March 3, 2021
A Woman Sells Her Children While Living In A Tent
For the majority of Americans, life during the Great Depression of the 1930s was hard. Many people, like the woman in this colorized photograph that was taken in 1936 by San Francisco photographer Dorothea Lange, left their homes in the Dust Bowl region to migrate to California in search of a better life.
The "better life" that people went out in search for was rarely waiting for them. Even when migrant workers found jobs in the fields of California they were maligned for taking jobs from locals and the pay was nothing to write home about. In black and white these photos look like something from a history book, but in color they look like they could have been taken today.
Far from a grand adventure, the reality of life during the Great Depression is that many Americans were reduced to wearing rags and didn’t know where their next meal was coming from.
The Great Depression
When the stock market crashed in October 1929, the economic downturn forced banks to close. Americans who didn’t lose all their money in the stock market crash certainly did when the banks went bankrupt. Cash money was hard to come by. Even scarcer were jobs. The situation was compounded by the Dust Bowl, the worst man-made natural disaster in U.S. history. Years of irresponsible farming practices turned millions of acres of farmland into dry, dusty wasteland. At that time, the United States did not have any sort of welfare or unemployment assistance. Some families have no other option than to accept handouts or rely on soup kitchens to feed their families.
The “Migrant Mother”
Dorothea Lange’s famous photograph of the migrant woman, that originally ran as a black and white photo in California newspapers, was titled the “Migrant Mother.” The face of the mother clearly shows the strain that the Great Depression had on families. The stress and anxiety of her plight can be seen on the lines on her face. When Lange snapped her iconic photograph, she did not get the woman’s name. She had been visiting a camp of displaced migrant workers in Nipomo, California, when she spotted a mother with her infant child and two other kids. The woman told Lange that she was 32 years old. Her children were living on the meals of meager portions of vegetables along with birds that were killed by her older children. When the photograph was taken, the woman had just sold the tires off her car to get money to buy food for her kids.
A Mass Migration
With no jobs and no income, families lost their homes to foreclosure. With nothing to lose, they left the devastation of the Dust Bowl states and flocked to California where they hoped to find jobs and get back on their feet. But California was not the promised land. The transient workers crammed into migrant camps with hardly more than the clothes on their backs.
Pooling Resources
In the migrant camps and in small towns across America, the people remained strong and compassionate, despite their hardships. Families often pooled resources with other families. Churches and social groups often hosted potluck meals, a perfect way for folks to share food with others, enjoy a fulfilling meal, and socialize with others. Anyone lucky enough to have a small yard, planted a vegetable garden. Even apartment dwellers could grow tomatoes in a pot. Home grown produce was a way for families to stretch their food dollars and to all feel a sense of control over their situation. In many communities, vacant lots and abandoned land was converted into community gardens called “thrift gardens.” Housewives looked for other ways to cheaply feed their families. Casseroles and one-pot meals offer ways to use less meat per serving. Soups, chili, mac and cheese, and creamed beef on toast were popular low-cost meals. For the truly impoverished, aid organizations opened soup kitchens to ensure that citizens could get at least one hot meal a day … that is, if they were willing to swallow their pride and accept a charitable handout.
Making Clothes Last
Buying fabric for new clothes was a luxury few people could afford during the Great Depression. Instead of buying new, they had to make the clothes they did own last as long as possible. Pants were patched, and then more patches were sewn onto those patches. Hems were taken out to make dresses and skirts longer. Mothers even used the fabric from flour sacks to make clothing for their children. When flour mills learned of this, they printed designed on their sacks, so youngsters would have prettier clothes to wear.
Even the Affluent Suffered
The wealthy were also impacted by the stock market crash and the Great Depression. Families that enjoyed an affluent lifestyle prior to the 1930s had to sell their luxury automobiles or large homes … if they could find a buyer. Like poorer Americans, the wealthy class was also cash poor. Professionals like doctors, dentists, and lawyers lost more than half their annual incomes. Their patients or clients could no longer afford to pay them in cash, so they accepted trade for the services they offered. A family, for example, may give a doctor a bushel of peaches in exchange for delivering a baby or a give a couple dozen eggs to a dentist to pull a tooth.
Cheap Entertainment
The radio offered a form of cheap entertainment for poverty-stricken families. The radio was not only their source of important news but was one of the biggest means of entertainment in the 1930s. Families gathered around the radio to listen to serial dramas, comedy shows, sporting events, and music. Board games also grew in popularity. Families could invite the neighbors over to play Monopoly or Scrabble and have an evening of friendly competition.
A Terrible Strain
The Great Depression took its toll mentally and physically. Many husbands and fathers felt like failures because they could no longer support their families financially. Depression and anxiety were sky high during the 1930s, but it was not something that people talked about. The result of the mental toll, however, was soaring divorce rates. If a husband didn’t actually file for divorce, but simply walked out on his family, it was called a “poor man’s divorce.” In 1933, the suicide rate was at the highest it has ever been.
Government Assistance
When Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled his New Deal programs in 1933, he had to work to overcome the stigma of charitable handouts. In the past, it was a wound to one’s pride to have to ask for financial assistance or charity. The New Deal programs offered a way to get out-of-work Americans back on the job, which is what they wanted. This helped folks to slowly shift their attitudes about government assistance programs. Although it was still a source of embarrassment, many families now viewed welfare as a temporary step on their way to becoming self-sufficient again.