who had to eat there christmas dinner around a small wooden table with probably just enough food to get by.  The children did not even have chairs to sit on as the poverty level was that bad.  Both of these images show how not only were adults left without jobs, but kids also had to suffer and live in ghetto’s for most of their childhoods as the depression went all the way to 1941.

03/14/11

The Rich Man’s Choice becomes “Poor”

The Great Depression scared all, including the rich. The Stock Market crash and other economic struggles forced Americans to stop purchasing! This in result led to much less production of goods and directly decreased the amount of human labor needed. People continued to loose their jobs and used places like “The POOR MAN’S STORE” as their last resort for trading, buying and selling what goods they did or did not need. On the contrary the first picture on the left, represents a normal environment inside of a store before all economic hell breaks out. Once people begin to refrain from buying because of a shortage of jobs and income, even those people who bought items on installment plans are unable to pay their dues and stores are forced to stock up on inventory: thus putting store owners to a loss.

03/14/11

Assignment due 3/21

Post an image of a political cartoon published between 1932 and 1941 on topic of the New Deal, which has not yet been posted to the blog. Include a caption that indicates the publicaton date and source of the cartoon as far as you can determine.  Write 1-2 paragraphs discussing the political argument behind the cartoon.  What do you think the artist was thinking?  What message was he/she trying to communicate?  What historical events were going on at the time the cartoon was published that explain the meaning of the cartoon (be as specific as possible).

03/14/11

Assignment due 3/16

A reminder that class will be held Wednesday, March 16.

The following assignment is due by class time on Wednesday:

Reading: Foner, Chapter 21.

Written: Write 2-3 comments in response to this post.  Each comment should be at least 2-3 sentences long.  At least one comment should discuss the cause of the Great Depression.  At least one additional comment should discuss the experiences of those living in America during the Great Depression.  I encourage you to build off of the comments already left by your classmates.  You can agree, disagree, or clarify their points.  Every comment should include at least one specific example (of a specific person, place, or event) from the reading that has not yet been mentioned in the conversation.
03/14/11

Hard life during the Great Depression

Picture above: Free food was distributed  in some urban centers to large numbers of the unemployed.

Picture on the left: Number of people who were unemployed and looking for a job.

During the Great Depression,the unemployment rate reached a extremely high point. Ten of thousand of people lost their jobs and they were just kept looking for a job. However, it was impossible to satisfy everyone. The amount of unemployed people were so great meanwhile the job opportunity was so less. When the people lost their job, they could not provide food to their families, not even themselves. Therefore, the government provided free meals to those people. The Great Depression made a terrible effect on everyone and it took a more than ten years to recover the society.

03/14/11

Life During the Great Depression

 

The Great Depression was one of the hardest times in the United States history for farmers as well. With the stock market crash in 1929 and American economy crushed, the farmers couldn’t make money on their crops, so they also lost $1.50 per acre of land they planted. Having no mercy on the farmers, the elements took their toll. As giant dust storms destroyed fields, it left farmers broke with no way to repair the damage, forcing many to leave their homes in search of different work.

03/14/11

Enemies of the Law… Heroes of the People!

During the Great Depression while the country’s money was decling and the unemployment rate was at its peak, Bonnie and Clyde became famous for their notorious battles against the law. Although Clyde expressed interests to lead a non-criminal life after his experience in the notoriously brutal Eastham Prison Farm, the start of the Great Depression left him jobless forcing him to rob again soon after. At the time many felt that big businesses and government officials were abusing the capitalistic system, so the news about Bonnie and Clyde made them instantly famous for their”opposition” of the system by robbing banks.

Bonnie and Clyde. (This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3c34474)
Bonnie Parker smoking a cigar while holding a gun moll. This image was found by the police. (http://foia.fbi.gov/bonclyd/bonclyd1a)

The image above on the right is a snapshot of Bonnie smoking a cigar while holding a gun moll. The police found this photo in one of their abandoned hideouts. These photos were soon released to the the press and was published nationwide. This began Bonnie’s notorious reputation as a cigar-smoking gull moll.

03/13/11

Having no choices

A jobseeker adopts the same strategy in New York during the Great Depression

A shanty town within Central Park, New York. The huts were designed with the idea that they'd been built out of everyday objects

After the stock market crash of October 1929 in New York, million people lost their jobs. Jobseekers started to stand on street with a cardboard which depicts the basic information of them. However, the unemployment rate was increasing and those jobseekers could not still afford their renting and housing. As a result, they used some trash to build huts and settled the huts to form a town, called “Hooverville” because they believed President Hoover’s policies lead the nation into depression.

03/13/11

The Crash That started the depression.

One of the major catalysts of the Great Depression was the stock market crash in October of 1929. The market lost $40 billion dollars in value in two months, which is at that time over 40% of the Gross Domestic Product of US in 1929. The crash led to widespread panic selling which fueled further declines in the market. Business conditions became bleak, leading to high unemployment rate. Black Tuesday was one the days when the market crashed and lost 12%, marking the beginning of the great depression. The market bottomed in 1932, after losing 89% of its value from its peak three years earlier.

03/13/11

 

This picture depicts the great amount of homeless men who had to wait on line for free dinner at a lodging house in New York.

 

Not only adults, but also children suffered during the Great Depression.

When the Great Depression struck the nation, it affected everybody. Unemployment was at an ultimate high  and most people did not have enough money to afford the basic necessities. In the first picture of homeless men lining up for a free meal in New York, we can see the extent of the economy’s failure. Hundreds of men are lining up for a free meal. It seems as if everyone felt the pain and setbacks of the Great Depression. In the second pictures, children are holding up signs on the lack of jobs available for their parents. Both of these pictures depict how the Great Depression had a strong impact on everyone’s daily lives.

03/13/11

Bread Lines During The Great Depression

"Breadline" sculpture by George Segal in the FDR Memorial in Washington, DC.
Bread line during the Great Depression

During the Great Depression thousands of unemployed residents who could not pay their rent or mortgages were evicted into the world of public assistance and bread lines. Unable to find work and seeing that each job they applied for had hundreds of seekers, these shabby, disillusioned men wandered aimlessly without funds, begging, picking over refuse in city dumps, and finally getting up the courage to stand and be seen publicly – in a bread line for free food. To accommodate them, charities, missions, and churches began programs to feed them. Men who experienced the waiting in line recall the personal shame of asking for a handout, unable to care for oneself or to provide for others. On the first picture, you can see  the “Breadline” sculpture by George Segal in the FDR Memorial in Washington, DC. The sorrowful faces of the life-size statues are a powerful expression of the times, showing the inactivity and troubles of everyday citizens during the Great Depression. On the 2nd picture, you can see a real bread line in NYC during the Great Depression.

03/13/11

Give Me Bread or Give Me Death!

Unemployed men waiting on line for food.

The Great Depression had a pervasive and profound impact on American life. When the stock market crashed, everything began to crumble and fall. Millions were without jobs, therefore, resulting in people relying on bread and soup lines to bring food to the table. In the two photographs, it depicts different groups of people waiting on line for food. In the first photograph, it is a picture of a group of men, most if not all white, on a line for free coffee and doughnuts. This line is targeted to the unemployed individuals. In the second picture, it shows African Americans on a soup line. These two pictures show how the depression negatively affected diverse segments of the population and that starvation was a widespread problem. In addition, the second picture has an ironic poster advocating the American life in the background. American dream? It did not exist anymore.

People waiting on the soup line.
03/13/11

Look What Great Depression has Caused

The image of waiting on line were the people who looked for food that was provided by the government and the image that has people sleeping in the public were the homeless who had no money to pay their rent or mortgage.  These two images are showing the immediate result of the Great Depression that started on Black Friday when the stock market crashed. People were jobless and they were not able to support their family because they have no money. They had to rely on government aid which was so little that they barely had any basic food for living. People who were homeless did not have a safe and warm place to live in. They have to face the cold winter outisde in the cold or on the street, and government up to that point still didn’t do much to help those poor or unemployed people. Great Depression caused more people to be jobless and homeless.