# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Historical Context: Movies in the Great Depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
These pictures also offered a kind of cultural escape valve: a safe battleground on which to explore serious issues like class under a comedic (and non-threatening) framework. Class conflicts often surfaced, even overtly, and were resolved happily in the movie. While the moviegoers loved to identify with the rich, on some level they also resented them.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The 1940 Census: Employment and Income

Spring 2012, Vol. 44, No. 1 | Genealogy Notes

By Diane Petro

"This year's census falls on the 150th anniversary of census-taking in America. . . . [V]ital new statistical knowledge will be developed by questions on education, mass migration, employment, unemployment, occupation and distribution of wages and salaries."

-Harry Hopkins, Secretary of Commerce, announcing the 1940 census

The opening of the 1940 population census this year gives us a window onto life in the United States during the Great Depression and the years immediately before involvement in World War II. Natural disasters compounded economic hardships as drought and wind created a "Dust Bowl" in the center of the country. This was a decade of great change for the country, and the questions asked on the census allow the people themselves to tell us about the social and economic issues they faced.

The 1940 census gathered an extensive amount of information related to employment and income. Some of the new questions are

How many weeks have you been unemployed?

Are you working at your usual occupation?

How much did you earn in 1939?

For 72 years the answers to those questions have been protected by privacy laws, but now this rich source of personal and cultural information is open to all researchers.

The 16th decennial census of population began on April 1, 1940. The average income was $1,368, and the average unemployment rate in the 1930s was 18.26 percent, up from the average of 5.2 percent in the 1920s. Earlier censuses primarily measured the expansion of the country quantitatively in population, territory, and resources, but for the 1940 census, officials felt that they should gather information that would throw light on the internal social and economic problems facing the nation.

Many families in the hard-hit "Dust Bowl"-covering parts of Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and the Texas Panhandle-were forced to abandon the land and join the ranks of migrant workers toiling for low wages on distant commercial farms. The migrant flow out of the region included people from cities and small towns and farmers who had been replaced by motorized farm machinery.

The questions on employment status pertain to the week of March 24-30, 1940, and include only people who were at work, with a job, seeking work, or on public emergency work during that week. A difference from earlier censuses is in the definition of at work and gainful workers. In earlier censuses, gainful workers were persons reported as having an occupation, regardless of whether they were working at the time of the census. For example, if Grandpa Hedges was a seasonal worker, but not working or seeking work at the time of the census, he would have been included among gainful workers in 1930. But in general, he would not be in the 1940 workforce.

Employment questions start in column 21. Because of widespread government projects during this period, there are two categories of work: those at work for pay or profit and those on public emergency work during the week of March 24-30, 1940.
Column 21 "Was this person AT WORK for pay or profit in private or nonemergency Govt. work during week of March 24-30, 1940?" (Y or N)
A "yes" in this column means the person was available to work, full-time or part-time during the week. Column 26 then indicates the number of hours the person worked during that week. On occasion, the number of hours worked is zero, even when there is a yes in column 21. For example, a doctor or lawyer may have been available at any time during the week but may not have performed any service or received any fees.

Sometimes the letters "Inst." appears in column 21. This indicates the person is an inmate of one of the following public or private institutions: prisons reformatories; jails; penal farms or camps; institutions for the mentally diseased, mentally defective, or epileptic; and homes for the aged, infirm, or needy. The 1940 census did not count anyone in institutions as being in the workforce even if they were at work. This is different from previous censuses. When "Inst." is in column 21, all other columns should be blank. 1
Column 22 "If not, was he at work on, or assigned to, public EMERGENCY WORK (WPA, NYA, CCC, etc.) during week of March 24-30?" (Y or N)
When the reported numbers were totaled, the Census Bureau noted a discrepancy between the total number of persons reported on emergency work and the number recorded on the federal emergency payroll. 2

Misclassification of persons on public emergency work occurred when

people were enumerated at work rather than as on public emergency work, or

people were reluctant to report they were on emergency work.

Column 23 "Was this person SEEKING WORK?" (Y or N)
The seeking work category represents persons without work of any sort in the week of March 24-30, 1940, who were actively seeking work during that week.
Column 24 "If not seeking work, did he HAVE A JOB, business, etc.?" (Y or N)
"Yes" appears if the person had a job, businesses, or a professional enterprise but was was temporarily absent from it the week of March 24-30. It also includes people who were temporarily ill but had a job to return to upon recovery. Only 2.5 percent of the population reported having a job but not being at work.
Questions 25-27 cover those not in the workforce, hours worked, and unemployment. Column 25 "Indicate whether engaged in home housework (H), in school (S), unable to work (U), or other (Ot)."
The instructions to enumerators defined these categories as:

H: A person primarily occupied during week March 24-30, 1940, in their own home doing housework.

S: A person enrolled in school.

U: A person unable to work because of permanent disability, chronic illness, or old age.

Ot: All others not at work, not seeking work, and without a job.

This category included persons who only worked during a short season of the year, such as a professional football player or seasonal farm worker; retired persons who were still able to work; persons who chose not to work; and persons able to work who for any other reason were not working, not seeking work, and were without a job. This category accounted for 4.1 percent of the population, or 1,578,930 persons.
Column 26 "Number of hours worked during week of March 24-30, 1940."
This question determined the length of the usual work week in each occupation and the proportion of workers whose hours were above or below the average number. The standard for full-time work in many industries was a 40- or 48-hour week. Many people worked fewer hours, indicating that part-time employment was prevalent. If a person worked for himself (e.g., a doctor, lawyer, or farmer) the number of hours devoted in any way to his profession or business is entered here. Public emergency work is not included in this column.
Column 27 "Duration of unemployment up to March 30, 1940-in weeks."
For an experienced worker, this question addressed the length of time since the last full-time job of one month or more. If a person had never worked, or had been out of the labor force for a considerable time, enumerators were instructed to report the number of weeks since the person last began to seek work. For example, Grandpa Hedges last worked on July 1, 1938, and sought work until he entered school on September 1, 1939. On February 1, 1940, he left school and once more began to seek work. The proper entry for duration of unemployment in this case is "8," the number of weeks from February 1 to March 30, 1940.

Emergency workers were considered unemployed for census purposes, and the time on emergency work is included in this column.
Columns 28-30 Occupation, Industry, and Class of Worker
These columns were very important in gathering census data. During this period of widespread unemployment, the census sought to measure which occupations and industries were growing and which were on the decline. Workers were subdivided into two groups: experienced workers and new workers.

Experienced workers were those who had held a permanent job for one month or more. Information on their occupation and industry is in columns 28-30.

New workers were those who had not held a permanent job for one month or more. The words "New worker" appears in column 28, and columns 29 and 30 are left blank.

New worker is an important addition to the 1940 census. It measures the number of young people who had finished their schooling in recent years but were unable to obtain work.

The occupation classification differs from previous censuses. The 1930 occupation titles were grouped under a few major industrial headings such as agriculture, forestry, and fishing. The 1940 occupation titles are grouped into 11 subdivisions such as professional and semiprofessional worker, craftsman, and kindred workers. This new arrangement made the data harder to compare to previous censuses, but it was more compatible to similar data collected by other agencies that tracked employment and occupations.

The enumerator recorded employment information in three columns (28, 29, and 30); a fourth column (F) for an occupation code was filled in at the Bureau of the Census headquarters.

The occupations listed in column 28 are frame spinner, salesman, laborer, rivet heater, and music teacher. Industries and businesses listed in column 29 are cotton mill, retail grocery, farm, shipyard, and public school. 3 The instructions to enumerators for column 30 give five codes for "Class of Worker":

PW-a person who worked for a wage under the direction of an employer

E-an employer, who employed one or more helpers

GW-government worker

OA-own account, such as a lawyer with no hired help

NP-unpaid family member whose work contributed to the family income, such as in a family store

Column 31 "Number of weeks worked in 1939 (equivalent full-time weeks)"
All persons 14 years old and over at the time of the census, except inmates of certain institutions, were asked to report the number of weeks they worked in 1939 for pay or profit. This data provided information on continuity of employment and was helpful in the analysis of unemployment in various occupations. Emergency work (WPA, NYA, CCC, local work relief, etc.) was counted as time worked during 1939, despite the fact that it was also considered time unemployed. This apparent inconsistency arises from the fact that a major purpose of this question was to compare how many weeks a person worked with the salary and wages they earned in 1939. Public emergency workers were paid wages; therefore the number of weeks worked is entered so as not to skew the data comparing these two columns. A zero is entered for persons who did not work for pay or profit during the year 1939. 4
Column 32 "Amount of money, wages, or salary received (including commissions)"
The 1940 census is the first to ask questions about income. Enumerators had detailed instructions on what they should and should not enter in this column. Each person was asked to state income from wages, salary, and commissions received in 1939 for work done as an employee, including public emergency project work, and report the total amount of money in whole dollars up to $5,000. Income over $5,000 was indicated on the schedule simply as $5,000+. Persons who worked for business profits rather than for money, wages, or salary during the year did not report an amount in this column. For example, if a farmer worked for himself and sold his crops, he did not report that money here.

The question on income caused controversy, and Republican Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire mounted an unsuccessful campaign to force the administration to delete the question.

Eventually, the two sides reached a compromise. Individuals who did not want to give the income information to the enumerator could send in form P-16, a confidential report of income earned. The letter "C" for confidential report was entered in the right-hand margin of the population schedule, opposite the number for the person. In the end, only 2 percent of the population did not answer the question. Form P-16 does not survive.
Column 33 "Did this person receive income of $50 or more from sources other than money wages or salary (Y or N)"
The amount of $50 was chosen to identify people whose income derived mainly from wages and salaries. The Census Bureau wanted the amount to be low enough to clearly separate the people who relied on salary or wages as their main source of income from those who had additional income. For example, Grandpa Hedges worked as a security guard at a department store but occasionally repaired radios. Because his radio repair income amounted to $45, his main source of income was from his salary. Another security guard regularly sold vegetables at a roadside stand and made well over $50. His nonwage income could put him in a different economic bracket than his co-worker. 5
Supplemental questions
The 1940 census is the first one to use sampling techniques. Based on a random selection of 5 percent of the population, sampling permitted

the collection of statistics on a larger number of inquiries than had previously been possible,

the release of preliminary population statistics at an early date, and

tabulation of a great many social and economic characteristics of the population at a relatively low cost.

Two lines on the 40-line schedule were selected for 15 additional questions. Columns 45-47 of the supplementary questions inquire about usual occupation, industry, and class of worker. What makes these questions different from the questions asked on the general schedule is the word usual. Here the respondents reported what they regarded as their usual occupation regardless of whether they had been in the labor force during the census week. In column 28 a person may have listed their current occupation as a grocery clerk and then listed bank teller as their usual occupation.

Census records are the only records that theoretically describe the entire population of the United States on a particular day. The 1940 census is no different. It enumerated more than 132 million people and captured for the first time data relating to unemployment, distribution of wages, and salaries. This statistical information helped both the government and industry gain insight into the nation's economic struggles. 6 This spring, however, these statistical reports will take a backseat and the individual voices that have been kept in silence for 72 years will be heard. They people themselves will tell us in detail about the social and economic issues they faced.

Diane Petro is an archives technician at the National Archives in Washington D.C. She has been with the National Archives and Records Administration for two and a half years and has been researching and writing about the 1940 census for more than a year. She has an MLS degree from Florida State University.
Notes
1 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940 Population, vol. 3, "The Labor Force. Occupation, Industry, Employment, and Income," part 1: United States Summary (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1943), p. 5. Available online at https://census.gov/library/publications/1943/dec/population-vol-3.html.

3 An online tool to decipher occupation codes is at www.stevemorse.org/census/ocodes.htm. While there are some differences between the 1930 and 1940 occupation codes, it is still helpful.

6 The statistical reports on the labor force have been produced by the Census Bureau and are accessible at www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html.

Articles published in Prologue do not necessarily represent the views of NARA or of any other agency of the United States Government.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The 1940 Census: Employment and Income Spring 2012, Vol. 44, No. 1 | Genealogy Notes By Diane Petro "This year's census falls on the 150th anniversary of census-taking in America. . . . [V]ital new statistical knowledge will be developed by questions on education, mass migration, employment, unemployment, occupation and distribution of wages and salaries."

# data[].attributes.headline
Great Depression and sports- Byron Haydt

# data[].attributes.subject
Great Depression and sports- Byron Haydt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Soccer Basketball The NHL was a fun and interesting back then. The NHL consisted of ten teams but when the stock market crashed, hockey suffered as well as any other sport. After the crash the league had then consisted of only 6 teams which was a disaster. Summary During The

# data[].attributes.headline
Fashion During the Great Depression- Anya Pacheco

# data[].attributes.subject
Fashion During the Great Depression- Anya Pacheco

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The '30s were an interesting time in fashion. The dresses were often flowery, or patterned which not only helped to hide wear, but was a function of what types of fabrics were most available and affordable. Clothing had to be practical, but they also added embellishments that made their clothing sometimes very stylish. At a time when Art Deco was a trend among the wealthy, the average person was wearing more traditional patterns, but with some lovely twists. Below are fashions worn by regular people during the Great Depression, some of which are surprisingly stylish ensembles.

We all know that they made do with what they had on hand. And, most mothers and wives were very resourceful. They were able to stay up to date with some of the fashion trends, making or altering nearly all of their family's clothing to save money.

Men wore suits and farmers or workmen wore overalls. Nearly always, the men wore a button-up shirt under their overalls.

Details like nice buttons were used to add interest to dresses and blouses. These decorative notions were often re-used on other clothing pieces later on.

Children wore a lot of hand-me-downs, although occasionally got something new. They often had play clothes, second best, and Sunday best, and that was it, if they even had that much.

Shoes were usually practical: boots, oxfords, and saddle shoes were the order of the day.

Click "Next Page" to look at more Great Depression fashion!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Depression-era Clothing Fashions Show Just How Creative They Really Were Back Then!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The '30s were an interesting time in fashion. The dresses were often flowery, or patterned which not only helped to hide wear, but was a function of what types of fabrics were most available and affordable. Clothing had to be practical, but they also added embellishments that made their clothing sometimes very stylish.

# data[].attributes.headline
Penny Restaurants During the Great Depression

# data[].attributes.subject
Penny Restaurants During the Great Depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
New York's 107 West 44th Street had been home to Bill Duffy's Olde English Tavern. But with the Great Depression emptying wallets and Prohibition yet to be repealed, it was difficult for upscale establishments to stay open. In place of the old restaurant's "merriment," the New York Herald Tribune reported, a new restaurant was opening at the same address. It could accommodate crowds that would have swamped Duffy's: 9,000 customers a day. The cuisine was humble: Pea soup and whole-wheat bread featured prominently on the menu. But it was dirt cheap, an aspect reflected by the establishments's name. The Penny Restaurant was a place for the downtrodden and not-quite penniless to have a bite to eat.

The establishment was not without precedent. So-called "penny restaurants" were in operation in the late 19th century in cities across the United States. Though popular with teenagers hankering to eat on a shoestring, the restaurants were usually run as charitable projects. T.M. Finney, who managed a St. Louis penny restaurant run by the local Provident Association, laid out the enduring modus operandi of charitable restaurants. "The aim of the scheme is to afford poor people to maintain their self-respect and reduce the number of beggars," Finney stated.

At his establishment, every item cost a penny: A meal of half a pound of bread, soup, potatoes, pork and beans, and coffee only cost hungry customers five cents. Breadlines, where miserable hundreds waited hours for free food, were an all-too-common sight during the Depression. Penny restaurants were the dignified alternative.

Penny restaurants always appeared during times of financial trouble, but they reached their greatest prominence during the Great Depression. In 1933, unemployment was at 25 percent nationwide. A whole new cuisine of make-do was developing across the country, from starchy slugburgers to pork masquerading as higher-end chicken. At penny restaurants, food was simple and often meatless.

In New York, the best known penny restaurants were run by Bernarr (yes, Bernarr) MacFadden, an unlikely charitable pioneer. Most people knew MacFadden for his muscles. One of the founding fathers of American fitness culture, MacFadden lifted weights and was vegetarian. He'd run penny restaurants at the turn of the century.

His 1933 restaurant on West 44th Street had four stories, one for fine dining, two where customers could sit at shining white tables, and one floor for eaters to stand and eat simple food. MacFadden ran a massive publishing empire, and many of his magazines raised eyebrows for their radical diet ideas, out-there moralizing, and numerous photos of fit young people. But he also used the proceeds to open several more penny restaurants, where customers paid a pittance for prunes, soup, and healthful whole-wheat bread (MacFadden considered white flour poison). Even presidential daughter Anna Roosevelt dined at his establishment.

But the eccentric MacFadden was outdone by a Californian restaurateur. Most penny restaurants were ephemeral, lasting a few months or a few years. But one Depression-era eating establishment still exists and is still churning out jello: Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles.

Started during the Depression, the Cafeteria was part of an 11-restaurant chain that spanned California. They were launched in 1931 by Clifford Clinton, the scion of a successful restaurant family. But the Clintons were also pious: Clifford and his parents spent years in China feeding the hungry with the Salvation Army. With this eponymous chain of cafeterias, named by combining his first and last names, Clinton hoped to attract the masses with his massive, wildly decorated eateries. But he and his wife, Nelda, also wanted to feed those who couldn't pay. His eateries boasted the slogan "Dine free unless delighted."

In the original restaurant's first three months of business, ten thousand customers took him up on the offer. But the Clifton's cafeterias were some of the largest in the world, and enough customers paid their bills to make them a success. The eat-free policy, Nelda later said, was meant to lend dignity to hungry people in precarious positions.

The same year that Clinton opened his first cafeteria on South Olive Street, the soon-to-be-named Clifton's Pacific Seas, he also opened a penny cafeteria serving soup and bread. It made him unpopular with some locals, who believed Clinton was feeding the lazy and "undeserving." (Clinton rebutted this with a printed pamphlet that asked why the deserving should also go hungry.) His most famous and still-existing cafeteria, in Brookdale, opened in 1935, under the same "Golden Rule" policy as the first. Four years later, it got a makeover with flowing streams, redwood trees, and grottoes.

With its rustic woodland surroundings, it became a popular dining spot for rich and poor alike. Later cafeterias around the state had their own themes: The Olive Street establishment gained a South Seas veneer, with a "Rain Hut" where guests could experience a tropical shower every 20 minutes. Later cafeterias featured decor riffing on Mediterranean design and Charles Dickens. While running his restaurants, Clinton kept busy. When he started a citizen campaign to investigate corruption in the city, his house was bombed and his cafeterias targeted. Suspecting that the graft went all the way to the top, Clinton waged a successful campaign to recall the mayor.

During the depths of the depression, penny restaurants were lauded for giving Americans the strength to keep searching for jobs. But by 1935, the economic clouds were lifting. Daniel W. Delano, the proprietor of one penny cafe in Washington D.C., told a reporter that the number of customers both paying and eating gratis had plummeted, and those that did come seeking meals were mostly children.

When the Depression ended and the post-war American economy boomed, many penny restaurants shut down. But Clifton's fate was entirely different. The restaurants entered their glory days, and lines to enter the Brookdale location stretched down the block. That cafeteria remains open today: The Brookdale location was expensively renovated to much fanfare in 2015. Though customers can no longer dine free, it's a relic of a time when a free restaurant meal was an alternative to a night in the breadline.
Gastro Obscura covers the world's most wondrous food and drink.
Sign up for our email, delivered twice a week.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
During the Great Depression, 'Penny Restaurants' Fed the Unemployed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
New York's 107 West 44th Street had been home to Bill Duffy's Olde English Tavern. But with the Great Depression emptying wallets and Prohibition yet to be repealed, it was difficult for upscale establishments to stay open. In place of the old restaurant's "merriment," the New York Herald Tribune reported, a new restaurant was opening at the same address.

# data[].attributes.headline
Facts about the great depression - Branden Rudolph

# data[].attributes.subject
Facts about the great depression - Branden Rudolph

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
facts about the united states of america

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
interesting facts about the great depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
facts about the united states government

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
facts about the great depression for kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Great Depression Facts | Great Depression Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is a website about the Great Depression.

# data[].attributes.headline
Foods during the Depression- Keily Gaetan

# data[].attributes.subject
Foods during the Depression- Keily Gaetan

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.ranker.com/list/food-during-the-great-depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Eleanor Roosevelt was doing the best she could with the hand she was dealt. How would you like to be the First Lady during the Great Depression in a time when Lady Magic in the kitchen was supposed to help us through the crisis? That said, Roosevelt promoted some truly foul dishes in her efforts to promote savvy home economics, such as this off-putting "casserole" made from spaghetti, boiled carrots, and a simple white sauce of milk, flour, salt, and butter.

The first step is to cook the spaghetti for a sadistic 25 minutes, which in a sane world means Step #2 is to order the biggest pizza Domino's will make. But this is the Great Depression we're talking about, so the idea is to get the noodles mushy so they pair nicely with the boiled-to-death carrots and the pennies worth of creamy sauce. The result? A "vehicle for nutrition and nutrients" that probably made people want to eat their old Flapper hats instead.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
15 Disgusting Foods People Ate To Survive The Great Depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Let's bust one Great Depression myth right off the bat, courtesy of Megan McArdle: "even at the height of the Depression, when a quarter of the workforce was unemployed, most people were not on relief, and most were not suffering malnutrition." Even if it wasn't all hobos sharing beans on a ...

# data[].attributes.headline
Environment During the Dust Bowl - Mason Arvig 

# data[].attributes.subject
Environment During the Dust Bowl - Mason Arvig 

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.perc.org/2004/12/10/the-dust-bowl-reconsidered/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Connor Kehl

When the stock market crashed in 1929 the United States went through one of the most dramatic and fastest changes in history. The previous decade and been filled with lively spirit of freedom and youth, and in a matter of days the entire mood of the country changed bringing everything with it, including music. Popular music that had been overwhelmingly positive and free-spirited gave way to earthier expressions of heartache and desperation. Music changed from the upbeat "Happy Days Are Here Again" to much more mellow songs like " Brother, Can You Spare Me a Dime? " as quickly as a syncopated percussion beat written by Gene Krupa (Lawarence). There were a few exceptions like " Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries " by Rudy Vallee, which is a much more comical and lighthearted song about looking at the bright side of life and forgetting about your troubles.

During the mid-1930s the Great Depression didn't seem to be getting any better and Jazz became one of America's most popular styles of music. Its new name was swing and its impact was revolutionary. In just 7 years, this Harlem born style had grown from 10 million records sold to 50 million records sold (Ward). Swing started to move towards big band instrumentation producing major hits such as " " by Louis Prima and Benny Goodman. Radios and jukeboxes could be heard playing swing in every restaurant and club. It became the theme music for Hollywood and provided entertainment and escape for those who were feeling uneasy in life (Ward). The song " " is in the opening scene of the 1933 movie Gold Diggers and is the perfect example of how the depression was the central topic for music and films in Hollywood.

Music is an outlet to express feeling and emotion. The Great Depression caused a major change of emotion throughout the entire country and the music of the nation was bound to follow. Music is a living and breathing thing that will be affected by everything the humans that create it do, and the Great Depression is no exception.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Connor Kehl When the stock market crashed in 1929 the United States went through one of the most dramatic and fastest changes in history. The previous decade and been filled with lively spirit of freedom and youth, and in a matter of days the entire mood of the country changed bringing everything with it, including music.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Table of Contents

1. Organized Crime in the Prohibition Era

2. Public Enemies and G-Men

3. Effects of New Deal and Falling Crime Rates in the Late 1930s

During the Great Depression, with much of the United States mired in grinding poverty and unemployment, some Americans found increased opportunities in criminal activities like bootlegging, robbing banks, loan-sharking-even murder.

Organized Crime in the Prohibition Era

The passage of the 18th Amendment and the introduction of Prohibition in 1920 fueled the rise of organized crime, with gangsters growing rich on profits from bootleg liquor-often aided by corrupt local policemen and politicians.

According to the FBI, Chicago alone had an estimated 1,300 gangs by the mid-1920s, a situation that led to turf wars and other violent activities between rival gangs.

Prohibition was unpopular with the public and bootleggers became heroes to many for supplying illegal alcohol during hard times. In hit movies like Little Caesar and The Public Enemy (both released in 1931), Hollywood depicted gangsters as champions of individualism and self-made men surviving in tough economic times.

Though the country's most famous real-life gangster, Al Capone, was locked up for tax evasion in 1931 and spent the rest of the decade in federal prison, others like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky (both in New York City) pushed aside old-line crime bosses to form a new, ruthless Mafia syndicate.

The end of Prohibition in 1933 deprived many gangsters of their lucrative bootlegging operations, forcing them to fall back on the old standbys of gambling and prostitution, as well as new opportunities in loan-sharking, labor racketeering and drug trafficking.

Public Enemies and G-Men

The kidnapping and murder of the infant son of Charles Lindbergh in 1931 increased the growing sense of lawlessness in the Depression era. Amidst a media frenzy, the Lindbergh Law, passed in 1932, increased the jurisdiction of the relatively new Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its hard-charging director, J. Edgar Hoover.

At the same time, colorful figures like John Dillinger, Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, "Baby Face" Nelson and "Ma" Barker and her sons were committing a wave of bank robberies and other crimes across the country.

Many Americans who had lost confidence in their government, and especially in their banks, saw these daring figures as outlaw heroes, even as the FBI included them on its new "Public Enemies" list.

But after the so-called Kansas City Massacre in June 1933, in which three gunmen fatally ambushed a group of unarmed police officers and FBI agents escorting bank robber Frank Nash back to prison, the public seemed to welcome a full-fledged war on crime.

A new anti-crime package spearheaded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his attorney general, Homer S. Cummings, became law in 1934, and Congress granted FBI agents the authority to carry guns and make arrests. By the end of 1934, many high-profile outlaws had been killed or captured, and Hollywood was glorifying Hoover and his "G-men" in their own movies.

Effects of New Deal and Falling Crime Rates in the Late 1930s

Violent crime rates may have risen at first during the Depression (in 1933, the nationwide homicide mortality rate hit a high for the century until that point, at 9.7 per 100,000 people) but the trend did not continue throughout the decade. As the economy showed signs of recovery in 1934-37, the homicide rate went down by 20 percent.

New Deal programs were likely a major factor in declining crime rates, as was the end of Prohibition and a slowdown of immigration and migration of people from rural America to northern cities, all of which reduced urban crime rates. Even when the U.S. economy stalled again in 1937-38, homicide rates kept falling, reaching 6.4 per 100,000 by the end of the decade.

Sources

The FBI and the American Gangster, 1924-1938, FBI.gov.
American History: The Great Depression: Gangsters and G-Men, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Barry Latzer, "Do hard times spark more crime?" Los Angeles Times (January 24, 2014).
Bryan Burrough, Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34 (New York: Penguin Books, 2004).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Organized Crime in the Prohibition Era Public Enemies and G-Men Effects of New Deal and Falling Crime Rates in the Late 1930s During the Great Depression, with much of the United States mired in grinding poverty and unemployment, some Americans found increased opportunities in criminal activities like bootlegging, robbing banks, loan-sharking-even murder.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Various incarnations of the publishing industry trade magazine Publishers Weekly have been around since 1852, and old issues are a marvel to skim through because they preserve the reading worlds of yesterday in amber.

Not only do they starkly demonstrate how fleeting fame can be (Who knew that in 1933 the "Best Paid Author in the World" was a gal named Temple Bailey?), but the old issues also provide plenty of opportunities for contemporary readers to condescend to the past. It's unsettling, for instance, to see an ad for Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (translated as My Battle) hawked in the July 1933 Publishers Weekly issue as a "stirring autobiography [in which] you will find Hitler's own story of his meteoric rise from obscurity to world-wide fame."

That same issue of Publishers Weekly declares that "the reading of books has increased throughout the Depression as shown by library circulation records." At a quick glance, the popular books Americans were reading in the early 1930s - either by taking them out of public libraries, borrowing them from the now-extinct bookstore rental libraries, or buying them - look a lot like the mass market offerings of 2009.

There's a furry precursor to the vampire mania of today lurking in an April 1933 best-seller called The Werewolf of Paris, and even a couple of canine ancestors of Marley and Me: The dog starring as Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel, Flush, in the 1930s Broadway play The Barretts of Wimpole Street is depicted in a Sept. 2 photo spread putting his paw to a contract for a fictional memoir.

That same month, Virginia Woolf cashed in on the Flush craze by bringing out a biography of the pooch; the ad promised that the forthcoming shaggy dog story was "certain to be Mrs. Woolf's most popular book." Clearly, the copywriter was not a fan of Woolf's experiments in literary modernism.

If you want to get a deeper sense, however, of the literary fantasies our fellow Americans were reaching for to help them cope with the economic meltdown of the 1930s, you've got to read between the lines of these yellowed Publishers Weekly magazines. Women, then as now, were turning to chick lit, with the crucial difference being that many of the 1930s plots featured plucky young women whose family fortunes had taken a nose dive.

Faith Baldwin's novel White Collar Girl was deemed "a circulation ace" in May of 1933. It told the story of "charming Linda who was forced by her father's failure ... to leave college for a ... selling job in her up-state New York home town."

No doubt male readers were the target audience for the many economic primers of the time, such as Counter-Attack, written by Maryland Sen. Millard E. Tydings and touted as "a bold, sound, feasible plan" to end the Depression. But there were also a plethora of hard-luck male extreme adventure tales published in the early 1930s, like Mutiny on the Bounty; Kenneth Roberts' Revolutionary War potboiler, Rabble in Arms; and one of the biggest best-sellers of 1933, Anthony Adverse, which weighed in at over 1,000 pages.

The allure of these novels seems pretty clear: Men who were struggling during the Great Depression could take comfort in reading about the exploits of stranded sailors, ragtag Colonial soldiers, and a disposed nobleman who has to fight his way from Cuba to Africa and to Europe and America to claim his rightful inheritance.

Some of the most desperate tales in the Depression-era issues of Publishers Weekly are the ones only hinted at by ads and brief news items. The bookstore Brentano's and the publisher Horace Liveright filed for bankruptcy; the Everyman's Library reduced its prices from 90 cents to 70 cents a volume; and three workers at Schulte's (a rare-book store on New York's Fourth Avenue) went out on strike wearing sandwich boards accusing the store of "unfair practice" because the owner tried to cut wages. Publishers Weekly noted that this was the first pay cut in four years and that the strikers should have presented their boss "with a medal instead of a placard" advertising complaints.

Then, there's this ad in the "Positions Wanted" section of the July 22, 1933, issue: "Man, 25, 3 years experience, old, new books, library. Do anything. Any salary."

I wonder how he made out.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What People Were Reading During The Depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Various incarnations of the publishing industry trade magazine Publishers Weekly have been around since 1852, and old issues are a marvel to skim through because they preserve the reading worlds of yesterday in amber.

# data[].attributes.headline
Food in the great depression- arya singh

# data[].attributes.subject
Food in the great depression- arya singh

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Feeding the Family

Farms in the 1930s were diversified, growing a variety of crops in the fields, vegetables in the garden and fruit in the orchard. Small farms usually raised chickens, eggs, hogs, and cattle, as well as keeping horses and mules for work, and sometimes sheep for wool and meat. Some farmers kept bees and harvested the honey. Women baked their own bread.
During the Depression, this self-sufficiency carried over into their social life. One-dish suppers and church potlucks were important ways to have fun and share food. On radio and in women's magazines, home economists taught women how to stretch their food budget with casseroles and meals like creamed chipped beef on toast or waffles. Chili, macaroni and cheese, soups, and creamed chicken on biscuits were popular meals.

In the 70 or more years since the Great Depression, a lot has changed on the farms of rural America. All of these changes have resulted in farms that usually specialize in only one main crop. Today, entire regions have become "monocultures."

Life was different in the 1930s. Person after person – like Millie Opitz (left) – will tell you that they never went hungry despite the fact that they never had much money. And Helen Bolton (right) can still quickly list all of the tasks she had to do to keep food on the table.

The Apetz brothers hunted rabbits to put a more meat on the dinner table. Delbert Apetz says, "We had a brooder house [for chickens]. My uncle and dad, they'd go out rabbit hunting (now this is in the winter time). Be rabbits hanging there, dressed all the way through that and any time you wanted something to eat you'd cut the string on the rabbit and bring it in the house, fry it or cook it and make soup or whatever you want. We ate a lotta, lotta rabbits. But that's what we had to eat." Still, it was a constant work to put food on the table, and sometimes the food was covered with dust when the wind blew dust through the cracks in the house.

Written by Claudia Reinhardt and Bill Ganzel, the Ganzel Group. First written and published in 2003.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Feeding the Family during the Great Depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Feeding the Family Farms in the 1930s were diversified, growing a variety of crops in the fields, vegetables in the garden and fruit in the orchard. Small farms usually raised chickens, eggs, hogs, and cattle, as well as keeping horses and mules for work, and sometimes sheep for wool and meat.

# data[].attributes.headline
Great depression immigration chart - Scott Trauger

# data[].attributes.subject
Great depression immigration chart - Scott Trauger

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv7IP2qL0gg

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Great Depression Explained in One Minute

# data[].attributes.body
Yamirelys Berrios

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Technological Advances in Agricultural Machines during the Depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For example, advances in steel manufacturing meant that there was stronger and cheaper steel available. Before the 30s, many implements like harrows were made primarily out of wood with steel teeth mounted in them. During the 30s, more and more implements were built completely from steel.

# data[].attributes.headline
Drinks during the great depressions-Lance Priestas

# data[].attributes.subject
Drinks during the great depressions-Lance Priestas

# data[].attributes.body
https://prezi.com/lc1wm2q2ygdi/food-and-drinks-during-the-great-depression/

# data[].attributes.headline
Political cartoon during the great depression - By Carol Fernandez

# data[].attributes.subject
Political cartoon during the great depression - By Carol Fernandez

# data[].attributes.body
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/al-capones-soup-kitchen-great-depression-chicago-1931/

# data[].attributes.headline
costs of food during the Great Depression compared to -Byron Haydt

# data[].attributes.subject
costs of food during the Great Depression compared to -Byron Haydt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In 1932, Safeway and Gates and Lydiard Groceteria in Medford advertised these items. Here's what the costs would be, converted into today's dollars and what prices were Friday at local supermarkets:

1932 price In today's dollars 2008 price

Bacon, 1 lb. 14.5¢ $2.32 $3.99

Hamburger, 2 lbs. 19¢ $3.04 $3.99

Steak, 1 lb. 17.5¢ $2.80 $4.99

Coffee, 2-lb. can 55¢ $8.80 $6.99

Eggs, dozen 23¢ $3.68 $2.49

Butter, 1 lb. 22¢ $3.04 $3.50

Bread, 1 loaf 5¢ 80¢ $1.79

Safeguards against a stock market collapse

The New York Stock Exchange can halt trading if the market becomes too volatile, a safeguard that began in 1998. Thresholds are reconfigured each quarter.

If the market:

Drops 10 percent, or 1,100 points, before 2 p.m., trading is halted for one hour.

Drops 2,200 points before 1 p.m., trading is stopped for two hours, or for one hour if it happens between 1 and 2 p.m.

Drops 3,350 points - no matter what time of day - all trading is stopped for the rest of the day.

The largest point decline in the market's history came on Sept. 29, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 777.68 points. The largest percentage drop came on Dec. 12, 1914, when the market declined 24.39 percent.

- Sources: Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones

Social Security

Reform of financial institutions, including creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Housing Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority

Many of the programs created during the Depression were hotly debated at the time, with some critics calling them socialism, communism or fascism. The programs were widely known as the New Deal after President Franklin D. Roosevelt promised a "new deal for the American people."
Oct. 29, 1929 (Black Tuesday) - Stock market collapses after panic trading. Speculators sell 16.4 million shares of stocks.

1930 - Stock market rallies and government and business show an uptick in spending; consumers cut back on expenditures by 10 percent; a severe drought hits agriculture.

1932 - The Depression reaches its lowest point. Unemployment soars to 25 percent. More than 5,000 banks fail and 32,000 businesses declare bankruptcy.

1940s - Depression ends as the U.S. shifts to wartime economy during World War II.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Great Depression and now: a comparison of food costs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1932, Safeway and Gates and Lydiard Groceteria in Medford advertised these items. Here's what the costs would be, converted into today's dollars and what prices were Friday at local supermarkets: 1932 price In today's dollars 2008 price Bacon, 1 lb. 14.5¢ $2.32 $3.99 Hamburger, 2 lbs. 19¢ $3.04 $3.99 Steak, 1 lb.

# data[].attributes.body
https://drivemag.com/red-calipers/the-most-beautiful-cars-of-the-1920s-and-1930s

# data[].attributes.headline
Political Cartoons during the Great Depression - Mason Arvig

# data[].attributes.subject
Political Cartoons during the Great Depression - Mason Arvig

# data[].attributes.body
https://fee.org/articles/3-great-great-depression-cartoons/

# data[].attributes.body
-Carter Rutkowski

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Great Depression

Imagine your life without enough food to eat, no car to ride in, a tiny shack for a house, only a few pairs of clothes, and no television, video games or toys, and having to quit school to work in a factory or on a farm. This was life for children from 1929 to 1940 during the Great Depression, a time when many people were without a job and had little or no money.

Today, in the United States, children are required to attend school starting with elementary school, then middle school, then high school. After passing all classes, you graduate from high school and can get a job or go to college. This was not always how American schools worked. During the Great Depression, there were no rules or expectations for all students to complete school.

Rural Schools

Prior to the Great Depression, most children in rural, or countryside, areas attended school, but during the Great Depression, many schools closed, leaving children without a school to attend. The school buildings were often just one big room, and without any money to keep them fixed, some began to fall apart.

To heat the schoolroom in the winter, the teacher would put wood in a wood-burning stove at the beginning of each day. During hot months, they had open windows to try and keep cool. Without bathrooms, they had to brave the cold or heat and walk to the outhouse, a small building away from the school that had a toilet in it.

Because farms were suffering greatly, many children came to school for only a few months a year. They walked or rode a horse to school when they were not needed to work on the farm. Many quit school by eighth grade to work on the farm full-time.

Teachers were paid before the Great Depression, but in rural areas during the depression, many teachers were not paid at all. Education was more enriching before the Great Depression, with classes such as science, history, and art, but students were now only taught reading, writing, and math. Because all students were in the same room, students sat in rows according to their grade. The teacher would call up each grade to teach their lesson while the others did their own work.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
schools during the great depression lesson for kids | study.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Schools During the Great Depression Lesson for Kids | Study.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Imagine your life without enough food to eat, no car to ride in, a tiny shack for a house, only a few pairs of clothes, and no television, video games or toys, and having to quit school to work in a factory or on a farm.

# data[].attributes.headline
Culture and Arts during the Great Deprssion

# data[].attributes.subject
Culture and Arts during the Great Deprssion

# data[].attributes.body
http://depts.washington.edu/depress/culture_arts.shtml

# data[].attributes.headline
Illnesses in the great depression-Lance Priestas

# data[].attributes.subject
Illnesses in the great depression-Lance Priestas

# data[].attributes.body
http://ur.umich.edu/0910/Oct05_09/19.php

# data[].attributes.headline
Grocery shopping during the great depression

# data[].attributes.subject
Grocery shopping during the great depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Jewell Faye Rand age 81 of Powell went to be with her Lord and Savior on February 23, 2019. She was a member of Wallace Memorial Baptist Church and taught pre-school in the Powell community for over 30 years. She was an avid Tennessee Vol fan and a longtime member of the Volunteer Street Rod Association. She passed with her beloved pet and companion Sky by her side.

Ruby Elizabeth Brooks (King) Johnson died peacefully at home on February 22, 2019, surrounded by

Carolyn S. Loy, age 75, of Knoxville passed away on February 23, 2019. Preceded by daughter Kimberly Loy. Survived by son Johnny Lee Loy Jr.; granddaughter Laura Ganskow (Blake); great grand Mya & Robert Ganskow. Family will receive friends at Mynatt Funeral Home Fountain City Chapel on Tuesday February 26, 2019 from 6:00-8:00pm with a service to follow at 8:00pm. There will be a private family interment. Online condolences can be made at www.mynattfh.com for the family of Carolyn S. Loy.

Dorothy "Dottie" Headrick, age 73, of Knoxville, went to be with her loving husband Ralph on February 19, 2019. She was a Christian woman who loved taking care of her family and others.

Preceded in death by loving husband Ralph Headrick; brother Bill Atchley; and great grandchild Karter Headrick.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Grocery Shopping During the Great Depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There are jigsaw puzzles that depict a general store with goods displayed on shelves as well as placed around the store. A few steps into the door and you were at the counter. That's the way it used to be. "Well, hello there, Mrs. Stimer. How are you today?"

# data[].attributes.headline
Industry During The Great Depression- Anya Pacheco

# data[].attributes.subject
Industry During The Great Depression- Anya Pacheco

# data[].attributes.headline
Pay Cuts for Representatives- Christina Stolnik

# data[].attributes.subject
Pay Cuts for Representatives- Christina Stolnik

# data[].attributes.body
https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1901-1950/A-pay-cut-for-Representatives-during-the-Great-Depression/

# data[].attributes.headline
Homlessn during the Depression- Keily Gaetan

# data[].attributes.subject
Homlessn during the Depression- Keily Gaetan

# data[].attributes.body
n

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A Soup Line (Notice the Kids in Front)

During the Great Depression, children suffered a lot. They no longer had the joys and freedoms of childhood, and often shared their parents' burdens and issues on money. For Christmas and birthdays, very few children were able to have fancy toy. Some families made gifts themselves, but many others could not afford food at all. For most people, the only way to celebrate holidays with gifts, were to window-shop. Since children lacked food, they often suffered from malnutrition.

Sometimes, children left home. They either did not want to burden their families,were tired of their boring and poor living, or just wanted an adventure. Some left with their families' blessings, but others escaped from the house overnight. Most of them traveled on boxcars, sections of trains, and helped each other. They shared routes, tips, and information. Children got on boxcars after trains started moving, so it was very possible for them to get injured if they missed their footing. In one case, a northern white boy, who had heard of segeration, but had not experienced it, helped on another, near midnight. They talked through the night of their exciting adventure, and when daybreak came, the boy realized his friend was African-American.
If a person was caught riding a boxcar, he or she would be taken off it, and depending on state rule, possibly punished. Some states were cruel, sentecing community labor, and others were nicer, letting the person stay overnight with food supply. In between, were states that just escorted the person to the state border, and telling them to never return again. Girls also were travelers. Some disguised themselves as boys, but some found advantages as being a girl. Some nice people would give girls the food and board they could offer that would not be given to boys.
Children of the Great Depression suffered heavily physically, with diseases like malnutrion, but even more suffered mentally, knowing that in a split second, within the blink of an eye, their lives might just change.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the Great Depression, children suffered a lot. They no longer had the joys and freedoms of childhood, and often shared their parents' burdens and issues on money. For Christmas...

# data[].attributes.headline
Inflation during the Great Depression - Scott Trauger

# data[].attributes.subject
Inflation during the Great Depression - Scott Trauger

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Inflation During the "Great Depression" 1930's

The great depression officially began with the stock market crash on September 4, 1929. But for over 50% of the U.S. population who lived on farms the Depression began ten years earlier with the dramatic fall of commodity prices when demand from Europe dried up at the end of WWI. Much of the "Roaring" part of the Twenties was the result of loose credit and stock market speculation. This speculation is thought to have sown the seeds of the great depression.

The stock market crash caused a panic and thus a liquidity crisis as banks and other lenders became risk adverse and refused to loan money. The stock market actually began rebounding in early 1930, and returned to early 1929 levels by April. But because of the parabolic rise in stock prices in 1929, this was still almost 30% below the peak of September 1929.

Many economists believe that government tight money policies made the Depression worse and that the Federal Reserve did exactly the wrong things. According to the Keynesians, although President Roosevelt tried public works, farm subsidies, and other devices to restart the US economy, he never spent enough to bring the economy out of recession until the start of World War II.

Monetarists, including Milton Friedman, argue that the Great Depression was mainly caused by monetary contraction, they believe that the Federal Reserve allowed the money supply as measured by the M2 money supply to shrink by one-third from 1929-1933, thereby transforming a normal recession into the Great Depression.

The Austrian School of Economics also blames the FED but rather than not doing enough they believe that the key cause of the Depression was the FED's expansion of the money supply in the 1920s that led to an unsustainable credit-driven boom. In February 1929 Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek published a paper predicting the Federal Reserve's actions would lead to a crisis starting in the stock and credit markets. According to Murray Rothbard, who wrote America's Great Depression, government intervention delayed the market's adjustment and made the road to complete recovery more difficult.

Marxists blamed the rich, believing that recessions and depressions are the result of having no restrictions on the accumulation of capital and when too much capital is in too few hands recessions result. Hoover and Roosevelt attempted to remedy this problem with large government work projects. Sowing seeds of Socialism in the American economy in the New Deal and public works projects.

Inflation and Deflation During the Great Depression of the 1930's

By looking at the flow of red ink in this table we can see that the majority of the deflation occurred from 1930-1932 but it resumed again in 1938-39. These are not monthly rates but annual inflation rates. Therefore any negative cell represents net falling prices for the previous 12 months.

Monthly Inflation

On a monthly basis we can see prices dropping by ½% or more each month in 1930 and often by 1% or more in 1931 and by over 2% in January of 1932.

The Consumer Price Index CPI from 1930 - 1939

The following table shows the Consumer Price index for the ten years from 1930 through 1939 based upon a 1982-84 base of 100. This table provides the basis for calculating the inflation rates and we can see that in January 1930 the CPI index was 17.1 and in December nine years later it was at 14.0 resulting in a net deflation for the entire decade.

Chart Comparing the 1930's to other Decades

In this chart we can see how the 1930's compare to other decades.

Click Chart for more Information

Inflation Chart 1930- 1939

The following chart shows the inflation rates during the period from 1930-1939.
Click Chart for Larger Image See Also:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Inflation and CPI Consumer Price Index 1930-1939

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The great depression officially began with the stock market crash on September 4, 1929. But for over 50% of the U.S. population who lived on farms the Depression began ten years earlier with the dramatic fall of commodity prices when demand from Europe dried up at the end of WWI.

# data[].attributes.body
-ANGELLUS LUGO

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The saga of the Bonus Army was born out of the inequality of the Selective Service Act (1917), the failure of the government to provide any meaningful benefits to the veterans of the First World War, and the fear and anxiety produced by the Great Depression.

During WWI, for the first time in America's history, a wartime army went off to fight composed of more than half draftees. Despite the rigorous propaganda efforts of George Creel's Committee on Public Information, only 97,000 men had volunteered for the war three weeks after America's declaration of war against Germany. Although 2 million men ultimately did volunteer, another 2.8 million were drafted. Draftees were organized into 4 categories, one of which exempted draftees who worked in essential defense industries. By the end of the war, these industrial workers had earned about ten times what the category I troops had earned. They had also avoided the physical, mental, and spiritual hardships of combat, and they were better positioned to survive in the nation's shrinking economy. It didn't take returning combat troops long to recognize the inequity of their situation. Meanwhile, Black American troops, bared from combat duty with American units, had fought in the trenches under the French flag. Having experienced a measure of equality and dignity from the French, they too arrived home with a heightened awareness of inequality.

Soon, American veterans began to argue that they should receive "adjusted compensation" for the wages they had lost while serving overseas, a term carefully chosen to suggest equality. Critics, however, were successful at labeling these veterans as "bonus seekers", suggesting some special treatment above and beyond what they deserved. In 1924, after several years of lobbying, congress finally awarded the WWI veterans "adjusted universal compensation"-a bonus-in the form of government bonds that would collect interest over two decades and be paid out no earlier than 1945. The bill was passed by overriding a veto from President Calvin Coolidge, who remarked, "Patriotism which is bought and paid for is not patriotism." Although the provision that allowed for the bonus to be paid immediately upon the veteran's death earned it the nickname, "the tombstone bonus," the veterans were satisfied.

But then, in 1929, the economy collapsed. President Herbert Hoover's reluctance to recognize the severity of the economic crisis exacerbated the problem. Although the president ultimately did authorize some massive public works projects to put money back into the economy, it was too little, too late. By 1932 veterans, desperate for economic relief, wanted the bonus to be paid immediately. Such a bill was introduced in congress by Congressman Wright Patman of Texas, himself a war veteran. This bill caught the attention of a former sergeant named Walter W. Waters, now unemployed in Portland, Oregon. Waters grew increasingly frustrated as the bill languished, while Washington lobbyists appeared successful at procuring legislation that benefited corporate interests. On March 15, Waters met with other veterans in the Portland area, and urged them to march on Washington, D.C., to lobby for the bonus in person. He had no takers that evening, but after the bill was shelved on May 11, the Portland veterans reconsidered. Soon, about 300 of them began "riding the rails" toward the nation's capital.

As they headed east, the media took an interest in the story. Radio, newspaper, and film crews reported on the veterans favorably. Suddenly, the Bonus Expeditionary Force (a play on the "American Expeditionary Force," under which they had been organized in France) became a movement of hope. Veterans across the country started jumping on freight trains, sometimes with their families, and headed for Washington. They came on buses, old trucks, and even on jitney Fords with up to 20 veterans hanging off the sides of them. Sympathetic railroad men, many of them veterans themselves, refused to turn in these illegal passengers. In town after town, supporters donated food, money and moral support.On May 21, railroad police tried to stop Waters and his men from hopping eastbound freight trains just outside of St. Louis in Illinois. In response, the veterans uncoupled cars and soaped the rails, refusing to let trains depart. Illinois governor Louis L. Emmerson called out the Illinois National Guard, and in Washington, the Army deputy chief of staff, Brig. Gen. George Van Horn Moseley, urged that U.S. Army troops be sent to stop the Bonus Marchers, on grounds that they were delaying the U.S. mail. But his boss, Army chief of staff and WWI veteran Douglas MacArthur vetoed the plan. To resolve the issue, the veterans were escorted onto trucks and transported to the Indiana state line. Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland each sent the veterans by truck on to the next state.

On May 25, 1932, the first veterans arrived. Waters and his men arrived on the 29th. Within a few weeks another 20,000 had joined them. They made camp wherever they could find space-in vacant lots and abandoned buildings. One large "Hooverville" sprang up along the Anacostia River, where veterans and their families erected crude structures from materials scavenged from an old dump at one end of the camp. The camp quickly became a local attraction. Washingtonians brought them much needed supplies, from sleeping bags to vegetables, to cigarettes, and often tossed coins to camp musicians. Soon the camp, named Camp Marks in honor of the police captain in whose precinct they were encamped, came to resemble a small city. There were named streets, a library, a post office, and a barber shop. Classes were set up for the children. They published their own newspaper, and staged vaudeville shows and boxing matches. Camp rules prohibited alcohol, weapons, fighting, and begging. And since the veterans wanted their motives to be unambiguous, communists were not allowed. Dozens of American flags could be seen waving above the shacks and mud. Marine Corps legend and retired Major General Smedley Butler turned out to praise and encourage them. It was the largest Hooverville in the nation.

Police Chief Pelham Glassford, himself a decorated WWI general, sympathized with his fellow vets. He toured the camp almost daily, organized medical care, provided building materials, solicited local merchants for food donations, and even contributed $773 out of his own pocket for provisions. Glassford once drove with Evalyn Walsh McLean, heiress to a Colorado mining fortune and owner of the famed Hope diamond, to an all-night diner where they ordered 1,000 sandwiches, 1,000 packs of cigarettes, and coffee. When McLean learned that the marchers needed a headquarters tent, she had one delivered along with books, radios and cots.

But Chief Glassford also knew that congress was not in a mood to pay bonuses. And Glassford also viewed the camp as symbolic of the vast army of the nation's unemployed. He was wary of events getting out of hand, of creating widespread social disorder across the nation. Despite the camp rules, a few of the veterans apparently did have some Communist sympathies, a not uncommon phenomenon in 1932, since it appeared to many that capitalism had failed. And the press did report on this small communist faction of veterans. Rumors about communist revolutionaries soon spread throughout the city, and deeply affected the highest levels of government. At the Justice Department, J. Edgar Hoover's Bureau of Investigation labored to find evidence that the Bonus Army had communist roots, evidence that never existed.

President Hoover's press secretary, Theodore Joslin, wrote in his diary that "The marchers have rapidly turned from bonus seekers to communists or bums." Government authorities also noted the absence of Jim Crow in this Southern event. They chose to interpret this racial camaraderie between former brothers-in-arms as symptomatic of left-wing radicalism. For several years, as the Great Depression had settled in, the government had been fearful of the possibility of an armed insurrection against Washington. Even before the arrival of the Bonus Army, the army had developed a plan to defend the city with tanks, machine guns, and poison gas.

Within days of his arrival, Walter Waters had a full-blown lobbying operation under way. On June 4, the B.E.F. marched in full force down the streets of Washington. Veterans filled their representative's waiting rooms, while others gathered outside the Capitol building. On June 14, the bonus bill, opposed by Republicans loyal to President Hoover, came to the floor. When Congressman Edward E. Eslick (D-TN) was speaking in support of the bill, he suddenly fell dead from of a heart attack. Thousands of Bonus Army veterans marched in his funeral procession, while congress adjourned out of respect. The following day, June 15, the House of Representatives passed the bonus bill by a vote of 211 to 176.

On the 17th, about 8,000 veterans gathered at the Capitol, feeling confident that the Senate would pass the bill. Another 10,000 were stranded behind the Anacostia drawbridge, which police had raised to keep them out of the city. Debate continued into the evening. Finally, around 9:30, Senate aides summoned Waters inside. He returned moments later to break the news to the crowd: the bill had been defeated. For a moment it looked as if the veterans would attack the Capitol. Instead, at the suggestion of a reporter, Waters asked the veterans to sing "America". When the song was over, they slowly filed back to camp.

In the days that followed, many bonus marchers went home. But Waters and 20,000 others declared their intention "to stay here until 1945 if necessary to get our bonus." They continued to demonstrate. On July 13, 1932, Police Chief Glassford addressed a rally on the Capitol grounds. He asked the veterans to raise their hands if they had served in France and were 100 percent American. As the weeks passed, conditions at the camp worsened. Evalyn Walsh McLean contacted Vice President Charles Curtis, who had attended dinner parties at her mansion. "Unless something is done for these men, there is bound to be a lot of trouble," she told him. McLean's efforts backfired. Vice President Curtis became paranoid when he saw veterans near his Capitol Hill office on the anniversary of the day the mobs stormed France's Bastille. President Hoover, Army Chief of Staff MacArthur, and Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley, increasingly feared that the Bonus Army would turn violent and trigger uprisings in Washington and elsewhere. Hoover was especially troubled by the veterans who occupied abandoned buildings downtown.

On July 28, on President Hoover's orders, Police Chief Glassford arrived with 100 policemen to evict them. Waters informed Glassford that the men had voted to remain. Just after noon, a small contingent of vets confronted a phalanx of policemen near the armory, resulting in a quick, but violent skirmish. Veterans threw bricks while policemen used their nightsticks. Shortly after 1:45 p.m. another fight broke out in a building adjacent to the armory. Shots rang out. When it ended, one veteran lay dead, another mortally wounded. Three policemen were injured.

At this point, Army Chief of Staff General MacArthur had had enough. He decided to put their practiced plan into action, and assumed personal command. For the first time in the nation's history, tanks rolled through the streets of the capital. MacArthur ordered his men to clear the estimated 8,000 veterans from the downtown area, and spectators who had been drawn to the scene by radio reports. Fred Blacher was 16 years old and standing on a corner waiting for a trolley. "By God, all of a sudden I see these cavalrymen come up the avenue and then swinging down to The Mall. I thought it was a parade," Blacher later said. "I asked a gentleman standing there, I said, do you know what's going on? What holiday is this? He says, 'It's no parade, bud.' He says, 'the Army is coming in to wipe out all these bonus people down here.'"Nearly 200 mounted cavalry, sabers drawn and pennants flying, rode out of the Ellipse, led by Major George S. Patton. They were followed by five tanks and about 300 helmeted infantrymen, armed with loaded rifles with fixed bayonets. The cavalry drove them all off the streets-pedestrians-curious onlookers, government workers and Bonus Army vets, including their wives and children. Soldiers with gas masks released hundreds of tear gas grenades at the crowd, setting off dozens of fires among the veterans' shelter erected near the armory.

Naaman Seigle, 7 years old that day, happened to go downtown to a hardware store with his father. As they emerged from the shop, they saw the tanks and were hit with a dose of tear gas. "I was coughing like hell. So was my father," Seigle recalled.

16-year-old Fred Blancher later said, "These guys got in there and they start waving their sabers, chasing these veterans out, and they start shooting tear gas. There was just so much noise and confusion, hollering and there was smoke and haze. People couldn't breathe."

By evening, the army arrived at Camp Marks. There, General MacArthur gave them twenty minutes to evacuate the women and children. The troops then attacked the camp with tear gas and fixed bayonets. One baby died, allegedly from tear-gas inhalation. They drove off the veterans and set fire to the camp,which quickly burned. The sky turned red in the dusk and the fire could be seen from all over Washington. Thousands of veterans and their families began a slow walk toward the Maryland state line, four miles away, where National Guard trucks waited to drive them to the Pennsylvania border.

Eyewitnesses, including MacArthur's aide Dwight D. Eisenhower (later Supreme Allied Commander of WWII and two-term President of the United States), insisted that Secretary of War Hurley, speaking for the president, had forbade any troops to cross the bridge into Anacostia and that at least two high-ranking officers were dispatched by Hurley to convey these orders to MacArthur. Eisenhower later wrote in his book, At Ease, that MacArthur, "said he was too busy and did not want either himself or his staff bothered by people coming down and pretending to bring orders." Eisenhower put it more bluntly during an interview with the late historian Stephen Ambrose. "I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch he had no business going down there," he said.

Around 11:00 p.m., MacArthur called a press conference to justify his actions. "Had the President not acted today, had he permitted this thing to go on for twenty-four hours more, he would have been faced with a grave situation which would have caused a real battle," MacArthur told reporters. "Had he let it go on another week, I believe the institutions of our Government would have been severely threatened."

Over the next few days, newspapers and newsreels (shown in movie theaters) showed graphic images of violence perpetrated on once uniformed soldiers (and their families), those who had won the First World War, by uniformed servicemen. In movie theaters across America, the Army was booed and MacArthur jeered. The incident only further weakened President Hoover's chances at re-election, then only three months away. Franklin, D. Roosevelt won easily.

For each of the next four years, veterans returned to Washington, D.C., to push for a bonus. Many of the men were sent to rehabilitation camps in the Florida keys. On September 2, 1935, several hundred of them were killed in a hurricane. The government attempted to suppress the news, but the writer Ernest Hemingway was aboard one of the first rescue boats, and he wrote an angry piece about it. Resistance to the bonus withered. Finally, in 1936, the veterans received their bonus.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Hoover & the Depression: The Bonus Army - History

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The saga of the Bonus Army was born out of the inequality of the Selective Service Act (1917), the failure of the government to provide any meaningful benefits to the veterans of the First World War, and the fear and anxiety produced by the Great Depression.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
'Winners' Of The Great Depression
Hollywood - Throughout the Great Depression, as many as 80 million Americans went to the movies once a week or more. The introduction of films with spoken words added to the industry's popularity, and movies were a way for Americans to escape their gloomy economic realities.

Filmmakers and theaters slashed prices and introduced special promotions to keep viewers in seats. Although that high attendance rate fell in 1933 by about 40 percent, it was a sector that outperformed countless others during some of the hardest times for industry.

Mae West - Hollywood's vixen of the Great Depression, her starring roles in multiple films helped keep Paramount Pictures afloat.

She made $5,000 a week as a film actress and by the mid-1930s was paid $300,000 per acting performance and $100,000 per screenplay. Her hypersexualized roles were tamped down by censorship prompted by the 1930s Hays Code Of Decency, which was adopted by the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association.

Joseph Kennedy - The father of President John F. Kennedy, and first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was founded in reaction to the stock market crash.

He divested almost all of his stocks before the market collapsed. Kennedy's film business made him money before and during the Depression, as did his alcohol ventures.

Ironically, much of the questionable business methods he practiced would be the very ones he clamped down on during his stint as SEC chairman.

Procter & Gamble Co. - P&G knew that people would still buy its soap, even during the Depression. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the company ramped up its advertising instead of cutting back. It was able to maintain and increase sales while other companies folded.

P&G also began daily radio serials to appeal to homemakers during this time. By 1939, these radio serials were widely known as "soap operas," and they inspired today's TV dramas.
Food Of The Great Depression
Soup became a staple because it could be made with whatever was in the kitchen, could be cooked in one pot and could be stretched just by adding water. Depression soup was one part ketchup to two parts water. Stale bread became croutons or bread pudding.

In the late 1930s, the Works Progress Administration commissioned a writing project to create an encyclopedia of American food and food traditions from coast-to-coast. The book was never completed, and the files were archived in the Library of Congress. Mark Kurlansky put those recipes and stories together in Food of a Younger Land. This recipe is adapted from that book and has not been tested by NPR.

1 cup grape juice

1 teaspoon soda

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

pinch of cloves

pinch of ginger

pinch of allspice

1 tablespoon bacon drippings

1 3/4 cups flour

1 cup sugar

pinch of salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

Dishes began to be made from a variety of weeds, like dandelions, milkweed and cattails.

People also began gardening to produce their own food and butchered their own meat. But many could no longer afford meat and began relying on meatless dishes like nut hash, black-eyed pea sausage, and meatloaf made of cottage cheese, crushed peanuts and rice.
Music Of The Great Depression
The crash and the Great Depression marked a change in popular musical styles. Songwriters wrote music that identified with the public mood or sought to keep people's minds off their hardships.

" Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?" (1932) is the most lasting piece of music from the era. Composer Rob Kapilow analyzed the song for NPR, taking note of the piece's minor key, syncopation and angry ending, all Depression-era musical traits.

" Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries" (lyrics by Lew Brown, music by Ray Henderson, 1931) sought to remind listeners that financial losses suffered during the crash and Depression weren't that important. "You can't take your dough when you go, go, go," warns the song. "Life is just a bowl of cherries, so live and laugh, laugh and love."

"Big Rock Candy Mountain," by Harry "Haywire Mac" McClintock, describes a hobo's paradise as a getaway from the despair of the Depression. In it there's a land of milk and honey, with cigarette trees, a soda water fountain, and handouts that grow on bushes.

" The Gold Digger's Song (We're In The Money)," by Benny Morton and his orchestra, is black Harlem's answer to the original song made popular in the film Gold Diggers of 1933. Lines like "Old Man Depression you are through - you done us wrong," make it a cheery send off to the Great Depression, albeit a few years too early.

"If I Ever Get A Job Again," by Dick Robertson, offered wishful promises for post-Depression life: "If I ever get a job again, I will never be a snob again! I'm through with stocks and bonds, I'd rather spend it all on blondes - If I ever get a job again!"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Remembering The Great Depression's Sunny Side

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
'Winners' Of The Great Depression Hollywood - Throughout the Great Depression, as many as 80 million Americans went to the movies once a week or more. The introduction of films with spoken words added to the industry's popularity, and movies were a way for Americans to escape their gloomy economic realities.

# data[].attributes.body
https://voxeu.org/article/technology-and-unemployment-evidence-great-depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The labour market consequences of technology adoption: Concrete evidence from the Great Depression

Do labour-saving technologies lead to a fall in employment or an increase in output in the medium run? This debate on labour displacement seems to be revived with each new wave of technology adoption - from the Jacquard textile loom, to the steam engine, to electricity, to computers.

On the one hand, proponents argue that either firms do not pass on lower production costs as lower prices, or that demand adjusts slowly to lower output prices. In this scenario, labour-saving innovations improve labour productivity faster than demand for products and are bound to displace some types of workers in the medium term, i.e. over a 5-10 year horizon (Ricardo 1821, Mill 1871, Keynes 1933, Samuelson 1988). This is the view of 'technological unemployment'.

On the other hand, critics argue that firms do pass on lower production costs as cheaper prices and that demand for products adjusts quickly to those prices. In this scenario, the effect of productivity-enhancing technologies should occur at the output margin with firms increasing production instead of destroying jobs (McCulloch 1821, Say 1924, Woirol 1996). Opponents refer to this view as the 'Luddite fallacy'.

The debate has again resurfaced in the context of information technologies, e.g. with computers leading firms to create more narrow job opportunities by skill and permanently increasing unemployment and the skill premium (Acemoglu 1999), and especially with the high unemployment since the Great Recession of 2007 (Jaimovich and Siu 2012, Krugman 2013, Frey and Osborne 2013). Despite the length of the debate and the relevance of occupational displacement for policymakers since the financial crisis of 2007, there is little empirical work supporting either side of the discussion.

New research on the labour market consequences of technology adoption

In a recent paper (Morin 2015), I exploit the within-country variation in the cost of electric technology, which is crucial for US in the early 20th century. My approach improves on the existing literature in two respects.

First, I identify the causal effects of labour-saving technology using a novel identification strategy. Among the three important General Purpose Technologies of steam, electricity, and computers, it is electricity that has the most within-country variation in price. Furthermore, a regression of quantities on prices raises concerns about endogeneity and is a challenge to identification - it is unclear whether the regression estimates the demand or supply equation.

An instrument that shifts the electricity supply curve is the coal share of power. Regions with hydroelectric power had initially cheaper electricity but the price fell slowly because hydroelectric technology was very efficient since the beginning and had little margin to improve. In contrast, regions with coal power had initially more expensive electricity but the price fell much faster because coal technology was improving steadily. The electricity market was regulated at the state-level with limited cross-state transfers, making the state the relevant level of variation for prices.

Figure 1 illustrates the predictive power of the coal share for the fall in the price of electricity at the state-level.

Figure 1 Initially higher coal share causes a decrease in the price of electricity.

Note that the instrument (coal share in the x-axis) and endogenous variable (fall in price of electricity in the y-axis) vary at the state-level, hence the 42 observations. The dependent variables (productivity, labour share, employment) vary at the level of concrete plants, which are represented by the size of the circles in each state.

Second, I focus on the concrete industry-a local, non-traded industry whose products harden quickly and weigh a considerable amount, precluding their long-distance transport. This non-traded aspect means that concrete firms locate near their customers, not near cheap electricity, and implies that I am able to focus on the economic mechanism at work without worrying about the confounding strategic decisions of firms' locations.

The novel dataset was collected and digitised from thousands of handwritten archival sources. It provides detailed measurements at the level of each concrete plant for the labour share of income, labour productivity, electric capital intensity (electric horsepower per worker), output, and employment.

In the absence of within-country variation in the price of a technology, existing studies have had to use anecdotal evidence or aggregate data with potentially confounding events. As such, this study constitutes the first credibly identified evidence on the labour market consequences of technology adoption.

Empirical findings

I find that electricity was a labour-saving technology and that firms adjusted by firing workers instead of increasing output. Cheaper electricity caused an increase in electric capital intensity and in labour productivity, as well as a decrease in the labour share of income. It explains between 15% and 25% of the change in these variables.

I also find evidence for the technological unemployment hypothesis: cheaper electricity had no statistically significant effect on output, either in quantity or value, and explains 15% of the decrease in employment. To put this in perspective, electricity is a better predictor of employment change than the boom in housing during the 1920s.

These results are consistent with the view that the adoption of labour-saving technology causes job loss in the adopting sector. Other mechanisms occurred simultaneously and the results are robust to these potentially confounding mechanisms - the importance of agriculture, the housing boom in the 1920s, proximity to dam construction, and entry and exit of firms.

I also find that these effects were stronger in counties where the Depression hit harder, as measured by the change in farm output at the county-level between 1930 and 1935 (farming represented 40% of employment and these results are similar when using the housing bust as a measure of the severity of the depression). The causal effect of cheaper electricity is larger for the labour share of income, labour productivity and employment in counties where the Depression was more severe.

These results are consistent with the 'cleansing effect of recessions' where a temporary downturn forces firms to adopt labour-saving technologies that increase productivity and reduce labour input (Caballero and Hammour 1994, Field 2003).

Figure 2 Causal effect of electricity on labour market outcomes for counties with a by deep depression (red) and shallow depression (green).

The regression is an instrumental variable regression of an outcome on electricity prices instrumented by the coal share. The sample is split into above- and below-median change in agricultural output. The whiskers represent 95% confidence intervals. First-stage F-statistics and number of states are at the right

I also estimate a structural equation for the labour share of income to pin down the elasticity of substitution between electric capital and dexterity tasks. This estimation is done in OLS and without the coal share as an instrument (the non-linear equation for the labour share requires using the level of electricity prices at the beginning and end of the period and requires two instruments, whereas the paper has only one).

The estimate of σ = 2.2 is above 1, like Karabarbounis and Neiman (2012) and unlike Oberfield and Raval (2014). It is within a third of the standard error of the estimate of Krusell et al. (2000) for the elasticity of substitution between capital equipment and unskilled labour for the post-war period.

Concluding remarks

My findings lend support to the theory of technological unemployment - firms reacted to cheaper electricity by reducing the price of concrete products, but the demand for concrete was not sufficiently elastic and the growth in output was too weak to offset productivity gains. They are also consistent with the 'cleansing effect of recessions', where temporary downturns allow firms to take advantage of new labour-saving technologies, restructure production, and reduce labour input.

Two questions naturally arise after this work.

First, do these results generalise from the concrete industry to the whole economy?

Counter-arguments for this generalisation include a strand of the labour-saving technologies debate, whereby consumers benefit from cheaper concrete prices and expand demand in other industries.

Supporting arguments for this generalisation are the broad representativeness of concrete for the whole economy (it is in the median of the distribution of electricity share of value added in levels and in changes) and the clarity of the results for this industry.

Second, does electricity in the 1930s generalise to technologies today?

This is also an open question and supporting arguments are the similarities between computers and electricity (David 1990) and the work of other authors who have linked labour market changes since the 1980s to computers, e.g. Jaimovich and Siu (2012).

References

Acemoglu, D (1999) "Changes in Unemployment and Wage Inequality: An Alternative Theory and Some Evidence", The American Economic Review 89(5):1259-1278, December.

Caballero, R and M Hammour (1994), "The cleansing effect of recessions", The American Economic Review 84(5):1350-1368.

David, P (1990) "The Dynamo and the Computer: An Historical Perspective on the Modern Productivity Paradox", The American Economic Review 80(2):355-361, May.

Field, A (2003) "The Most Technologically Progressive Decade of the Century", The American Economic Review 93(4):1399-1413, September.

Benedikt, F and Osborne, M (2013), "The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerisation?", University of Oxford Manuscript, access October.

Jaimovich, N and H Siu (2012), "The Trend is the Cycle: Job Polarisation and Jobless Recoveries", NBER Working Paper 18334.

Karabarbounis, L and B Neiman (2012), "Declining Labour Shares and the Global Rise of Corporate Savings", NBER Working Paper 18154.

Keynes, J M (1933), "Economic possibilities for our grandchildren", Essays in Persuasion, Macmillan.

Krugman, P (2013), "Sympathy for the Luddites", The New York Times, June.

Krusell, P, L Ohanian, J-V Rios-Rull and G Violante (2000), "Capital-Skill Complementarity and Inequality: A Macroeconomic Analysis", Econometrica 68(5):1029-1053.

McCulloch, J R (1821), "The Opinions of Messrs. Say, Sismondi and Malthus on the Effects of Machinery and Accumulation, Stated and Examined", The Edinburgh Review, March.

Mill, J S (1871), Principles of Political Economy with Some of their Applications to Social Philosophy, Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, London.

Morin, M (2015), "The labour market consequences of electricity adoption: Concrete evidence from the great depression", INET Working Paper 1511.

Oberfield, E and D Raval (2014), "Micro data and macro technology", NBER working paper 20452.

Ricardo, D (1821), On The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, John Murray, London, 3rd edition.

Samuelson, P (1988), "Mathematical Vindication of Ricardo on Machinery", Journal of Political Economy 96(2):274-282, April.

Say, J-B (1924), Treatise on Political Economy: Or the Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth, volume I, Boston: Wells and Lilly, 2nd American edition.

Woirol, G (1996), The Technological Unemployment and Structural Unemployment Debates, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Technology and unemployment: Evidence from the Great Depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A longstanding question in economics is whether labour-saving technology affects firms in the medium term by increasing output, by decreasing employment, or both. This column provides evidence on this issue using a novel dataset from the concrete industry during the Great Depression.

# data[].attributes.headline
Amount of rich people during Great Depression 

# data[].attributes.subject
Amount of rich people during Great Depression 

# data[].attributes.body
Dennis Rukasov

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sandwiched between the giddy 1920's and World War II, the 1930s saw a huge disparity in the lifestyles of the common man and those considered High Society.

The period following the Great War, the so-called "Roaring Twenties" earned its name due to the booming economy and explosion in consumerism as Americans enthusiastically embraced the future.

Innovation and increased efficiency at home and at work allowed for more leisure time and people embraced cultural and social pursuits such as literature, film, music and partying.

Women were also gaining their independence and making their mark outside the home.

But the good times came to a crashing halt on "Black Friday", October 29, 1929 when the stock market crashed. Within a year 5,000 banks collapsed and six-million workers lost their jobs. By 1933 more than 15-million people - one-quarter of the workforce - were unemployed.

The Great Depression was partly caused by the great inequality between the rich who accounted for a third of all wealth and the poor who had no savings at all. As the economy worsened many lost their fortunes, and some members of high society were forced to curb their extravagant lifestyles.

But for others the Depression was simply an inconvenience especially in New York where the city's glamorous venues - places to see and be seen - such as El Morocco and The Stork Club were heaving with celebrities, socialites and aristocrats.

For the vast majority the 1930s was a time of misery. But for many American dynastic families, parties helped to escape the reality on the street and the grander the better.

While storefronts stood empty, the 47-storey Waldorf-Astoria Hotel opened in 1931 at a cost of $42 million ($600 million today). Hosting a number of lavish parties during the Depression, the Waldorf even had it's own in-house professional hostess in Elsa Maxwell. She delighted high society with her child-like bashes: costume and painting parties, cooking soirees, and parlor games. In fact, it was during this decade that this "hostest with the mostest" invented the "scavenger hunt" to keep her guests entertained.

The Ritz was another favored venue for extravagant celebrations. It hosted two of High Society's most memorable coming out parties during the Great Depression. Socialite and "poor little rich girl" Barbara Hutton, grand-daughter of the dime-store magnate Frank W. Woolworth, made her debut there in 1933. Costing more than $60,000 ($1million today) it was one of the most glamorous parties of the 1930s. Eucalyptus and silver birch trees were imported from California, four orchestras played accompanied by singer, Rudy Vallee. It was attended by a veritable Who's Who list of the rich and famous, including the Astors and the Rockefellers.

It was on the West Coast that even greater excesses were witnessed, at a time when most Americans could not afford to feed their family.

Newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst was fast losing revenue from advertisers taking flight. Yet he refused to believe it would last: the worse the Depression got, the more frantic Heart's spending became. Throughout the early 1930's Hearst held elaborate parties and commissioned new bedrooms at his home to accommodate all the guests. According to the Hollywood gossip and historian Kenneth Anger, the parties were "the most extravagant the movie colony had ever seen." On New Year's Eve 1932, he held a Kids' Masquerade that was so extravagant that gossip columnist Louella Parsons apologized to her readers and explained "the beauty of this party was that the costumes were inexpensive."

America has never again seen such obvious excess at a time of widespread poverty, which has cemented the reputation of 1930's High Society into the stuff of legend.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
1930s High Society | History Detectives | PBS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sandwiched between the giddy 1920's and World War II, the 1930s saw a huge disparity in the lifestyles of the common man and those considered High Society. The period following the Great War, the so-called "Roaring Twenties" earned its name due to the booming economy and explosion in consumerism as Americans enthusiastically embraced the future.

# data[].attributes.headline
Benefits certain people got from The great Depression- Carol Fernandez

# data[].attributes.subject
Benefits certain people got from The great Depression- Carol Fernandez

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
|

"Everything was all right in those years, but only if you had a job." ~ Grandmother of Amity Shlaes in The Forgotten Man

Can the worst of times also be the best of times? When we think of the Great Depression of the 1930s, we are quick to recall the soup lines, bank closings, dust bowls, bear markets, demoralizing despair, and the aftershocks - Nazi Germany, the New Deal, Keynesianism, and, some say, World War II. Today, as the current recession worsens, everyone fears the dreaded D and seeks desperate rescue measures.

But was the Great Depression all bad? Truth is, there's a bright side to the gloomy Thirties - a lower cost of living, huge technological advances, new forms of entertainment, more leisure time, and a return to responsible social behavior.

It was the beginning of the five-day work week....the Golden Age of radio and film....the playing of social sports like bridge, Monopoly, and softball....leisure time to read books and dance the jitterbug....while scientists invented the electron microscope, FM radio, radar, the jet airplane, and network television....

Chicago economist Robert Lucas, Jr., once called the 1930s "one long vacation," and social historian Frederick Lewis Allen exclaimed, "[T]he American imagination was beginning to break loose again."

There's an old Asian saying, "It is the irritation in the oyster that forms the pearl." A few people couldn't take the hard times and jumped out windows, but most people responded to the challenge. Adversity often brings out creativity and opportunities to learn and advance. The 1930s were no exception.

This is a summary of a full-length article called " Brother, Can You Spare a Decade?" that I wrote on the subject in the May issue of Liberty magazine. Since writing this controversial and politically incorrect article, I've been attacked and defended by friends and foes.

For example, Mike Sharpe, my academic publisher at M. E. Sharpe and a social Democrat, took strong exception to my article. He wrote:

"What Mark Skousen says in 'Brother Can You Spare a Decade?' is beside the point. Millions of people were jobless, hungry, and in despair during the Depression. The fact that songs were written or scientific discoveries were made doesn't mitigate the suffering. Does the work of Socrates mitigate the effects of the tyranny that executed him? Do the discoveries of Galileo offset the Roman Inquisition? Do the works of Shakespeare compensate for the expulsion of the Jews from England? Does the first novel by an American black, Clotel, written in 1853, reflect well on slavery? Do the performances of Von Karajan under Hitler make Nazism enjoyable? Does "God Bless America" sung by Kate Smith during World War II make that war less of a tragedy? Skousen's entire argument is a non sequitur, harmful to a true understanding of the effects of the Depression and by extension, the current recession. He should not make light of suffering."

My response:

I'm reluctant to start a fight with the publisher of my books, but here goes:

My essay may well be irreverent, but it's not irrelevant. Mr. Sharpe's view is the traditional view. I don't dispute it. There was a lot of real suffering during the Great Depression, and I mention the dark side of the 1930s at various times in the essay.

But what I do try to do is look at the positive things that came out of the Great Depression. Sharpe wants to ignore them. Yes, there was a lot of suffering, but there were times of joy, good times, and scientific advances in the midst of the depression.

I think we have to look at both extremes to find out what really matters, the bad and the good that came out of the Great Depression and today's recession. Sharpe focuses on the suffering that goes on in a recession/depression, I focus on the positive effects of a downturn, such as the good things people are doing now (out of necessity): being more careful about what they spend, saving for a rainy day, not taking their job for granted, and sensing trouble rather than going along merrily trusting in the establishment, without thinking. What's so bad about that?

Both views are important.

Sometimes I think we as a nation and as legislators are impatient. We want to avoid suffering at all times, and take pills if we sense even a slight headache. No one wants to be unemployed or fired from a job, but you know what? Lots of unemployed and fired people tell me later (a year or two after finding another job) that it was the best thing that ever happened to them. Not all, but many.

I conclude that a lot of good can come out of bad times.

What's your view? Is the recession or depression good or bad for America?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Was the Great Depression Good for Us? | Human Events

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Everything was all right in those years, but only if you had a job." ~ Grandmother of Amity Shlaes in The Forgotten Man Can the worst of times also be the best of times?

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.history.com/news/apples-weapon-great-depression

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.thefinertimes.com/The-1930s/1930s-hairstyles-let-a-girl-be-a-girl.html

# data[].attributes.headline
Amount of Unemployment for men Dennis Rukasov

# data[].attributes.subject
Amount of Unemployment for men Dennis Rukasov

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, unemployment was unprecedentedly high. With 19.4 percent of the labour force unemployed, the equivalent of approximately 650 thousand labour years, unemployment reached a record level in 1935. The soaring unemployment rates were caused by a 7 percent shrink of the economy between 1929 and 1934. Exports and private sector investments plunged by 28 and 25 percent respectively.

Unemployment, 1921-1939

Highest unemployment during Great Depression in construction sector

When the crisis came to a head, nearly one third of industrial workers were unemployed. With more than half of workers unemployed, the rate was even higher in the construction sector and persisted longer. As late as in 1939, one quarter of construction workers were still unemployed. In the metal industry, more than 40 percent were unemployed, but the rate rapidly dropped to 12 percent in 1939.

Highest post-war unemployment in the early 1980s

After the Second World War, a prolonged period of solid economic growth and low unemployment set in. From 1970, unemployment rose steadily but remained relatively low. All that changed during the crisis at the beginning of the 1980s.

The economy shrank between 1980 and 1982. Private sector investments and household consumption dropped by 13 and 4 percent respectively. Exports growth slowed down, but remained positive. Unemployment peaked at 10.2 percent in 1983 and 1984.

Unemployment rates in the 1980s remained far below the level of the 1930s. The increase in unemployment was more moderate in the 1980s and the period of high unemployment did not last as long as in the 1930s.

Unemployment, 1970-2008

As many men as women unemployed

After the 1980s, unemployment rates soared as a result of the poor economic situation: 8.5 percent in 1994 and 6.5 percent in 2004 and 2005, but these rates were below the level reached in 1983 and 1984. Men and women were hit equally hard by the recession, whereas in earlier periods of recession, more men than women became unemployed.

In the past eighty years, unemployment reached its highest level when the economic situation was already improving.
Gert den Bakker, Bas van den Elshout and Michiel Vergeer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Unemployment in 1930s unprecedentedly high

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, unemployment was unprecedentedly high. With 19.4 percent of the labour force unemployed, the equivalent of approximately 650 thousand labour years, unemployment reached a record level in 1935. The soaring unemployment rates were caused by a 7 percent shrink of the economy between 1929 and 1934.

# data[].attributes.body
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_Summer_Olympics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Great Depression: Overview, Causes, and Effects

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Great Depression was a devastating and prolonged economic recession that followed the crash of the U.S. stock market in 1929.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Great Depression was a worldwide economic depression that lasted 10 years. It began in the United States on October 24, 1929, otherwise known as "Black Thursday," when panicked investors sold a record 13 million shares. Over the next four trading days, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a popular proxy for the U.S. stock market, fell nearly 25%. It continued to decline for the next three years, losing nearly 90% between October 1929 and July 1932.

The stock market crash significantly reduced consumer spending and business investment. Consequently, U.S. GDP decreased dramatically in the first years of the Great Depression, dropping from $104.6 billion in 1929 to $57.2 billion in 1933. In comparison, GDP declined just 2% at the height of the Great Recession between 2008 and 2009.

Key Takeaways

Unemployment Reached 25%

The Great Depression affected all aspects of society. By its height in 1933, unemployment had risen from about 3% to nearly 25% of the nation's workforce. Some workers that kept their jobs saw their wages fall, many others had to work lower paying jobs that they were often overqualified for. From 1929 to 1932 the U.S. gross domestic product was nearly cut in half, dramatically decreasing from $104.6 billion to $57.2 billion, partly due to deflation. The Consumer Price Index fell 27% between November 1929 to March 1933, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Panicked government leaders passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1930 to protect domestic industries and jobs, but it actually worsened the issue. World trade plummeted 66% as measured in U.S. dollars between 1929 and 1934.

The Depression's pain was felt worldwide, leading to World War II. Germans were already burdened with financial reparations from World War I. That caused hyperinflation. This added to the pressures that ultimately led the German people to elect Adolf Hitler's Nazi party to a majority in 1933.

Life During the Depression

The Depression caused many farmers to lose their farms. At the same time, years of over-cultivation and drought created the "Dust Bowl" in the Midwest, destroying agricultural production in a previously fertile region. Thousands of these farmers and other unemployed workers migrated to California in search of work.

Note

What Caused It

According to Ben Bernanke, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank helped create the Depression. It used tight monetary policies when it should have done the opposite. According to Bernanke in 2004, these were the Fed's five critical mistakes:

1. The Fed began raising the fed funds rate in the spring of 1928. It kept increasing it through a recession that started in August 1929.

2. When the stock market crashed, investors turned to the currency markets. At that time, the gold standard supported the value of the dollars held by the U.S. government. Speculators began trading in their dollars for gold in September 1931. That created a run on the dollar.

3. The Fed raised interest rates again to preserve the dollar's value. That further restricted the availability of money for businesses. More bankruptcies followed.

4. The Fed did not increase the supply of money to combat deflation.

5. Investors withdrew all their deposits from banks. The failure of the banks created more panic. The Fed ignored the banks' plight. This situation destroyed any of consumers' remaining confidence in financial institutions. Most people withdrew their cash and put it under their mattresses. That further decreased the money supply.

The Fed did not put enough money in circulation to get the economy going again. Instead, the Fed allowed the total supply of U.S. dollars to fall by a third. Later research has supported parts of Bernanke's assessment.

What Ended the Great Depression

In 1932, the country elected Franklin D. Roosevelt as president. He promised to create federal government programs to end the Great Depression. Within 100 days, he signed the New Deal into law, creating 42 new agencies throughout its lifetime. They were designed to create jobs, allow unionization, and provide unemployment insurance. Many of these programs still exist. They aim to help safeguard the economy and prevent another depression.

Note

Many argue that World War II, not the New Deal, ended the Depression. Still, others contend that if FDR had spent as much on the New Deal as he did during the War, it would have ended the Depression. In the nine years between the launch of the New Deal and the attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR increased the debt by $3 billion. In 1942, defense spending added $23 billion to the debt. In 1943, it added another $64 billion.

Reasons a Great Depression Could Not Happen Again

While anything is possible, it's unlikely to happen again. Central banks around the world, including the Federal Reserve, have learned from the past. There are better safeguards in place to protect against catastrophe, and developments in monetary policy help manage the economy. The Great Recession, for instance, had a significantly smaller impact.

Some argue that the sizes of the U.S. national debt and the current account deficit could trigger an economic crisis. Experts also predict that climate change could cause profound losses.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

When did the Great Depression end?

How many people died during the Great Depression?

How did the Great Depression change the role of government in America?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Happened During the Great Depression?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Great Depression of 1929 was a 10-year global economic crisis. Here are causes, impact, and chances of recurrence.

# data[].attributes.headline
St. Louis Hooverville (The Largest Hooverville in the U.S.) - Liam Chavez

# data[].attributes.subject
St. Louis Hooverville (The Largest Hooverville in the U.S.) - Liam Chavez

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The article was brief, tucked into the back of a paper packed with news of the ravages of the Great Depression. But if you looked carefully in the New York Times on September 27, 1931, the small news item might have stood out: "Hard-Up Missouri Folk Name Shack Colony Hooverville."

Homeless people in St. Louis had banded together to form a colony of ad hoc houses on the banks of the Mississippi River, the article said. And they had named their homes after the president they blamed for ruining their lives.

It was just the second time the newspaper had printed the word " Hooverville," but the word would soon come to stand for the miserable settlements formed by hundreds of thousands of Americans who could no longer afford housing. Just two years since the stock market crash, the Depression had already decimated millions of lives. But in St. Louis, the nation's seventh-largest city at the time, the outlook was even worse. The city's unemployment rate was far higher than the national average, peaking at over 30 percent in 1933.

Over the years, St. Louis' settlement would become the nation's largest, home to between 3,000 and 5,000 down-and-out victims of the Great Depression. Inside the colony, residents thumbed their nose at the economic disaster, giving neighborhoods names like "Happyland" and "Merryland," electing a mayor, and taking on the trappings of a legitimate town. But the infamous Hooverville was also home to some of the Great Depression's most acute suffering.

The settlement had roots in an already itinerant community: the houseboat dwellers who lived on the Mississippi River. As historian Martin G. Towey notes, police and landlords had long ignored the houseboat settlement, and the railroad that owned the land beneath much of the Hooverville rented it to the squatters for a single dollar a month.

As the Depression forced St. Louis residents out of their homes and their economic situations became more and more precarious, they migrated to the river's banks. There, they built makeshift homes of orange crates, pieces of wood and what garbage they could scavenge from the city's docks and alleys. Out of sight of most of St. Louis, the Hooverville was shielded from prosecution by police who looked the other way and landlords who didn't bother to report the illegal squatters.

Today, many cities try to eradicate colonies filled with people struggling with homelessness. But city dwellers' attitude toward the Hooverville was more permissive. "Hooverville residents are not 'bums,'" the New York Times wrote in 1932. "They are victims of the depression period who live in shanties of their own construction on the river bank."

The Hooverville residents countered existing stereotypes of homeless people-and modern ones, too. They were primarily blue-collar workers who had recently been employed, and they made up an increasingly large part of Depression-era society. By 1933, approximately 1.5 million Americans were homeless, and those who did have housing were well aware that, given the precariousness of the economy, they could easily be next.

Residents did their best to make the settlement feel like home. Gus Smith, a fruit and vegetable vendor and pastor who was one of the Hooverville's first residents, appointed himself "mayor," and residents lived in "neighborhoods." In 1932, the settlement's inhabitants dedicated a church made of orange crates-a sign that residents thought they were there to stay. That number grew to four by the 1935.

Hooverville residents worked hard to maintain some sense of normalcy for the many children who lived there, too. They attended public schools and were given toys and clothing by local charitable groups. Crime was relatively low, and the Hooverville even had entertainment. "Lotta blues happenin' out there along the river back then," recalled blues musician Big Joe Williams. The settlement was one of "the few racially integrated areas in St. Louis," notes historian John Aaron Wright.

Despite some of the trappings of a more secure life, most residents barely got by. Some survived on their earnings from picking up garbage or washing windows. Many others relied on charity for food and clothing and scavenged coal and materials for their homes. The Welcome Inn, a charity center organized by a St. Louis resident, served up to 4,000 meals a day and became the ad hoc town's post office and community center. And Ruth Hornby, a 16-year-old St. Louis high school student, began another center called "Ruth's Haven" that offered a kindergarten, entertainment and other services. Local businesses donated food, too.

Sanitation was a constant struggle. "I often watched the children of families living in those areas take a wagon loaded with empty jugs up to the closest fire hydrant and with a big wrench, turn on the water for the day's supply," William Leahy, a St. Louis police officer, wrote. With no running water, no electricity, and no security, residents were well aware their makeshift homes were only temporary.

That became even clearer when the Mississippi River rose. The Hooverville flooded three times over the years, washing away the shacks and forcing residents to start over again. "Much refuse and a number of dead chickens and dogs were floating in the swollen stream," noted the St. Louis Post-Dispatch during the 1935 flood.

By then, though, the job market had picked up and many Hooverville residents were moving back into the job force. The St. Louis Hooverville had become so well known that it became a tourist destination; kids and adults sold popcorn and gave tours to curious visitors. But people were eager to leave it behind and get back into more stable housing.

As the population dwindled, the city of St. Louis worried it would become a slum and designated it an eyesore. In 1936, the Hooverville where people had gathered because they couldn't get jobs ironically became a job site for Works Progress Administration workers tasked with tearing it to the ground. Today, the Hooverville is just a bad memory-a long-gone symbol of the struggles of the people whose lives were disrupted by the Great Depression.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Largest U.S. Hooverville Had Its Own Mayor and a Church Made of Orange Crates

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The article was brief, tucked into the back of a paper packed with news of the ravages of the Great Depression. But if you looked carefully in the New York Times on September 27, 1931, the small news item might have stood out: "Hard-Up Missouri Folk Name Shack Colony Hooverville."

# data[].attributes.headline
Major Cities during the Great Depression

# data[].attributes.subject
Major Cities during the Great Depression

# data[].attributes.headline
Life and Death rates During the Great Depression - Selia Tsamoutalidis 

# data[].attributes.subject
Life and Death rates During the Great Depression - Selia Tsamoutalidis 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Abstract

Recent events highlight the importance of examining the impact of economic downturns on population health. The Great Depression of the 1930s was the most important economic downturn in the U.S. in the twentieth century. We used historical life expectancy and mortality data to examine associations of economic growth with population health for the period 1920-1940. We conducted descriptive analyses of trends and examined associations between annual changes in health indicators and annual changes in economic activity using correlations and regression models. Population health did not decline and indeed generally improved during the 4 years of the Great Depression, 1930-1933, with mortality decreasing for almost all ages, and life expectancy increasing by several years in males, females, whites, and nonwhites. For most age groups, mortality tended to peak during years of strong economic expansion (such as 1923, 1926, 1929, and 1936-1937). In contrast, the recessions of 1921, 1930-1933, and 1938 coincided with declines in mortality and gains in life expectancy. The only exception was suicide mortality which increased during the Great Depression, but accounted for less than 2% of deaths. Correlation and regression analyses confirmed a significant negative effect of economic expansions on health gains. The evolution of population health during the years 1920-1940 confirms the counterintuitive hypothesis that, as in other historical periods and market economies, population health tends to evolve better during recessions than in expansions.

The U.S. Economy During the 1920s and 1930s.

The 1920s began with a major recession in which economic growth (measured by the rate of increase of the gross domestic product; GDP) was negative, and unemployment reached 11.3% in 1921 ( Fig. 1). This was followed by a period of runaway economic growth, with GDP expanding at an annual rate of 12.5% in 1923. Economic growth oscillated around more modest levels during the rest of the decade, but it rose to 5.9% in 1926 and to 6.6% in 1929, and the unemployment rate remained below 5% from 1925 to the end of the 1920s.

Although signs of declining economic activity had been apparent since the summer of 1929, the onset of the Great Depression was marked by the stock market crash of October 1929 ( 1, 2) The collapse of Wall Street was followed by a steep decline in economic activity. Between 1929 and 1930, GDP "growth" was −9.0% ( Fig. 1). The contraction of GDP continued for 3 more years, with GDP shrinking 6.5% in 1931, 14.0% in 1932, and 1.4% in 1933. Economic activity accelerated beginning in mid-1933 ( 1, 3), reaching very large rates of growth-around and over 10%-during the years 1934-1936. This was followed by a new downturn in 1938, with GDP declining 3.6% during that year. The unemployment rate increased sharply during the early 1930s ( Fig. 1), reaching its historical maximum of 22.9% in the U.S. in 1932. It subsequently declined between 1933 and 1937, only to increase once again to 12.5% in 1938. Overall unemployment rates remained very high-always above 14% and 2 years above 20%-during the whole period 1931-1935 and oscillated between 9% and 12% the rest of the decade.

Life Expectancy at Birth and Age-Specific Mortality During the 1920s and 1930s.

Life expectancy generally increased throughout the period of study ( Fig. 1). However, it oscillated substantially throughout the 1920s and 1930s with important drops in 1923, 1926, 1928-1929, and 1936 coinciding with strong economic expansions. During the Great Depression, it rose from 57.1 in 1929 to 63.3 years in 1933. The rates of infant mortality and age-specific mortality for all age groups under 20 years ( Fig. 2 A) generally declined during the 1920s and 1930s. Superimposed on this general declining trend, peaks in both infant mortality and mortality for children aged 1-4, 5-9, 10-14, and 15-19 were observed in the years 1923, 1926, 1928-1929, and 1934-1936. These peaks all coincide with periods of strong economic growth ( Fig. 1).

Mortality rates of men and women aged 25-44 years ( Fig. 2 B) declined sharply during the recession of 1920-1921, but were either stagnant or increasing during the rest of the 1920s, reaching peaks either in 1928 or 1929, a year of strong economic growth, in all age strata. In all these demographic groups, mortality declined during the early 1930s, coinciding with the Great Depression, and then rose during the strong economic growth of the mid-1930s.

Mortality rates of older people aged 45-64 ( Fig. 2 C) and 65-84 ( Fig. 2 D) also appear to have evolved more favorably in the 1930s than in the 1920s. For instance, in males aged 60-64, mortality increased in 1921-1923 (during a period of strong economic growth) and then remained approximately stable during the rest of the decade and the early 1930s (during the Great Depression), only to increase again in 1936 (when strong growth resumed). Similar patterns of stable or increasing rates during the 1920s, decreasing rates during the early 1930s, and an increase in the mid-1930s with a peak in 1936 are present for nearly all age groups between 25 and 84 years.

Life Expectancy at Birth by Sex and Race.

Life expectancy for white and nonwhite males and females ( Fig. 3) shows the same general patterns observed for overall life expectancy ( Fig. 1). Stable or decreasing life expectancy during the 1920s was followed by increases in life expectancy for white and nonwhite men and women during the Great Depression, a decline in 1936, coinciding with a period of strong economic growth, and increasing life expectancy for the latter part of the 1930s. The patterns are particularly noticeable in nonwhites; nonwhite males lost 8.1 years of life expectancy between 1921 and 1926, and females lost 7.4 years of life expectancy in the same period. In contrast, during the Great Depression nonwhites gained 8 years of longevity, with life expectancy increasing in nonwhite males from 45.7 years in 1929 to 53.8 years in 1933 and from 47.8 to 56.0 in females during the same period.

Specific Diseases and Other Causes of Death.

Of six causes of death that compose about two-thirds of total mortality in the 1930s ( Fig. 4), only suicides increased during the Great Depression. Suicide mortality peaked with unemployment, in the most recessionary years, 1921, 1932, and 1938. After increasing during the 1920s, mortality due to cardiovascular/renal diseases stabilized in 1930-1932. Tuberculosis mortality had decreased sharply during the 1920s and continued its decline through the 1930s. However, over and above these trends, both cardiovascular and tuberculosis mortality reveal peaks in 1926, 1928, and especially 1936, coinciding with economic expansions. Mortality due to flu/pneumonia was lower during the 1930s than during the late 1920s.

Cars became increasingly common during the 1920s, and traffic-related mortality increased markedly until 1931, but dropped sharply in 1932, the worst year of the depression. It rose again during the economic expansion of the mid-1930s and plummeted in the recession of 1938.

Correlations and Regression Models.

Table 1 shows correlations between annual improvements in health-as assessed by gains in life expectancy or reductions in age-specific mortality rates-and annual changes in economic conditions. Improvements in health are negatively correlated with GDP growth and positively correlated with increases in the unemployment rate ( Table 1). Patterns were consistent across race, sex, and age groups (negative correlations between GDP growth and health improvement are statistically significant at the usual 0.05 level for 10 of the 16 demographic categories examined, and positive correlations between unemployment change and health improvement are statistically significant in 13 of the 16 demographic categories).

Overall life expectancy increased 8.8 years over the period 1920-1940, i.e., on average the annual gain was 0.4 years. Table 2 shows the mean difference in the annual gain in life expectancy associated with a GDP increase of 1 percentage point in the same year and in the 3 prior years. The negative coefficients for lag zero (all of which are statistically significant) indicate that years of larger GDP growth are also years of smaller gains in life expectancy. None of the coefficients for lagged GDP change are large or statistically significant. The model for the whole population including only GDP growth at lag zero indicates that a percentage point increase in GDP growth is associated with a reduction in the annual gain in life expectancy of 0.20 years (95% confidence interval: −0.06 to −0.34).

The model fitted for the whole population including only lag zero is Δ e t = 0.88 - 0.20 gt. This model predicts an annual increase of 0.88 years in life expectancy (Δ e t) in years of zero economic growth ( gt = 0). The expected change in life expectancy during an expansion year with GDP growth of 5% (it was 5.1% in 1937), would be −0.12 years, that is life expectancy would drop by 0.12 years. In contrast, during a recession year with GDP "growth" of −5% (it was −6.5% in 1931) life expectancy would increase by 1.88 years.

Discussion

Analysis of various indicators of population health shows that population health did not decline and indeed improved during the Great Depression of 1930-1933. During this period, mortality decreased for almost all ages, and gains of several years in life expectancy were observed for males, females, whites and nonwhites-with the latter group being the group that most benefited. For most age groups, mortality tended to peak-over and above its long-term trend-during years of strong economic expansion (such as 1923, 1926, 1929, and 1936-1937). In contrast, the deep recessions of 1921, 1930-1933, and 1938 coincided with generalized declines in mortality rates and peaks in life expectancy. The only exception to this general pattern was suicide mortality, which increased during the Great Depression, but suicides account for less than 2% of all deaths. Overall, our results show that years of strong economic growth are associated with either worsening health or with a slowing of secular improvements in health.

Few if any studies have specifically focused on the evolution of population health during the Great Depression in the United States. Researchers contemporary to the Great Depression observed that mortality had increased during the 1920s ( 4) and decreased in the early 1930s ( 5). They also noted with puzzlement that infant and tuberculosis mortality declined between 1929 to 1933, when the economy was in shambles, although there was also evidence of increased malnutrition among low-income groups ( 6, 7) and increases in infant mortality in some areas with very high unemployment ( 8). Our work documents that population health did not decline on average during the Great Depression in the U.S.

It has been argued that recessions have lagged effects on health, so that economic downturns would be associated with increased mortality or other negative health outcomes (hospital admissions or morbidity) years later ( 9, 10). This hypothesis has generated considerable debate ( 11- 13). Given the restricted time frame of the present investigation, we could not explore lagged effects beyond 3 years, and thus cannot rule out longer lagged effects. However, investigations of longer lags have been unable to document long-lag effects of recessions on mortality in the U.S. or other countries ( 14- 16). A recent study of the potential effects of stress in utero during the Great Depression found no associations with disability or chronic disease later in life ( 17).

If the lagged effects hypothesis were true, one would expect major increases in mortality following a lag after the Great Depression. A peak in mortality occurred in 1936, 4 years after the worst year of the Great Depression coinciding with a period of very strong economic growth. The mortality increase was observed the same year for almost all age groups-even for children under age 4-and for causes of death involving very different pathophysiologic processes-including some causes of death such as injuries, where no plausible lag in causation is to be expected. This makes the lagged effects hypothesis an unlikely explanation of the 1936 peak in mortality.

The fact that population health tends to evolve better in recessions than in expansions was first noted decades ago ( 18- 20), but was largely ignored until recently, when several studies reported this relationship using data from the latter half of the twentieth century ( 14- 16, 21- 26). A number of mechanisms may explain the effects of business cycles on health ( 11, 15, 19- 21, 23, 24, 27- 30). Many of these mechanisms would produce short-term effects by precipitating death among persons with underlying (sometimes asymptomatic) chronic disease, and increasing rates of unintentional injuries.

Existing data supports several of these mechanisms. Economic expansions have been linked to increases in smoking and alcohol consumption ( 3, 28, 29), reductions in sleep ( 31), and increases in work stress related to overtime and faster and more strenuous labor ( 3), all of which are associated with adverse health outcomes and mortality among healthy persons and among persons with underlying chronic disease ( 32- 35). The increase in mortality due to traffic ( 36) or industrial injuries ( 34, 37) during expansions is clearly related to accelerated economic activity. Economic expansions are also associated with increases in atmospheric pollution, which has well-documented short-term effects on cardiovascular and respiratory mortality ( 24, 38- 40).

Other mechanisms involving increases in social isolation, lack of home care, and decreases in social support during economic expansions as a result of greater employment, increased work demands, and work-related migration could also play a role ( 11, 41- 43).

Extrapolations from our results and those of others ( 16, 21, 23- 26, 44- 46) suggest that periods of accelerated economic growth could lead to a slowing or even a reversal of long-term trends of improvements in health. For example, our results indicate that for conditions such as infant mortality, which experienced a secular decline over the period of study, this decline slowed or reversed during expansions but accelerated during recessions. At first glance, our findings appear to contradict the observations that in many countries the long-term rise in GDP per capita has coincided with long-term declines in mortality ( 47). The extent to which this relationship is causal however is questionable ( 48, 49).

The long-term changes in GDP may be simply correlated with a set of health-enhancing social changes (such as increased access to improved nutrition, smaller family size, etc.), which are quite distinct from the short-term consequences of economic expansions we investigate here. Many countries in the world experienced major improvements in health with little or no economic growth. For example, in India and China, there is a negative correlation between decadal rates of economic growth and reductions in child mortality ( 50), and almost all of China's post-World War II reduction in infant mortality occurred before the accelerated economic growth during the 1980s-1990s, during which there was relatively little progress in child health. Nevertheless, a detailed investigation of the long-term relationship between secular trends in the economy and in health would require data and analyses very different from the ones we report here.

Although social science is not physics, regularities in the past allow us at least some confidence in forecasting the future. Historical experience tells us that no particular increase of mortality is to be expected as a consequence of a recession beyond an increase in suicides which, although clearly important, is of small magnitude compared to the reduced number of fatalities from other causes.

While economic expansions bring with them increases in employment, greater optimism, and higher incomes (although not always and not for all sectors of the population), recessions are periods of pessimism, shrinking revenues, and social malaise. The Great Depression of the 1930s was a major crisis of social life, in which many people suffered reductions in income and deprivation, and consequent social unrest was widespread. Nevertheless, this was not associated with major declines in population health, which suggests that other mechanisms more than compensate the possible detrimental health impact of high unemployment and economic disruption. A better understanding of the beneficial effects of recessions on health may perhaps contribute to the development of economic policies that enhance health and minimize or buffer adverse impacts of economic expansions.

Data and Methods.

Economic and health data were obtained from historical statistics ( 51). Population health was indexed by life expectancy at birth and mortality rates. We examined age-specific rates and rates due to six causes of death contributing 64.4% of total mortality in 1930: Cardiovascular and renal diseases (36.7%), cancer (8.6%), influenza and pneumonia (9.1%), tuberculosis (6.3%), motor vehicle traffic injuries (2.4%), and suicide (1.4%). In addition to descriptive analyses, statistical models were used to examine associations between the dynamic conditions of the economy and the evolution of health indicators. We calculated correlations between the change in health, measured by the annual change in life expectancy or in a mortality rate, and the change in economic conditions, measured by GDP growth or the annual change in unemployment. GDP growth at year t was defined as the change in the logarithm of real GDP (i.e., GDP measured in inflation-adjusted dollars) between year t and year t - 1.

We also fit distributed lag models ( 52), in which the annual gain in life expectancy (or the percentage decrease in a mortality rate) between year t and year t - 1 (Δ ht) is regressed on GDP growth the same year ( g t) and prior years ( g t-i), that is, where α is a constant, βi is the effect of economic conditions as indexed by GDP growth at the year t - i, and εt is the error term. The annual change in life expectancy, the annual percentage change in age-specific mortality, and the rate of growth of GDP are all mean-stationary and variance-stationary series, therefore it is possible to use them in regression models without risk of spurious results due to trends ( 52). In other words, these analyses estimate associations over and above any correlations generated by parallel long-term trends.

Acknowledgments

This work was funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars program.

Footnotes

¹To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jatapia{at}umich.edu

Author contributions: J.A.T.G. designed research; J.A.T.G. and A.V.D.R. performed research; J.A.T.G. analyzed data; and J.A.T.G. and A.V.D.R. wrote the paper.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

View Abstract

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life and death during the Great Depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Recent events highlight the importance of examining the impact of economic downturns on population health. The Great Depression of the 1930s was the most important economic downturn in the U.S. in the twentieth century. We used historical life expectancy and mortality data to examine associations of economic growth with population health for the period 1920-1940.

# data[].attributes.headline
Crime Rate During the Great Depression Michael Smyth

# data[].attributes.subject
Crime Rate During the Great Depression Michael Smyth

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.city-journal.org/html/crime-and-great-recession-13399.html

# data[].attributes.headline
Inventions created during the Great Depression - Branden Rudolph

# data[].attributes.subject
Inventions created during the Great Depression - Branden Rudolph

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
First Electric Dry Razor 1910 (Idea) 1929-Invention hit Market The idea came from retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Jacob Schick who grew tired of lathering up in the freezing cold to shave while...

# data[].attributes.headline
Famous actors during the great depression-Abigael Mogere

# data[].attributes.subject
Famous actors during the great depression-Abigael Mogere

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
famous actors during the great depression - Google Search

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
value of all the major stock indexes during the depression - Google Search

# data[].attributes.headline
Richest men during the depression-Abigael Mogere

# data[].attributes.subject
Richest men during the depression-Abigael Mogere

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
richest person during the great depression - Google Search

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Modern American Poetry Site is a comprehensive learning environment and scholarly forum for the study of modern and contemporary American poetry. MAPS welcomes submissions of original essays and teaching materials related to MAPS poets and the Anthology of Modern American Poetry. We are also happy to take questions and suggestions for future materials.

# data[].attributes.headline
Culture during the Great Depression - Mason Arvig 

# data[].attributes.subject
Culture during the Great Depression - Mason Arvig 

# data[].attributes.headline
Famous Literature Written during The Great Depression

# data[].attributes.subject
Famous Literature Written during The Great Depression

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.whizzpast.com/10-books-written-1930s-love-even-today/