Great Depression Photos – Please use this image to answer the questions of the Photo
Analysis Sheet.
Caption: The shack of Max Sparks and family near Long Lake, Wisconsin. The family was forced to
move from the place they were buying to this shack because of inability to pay three dollars monthly,
which was the basis of the contract.
Lee, Russell, 1937, photographer
Great Depression Photos – Please use this image to answer the questions of the Photo
Analysis Sheet.
Caption: As homelessness increased, the shantytowns of makeshift shelters spread into the vacant lots of
American cities. They frequently rose up right outside of most cities. Blaming an unresponsive president
for their plight, the homeless mockingly refereed to these shantytowns as a Hoovervilles.
Great Depression Photos – Please use this image to answer the questions of the Photo
Analysis Sheet.
Caption: After the market crash in 1929 and the banking crisis, stores closed, factories stood idle, and
millions of unemployed workers walked the streets looking for jobs. This frantic search for work was
made worse for many when the Dust Bowl wiped out farms. “These unemployed are dead men,” wrote on
observer, “They are ghosts that walk the streets.”
Jobless Men Keep Going Credit: John E. Allen, Inc.
Great Depression Photos – Please use this image to answer the questions of the Photo
Analysis Sheet.
Caption: During the Great Ohio River Flood of 1937, men and women in Louisville, Kentucky, line up
seeking food and clothing from a relief station, in front of a billboard proclaiming, "World's Highest
Standard of Living."
Margaret Bourke-White, photographer
Great Depression Photos – Please use this image to answer the questions of the Photo
Analysis Sheet.
Caption: Men's dormitory at night at the homeless men's bureau, Sioux City, Iowa (for unattached men).
Unemployment is the primary cause of their being here. This unemployment has been the direct cause of
broken homes, through divorce and incompatibility. Most of the men are willing to work if they could
find it. Average age fifty-two. Most of the men are from the urban districts.
Lee, Russell, 1936, photographer.
Great Depression Photos – Please use this image to answer the questions of the Photo
Analysis Sheet.
Caption William A. Swift, once a farmer, now a resident of Circleville's "Hooverville." He first moved to
Ohio when he returned from the war. Centerville is an average small Ohio city, depending upon
surrounding rich farmlands for its livelihood. Eshelman's Feed Mill. Employs 150-200 men the year
'round. Pay averages about eighty-five cents an hour. During the depression many farms of the district
Great Depression Photos – Please use this image to answer the questions of the Photo
Analysis Sheet.
were foreclosed. People who lost homes naturally gravitated toward the town. Circleville was unable to
house this new influx of population. Consequently there sprang up around it an extensive Hooverville.
Shahn, Ben, 1938,photographer.
Great Depression Photos – Please use this image to answer the questions of the Photo
Analysis Sheet.
Caption A shanty built of refuse near the Sunnyside slack pile, Herrin, Illinois Many residences in
southern Illinois coal towns were built with money borrowed from building and loan associations. During
the depression building and loan associations almost all went into bankruptcy. Their mortgages were sold
for whatever they would bring, and the purchasers demolished houses by the hundreds in order to
salvage the scrap lumber. The result is a serious overcrowding and high rents in all the coal towns. A
number of people can find no houses to rent, and are living in tents and shanties on the fringes of the
town.
Rothstein, Arthur, 1939,photographer.
Great Depression Photos – Please use this image to answer the questions of the Photo
Analysis Sheet.
Caption Part of an impoverished family of nine on a New Mexico highway. Depression refugees from
Iowa. Left Iowa in 1932 because of father's ill health. Father an auto mechanic laborer, painter by trade,
tubercular. Family has been on relief in Arizona but refused entry on relief roles in Iowa to which state
they wish to return. Nine children including a sick four-month-old baby. No money at all. About to sell
their belongings and trailer for money to buy food. "We don't want to go where we'll be a nuisance to
anybody".
Great Depression Photos – Please use this image to answer the questions of the Photo
Analysis Sheet.
Lange, Dorothea, 1936 photographer.