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Find archive articles on the Great Depression from the 1930’s. Our site has great information from old magazine and newspaper articles on the Great Depression.
Scrip (sometimes called chit) is a term for any substitute for legal tender and is often a form of credit – so reads the Wikipedia definition for those items that served as currency in those portions of the U.S. where the bucks were scarce.
The attached news column tells a scrip story from the Great Depression – the sort of story that was probably most common on the old frontier.
A single paragraph from the late Forties explains who was behind the rise and fall of the oft-photographed sidewalk apple vending stands in New York City.
Click here to read about the end of the Great Depression…
This magazine article from 1935 documented the Federal aid that was made available for America’s poorest children. The malnutrition visited upon the boys of America’s indigent would render some of them unfit for military service in World War II.
With nearly one-sixth of the nation’s child population in families dependent upon emergency relief, welfare agencies call for a solution of their grave problem.
The problem was laid before the recent National Conference on the 1935 Needs of Children held under the auspices of The Parent’s Magazine in New York City. Before them Katherine F. Lenroot, Chief of the United States Children’s Bureau, made one of her first public appearances since taking office:
…These children have a right to expect that Federal, State, and community relief policies of 1935 will provide more adequately for essential items in the family budget.
Another article about children of the Great Depression can be read here…
Some people have maintained that doctors weren’t hit so hard by the economic slump. The claim was that people couldn’t help getting sick and their misfortune was the doctor’s gravy. But the Committee on the Cost of Medical Care, a non-governmental committee, of which Secretary Wilbur is chairman, reports a rapid decline in the income of doctors during the Depression… In 1930, the first [full] year of the Depression, physician’s incomes decreased 17% and they have been decreasing ever since.
The author also included some other elements gleaned by the committee – such as the average sum paid by the families in their study, the approximate cost of the nation’s medical bills and an approximation concerning the number of medical professionals at work in 1931.
During the Depression, many doctors and nurses worked entirely for free; to read about that, click here…
Novelist Taylor Caldwell (Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell: 1900 – 1985) recalled the bleak days of the Great Depression – and the perpetual appearance of American socialist who seemed always to be in recruitment mode.
Open or crypto-Communists, they had one unwavering theme: Communism was a System with a Heart. Communism was the new Christianity. Communism was the savior of the working people. America must become Communistic, if it was to pull out of the Great Depression. The Light of the World was not in my church. It was in Moscow.
Click here to read further about American Communists during the Great Depression…
In 1887 the NEW YORK TIMES reviewed the first english edition of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, click here to read it…
This is an interesting article that assesses the financial abilities of each of the 48 states in 1935 in an effort to illustrate that the ten richest states, as a result of their minority status on Capitol Hill, were in no position to cry out about majority tyranny when the insolvent 38 states rigged a deliberately unfair tax code that would see to it that they alone would pay the nation’s bills.
The ‘rich’ people may howl and growl and moan at having to foot the bills for everything, but there’s no remedy for it… The reason is this: our parade of poor states totals 38, while the rich states number only ten. The figures show that these rich states, which have only one-third the population, have to pay two-thirds of the taxes. The 10 richest states have only 20 Senators in the Senate, while the 38 poor states have 76. The rich are decidedly in the minority and there is no way for them to change the set-up.
This article was written by an anonymous soul who wanted the Script readers to understand that the life of an American Communist during the Great Depression was not a good one. Their lives often involved constant police surveillance and harassment to say nothing of blacklisting.
What boon can membership in the Communist Party confer upon them in exchange for the martyrdom they almost inevitably suffer? But is any membership card ever printed worth having one’s skull fractured for?
More about American Communists during the Great depression can be read here
When the market crashed in the Fall of 1929, the Communist Party of America really thought their hour had arrived. They took to the streets with their red banners and set to work fomenting unrest in whatever factories were still afloat. Most Americans recognized their blarney as mere pie in the sky and would have none of it; still their membership lists were growing and many Americans were wondering how they should be dealt with. This article examined how the communists were organized, what they were up to and recommended that Americans should keep in mind that the Reds will go when prosperity returns – and not before.
We also have an article on The Daily Worker.
Click here to read about an American woman who grew heartily sick of the socialists who loitered on every street
Published in May of 1933, the attached article concerned the much anticipated London Economic Conference which was scheduled to convene the following month in London. The world leaders who agreed to assemble were all of one mind in so much as their shared belief that collectively they would stand a better chance in defeating the economic depression that was bedeviling all their respective countries. It was their intention to meet and review all existing international trade and tariff agreements and to make an effort at stabilizing the currency exchange rates.
This article recorded portions of the battle on Capitol Hill that were waged between the Spring and Winter of 1937 when Congress was crafting legislation that would establish a minimum wage law for the nation’s employees as well as a maximum amount of working hours they would be expected to toil before additional payments would be required. This legislation would also see to it that children were removed from the American labor force. The subject at hand is the Black-Connery Bill and it passed into law as the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Written during the later years of the Great Depression, these columns summarize the sad lot of America’s Black population – their hardships, ambitions, leadership, and where they tended to live.
When the Depression struck, Negroes were the first to lose their jobs. Today, 1,500,000 colored adults are unemployed.
A 1938 article about the hardships of the Southern States during the Great Depression can be read here…
Click here to learn about the origins of the term Jim Crow.
Renowned as an earthly paradise from whose rich soil the brilliant sun draws abundant crops of semi-tropical fruits, the Great Valley is today the state’s principal source of wealth. Last week, Californians were acutely conscious that the valley could also produce squalor, misery, disease and death…[The San Joaquin Valley] is host to 70,000 jobless, homeless families living in frightful squalor and privation….hopeless men and women sprawled in the sun as their ill-clad children played in the dirt.
Read about the the mood of the Great Depression and how it was reflected in the election of 1932 – click here…
All the editorial writers quoted in this 1933 article agreed that FDR was the first U.S. President to ever have faced a genuine economic calamity as that which was created by the Great Depression:
Look at the picture flung into the face of Franklin Roosevelt:
Ships are tied up in harbors and their hulls are rotting; freight trains are idle; passenger trains are empty; 11,000,000 people are without work; business is at a standstill; the treasury building is bursting with gold, yet Congress wrestles with a deficit mounting into the billions, the result of wild and extravagant spending; granaries are overflowing with wheat and corn; cotton is a drag on the market, food crops are gigantic and unsalable, yet millions beg for food; mines are shut down; oil industries are engaged in cutthroat competition; farmers are desperate, taking the law into their own hands to prevent foreclosures; factories are idle; industry is paralyzed…
In the Spring of 1935, as the world slipped deeper and deeper into the muck of the Great Depression, journalist Cedric Fowler noticed that both governments state and Federal were introducing legislation that was designed to muzzle free-speech and make the deportation of foreign radicals far easier. At first he thought it was a result of the spread of Fascism across the globe – and it had finally reached our shores. He also considered the possibility that the elected classes, realizing that they were unable to reduce the destruction of the Depression, felt emasculated and invigorated by picking on the radical minority. Either way, he feared for the nations future.
In a statement for the month of December, President Green of the Federation of Labor placed the number of unemployed at about 5,000,000; estimated that incomes of wage earners had declined over $6,000,000,000 in the past year and said about 50 percent of trade union members had had to lower their standard of living because of lowered incomes.
Sadly, this is a story that has been duplicated numerous times throughout the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Red China, Vietnam, Canada and every other nation where the people have entrusted their health care to a faceless bureaucracy. It was a pathetic anecdote that was adored by FDR’s critics.
More about New Deal spending can be read here…
An article about Governor Floyd B. Olson (1891 – 1936) of Minnesota who allowed his emotions to get the better of him one day in the early Spring of 1933 when he threatened to impose martial law throughout the state in order to confiscate private wealth should his proposed relief legislation fail to pass the Minnesota Senate:
Was former Democratic vice-President Henry Wallace a dirty Red?
