Migrant Workers thru the Great Depression

More than half a century has passed since the beginning of the Great Depression. And jet, the shadow of the 1930s still hovers over American society.

During the year after the stock market crashed, 4 million workers lost their jobs. By 1931, 100.000 Americans were being laid off each week. By 1932, nearly 13 million people were unemployed, a full quarter of the work force, thus depriving another 30 million people who depended on their support for the necessities of life. Black worker, the last hired and the first fired, had an unemployment rate of 35 percent.

Employees who held on to their jobs took cuts in pay. Between 1929 and 1933, the average earnings of workers in manufacturing fell from $25 per week to less than $17. The income of farmers declined until , by the winter of 1933, many corn and wheat growers were burning their crops to heat

But not every memory of the depression years is negative. Many Americans took pride in the fact that when the economy hit bottom, they had not vital cultural, social and personal activities. President Hoover was not one of those people. Brimming with confidence and energy when he became president in March 1929, he grew nervous and defensive when every action he took failed to halt the economy’s downward slide. By the 1932 election, he was a grim, crushed man so unpopular that he hesitated to appear before any audiences but those made up of devoted Republicans. On one occasion when he rode in a motorcade through downtown Detroit, a city hit hard by bad times, thousands of people lined the streets to stare silently at the President. It was a far more effective statement than boos or even rioting would have been.

Evidence of the Depression was everywhere. Each day, more than 5.000 people lined up outside a New York employment agency to apply for 300 jobs. When in Birmingham, Alabama, put out a call for 80 workers to put in 11-hour day for $2 a day, 12.000 applicants sho

Some topics in this essay:
Tennessee Williams, Birmingham Alabama, President Hoover, Pacific Railroad, St Paul, Oklahoma Arkansas, Migrant Workers, Evidence Depression, South Midwest, Model Fords, bread lines, people lined,