The Great Depression
A Photo Exhibit
Enduring Life: Billboard on U.S. Highway 99 in California. National advertising campaign sponsored by National Association of Manufacturers.
machines like this helped farmers expedite their tedious jobs, but quickly
In the Fields: Near Meloland, Imperial Valley. Large scale agriculture. Gang labor, Mexican and white, from the Southwest. Pull, clean, tie and crate carrots for the eastern market for eleven cents per crate of forty-eight bunches. Many can make barely one dollar a day. Heavy oversupply of labor and competition for jobs is keen.
In the Fields: Cabbage cutting and hauling by new Vessey (flat truck) system, now also used in carrots and lettuce. Imperial Valley, California.
A dust storm as part of the Dust Bowl hits a farm
Crowd at New York's American Union Bank during a bank run early in the Great Depression.
Billboard along U.S. 99 behind which three destitute families of migrants are camped. Kern County, California
Unemployed men line up outside a soup kitchen in Chicago, February 1931.
following a stock market crash, people flood the streets
Scenes like this were common, former rich men trying to find some way to scrape a living post-economic collapse
in contrast to the billboard above, this picture shows a line of the poor waiting in line for either food or jobs, in front of a now obsolete billboard
men lined up to either get their money from a bank, get food, or get a job. Lines
a single farm house stands alone in the midst of plowed but desolate and barren land, showing the affect of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl on farmers
In response to these tragic events, politicians like FDR tried to pass laws amending the situation, to varying degrees of effect
Unhealthy Lifestyle: Son of destitute migrant, American River camp, near Sacramento, California. The boy has dysentery.