The second one is a group of documents I used to introduce the great depression and dustbowl (before teachingTo Kill A Mockingbird). I put on some music and the students wandered around and read the documents, writing down little notes or impressions for each one. They really liked this activity. I used this with 9th.
SAMPLE 1
March 29,1935
Dear Mrs. Roosevelt.
I am writing you a little letter this morning. Are you glad it spring I am. For so many poor people can raise some more to eat. You no what I am writing this letter for Mother said Mrs. Roosevelt is just a God mother to the world And I though ma be you had some old cloths you no Mother is a good sewer and all the little girls are getting Easter dresses And I though that you had some you no papa could wear Mr Roosevelt shirt and cloth I no. My papa like Mr Roosevelt And Mother said Roosevelt carry his worries with a smile You no he is always happy. You no we are not living on the relief we live on a little farm. Papa did have a job and got laid on 5 yr ago so we save and got two horses and 2 cows and hogs so we can all the food stuff we can ever thing to eat some time we don’t have ever thing but we live. But you no it is so hard to get cloth. So I thought mabe you had some. You no what you though was no good Mother can make over for me I am 11 yr old I have 2 brothers and a sister 14 yr old. I wish I could see you I know I would like you both, and shoes mother wears 6 or 6 ½ and papa wear 9. We have no car or no phone or Radio papa he would like to have a radio but he said there is other thing he need more. Papa is worried about his seed oats, And one horse is not very good. But ever one has’t to worie. I am send this letter with the pennie I get to take to Sunday school mother give me one so it took 3 week Cause mother would think I better not ask things from the first Lady, But Mother said you was an angle for doing so much for the poor. And I though that would be all rite this is s ome paper my teacher gave for X-mas. My add is C.V…
SAMPLE 2
Double Springs, ALA.
Dec 27, 1934
Dear Mrs. Roosevelt,
qI know you get letters like this almost every day, But here is one I hope and pray will be answer. I live in Ala. On a farm, and it seem might hard for us, we have so much sickness in our home We have a farm. But it seems if there isn’t something done we will lose it. We owe lots of Hospital Bills. Wasn’t for that we would Be in a better shape. My father and one of my sister had a operation the same year. My mother and father is in very bad Health. I am the oldest child at home and I am only 16. Mrs. Roosevelt if you please will send us a few dollars not to pay our debts But to get us a few clothes to wear. if you can’t send us non, please answer my letter and tell me why you can’t. if you possible can just send us a little bit. don’t never think it will be wasted for it won’t. I am sure it would be put to good use. we want to thank your Husband Mr. Roosevelt for his good plan he has planned for us poor people. We know it is for the poor people good. But it seems it hasn’t reached us yet much. Mrs. Roosevelt this is my first time to write any one for any money. or any any of the familie. But I know you are ver very rich. And we have to work hard. I don’t dread working if we could only get one thing much for what we raise. Now if you please will send us a few dollars and it will gratley be appirshed. And we never can and never will thank you enough for it. Please answer my letter.
Your friend that lives in Ala.
E.B.
SAMPLE 3
Swartz Creek, Michigan
August 6, 1936
Dear Mrs. Roosevelt:
I am a girl, 12 yrs. of age. I would like very much if you would send me a bicycle. My family is too poor to buy me one.
We live in a house made over from a chicken coop and a garage. We now lost our farm because it was on a contract with another farm. Although we paid in it an $8,000 house and $8,036.87, $36.87 more than what we were supposed to pay in it.
I hope you will receive this letter if you would be as kind as to send me a bicycle and to let us have back our farm because we haven’t any money to take it to a higher court. I do not want to tell my mother or anyone else to whom I am sending this letter for fear I would be laughed at.
Good-bye
Yours truly
P.s. I will be waiting every day for a bicycle and a reply about the farm.
SAMPLE 4
The Great Depression (1929-39) was the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world. In the United States, the Great Depression began soon after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and rising levels of unemployment as failing companies laid off workers. By 1933, when the Great Depression reached its nadir, some 13 to 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half of the country’s banks had failed. Though the relief and reform measures put into place by President Franklin D. Roosevelt helped lessen the worst effects of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the economy would not fully turn around until after 1939, when World War II kicked American industry into high gear.
SAMPLE 5
A homeless family (previously tenant farmers).
Despite assurances from President Herbert Hoover and other leaders that the crisis would run its course, matters continued to get worse over the next three years. By 1930, 4 million Americans looking for work could not find it; that number had risen to 6 million in 1931. Meanwhile, the country’s industrial production had dropped by half. Bread lines, soup kitchens and rising numbers of homeless people became more and more common in America’s towns and cities. Farmers (who had been struggling with their own economic depression for much of the 1920s due to drought and falling food prices) couldn’t afford to harvest their crops, and were forced to leave them rotting in the fields while people elsewhere starved.
SAMPLE 6
SAMPLE 7
One Third of a Nation”: FDR’s Second Inaugural Address
I see a great nation, upon a great continent, blessed with a great wealth of natural resources. Its hundred and thirty million people are at peace among themselves; they are making their country a good neighbor among the nations. I see a United States which can demonstrate that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level of mere subsistence.
But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.
I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.
I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.
I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.
I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.
I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.
But it is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope—because the nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
SAMPLE 8
Passage: THE GRAPES OF WRATH
The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow.
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.
And the smell of rot fills the country.
Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.
The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
SAMPLE 9: Timeline of the Great Depression
October 1929
The stock market crashes, marking the end of six years of unparalleled prosperity for most sectors of the American economy. The "crash" begins on October 24 (Black Thursday). By October 29, stock prices will plummet and banks will be calling in loans. An estimated $30 billion in stock values will "disappear" by mid-November.
November 1929
President Herbert Hoover says, "Any lack of confidence in the economic future or the basic strength of business in the United States is foolish."
March 1930
More than 3.2 million people are unemployed, up from 1.5 million before the October, 1929 crash. President Hoover remains optimistic, however, stating that "all the evidences indicate that the worst effects of the crash upon unemployment will have passed during the next 60 days."
November 1930
The street corners of New York City are crowded with apple-sellers. Nearly 6,000 unemployed individuals work at selling apples for five cents apiece.
January 1931
Texas congressman Wright Patman introduces legislation authorizing immediate payment of "bonus" funds to veterans of World War I. The "bonus bill" had been passed in 1924. It allots bonuses, in the form of "adjusted service certificates," equaling $1 a day for each day of service in the U.S., and $1.25 for each day overseas. President Hoover is against payment of these funds, saying it would cost the Treasury $4 billion.
February 1931
"Food riots" begin to break out in parts of the U.S. In Minneapolis, several hundred men and women smash the windows of a grocery market and make off with fruit, canned goods, bacon, and ham. One of the store's owners pulls out a gun to stop the looters, but is leapt upon and has his arm broken. The "riot" is brought under control by 100 policemen. Seven people are arrested.
Resentment of "foreign" workers increases along with unemployment rolls. In Los Angeles, California, Mexican Americans are accused of stealing jobs from "real" Americans. During the month, 6,024 Mexican Americans are deported.
December 1931
New York's Bank of the United States collapses. At the time of the collapse, the bank had over $200 million in deposits, making it the largest single bank failure in the nation's history.
January 1932
Congress establishes the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The R.F.C. is allowed to lend $2 billion to banks, insurance companies, building and loan associations, agricultural credit organizations and railroads. Critics of the R.F.C. call it "the millionaires' dole."
March 1932
Three thousand unemployed workers march on the Ford Motor Company's plant in River Rouge, Michigan. Dearborn police and Ford's company guards attack the workers, killing four and injuring many more.
April 1932
More than 750,000 New Yorkers are reported to be dependent upon city relief, with an additional 160,000 on a waiting list. Expenditures average about $8.20 per month for each person on relief.
SAMPLE 10
This passage is from Karen Hesse’s book, Out of the Dust(historical fiction). The speaker is a young girl who lives with her family in the Midwest during the 1930s. At that time, serious drought destroyed the farmers’ crops and caused great dust storms. People were very poor and some farmers lost their farms.
Daddy is thinking
Of taking a loan from Mr. Roosevelt and his men,
To get some new wheat planted
Where the winter crop has spindled out and died.
Mr. Roosevelt promised
Daddy won’t have to pay a dime
Till the crop comes in.
Daddy says,
“I can turn the fields over,
start again.
Its sure to rain soon.
Wheat’s sure to grow.”
Ma says, “What if it doesn’t?”
Daddy takes off his hat,
roughs up his hair,
puts the hat back on.
“Course it’ll rain,” he says.
Ma says, “Bay,
it hasn’t rained enough to grow wheat in three years.”
Daddy looks like a fight brewing.
He takes that red face of his out to the barn,
to keep from feuding with my pregnant ma.
I ask Ma
how,
after all this time,
Daddy still believes in rain.
“Well, it rains enough,” Ma says,
“now and again,
to keep a person hoping.
But even if it didn’t
your daddy would have to believe.
It’s coming on spring,
and he’s a farmer.”
March 1934