Hard Times and the New Deal
Industrial production fell more than 9 percent from October to December
1929 and American imports dropped 20 percent from September to
December
Hooverville outside of Seattle, Washington (1933)
Farm Foreclosure Sale In Iowa During the Great
Depression (1933)
View of Bonus Veterans’ Camp (1932)
The Bonus Army’s Encampment Set Ablaze
On way to U.S. Capitol for Roosevelt's Inauguration, March 4, 1933
FDR delivering one of his “fireside chats”
Photograph of a Slaughtered Pig During the Great Depression
Photograph of a Dust Storm in Oklahoma
During the Great Depression
Migrants Sitting in Their Car
Photograph of "Okies" Driving to California
During the Great Depression
Photograph of a Wife and Children of a
Sharecropper During the Great Depression
Black and white farm workers listen to a speaker at a
Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union meeting in Arkansas.
Hydroelectric
generators at the
Grand Coulee Dam
Photograph of Civilian Conservation Corps
Enrollees Clearing Land During the Great
Depression
Photograph of Civilian Conservation Corps at an
Experimental Farm During the Great Depression
Civilian Conservation Corps Enrollees on the Fire
Line in a Big Forest Fire in the West. (Circa 1933)
Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933-1952
The Spirit of the New Deal, 1933 cartoon from the
Washington Star.
New popular movements indicated that many
people wanted the government to do much more to
relieve the Depression
Huey P. Long
Louisiana Senator
Share Our Wealth Plan
“Every Man a King”
Migrant Mother by
Dorothea Lange –
perhaps the most
famous documentary
photograph of the
1930s.
Arts of the West by Thomas Hart Benton
Diego Rivera (1932)
Jerry Mast Painting WPA Mural
•
Works Projects
Administration artist painting
mural at Clare High School,
January 27, 1937. The Works
Projects Administration was part
of President Roosevelt’s New
Deal, a revolutionary program
which aimed to alleviate the
massive suffering of
unemployed during the
Depression by creating jobs
through public projects. The
WPA lasted from 1935 to 1943,
and during this time the
administration created
thousands of public works
projects, as well as fine arts
programs. Above, artist Jerry
Mast paints one of the
thousands of WPA murals that
adorn public buildings
throughout the country.
WPA Mural (Jackson, Missouri Post Office)
A 1935 poster
promoting the new
Social Security system
Advocates of industrial
unionism saw the
government’s move to
the left and the Wagner
Act as the most
promising of times to
organize the
unorganized
This leaflet distributed
by the United Auto
Workers (UAW)
captured the impact of
the Wagner Act on
union organizing
Strikers occupying GM’s Fisher Body Plant No. 1
keeping up with news of the strike
A cartoon from the
Richmond TimesDispatch commenting
on FDR’s attempt to
pack the Supreme
Court