Stories from the Great Depression

[Music] as Franklin D Roosevelt spoke these simple and inspiring words in 1933 Americans from coast-to-coast weary from years of economic hardship were willing to take the freshly minted president at his word he offered them hope which was all that many people had left the economic hardships brought on by the Great Depression had reached a pinnacle by the spring of 1933 on March 4th an unprecedented event had occurred each and every bank had closed its doors for some this measure was only temporary but for a large number the economic crisis was a permanent reality the banking system was near collapse a quarter of the labor force was unemployed and prices and production were down by 1/3 from their 1929 levels during his first inaugural speech President Roosevelt looked over the tense cloud in front of the Capitol anxiously gathered before him and with unquestionable conviction stated this nation asks for action and action now my father cotton mill worker and so we moved along the time I was 21 years old I had moved 21 times but we've you know we didn't have a big house back then and you didn't have carpet or anything I think you know Borden's old with linoleum rug down on top right there because some of the place really exceeded ground through the floor we ran had country closest stolen within miss Vale and the cotton gin in the south cotton was you couldn't get anything for the card and then good we came along and I had us take your head cut out cotton production back in the depression we saw a lot of people come from South East Kentucky and Eastern Tennessee because they wanted to get better jobs there was nothing going in the coal mines so we had a lot of people come in that were in bad shape and they also went across the river to Cincinnati and there were almost we're on claves people hoping they get some day up to Detroit people found ways to get money to do a job to get employment to keep the family going [Music] in the first 100 days of the new administration 15 measures flowed from the White House to Congress 15 new laws assured absolute government action to employ the jobless to improve the Tennessee Valley to support crop prices to prevent home foreclosures to insure bank deposits and to stabilize the economy Franklin D Roosevelt called these programs a new deal for the nation my mother got a job with the WPA one of the New Deal agencies she worked in the public library and I think she really enjoyed that job she talked about it a lot and it's the only job that she ever had in her entire life later on after she marriage she did not work outside the home and but she talked a lot when she would take us to the library as small children she would tell us about her experiences working for the WPA in the public library during the Depression many people from Oklahoma and other states affected by the Dust Bowl San Joaquin Valley looking for work some families were lucky and were able to get good jobs in Tehachapi working in the cement plant in the Roman state prison my parents bought a house on the edge of town and we had no gas or sewer line I can still remember when the gas Lange was late through the alley the workers wrapped me in a material that looked like saran wrap around the pipes the house next door was rented mostly by family from Oklahoma one family built a small square Shack behind the house using rolls of roofing material to cover the outside walls and migrant families will live in the shack for a while before moving somewhere else looking for work our house was close to the railroad tracks and I remember men knocking on our back door and asking for water and something to eat my mom would make them a bologna sandwich I like bread back then these men would not call all these people tramps a lot of people remember what I think is cause but they don't remember what they made and that makes a whole lot of difference you know you could buy a coat for a nickel or a hamburger for a nickel but trouble was you didn't have a nickel to buy them when mostly and just think like that so you know your memory clouds things a little bit and you tend to remember the good thing my husband when he was a small boy he was brought up in Walker County Alabama it is a coal mine district and he was paid 10 cents a shot to go into the coal mines and to light the fuse on the blasting powder and then to get out before the thing explode men wouldn't do it grown men wouldn't do it because they couldn't move fast enough so they hired him because he was small and wiry and he just he would get out of it before it blew up well when his father found out about it he whupped Vitara [Music] the president's first priority was relief for the millions of Americans who suddenly found themselves without work without food without shelter and without hope he concluded that help for the downtrodden must come from beyond the traditional private or local government sources he believed that the federal government needed to take on a larger role in providing for the well-being of the American people of his many initiatives the Works Progress Administration was the largest it was created in the spring of 1935 and it further extended the National relief effort the primary goal of the WPA was to alleviate the high unemployment rate and to provide assistance for the discouraged American workforce story where they the fabric and it seems that the fabric was all one color so everybody knew if you had that fabric did it it doesn't be a tight part of their job part of their pain my grandmother made dresses for all pearls that she had two dresses and in this day and time we don't think of that many but she was very excited about wearing her new dress to school but when she got there the other girls who had a little bit more money kind of laughed at her because she had on WBA but I laughed at her at her statement she said I didn't care I have another dress and said that was the most important but my grandmother was a seamstress and she worked all of her life all of her married life and she would send this and out to collect remnants from clothing factories and sew clothes was not a problem it was not an issue because my grandmother could make something out of nothing always she said however shoes they didn't have shoes because ground I couldn't make shoes but one of my aunt's who was 85 shared so many stories with which she said that she didn't feel that the Depression had made that much of an impact on them because they were a family of nine children so life was just always a struggle and she didn't really notice that much because everybody in the neighborhood and all the other family members were working just as hard and struggling just as hard one of the stories that the rolling truck would come to their farm what sleep and if they had worked hard for their family that we they got one aid each child there was 12 children they got one egg I could trade that in for a piece of candy my mother tells Tuesday good that candle taste they got for another whole week when we were a little had to go out near the dump play ball you know use rocks and stones for bases my brother and I one of the things that we love to do all the time the summertime is to go and pick blackberries but berries are plentiful and they're free they grow while the woods and we would always come home and I would help her make a pot like very kind and we loved it and she would always tell me that we were using her granite her mother's recipe and bike very has a very simple dish to make it doesn't cost very much of the but berries are free it's just a little sugar and then a little crust made with flour and lard and she would tell me that there were times during the Depression when black moon pies all that they had to eat we were raised in the Sunset District of San Francisco my dad had an office job and like so many people in the prosperous 1920s he was doing well then the Great Depression hit my dad lost his job in 1930 his savings were depleted we were forced to accept charity the term welfare was not in vogue at the time the procedure was once a week the Associated Charities of San Francisco would deliver boxes of food to needy families we would watch as the boxes were brought to the men at first one or two families were getting aid but as the depression deepened most of the families were receiving assistance it was sad to see men selling apples on the street corners their clothes were old and shabby and usually consisted of a pair of old pants with a suit coat trying to stay warm on a typical foggy day we lost our house a cottage at 1933 eighth Avenue which still stands and is presently occupied Edward McSweeney June 1994 my grandfather used to talk a whole lot about the depression and he often stated that during the Depression that money was real tight and I remember story he tells me about his oldest son he said if you do it right living on the farm you could always eat and he said he didn't have to stand in the soup line anything like that because he was able to raise his own food and also he had plenty of cows and chickens and holes for food so he wasn't hungry but some of the other things like clothing his family didn't have many clothes or anything like that they didn't have much money to buy him and he stated that his son was barefooted and he wanted him to go to school and he didn't have shoes and he found the nipple and with that nickel he went and bought his son a pair of shoes my grandmother she stated that she was mad at President Hoover at the time and she felt at that particular time that the work she had to do was much better than the work that her grandparents had to do and you know they were slaves and she said that wasn't much better than slave labor my maternal grandmother was born in Maine in 1920 in the summer of 1929 when she was nine years old her parents decided to move to Michigan because some other family members had found work there they had a substantial amount of money in the bank when the stock market crashed in October of 1929 the banks closed and they had no access to their funds over time they both lost their jobs they struggled for a couple of years in Michigan in fact they lived near a state prison and my great-uncle told me that he remembered people talking about breaking into the prison because the prisoners were able to get a lot of fresh foods from the gardens that they grew after struggling for a couple of years in Michigan my great-grandparents received a letter from a relative in Maine who said that he could provide a job for my great-grandfather in the logging industry the relative who offered this job wrote to the state officials on behalf of my great-grandfather and the state agreed to provide him with $25 and a Model T Ford to travel back to Maine with it was a journey of mishaps the Model T Ford that they were given had no fuel pump like modern cars the gas was gravity-fed into the engine so that the car had to go up steep hills in Reverse and in fact the car was so slow at times that the family would just get out and walk beside it but they eventually made it back to the main woods where my great-grandfather worked as a logger for a while near the town of Andover I know that during that time loggers who worked hard could make about a dollar of day cutting cord wood they used buck saws and axes and hauled the trees out of the woods using horses and if they were lucky they could cut four to six quart of what a day the 1930s was a decade of tremendous technological advancement and by 1939 over 80% of Americans had a radio set although primarily used for entertainment radio broadcasts quickly became a tool to inform the public of the increasing crisis in Europe Roosevelt steered a steady course and kept the American audience informed about his plans and progress through a series of radio addresses which came to be called fireside chats these broadcasts were centered on specific topics and issues and were delivered in a warm and simple language that made people feel they were partners in the efforts the president was putting forth when Franklin Roosevelt poised and self-assured addressed his audience as my friends most Americans believed they were exactly that my grandfather had a store a little country store and so food but also some other types of items too and he was very successful with his business until the depression came along and he had extended credit to a lot of people and of course people were out of work and they were not able to pay and they didn't pay him that he couldn't afford to operate the store so he lost his business and the family struggled for a long time after that because there were no jobs it took a long time for him to find work particularly in that part of the country my grandfather was a grocer always had been a grocer and that I noticed in the city directories that they were always moving always moving and she said that was because he was always looking for a better location a better neighborhood where business would be better and they might be able to improve their finances but he eventually went out of business after 25 years of being a grocer his Rhoyne had been his compassion for the poor people he gave credit and they couldn't pay him they didn't know that they were poor as such because they have food they have question where she needs to a lot of things she didn't know that she had the basic things that you need and a big family in the the mom was born in 1918 my dad was born in 1920 both passed away in the last 18 months or so what I remember most about them they were great parents great providers and they were great teachers to all the McSweeney children as a kid growing up I remember them speaking not about the hard times during the 1930s they spoke rather about Roosevelt's hope and the optimism and they would tell us stories over and over again about old-time radio Jack Armstrong the all-american boy Jack Benny Amos and Andy they would talk about all the famous sports team as the gas house being a baseball the New York Yankees they told us about how they could go to the cinema for five cents and see the Marx Brothers the young Betty Davis Walt Disney films etc just a tremendous period to be a young child growing up and I guess is testimony to their own parents they kept that side of the Great Depression in terms of the negative image away we were aware it's a degree but most of my friends was in the same boat we were so we didn't know much about the script and said we would see the big houses you know the people had big homes and things like that and but we never came in contact with a much or talk to them much so we just knew they had a lot more than we had but there was no whole fact that we never really desire to be rich the government we knew you were checking in for the patient they were coming to dinner that MPSP my name is Jeff Zucker what is your name and I told you this is it I love the names is it but I'd like to call you Susie is that all right and I said oh and get what we call him grote and all of the children call him doc red cell [Music] we have a late bulletin here is a flash President Roosevelt passed away the satire at Warm Springs Georgia this afternoon at his little white pine cottage atop the death no Franklin D Roosevelt in his 63rd year it is George was affectionately called the little white house they said of beyond the doubt the syrup over here for me denied is pouring out it's simple president's death came without warning he had been in 4:35 p.m. Eastern wartime the presidents died without forty five PM eastern board I'm in Washington [Music] he was said when you got back from y'all he thought well if I can get down one and I prayed with that and he looked at it he was 63 years old and now but he had been he looked like he was tired and but he would always smile when you would see him [Music] when the news came on April 12 1945 that President Roosevelt had died all Americans felt the severity of this loss millions mourned over the death of a man that most had never met President Roosevelt died confidently believing that victory was assured but never able to fully realize the success of all that he had accomplished in the federal programs there seemed to be no discrimination so that a black person could get a job with the WPA just as soon as a white person they loved FDR and they loved the federal programs because as black families they felt that they were really benefiting by those programs my mother you know who was came over here in 1914 but she thought I bruises always the greatest thing walking so yeah she took it badly and a lot of the neighbors did it was a labor town it was a savior back then because things were so bad it was a very difficult time and it had it just left so many memories with people and I think sometimes they were reluctant to talk about those during the 1930s and early 1940s the Farm Security Administration a federal agency created to ease the plight of the farmer employed a remarkable group of photographers Dorothea Lange Gordon Parks and many others to document the lives and struggles of Americans in during the Great Depression their work included some of the most powerful images of the nation to emerge from those difficult years many of these photographs have reached iconic status in American culture for those born after the 1930s the Great Depression is something that can only be visualized through photography and personal oral histories these photographs on exhibit at the National Archives southeast region inspire family historians to examine their past and reflect on their family's life during one of the most difficult times in American history through the public programs of the National Archive southeast region these histories will be remembered and preserved for future generations through our holdings students educators family historians and the general public have the opportunity to rub elbows with presidents war heroes civil rights leaders and the greatest scientific minds that the world has ever known the National Archives in Atlanta Georgia is home to thousands of original records documenting the settlement and development of the southeast these documents tell intriguing stories of the people who once inhabited this land and the history of this unique area we invite you to visit us in Georgia and discover your history visit us at WWF [Music] you

Channel: US National Archives

Views: 1,978,698

Rating: 4.7164974 out of 5

Keywords: Great Depression, Recession, National Archives, South, 1930s, unemployment, documentaries, Franklin Roosevelt, economic crisis, banking collapse

Id: TpfY8kh5lUw

Length: 27min 47sec (1667 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 15 2009