A Decade of Despair

Tuesday October 29, 1929

1. Buying on margin: buying stocks on borrowed money with the hope that the stock will rise significantly in a short time,
2. Speculation: The belief that a stock will rise; stockholder can re-pay the loan after selling his/her shares.

1. Protectionism
Protective Tariffs: Tariffs are duties collected on goods coming into a country.
• A country can protect home industries from the competition of foreign goods by discouraging imports through protective tariffs.
• When the United States began protectionist policies this wheat from Canada ).

 Decrease in production led to layoffs in factories
 Less spending on consumer goods
•Further decrease in production
•led to additional layoffs in factories

 illustrated a major weakness in the
Canadian Economy; a dependence on the export of primary resources
 Mainly wheat (40% of world demand)and newsprint (65% of world demand)
 A slowdown in the world markets led to lost jobs
 Many Canadians were forced onto government assistance (Pogey)

• 1 in 5 Canadians became dependent on government relief (Pogey).
• 30% of the Labour Force was unemployed.
• The effects of unemployment were very severe because employment insurance and welfare payments did not yet exist.

Why didn’t more people collect public relief?
• Pogey was lower than the lowest paying jobs in order to discourage people from wanting to be on it.
• Government made it difficult for the unemployed to collect “pogey”:
• Men had to wait in line for hours and declare their financial failure publicly

Unemployment
Loss of jobs and incomes
Poverty
Poor are evicted from homes
Despair
Loss of hope, dignity, respect…suicide rate jumps

 In 1931, the government put a complete stop to immigration.
 First 1/2 of the depression saw the deportation of
10,000immigrants

Responses to the Depression
 PM King was not ready for the depression and believed the economy would improve in time.
 When desperate Canadians began to ask him for help he said it was the responsibility of the provinces and municipalities to offer aid.
 Unfortunately, many municipalities were bankrupted by the depression.
 PM King is a Liberal (Grit), when the Conservatives asked why some provinces were not being helped, King replied that he would not give a “a five-cent piece to a Tory
(Conservative) provincial government.
 In 1930, King lost the election to the Conservative R.B.
Bennett.

R.B. Bennett was brought into power when his opposition,
Mackenzie King, reported that he would not give " a five-cent piece" to "any Tory Provincial Government".
In the election, of 1930, the conservatives got 137 seats in parliament and the Liberal representation was 88 seats.
William Lyon Mackenzie King
Liberal, Prime Minister
R.B Bennett
Conservative,
Prime Minister

• Government relief (Pogey)
•Not easy to get…had to prove your hardship and swear they did not own anything of value
• Private and Religious Charities set up soup kitchens and distributed clothing
• Despite the help, many chose suicide over destitution

 Increase Tariffs - no help
 Banned Communist Party
 Relief Camps
The Conservative government of Bennett set up work camps to prevent the growing unrest among this wandering mass of young unemployed workers.
The camps were located in remote areas such as northern Ontario and B.C.'s interior. Inmates called these camps "slave camps".
They lived on war surplus clothing, bunked in tar-paper shacks, ate army rations and were forced to work six and a half days a week for twenty cents a day

Relief Camp

Dear Sir: I am writing you as a last resource to see if I cannot, through your aid, obtain a position and at last, after a period of more than two years, support myself.
The fact is this day I am faced with starvation and I see no possibility for counteracting it or even averting it temporarily.
I have applied for every position that I heard about but there were always so many girls who applied that it was impossible to get work... First I ate three very light meals a day; then two and then one. During the past two weeks I have eaten only toast and a drunk a cup of tea every other day.
Day after day I pass a delicatessen and the food in the window look oh, so good! So tempting and I'm so hungry!...The stamp which carries this letter to you will represent the last three cents I have in the world, yet before I will stoop to dishonour my family, my character or my God, I will drown myself.

• Government would have to take a more active role in caring for the poor.
• Unemployment insurance, sick benefits, child benefits, and welfare were proposed during the Depression and implemented some time later.
• Laissez faire* treatment of the economy was dead. (*Leave it alone)
• Governments began to manage the economy through tax policy, monetary policy, and fiscal policy.

 1935 - 1000 camp workers from BC plan to go to Ottawa to protest the conditions in the camps.
 They grew in numbers along the way, riding railcars toward Ottawa.
 When they arrived in Regina only the leaders were allowed to go on to
Ottawa.
 Bennett declared the leaders “radicals and troublemakers” and did not hear them.
 Meanwhile in Regina, the RCMP cleared the rest of the trekkers; one man was killed and 130 arrested.

 Drought on the prairies between
1928-1936
 Combined with the collapse of the world wheat market the result was disaster
 Wind caused constant dust storms

No chance…