Life During the Depression

During the Great Depression, many workers became unemployed. As a result, families turned to public relief systems and charities for assistance. However, these programs were relatively small scale and did not have a large enough budget to handle the demands placed on them. Consequently, long bread lines and soup kitchens sponsored by the Red Cross and the Salvation Army developed. Still, malnutrition became commonplace, and some people died from starvation.

However, people who lived in rural areas such as the Dust Bowl suffered the most during this period. Farmers collected little profit for their crops, since the prices were very low. This area experienced a drought which transformed farmland into desert. Dust storms that killed livestock and people accompanied the lack of rain. Hordes of grasshoppers destroyed all in their path, including crops. People in the Dust Bowl could not receive food provided by charity organizations, due to their isolated location. Farmers were eventually forced to leave their homes in search of work.

The Great Depression

One of the most important causes of the Great Depression was the maldistribution of wealth. During the late 1920s, industrial and agricultural production increased greatly. However, farmers and workers only received meager profits; thus they could not buy the produced goods. Consequently, the economy could not sustain a balance between demand and supply. Industries that experienced this drop in demand were forced to fire workers, so the purchasing power of Americans further diminished. Essentially, the maldistribution of wealth created a significant gap between the rich and the poor; the middle class, which majorly contributed to the economy, nearly disappeared. This economic disequilibrium resulted in the most severe recession in history.