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Depression and a New Deal, Page 6

Life in the Depression

Poverty spread during the Great Depression. When banks failed and took people’s savings, middle-class families were plummeted into poverty. By 1932, at least 12 million people were unemployed, which equaled 25 percent of the population who were of working age. The Great Plains area of the Midwest and Southwest, including areas of Kansas, Arkansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Missouri, had little rainfall and high winds. Most of the land had been hastily cleared and used to plant grain during World War I. Because it had not been properly maintained by crop rotation and other agricultural means, drought coupled with high winds turned the Great Plains into dust. The region became known as the Dust Bowl during the mid-1930s.

Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl circa 1930

Many of the farmers left their land and moved to cities where jobs were scarce. The government hired photojournalists to record agricultural life during the Great Depression. They worked for the Farm Services Administration. Photojournalists including Dorothea Lange and Roy Stryker recorded impressive pictures of the devastated environment. John Steinbeck also captured life in the Dust Bowl in his novel,The Grapes of Wrath.