THE 1929 CRISIS...

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Introduction

In the world we live in today, everybody wants to make money but no one wants to be responsible for the consequences.

This means that the financial crisis that we are facing right now is due in part, to unhealthy consumption. In other words, the financial market was making more and more money but no one wondered where it came from and no one feared that one day everything might crumble down. The crisis has forced people to face reality and to understand that the financial and economical markets are unstable and unpredictable and that money doesn’t produce itself.

Until the crisis started, the Wall Street brokers and investors didn’t have to worry about any regulations or risks, and this resulted in non-existing fear, leading to ignorance, carelessness and greed.

This is exactly what caused the unavoidable crisis we are in today and it should be a lesson for the future. Before the crisis, individuals had plenty of money available to buy corporations; real estate was claimed to be a safe investment and mortgage loans were given out to everyone.

The thought that things wouldn’t keep booming forever and that a house-price slump was coming up never came across people’s minds. Now, facing the meltdown, banks and other financial institutes around the world are struggling to pull themselves out of this disaster, where nobody is ready to commit to failures or acknowledge the fact that these are the consequences of their previous actions.

This is not the first time the world has faced a problem of this kind: a similar financial crisis already occurred in 1929. It was one of the biggest slumps in history, which resulted into the Great Depression.

Do the financial crises of 1929 one and the one today have anything in common?

Are there any similar factors which triggered them, or are they not comparable at all?

What happened back in the late 1020's?

In 1928 the new Republican president Herbert Hoover confidently stated, 'We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.' Within a year, all the confidence had ended and America was plunged into the Depression.

Wall Street Crash

When the Wall Street stock market crashed in October 1929, the world economy was plunged into the Great Depression. By the winter of 1932, America was in the depths of the greatest economic depression in its history.

The number of unemployed people reached upwards of 13 million. Many people lived in primitive conditions close to famine. One New York family moved into a cave in Central Park. In St Louis, more than 1,000 people lived in shacks made from scrap metal and boxes. There were many similar Hoovervilles all over America. Between 1 and 2 million people travelled the country desperately looking for work. Signs saying 'No Men Wanted' were displayed all over the country.


Many children were deserted and left homeless during the Depression

By the time of the election in November 1932, Hoover's popularity had reached rock bottom. It was not even safe for him to go onto the streets to campaign. After his heavy defeat, Hoover told his friends, "we are at the end of our string... there is nothing more we can do". The American economy did not fully recover until the USA entered the Second World War in December 1941.

Causes of the Depression

  1. As early as 1926, there were signs that the boom was under threat - this was seen in the collapse of land prices in Florida.
  2. Eventually, there were too many goods being made and not enough people to buy them.
  3. Farmers had produced too much food in the 1920s, so prices for their produce became steadily lower.
  4. There were too many small banks - these banks did not have enough funds to cope with the sudden rush to take out savings, which happened in the autumn of 1929.
  5. Too much speculation on the stock market - the middle class had a lot to lose and they had spent a lot on what amounted to pieces of paper.
  6. The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 was a massive psychological blow.
  7. America had lent huge sums of money to European countries. When the stock market collapsed, they suddenly recalled those loans. This had a devastating impact on the European economy.
  8. The collapse of European banks caused a general world financial crisis.


Effects of the Depression

  1. Unemployment - 13 million people were out of work.
  2. Industrial production dropped by 45 per cent between 1929 and 1932.
  3. House-building fell by 80 per cent between 1929 and 1932.
  4. The entire American banking system reached the brink of collapse.
  5. From 1929 to 1932, 5,000 banks went out of business.
  6. Although many people went hungry, the number of recorded deaths from starvation during the Depression was 110, although many other illnesses and deaths were probably related to a lack of nutrition.

Classroom activities:

  1. Write a list of the factors that caused the Great Depression. Place the factors in what you consider to be their order of importance.
  2. Explain:
  1. Why there was a great depression in America.
  2. Why the Depression of 1929 was so sudden and so severe.
  3. To what extent the Wall Street Crash was the main cause of the Depression.
  4. What the causes and consequences of the Wall Street Crash were.
  5. How far speculation was responsible for the Wall Street Crash.
  6. What impact the Crash had on the economy.
  7. What life was like in the USA during the Great Depression.
  8. What the effects of the Depression were on the American people.
  9. What the social consequences of the Crash were.

HOW WRITERS SAW THE 1929 CRISIS

John Steinbeck


John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California in 1902. Although his family was wealthy, he was interested in the lives of the farm labourers and spent time working with them. He used his experiences as material for his writing.

He wrote a number of novels about poor people who worked on the land and dreamed of a better life, including The Grapes of Wrath, which is the heart-rending story of a family's struggle to escape the dust bowl of the West to reach California. Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, six years before his death in 1968.

The Depression

As you know by now, on October 29 1929, millions of dollars were wiped out in the Wall Street Crash. The Depression in America crippled the country from 1930 - 1936. People lost their life savings when firms and banks went bust, and 12 - 15 million men and women - one third of America's population - were unemployed.

There was then no dole to fall back on, so food was short and the unemployed in cities couldn't pay their rent. Some ended up in settlements called 'Hoovervilles' (after the US president of the time, Herbert C Hoover), in shanties made from old packing cases and corrugated iron.

A song about an unemployed man meeting an old friend he has fought alongside in the First World War and asking him for a dime (the price of a cup of coffee) summed up the national mood.

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits,

Gee we looked swell,

Full of Yankee Doodle-de-dum.

Half a millin boots went sloggin' through Hell,

I was the kid with the drum.

Say, don't you remember, they called me Al,

It was Al all the time.

Why don't you remember I'm your pal,

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Listen to the song

George Michael sang this song too

They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum,
Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,
And I was the kid with the drum!
Say, don't you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.
Why don't you remember, I'm your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum,
Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,
And I was the kid with the drum!
Say, don't you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.
Say, don't you remember, I'm your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?

GRAPES OF WRATH


Watch the New York Times review on the book

The plot

Released from an Oklahoma state prison after serving four years for a manslaughter conviction, Tom Joad makes his way back to his family’s farm in Oklahoma. He meets Jim Casy, a former preacher who has given up his calling out of a belief that all life is holy—even the parts that are typically thought to be sinful—and that sacredness consists simply in endeavoring to be an equal among the people. Jim accompanies Tom to his home, only to find it—and all the surrounding farms—deserted. Muley Graves, an old neighbor, wanders by and tells the men that everyone has been “tractored” off the land. Most families, he says, including his own, have headed to California to look for work. The next morning, Tom and Jim set out for Tom’s Uncle John’s, where Muley assures them they will find the Joad clan. Upon arrival, Tom finds Ma and Pa Joad packing up the family’s few possessions. Having seen handbills advertising fruit-picking jobs in California, they envision the trip to California as their only hope of getting their lives back on track.

The journey to California in a rickety used truck is long and arduous. Grampa Joad, a feisty old man who complains bitterly that he does not want to leave his land, dies on the road shortly after the family’s departure. Dilapidated cars and trucks, loaded down with scrappy possessions, clog Highway 66: it seems the entire country is in flight to the Promised Land of California. The Joads meet Ivy and Sairy Wilson, a couple plagued with car trouble, and invite them to travel with the family. Sairy Wilson is sick and, near the California border, becomes unable to continue the journey.

As the Joads near California, they hear ominous rumors of a depleted job market. One migrant tells Pa that 20,000 people show up for every 800 jobs and that his own children have starved to death. Although the Joads press on, their first days in California prove tragic, as Granma Joad dies. The remaining family members move from one squalid camp to the next, looking in vain for work, struggling to find food, and trying desperately to hold their family together. Noah, the oldest of the Joad children, soon abandons the family, as does Connie, a young dreamer who is married to Tom’s pregnant sister, Rose of Sharon.

The Joads meet with much hostility in California. The camps are overcrowded and full of starving migrants, who are often nasty to each other. The locals are fearful and angry at the flood of newcomers, whom they derisively label “Okies.” Work is almost impossible to find or pays such a meager wage that a family’s full day’s work cannot buy a decent meal. Fearing an uprising, the large landowners do everything in their power to keep the migrants poor and dependent. While staying in a ramshackle camp known as a “Hooverville,”Tom and several men get into a heated argument with a deputy sheriff over whether workers should organize into a union. When the argument turns violent, Jim Casy knocks the sheriff unconscious and is arrested. Police officers arrive and announce their intention to burn the Hooverville to the ground.

A government-run camp proves much more hospitable to the Joads, and the family soon finds many friends and a bit of work. However, one day, while working at a pipe-laying job, Tom learns that the police are planning to stage a riot in the camp, which will allow them to shut down the facilities. By alerting and organizing the men in the camp, Tom helps to defuse the danger. Still, as pleasant as life in the government camp is, the Joads cannot survive without steady work, and they have to move on. They find employment picking fruit, but soon learn that they are earning a decent wage only because they have been hired to break a workers’ strike. Tom runs into Jim Casy who, after being released from jail, has begun organizing workers; in the process, Casy has made many enemies among the landowners. When the police hunt him down and kill him in Tom’s presence, Tom retaliates and kills a police officer.

Tom goes into hiding, while the family moves into a boxcar on a cotton farm. One day, Ruthie, the youngest Joad daughter, reveals to a girl in the camp that her brother has killed two men and is hiding nearby. Fearing for his safety, Ma Joad finds Tom and sends him away. Tom heads off to fulfill Jim’s task of organizing the migrant workers. The end of the cotton season means the end of work, and word sweeps across the land that there are no jobs to be had for three months. Rains set in and flood the land. Rose of Sharon gives birth to a stillborn child, and Ma, desperate to get her family to safety from the floods, leads them to a dry barn not far away. Here, they find a young boy kneeling over his father, who is slowly starving to death. He has not eaten for days, giving whatever food he had to his son. Realizing that Rose of Sharon is now producing milk, Ma sends the others outside, so that her daughter can nurse the dying man.

Migrant farmers

Added to the man-made financial problems were natural ones. A series of droughts in southern mid-western states like Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas led to failed harvests and dried-up land. Farmers were forced to move off their land: they couldn't repay the bank-loans which had helped buy the farms and had to sell what they owned to pay their debts.

Many economic migrants headed west to 'Golden' California, thinking there would be land going spare, but the Californians turned many back, fearing they would be over-run. The refuges had nowhere to go back to, so they set up home in huge camps in the California valleys - living in shacks of cardboard and old metal - and sought work as casual farmhands.


Ranch hands

Against this background, ranch hands like George and Lennie were lucky to have work. Ranch hands were grateful for at least a bunk-house to live in and to have food provided, even though the pay was low.


Think about how the men agree to hush-up the fight between Curley and Lennie and claim that Curley got his hand caught in a machine: they know that Lennie and George would be fired if the boss came to hear of it, and then Lennie and George could be left with nothing

Watch the 27-minute video Stories from the Great Depression

IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS OF

GRAPES OF WRATH

Analysis of Major Characters

Tom Joad

Tom begins the novel in possession of a practical sort of self-interest. Four years in prison, he claims, have molded him into someone who devotes his time and energies to the present moment. The future, which seems illusory and out of reach, does not concern him. He adopts this philosophy toward living not because he is selfish but as a means of coping: he fears that by putting his life in a context larger than the present day, he will drive himself mad with anger and helplessness. Of course, Tom, who exhibits a rare strength, thoughtfulness, and moral certainty, is destined for more than mere day-to-day survival. Tom undergoes the most significant transformation in the novel as he sheds this carpe diem (seize the day) philosophy for a commitment to bettering the future.