Luke McMeans
History 1302-63006
Midterm Essay
3/29/15
Insult to Injury:
The Social Depression of the Working-Class
Luke McMeans
Mountain View College
Luke McMeans
History 1302-63006
Midterm Essay
3/29/15
Insult to Injury: The Social Depression of the Working-Class
The economic fallout of the Great Depression had a dramatic effect on almost every class
of the American public. The mass closings of private banks, the amount of debt which had been
generated by working families and businesses (as well as the National war debt America had
accumulated after WWI), the massive deficit in demand as opposed to supply, and the shifting of
labor from communal ranching and subsistence agriculture to privatized industrial crop
production all played a key role in the U.S. economy’s instability in the period between the
1890s and the start of WWII. While most of the American population was effected by these
problems, it can be argued that the portion of America most hurt by the Great Depression was the
working-class. After a recent reconstruction of their way of life (the shift from subsistence
farming/business within local markets and island communities to prevalent wage labor positions
in a national market), the working class was once again forced to readjust their lifestyle to
conform to a drastic change in the national economy.
The Great Depression undermined the national market which had been created
during the Second Industrial Revolution, thereby degrading the working-class by
invalidating their investment in new societal institutions such as wage labor and the
national capitalist economy; removing their sense of value and earning capability. To
understand why the Great Depression was so particularly devastating to the working-class – both
in their finances and their dignity – one must look back at the huge shift they had just undergone
in the Second Industrial Revolution.
Luke McMeans
History 1302-63006
Midterm Essay
3/29/15
Before the Second Industrial Revolution, America was composed primarily of
disconnected communities. These were made up of subsistence farmers who owned and worked
just enough land to produce the crops needed to provide for their families. There was no need to
buy enough land or produce enough crops to sell on a non-local market, because there was no
means by which they could transport a surplus to another place to sell it. Thus, crop-growth was
not competitive, debt was kept at a minimum, and the daily lives and schedules of working men
and their families were dictated by their own individual needs. However, the Second Industrial
Revolution quickly connected these island communities and shaped the U.S. into one massive
(and highly competitive) market which survived on cheap labor, mass production, and huge
private corporations (instead of communal or family-owned businesses).
This sudden and volatile explosion into a competitive market forced many “mom-andpop” businesses to lose their buyers to major companies and fail. It also displaced many
members of the lower class as communal land was purchased and converted to more productive
private landscapes. In the book George Washington Gómez, written by Américo Paredez, the
harmful effect this shift had on members of the working-class (particularly Mexican Americans),
is illustrated by describing how Hispanic ranchers were forced to clear what had once been their
own homeland into private farms and ranches for members of the upper class: “Then came the
railroad early in the 20th century, and with it arrived the first real-estate men and the land-andtitle companies, and a Chamber of Commerce… Mexicans labored with spade and axe to clear
away the brush where the cattle of their ancestors once had roamed. To make room for truck
farming and citrus groves. And the settlers poured in from the U.S. heartland, while Mexicans
were pushed out of cattle-raising into hard manual labor.” (Paredez) This tumultuous change
Luke McMeans
History 1302-63006
Midterm Essay
3/29/15
forced millions of Americans into industrialized cities where they could find wage-labor
positions in factories. These positions paid little, forced workers into rigid and difficult schedules
and lifestyles, and locked many American families into poverty by requiring hard work and
paying just enough to get by (sometimes) but not enough to invest or save.
Thus, many working class families had left everything they had worked for in their
hometowns across the nation to come to industrialized cities. When they arrived, they became
completely invested in wage-labor positions and depended heavily on such jobs to provide for
their families. In many instances, families who lived in company towns had literally no estate or
property that had any worth outside of the particular company they worked for. When the
economy failed and Americans began getting laid off or experiencing wage-cuts, the average
citizen was unable to buy goods from major companies. Thus, as demand decreased and the need
for production slowed, the men and women who had “sold” their entire lives to now-failing
companies lost everything. The lifestyle that the Second Industrial Revolution had forced on
them was ripped away as quickly as it had been introduced, and now there was nowhere for them
to turn. As banks closed and borrowing money to purchase land became practically impossible,
even the option to return to their former lifestyles of subsistence farming disappeared. The Great
Depression ripped away the only source of income that many Americans possessed and left them
helpless.
Most (if not all) of the working-class had no available jobs, no savings, and, before
FDR’s New Deal, almost no assistance from the government. As more and more workers were
laid off, the problem only became more substantial in that demand continued to fall, less
factory/production labor was needed, and confidence in the economy to “bounce back” rapidly
Luke McMeans
History 1302-63006
Midterm Essay
3/29/15
declined. Bread lines grew, workers who had been laid off rallied together to protest, and
marches were held in an affront to major companies such as Ford (which, again, displayed the
population’s view that corporations, not the government, had control over the nation’s economy).
These problems only strengthened as the ideological blaming of the working class for the Great
Depression, strongly supported by President Hoover, continued to steal hope from impoverished
working-class families.
One of the most tragic aspects of the Depression for the working-class is illustrated in
Meridel Le Sueur’s Women on the Breadlines. In Le Sueur’s account of what life during the
Depression was like for the average working-class woman, one can see the great sense of shame
and helplessness that the Depression draped over the population: “But there is no work. Sitting in
the room we all know it. That is why we don’t talk; much. We look at the floor dreading to see
that knowledge in each other’s eyes. There is a kind of humiliation in it. We look away from each
other. We look at the floor. It’s too terrible to see this animal terror in each other’s eyes.”
(Sueur) What can be inferred from Le Sueur’s description of waiting at an employment agency is
this: It was not that the desire to work was not present, or that they did not think that they had to
earn what they needed to survive. It was that they knew that they had been rendered completely
incapable of doing so. They were willing, and still had the same skillsets that the Second
Industrial Revolution had brought about, but, because of the Depression, their fates were now
more out of their control than ever. Despite hours of waiting for elusive job opportunities, they
had been rendered essentially worthless and voiceless in America’s economy. This deprivation
of their ability to work had created for them a painlessly purposeless space–more of a void,
Luke McMeans
History 1302-63006
Midterm Essay
3/29/15
really– in society that was shared by all but created a great sense of distance between them and
the rest of society.
Thus, the Great Depression served to demonstrate how the Second Industrial Revolution
had not only uprooted the working-class from their former ways of life, but had directly linked
them to the success or failure of the national economy by removing their long-term stability and
ability to save for times when labor would not be as readily available. Because of this, the Great
Depression was a period of the working-class’ complete dependence on private institutions to
provide for their needs. It was not until FDR began to strongly support the idea of Labor Unions
and provide new jobs outside of a factory setting (such as the creation of Mt. Rushmore) that the
working-class became able to build more stability and regain confidence in their ability to earn
and work again.
Luke McMeans
History 1302-63006
Midterm Essay
3/29/15
Works Cited
Paredez, Americo. George Washington Gomez. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1990. Document.
Sueur, Meridel Le. Women on the Breadlines. Albuquerque: West End Press, 1932. Book Excerpt.