Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
Time Travelers
Professor Jeff Wiltse
The Great Depressions
I.
Introduction
A. This is time travelers Unit 3, Lecture 2 on the great depressions in the
Northwest.
B. One of the central storylines of U.S. history during the 1920s and 1930s was
the economy.
1. The 1920s, especially after about 1922, were years of general
prosperity and spending in the US.
2. The 1930s, on the other hand, were defined by the Great
Depression.
3. In both decades, the economic conditions profoundly affected almost
all areas of American life.
a. In the 1920s, for example, the prosperity spawned the
emergence of a widespread consumer culture.
b. During the 1930s, the Great Depression led to the New Deal,
which redefined the role of the federal government.
C. In the Northwest, economic conditions were equally as consequential during
the interwar years, but they followed a different pattern than occurred more
generally.
1. The 1920s—with the exception of a few years at the end of the
decade—were not especially prosperous in the Northwest, and in
rural parts of the region, it was quite bad.
2. And so, where as much of the country experienced prosperity, many
parts of the northwest suffered through an agricultural depression.
3. When the nation descended into the Great Depression during the
early 1930s, the economic hard times in the Northwest then spread
to cities and non-agricultural economic sectors as well.
D. In this lecture:
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Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
1. I will focus on the agricultural depression during the 1920s, focusing
on Montana in particular because it marked a turning point in the
state’s history.
2. Then, I will broaden out a bit and talk about the impact that the Great
Depression had on the Northwest as a whole.
II.
Post-World War I Agricultural Depression in Montana
A. As I indicated at the end of my earlier lecture on the homestead boom in
Montana, the state suffered a severe agricultural depression that lasted from
about 1919 to 1925.
1. It provides one more example of a persistent theme in Montana
history.
2. The state’s economy goes through severe boom and bust cycles.
3. Put another way, Montana’s economy is unstable.
B. The post-WWI agricultural depression had several causes
1. One was Drought
a. If you recall from my earlier lecture, Montana received
unusually ample rainfall during the early to mid 1910s.
b. That ended in 1917, when a drought cycle began.
∙Started in the High Line counties in northern Montana in
1917
∙Encompassed the entire state by 1919
c. The most immediate consequence was that Montana’s
marginal farm lands produced pitifully low yields.
∙During earlier wet years, an acre yielded about 25 bushels of
wheat.
∙In 1919, an acre yielded only 2.4 bushels.
d. There were also other problems created by the drought.
∙Plagues of gophers and locusts.
∙Amusingly, Montana farmers imported over 100,000 turkeys
to eat the grasshoppers, but it did much help.
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Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
e. There were also unusually high winds that kicked up in 1920
and whipped away great clouds of topsoil.
2. The second primary cause of the postwar agricultural depression
was a decline in crop prices
a. In August of 1920, wheat sold for $2.40 a bushel.
b. Three months later, it sold for $1.25 a bushel.
c. Several causes for the precipitous decline
∙Federal government ended price controls
∙European farms began to bring wheat crops to market that
year.
C. Economic indicators of depression
1. During the early 1920s, 2 million acres of farmland were taken out of
production
2. 11,000 farms were vacated20 percent of all farms in Montana
3. There were also 20,000 farm foreclosures
4. In total, 50 percent of all Montana farmers lost their land
5. Furthermore, over 50 percent of the state’s banks—214 in total—
failed.
∙Thousands of Montanans lost their life savings.
D. Social consequences
1. The most direct social consequence of this economic calamity was
out migration.
a. Tens of thousands of Montanans chose to abandon their
homesteads and farms and leave the state.
b. Wagons and jalopies rolled out of homestead communities,
with mattresses and belongings tied to their top and sides.
c. Some, not lacking their sense of humor, affixed signs that read
such things as “Goodby Old Dry!”
d. In total, 60,000 people left Montana during the 1920s
∙One historian has speculated that many more would have
left, but they could not afford to.
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Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
2. The out migration was socially selective and caused a historic
demographic shift in Montana
a. Prior to the 1920s, Montana had been a typical frontier state
with a relatively young and ambitious citizenry.
b. During the early 1920s, however, the bulk of out migrants were
people in the primes of their lives.
c. As a result, Montana’s population became skewed to the very
young and the old, with disproportionately few young and
middle-aged adults.
3. It is also worth noting some of the visual signs of economic collapse
a. Weeds sprouting in homestead towns and along roads
b. Quiet main streets with boarded-up storefronts
c. Abandoned homestead shacks with dust storm dirt pressed up
against the sides
d. These were common sights in Eastern Montana during the
1920s
E. Finally, mention some psychological consequences of the postwar
agricultural depression.
1. As the demographic shift I indicated earlier suggests, the early
1920s marked a critical turning point in Montana history.
a. Marked the end of a long period of economic vitality and
population growth
b. And began an era of economic stagnation and population loss
2. This change had a clearly identifiable psychological impact upon
Montanans.
a. Montanans lost much of the optimism of the previous
generation and became increasingly cynical and bitter.
b. As one historian has remarked, Montana “lost its selfconfidence and its faith in the future.”
3. Many Montanans took on a victimization mentality—they looked for
people and institutions to blame for their plight.
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Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
a. Favorite targets were banks, railroads, and the federal
government.
b. Jim Hill, head of the Great Northern Railroad, was the
archvillian because he had been the lead booster of
homesteading.
∙Countless Montana children learned to sing:
Twixt Hill and Hell, there’s just one letter;
Were Hill in Hell, we’d feel much better.
4. This pessimism and victim’s mentality is exemplified by Joseph
Kinsey Howard’s book Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome and is
also the undercurrent of K. Ross Toole’s academic histories of MT.
III.
The Great Depression in the Northwest
A. Shift now and talk about the Great Depression of the 1930s.
B. Beginning in late 1929, the United States began to slide into what would
become the worst depression in the nation’s history.
1. The nadir occurred in late 1932, when thousands of banks failed, 25
percent of Americans were unemployed, and millions more were
underemployed.
2. The Great Depression in the United States also coincided with a
worldwide economic downturn.
3. In the Northwest, the onset of the Great Depression worsened
already bad conditions in rural areas and expanded the hard times
into cities and non-agricultural sectors of the economy as well.
a. First talk briefly about the Great Depression’s impact on
agriculture in the NW
b. And then, focus on cities and other industries.
C. In rural parts of the Northwest, the Great Depression made bad conditions
even worse.
1. For one, the price of agricultural commodities plummeted even
further
a. By 1932, a bushel of wheat fetched only 32 cents.
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Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
∙An amount of wheat that fetched $100 in 1920 brought only
$19 in 1932.
b. Price of cattle dropped from $9.10 per hundred weight in 1929
to $3.34 in 1934.
2. Not surprisingly, this drop in crop prices had a devastating impact on
rural areas of the northwest.
a. In Idaho, the average income in the state dropped by 50
percent.
b. The number of farms in MT dropped by another 15 percent.
c. In Scobey, Montana—a farming and ranching entrepot--70
percent of the residents (3,500 out of 5,000) needed relief
assistance in 1933.
d. One Montana farmer later recalled, “I went to that movie
‘Grapes of Wrath’ and a guy said ‘Who do they think they’re
kidding? Nobody lives like that.’ I said, ‘I’ve lived worse than
that.’”
D. What was novel about the Great Depression in the Northwest was that city
dwellers and non-agricultural industries suffered as well.
1. Timber businesses throughout the region suffered due to a dramatic
slowdown in new construction.
a. Roughly 80 percent of the region’s lumber mills shut down
operations between 1929 and 1932, forcing thousands of
workers into unemployment.
b. The situation grew so bad in timber areas of the Northwest that
arsonists ignited forest fires and then sought to earn money
putting them out.
c. According to one historian, “the incendiary epidemic became so
widespread that the governor of Idaho declared the timber
country to be in a state of insurrection.”
2. The northwest’s mining industry was also devastated.
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Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
a. The price of copper plummeted between 1929 and 1932—from
18 cents a pound to 5 cents.
b. In response, the Anaconda Company cut production from
300,000 tons of ore monthly to 30,000 tons, causing massive
layoffs.
c. At the same time, Anaconda stock dropped from a high of $175
a share in 1929 to $3 in 1932 . . . yikes!
E. Cities
1. Because the Great Depression devastated non-agricultural sectors
of the economy, cities vividly showed the poverty of the era.
2. The massive layoffs in mining led to tough times in Butte.
a. 85 percent of children living in Butte lacked sufficient
nourishment
b. 60 percent of the homes were in disrepair, many in severe
disrepair.
c. For example, 30 percent of the homes in the city did not have
functioning baths or showers.
3. Conditions were also quite bad in Seattle during the 1930s, but,
rather than give you more statistics, I will tell you about the city’s
“Hooverville.”
a. As I suspect you know, “Hooverville” was the name given to the
shacktown encampments of the unemployed that sprung up in
cities throughout the country during the early 1930s.
b. Seattle’s “Hooverville” formed in 1931 and was located on land
south of city, where the Kingdome used to be and Seahawks
stadium now stands.
∙The community lasted for 10 years, despite several early
attempts by the city to burn it down.
∙Made up of hundreds of makeshift homes made of scraps of
wood and metal.
∙Only one water tap.
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Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
∙At any given time, there were about 1,000 residents, but the
population was constantly in flux.
∙Over its 10 years of existence, estimates are that between
11,000 and 14,000 people called it home.
∙Almost all the residents were men because the city forbid
women and children from living there.
c. The city’s Hooverville became an essentially self-governing
community.
∙It had an unofficial mayor, named Jesse Jackson.
∙It also had a governing committee consisting of six members.
∙Two positions on the committee were reserved for whites,
two for blacks, and two for Filipinos. These were the three
largest social groups represented among the people living
there.
∙This indicates that the people living in Hooverville were
socially egalitarian and yet also very conscious of racial
difference, in that people of different races needed their
own representatives.
d. The Hooverville finally closed down in 1941, when WWII
brought about economic recovery in the area.
e. It is also worth noting that there were several other homeless
encampments around Seattle during the 1930s, including one
called “Indian Town,” which was located on the Duwamish
River tide flats.
f. There is lots of good information on and photographs of
Seattle’s Hooverville on the Internet, so it is something you can
explore more with your classes.
IV.
Conclusion
A. Conclude by assessing the larger historical significance of the Great
Depression.
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Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
B. The Great Depression was a social trauma that has to be understood in
human terms.
1. It is difficult to do that in a 45 minute lecture, so I have focused more
on the economic trauma of the period, which is much easier to
encapsulate.
2. One way to get your students thinking about the social impact of the
Great Depression is to have them talk to their parents or
grandparents and ask if there are family stories about life in the
Depression.
a. For example, my grandfather, who had a professional job
before the Depression, delivered newspapers during the early
1930s to get by.
3. And, your students could ask their parents if the impact of the
Depression was apparent in the subsequent habits of their
ancestors.
a. For example, my grandmother—who was in her 20s during the
Great Depression—never, for the rest of her life, invested any
money in the stock market because she lived through the crash
of 1929.
b. My Great Uncle had the peculiar habit of saving all the nubs of
soap that were too small to use
∙When he had enough of them, he rubbed them together to
form a usable bar of soap.
c. These are what one historian has called the “invisible scars” of
the Great Depression.
C. Another historical significance of the Great Depression was that it caused
Americans to question the capitalist economic system that existed in America
at the time.
1. Socialists and communists argued that the Great Depression proved
that the capitalist system did not function and should be scrapped.
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Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
2. In the end, Americans chose to maintain the existing economic
structures and not significantly redistribute wealth.
3. But they did significantly reform the economic system by
empowering government to regulate and manage all sorts of
economic activities.
D. Finally, the Great Depression is historically significant because it caused the
United States to significantly redefine the role of government—especially the
federal government—in American life.
1. This will be the focus of my next lecture, which will cover the New
Deal in the Northwest.
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