getting to california

• bread lines / soup kitchens – charities provided the primary source of food for many urban Americans

• baliffs – delivered court orders that forced homeowners to leave their homes when they could not pay the mortage

• Hoovervilles – shacks built by homeless people (also called shantytowns) named after President Hoover

• hobos – homeless Americans who “rode the rails” traveling from town to town looking for work

• Movie Theaters – provided an “escape” for Americans with cheap entertainment and newsreels for information

• Soap Operas - radio dramas that provided cheap at home entertainment that were aired nationwide during the daytime and sponsored by soap companies

Ch 17 Sec 2: The Depression

Intro 3

Click the mouse button or press the Space Bar to display the information.Click the mouse button or press the Space Bar to display the information.

Chapter ObjectivesSection 2: Life During the Depression

• Describe how the Great Depression affected American families.

• Discuss how artists portrayed the effects of the Depression.

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The Depression Worsens


• By 1933 thousands of banks had closed and millions of American workers were unemployed.

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• Unemployed workers often stood at bread lines to receive free food or at soup kitchens where private charities gave a free meal to the poor.

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• Americans unable to pay their mortgage or rent lost their homes.

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• Those unable or unwilling to move had a court-ordered eviction notice delivered by a court officer or bailiff who forced nonpaying tenants out onto the street.

The Depression Worsens (cont.)


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• Many of the homeless built shacks in shantytowns, which they referred to as “Hoovervilles” because they blamed the president for their financial trouble.



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In 1931 a Christmas tree was placed amid the rubble from some demolished buildings. Workers who still had jobs decorated the tree with tin cans and paper. A few years later at the same site, the official Rockefeller Center tree tradition was inaugurated.

• Hobos, or homeless Americans who wandered around hitching rides on railroad cars, searched for work and a better life.



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F/F/F 2-Folklore

Hobo Signs The hundreds of thousands of hobos who roamed the country developed intricate symbols that they wrote on trees, fences, or buildings to warn or inform other hobos. Many became a part of American folklore.

At the height of the Great Depression there may have been as many as 250,000 teenage hobos.

• As crop prices dropped in the 1920s, many American farmers left their fields uncultivated.

• A terrible drought in the Great Plains, beginning in 1932, caused the region to become a “Dust Bowl.”



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• Many Midwestern farmers and Great Plains farmers lost their farms.



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• Many families moved west to California hoping to find a better life, but most still faced poverty and homelessness.



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White Angel Migrant Mother

by Dorothea Lange

Escaping the Depression


• Americans escaped the hardships of the Depression by going to the movies and listening to radio broadcasts.

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• Stories tended to be about overcoming hardships and achieving success.

• Walt Disney produced the first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1937.

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• Other films, like The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Gone with the Wind, contained stories of triumph over adversity and visions of a better life.

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• Families gathered around the radio daily to hear news or listen to comedians like George Burns or a dramatic series like the Lone Ranger.

Escaping the Depression (cont.)


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• Melodramas, called soap operas, became very popular with housewives.

• Soap operas received their name because makers of laundry soaps often sponsored them.

Escaping the Depression (cont.)


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Ironically the board game Monopoly was invented during the Depression. Charles Darrow was an unemployed Pennsylvania engineer when he designed the famous game in the early 1930s.

The Depression in Art


• Homeless and unemployed Americans were the subjects of art and literature during the 1930s.

• Artists and writers tried to capture the real life drama of the Depression.

• Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood emphasized traditional American values in their art.

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• John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath told the story of an Oklahoma family fleeing the Dust Bowl to find a new life in California.

• Steinbeck, like many writers of this time, wrote of poverty, misfortune, and social injustice.

The Depression in Art (cont.)


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• Novelist William Faulkner’s literary technique, stream of consciousness, revealed characters’ thoughts and feelings before they spoke–thoughts they dared not reveal.

• In his novels, he exposed hidden attitudes of Southern whites and African Americans in a fictional Mississippi county.


The Depression in Art (cont.)

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End of Section 2

getting to california

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