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I chose this video because it was under the time limit and it was about the largest city during the great depression. It mainly cover how unemployment was so low during this time and the life of the ultra poor. It is not that interesting but it was the first thing to come up.

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I chose this painting because I thought it had a lot going on too. I feel like the colors are so dark and gloomy and I think that was done on purpose to set a mood. The buildings are run down and cramped and everyone just looks sad except for the couple on the bottom left.

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I chose the NRA Blues by Bill Cox. I chose this song because I thought that the point was very interesting. The NRA now is the national rifle association but then it was the National Recovery Administration. They helped people out by making new. minimum wages and maximum hours in one day. He wrote the song to spread awareness about this new program.

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When I went looking for charts on unemployment I could not find anyhing exclusive to the city. Then I found this investment graph that I thought was very interesting. It shows how the markets crash is what began the great depression. I also thought it was related to the city because that was the only place to invest in the US at the time.

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I chose this cartoon because I thought it went well with my photo. It shows how much people dislike the government. The carriage is supposed to be the government and they are rich. They have bags of coins and tons of cash. It is supposed to be them clearly kind of stealing it from the citizens.

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Great Depression: Daily Life in the City for Kids

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Kids learn about daily life in the city during the Great Depression including food, soup kitchens, Hoovervilles, clothing, entertainment, and interesting facts. Educational article for students, schools, and teachers.

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The Great Depression (1929-1939) was the worst economic downturn in modern history. The preceding decade, known as the " Roaring Twenties," was a time of relative affluence for many middle- and working-class families. As the economy boomed, new innovations allowed for more leisure time and the creation of a consumer society. But the economic depression that followed those boon years profoundly affected the daily life of American families, in ways large and small.

Even the affluent faced severe belt-tightening.

Four years after the 1929 stock market crash, during the bleakest point of the Great Depression, about a quarter of the U.S. workforce was unemployed. Those that were lucky enough to have steady employment often saw their wages cut or their hours reduced to part-time.

Even upper-middle-class professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, saw their incomes drop by as much as 40 percent. Families who had previously enjoyed economic security suddenly faced financial instability or, in some cases, ruin.

The average American family lived by the Depression-era motto: "Use it up, wear it out, make do or do without." Many tried to keep up appearances and carry on with life as close to normal as possible while they adapted to new economic circumstances.

Households embraced a new level of frugality in daily life. They kept kitchen gardens, patched worn-out clothes and passed on trips to the movies as they privately struggled to retain ownership of a home or automobile.

Potlucks and 'thrift gardens' were the norm.

Women's magazines and radio shows taught Depression-era homemakers how to stretch their food budget with casseroles and one-pot meals. Favorites included chili, macaroni and cheese, soups, and chipped beef on toast.

Potlucks, often organized by churches, became a popular way to share food and a cheap form of social entertainment.

Many families strived for self-sufficiency by keeping small kitchen gardens with vegetables and herbs. Some towns and cities allowed for the conversion of vacant lots into community "thrift gardens" where residents could grow food.

Between 1931 and 1932, Detroit's thrift garden program provided food for about 20,000 people. Experienced gardeners could be seen helping former office workers-still dressed in white button-down shirts and slacks-to cultivate their plots.

Board games and miniature golf courses thrived.

The average American family didn't have much extra income to spend on leisure activities during the 1930s. Before the Depression, going to the movie theater was a major pastime. Fewer Americans could afford this luxury after the stock market crashed-so more than one-third of the cinemas in America closed between 1929 and 1934.

Often, people chose to spend time at home. Neighbors got together to play cards, and board games such as Scrabble and Monopoly-both introduced during the 1930s-became popular.

The radio also provided a free form of entertainment. By the early 1930s, many middle-class families owned a home radio. Comedy programs such as Amos 'n' Andy, soap operas, sporting events and swing music distracted listeners from everyday struggles.

Mini-golf became a Depression-era craze. More than 30,000 miniature golf links sprang up across the country during the 1930s. Prices ranged from 25 to 50 cents per round.

Women entered the workforce in increasing numbers.

Some families maintained a middle-class income by adding an extra wage earner. Despite widespread unemployment during the Depression years, the number of married women in the workforce actually increased.

Some people criticized married women for taking jobs when so many men were out of work, though women often took clerical or service industry positions that weren't seen as socially acceptable for men at the time.

Women found work as secretaries, teachers, telephone operators and nurses. But in many cases, employers paid women workers less than their male counterparts.

Families on government support were less stigmatized.

The New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt meant the expansion of government into people's everyday lives after 1933. Many Americans received some level of financial aid or employment as a result of New Deal programs.

Prior to the Great Depression, most Americans had negative views of government welfare programs and refused to go on welfare. In some towns, local newspapers published the names of welfare recipients.

While attitudes toward government assistance began to change during the Great Depression, going on welfare was still viewed as a painful and humiliating experience for many families.

Economic hardship caused family breakdowns.

The stress of financial strain took a psychological toll-especially on men who were suddenly unable to provide for their families. The national suicide rate rose to an all-time high in 1933.

Marriages became strained, though many couples could not afford to separate. Divorce rates dropped during the 1930s though abandonments increased. Some men deserted their families out of embarrassment or frustration: This was sometimes called a "poor man's divorce."

It's estimated that more than two million men and women became traveling hobos. Many of these were teens who felt they had become a burden on their families and left home in search of work.

Riding the rails-illegally hopping on freight trains-became a common, yet dangerous way to travel. Those traveling the country in search of work often camped in " Hoovervilles," shantytowns named after Herbert Hoover, president during the early years of the Great Depression.

Crime was mythologized, but this was largely hype.

Famous outlaw duo Bonnie and Clyde went on a two-year bank robbing spree across America, while in New Jersey, famous aviator Charles Lindbergh 's toddler son was abducted, held for ransom and then murdered.

High-profile events like these, broadcast through radio announcements and in newspaper headlines, contributed to a sense of lawlessness and crime in the Great Depression, stoking fears that hard times had created a crime wave. But this was more hype than reality.

Violent crimes initially spiked during the first few years of the Great Depression, but nationwide, rates of homicides and violent crimes began to fall sharply between 1934 and 1937-a downward trend that continued until the 1960s.

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Life for the Average Family During the Great Depression | HISTORY

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The Great Depression, the worst economic downturn in modern history, profoundly affected the daily life of American families in ways large and small.

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Although the Great Depression was born on Wall Street, it affected Americans in their homes and on the streets, and its ramifications would echo for decades. The record unemployment of the Great Depression is jarring but doesn’t even begin to convey the distress felt by individuals in their daily lives for so many years. Many… MORE

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The New Deal Gas and Grocery, 1935, in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. The Great Depression and the New Deal changed everyday life for people in both overt and subtle ways. Click image to enlarge. (Courtesy of the Museum of History and Industry.)

The Great Depression transformed American social and political institutions and the ways individual people thought about themselves and their relationship to the country and the world. Though no two people had the same understanding of the Depression, everyone felt challenged and changed by the experience.

By 1932, three years after the initial crash, near thirty million Americans had lost their source of income, from unemployment or loss of a family breadwinner. This included more than a quarter of the population of Washington State. Of those lucky enough to have consistent work, many, perhaps most, took pay cuts or worked reduced schedules. Though there had been devastating economic depressions before, the 1930s crisis encompassed both urban and rural regions and devastated middle-class and working-class people alike.

LEARN MORE

* Bellingham Families during the Depression: Changes in Everyday Life by Annie Morro

* The Banking Crisis of 1933: Seattle's Survival during the Great Depression Bank Closures, by Drew Powers

* Life in Raymond, Washington, during the early years of the Great Depression, by Jacob Monson

* The Great Depression in Kitsap County, 1929-1932, by Lauren Champa

* Emerging Opportunities in Dark Times: Japanese Americans in the Northwest, 1933-1934, by Yukio Maeda

* The 1932 Seattle Sports Scene: Helping the Emerald City through Hard Times, by Brian Harris

* Changing Advertising Trends in the Seattle Times During the Great Depression, by Yifeng Hua

* The Rainy City on the "Wet Coast": The Failure of Prohibition in Seattle, by Kayta Katherine Samuels

* Responding to Anti-Semitism in the Jewish Transcript: Seattle's Jews during America's Great Depression, by Stephanie Fajardo

* Murders, Gambling, and Suicides: Crime in Seattle during the Depression, by Sarah Lawrence

* Challenging Gender Stereotypes during the Depression: Female Students at the University of Washington, by Nicolette Flannery

* The Town the New Deal Built: Mason City, Grand Coulee Dam, and Visions of New Deal America, by Allison Lamb

Nevertheless, the pain was not equally distributed. Indeed some businesses did well even in the dark days of 1931 and 1932 and most families did not lose livelihoods or face privation. The impact varied according to industry, class, race, location, and luck. The construction trades and the lumber industry suffered greatly, and in the mill towns and lumber camps of Washington State, unemployment surged (see "Life in Raymond"). Workers in other kinds of factories often lost their jobs but those with advanced skills were less likely to be hurt. White collar jobs fared better than blue collar jobs and those lucky enough to work for a city, county, state, or at one of the military facilities generally held on to jobs. Farm families were mostly well positioned (see "Kitsap County"). Farm prices fell but not so drastically that many Washington farmers were forced to sell or abandon their homesteads. Indeed, the farm population grew during these hard times, as people who years before had left farmsteads for city jobs returned, moving in with relatives or friends.

Washington's tiny communities of color were hit especially hard. Employment discrimination doubled in intensity and African Americans and Asian Americans were pushed out of jobs, including domestic service and farm labor, that whites had previously shunned. Japanese Americans, the state's largest minority population, had built a thriving small business sector in Seattle in the decades before the Great Depression. Now many of those residential hotels and restaurants struggled for customers (see "Emerging Opportunities in Dark Times"). The crisis encouraged some families to leave. Seattle's Japanese American population fell during the 1930s, with some moving to rural areas and others to Japan.

For Washington residents of all backgrounds who lost jobs, the challenges were daunting. With no unemployment insurance and typically with only one breadwinner, the loss of wages had an immediate and devastating effect on families, often leading to eviction and homelessness. People squeezed in with relatives when possible or begged landlords to stay on rent-free. Wives and teenage children joined unemployed husbands in the desperate search for work. Minimal help with food or rent was sometimes available from churches and charities, and in some counties, governments raised property taxes in an attempt to feed the hungry. The need far outstripped these local resources.

Sudden poverty produces psychological damage. Families broke apart under the strain. Divorces escalated, as did informal divorces as one partner or another (mostly husbands) abandoned their family. Young people also fled, quitting school and setting off on the road. Marriage rates and birth rates plummeted as people worried that they could not afford to start families. Acts of domestic violence multiplied and the suicide rate increased dramatically (see "Murders, Gambling Suicide").

New Deal period

When Franklin Roosevelt assumed office in March 1933, the economy was nearly stalled. Congress quickly passed a sequence of emergency measures to rescue the banking system, to send emergency aid to the states, and to begin to re-employ the millions who were out of work. Federal funds to Washington State were funneled through the Washington Emergency Relief Administration, a state agency that dispersed some money directly to the poor in the form of cash grants while also launching dozens of public works projects that created new jobs. Soon there would be more jobs coordinated with federal agencies. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) would employ thousands of young men in the forests and national parks of Washington State. The Civil Works Adminstration set up small public works jobs, while the Public Works Administration planned huge new infrastructure projects that included Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams on the Columbia River (see "Mason City, Grand Cooley Dam"). In 1935 many of the jobs and construction programs were consolidated under the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

With federal help, the state economy began a dramatic recovery, faster than many other states. By 1937, income payments in Washington (our best measure of economic activity) had returned to 93 percent of the 1929 level. Nationally, the level was 88 percent. Employment in the region's key industry, forest products, keyed the recovery. In 1937, there were almost as many workers employed in the woods, sawmills, paper mills, furniture, and wood products factories as in 1929, although wages remained well below normal. Other parts of the economy had rebounded, though not so dramatically (see "Economics and Poverty").

New concerns/ new possibilities

After 1933, the expansion of the New Deal meant that the government now intervened much more clearly in people's daily lives, employing them and giving them aid, as well as providing new forms of social insurance. The political mood also changed. A wave of labor strikes and unionization allowed for a new way of thinking about the power of ordinary people and racial and gender divisions. Some responded to the crisis by looking for different forms of social, political, and economic organization, and turned to radical- and sometimes, conservative -movements (see "Strikes and Unions"). Ethnic communities, marginalized by race or religious categorizations, sought out different strategies for economic and social survival. A new kind of civil rights activism became evident, especially in Seattle where it was centered in the African American and Filipino American communities and given voice in the Northwest Enterprise and Philippine-American Chronicle. Jewish organizations and activists played an important role in the civil rights struggles of the 1930s, as did the Communist Party and some left wing unions (see "Civil Rights").

Late in 1933, Utah ratified the 21st Amendment to the constitution, ending prohibition. The legal sale and consumption of alcohol and the reopening of bars and nightclubs changed the contours of everyday life in dramatic ways, bringing drinking out of the shadows, making it cheaper, safer, and more widespread. It was just one of the notable cultural changes of the Great Depression era. The repeal of prohibition changed how leisure was understood, while at the most intimate level, family relationships adapted to the new conditions of work and unemployment that the Depression brought.

Gender expectations were changing. Massive unemployment disrupted the husband-as-sole-breadwinner ideal. Women entered the paid labor force at higher rates than ever before, including married women and mothers. And some women reworked their understandings of their role in communities, in the nation, and in the world. This included female students at the University of Washington (see "Challenging gender stereotypes")
Copyright (c) 2019, James Gregory
Next: Culture and Arts During the Depression

Click on the links below to read illustrated research reports on everyday life during Washinton's Great Depression:

Bellingham Families during the Depression: Changes in Everyday Life by Annie Morro

The Town the New Deal Built: Mason City, Grand Coulee Dam, and Visions of New Deal America, by Allison Lamb

Mason City, WA was built by federal New Deal funds and private contractors to house the workers and families who were building the Grand Coulee Dam, and was consciously promoted as an example of the social vision, technological capacity, and high standard of living that New Deal America aspired to.

Changing Advertising Trends in the Seattle Times During the Great Depression, by Yifeng Hua

The Rainy City on the "Wet Coast": The Failure of Prohibition in Seattle, by Kayta Katherine Samuels

Responding to Anti-Semitism in the Jewish Transcript: Seattle's Jews during America's Great Depression, by Stephanie Fajardo

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Everyday Life in 1930s - Washington State

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The New Deal Gas and Grocery, 1935, in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. The Great Depression and the New Deal changed everyday life for people in both overt and subtle ways. Click image to enlarge. (Courtesy of the Museum of History and Industry.)