The Great Depression
"Almost every time the clock ticked, a man lost his job."
Harry Hopkins, Director of TERA
Harry Hopkins, Director of TERA
Text from Timeline of the Great Depression, PBS
(The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, Ken Burns)
When things got real bad, they had soup lines. They didn't feed 'em much, but they fed 'em a bowl of soup and a piece of bread. I saw the Hoovervilles in Central Park. A lot of these men, they weren't only the bums. I'm talkin' about people that lost their jobs --- decent people. They had to move to Central Park. They lived in paper crates and wooden crates and tents and you name it. There must have been a few hundred. I talked to a few of the guys... some of 'em told me they were still lookin' for work, and then some of 'em told me they were sellin' apples or fruit or bananas.
Most of 'em were workin' people. Some of them had families... some of 'em were pretty ragged. If you gave 'em a shirt or a piece of clothing, they would appreciate it. It was sad."
Joe Henry, Resident of Upper East Side, NYC
You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II, Jeff Kisseloff
Conditions in New York State1,000,000 people were unemployed in New York by the summer of 1931.
In Buffalo, a Department of Labor survey found that unemployment had increased from 6.2% in November, 1929 to 17.2% in November, 1930. It would increase to 24.3% in 1931 and 32.6% in 1932. |
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Wildly increased unemployment necessitated that someone provide relief to those
who, by no fault of their own, could not provide for themselves.
who, by no fault of their own, could not provide for themselves.