Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945
Overview
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
In June of 1932, nearly 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country marched on
the United States Capitol to request early payment of cash bonuses for their military service that
weren't due to be paid until 1945. The marchers, who the organizers called the "Bonus
Expeditionary Force" but who became widely known as the Bonus Army, spent several days in
Washington, D.C., pressing their case, but a Congressional bill to pay the bonus was defeated.
On July 28, U.S. troops and tanks commanded by General Douglas MacArthur dispersed the
marchers and destroyed their makeshift camps in the city.
However, not all citizens were caught up in the social eruptions. Many were too
downtrodden or busy surviving day to day to get involved in public displays of discontent.
Instead, they placed their hope and trust in the federal government, especially after the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932.
Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s
Even during hard times and wartime, people need to be entertained. The American people
in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment,
particularly if they could do so inexpensively.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster
movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great
dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds
of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
In the 1930s, big bands and swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny
Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1940s, the bands started to break up,
and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs
became popular.
Among the unemployed in the Depression were artists and performers of many types.
Government programs to assist these people resulted in production of plays and artworks for all
to enjoy.
As you examine the documents in this section, compare arts and entertainment in the 1930s
and 1940s with arts and entertainment as you know them today. What similarities do you see?
What differences? How might you explain the continuity you see, as well as the change?
The Dust Bowl
Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered
a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of
settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their
land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the
demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were
plowed and planted.
Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie
grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually,
the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural
elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.
With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow
away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken
for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some
places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the
heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm
families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.
In his 1939 bookDThe Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of
families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out,
tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything,
any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying
for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims
of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal
In the summer of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as
the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt
addressed the problems of the depression by telling the American people that, "I pledge you, I
pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In the election that took place in the fall
of 1932, Roosevelt won by a landslide.
The New Deal Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape
immediately after his inauguration in March 1933. Based on the assumption that the power of the
federal government was needed to get the country out of the depression, the first days of
Roosevelt's administration saw the passage of banking reform laws, emergency relief programs,
work relief programs, and agricultural programs. Later, a second New Deal was to evolve; it
included union protection programs, the Social Security Act, and programs to aid tenant farmers
and migrant workers. Many of the New Deal acts or agencies came to be known by their
acronyms. For example, the Works Progress Administration was known as the WPA, while the
Civilian Conservation Corps was known as the CCC. Many people remarked that the New Deal
programs reminded them of alphabet soup.
By 1939, the New Deal had run its course. In the short term, New Deal programs helped
improve the lives of people suffering from the events of the depression. In the long run, New
Deal programs set a precedent for the federal government to play a key role in the economic and
social affairs of the nation.
Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal
In the early 1930s, as the nation slid toward the depths of depression, the future of
organized labor seemed bleak. In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3
million, compared to 5 million a decade before. Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled
craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger
number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
These, rather than the skilled crafts, were to be the major growth industries of the first half of the
20th century.
Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union
stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early
New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The
1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to
bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees. Meanwhile,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive
in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before. Strikes of various kinds
became important organizing tools of the CIO.
Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
The problems of the Great Depression affected virtually every group of Americans. No
group was harder hit than African Americans, however. By 1932, approximately half of African
Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for African Americans to be
fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more
common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28
in 1933.
Although most African Americans traditionally voted Republican, the election of President
Franklin Roosevelt began to change voting patterns. Roosevelt entertained African American
visitors at the White House and was known to have a number of black advisors. According to
historian John Hope Franklin, many African Americans were excited by the energy with which
Roosevelt began tackling the problems of the Depression and gained "a sense of belonging they
had never experienced before" from his fireside chats.
Still, discrimination occurred in New Deal housing and employment projects, and President
Roosevelt, for political reasons, did not back all of the legislation favored by such groups as the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When the U.S. entered
World War II, labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to
protest job discrimination in the military and other defense-related activities. In response,
President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, stating that all persons, regardless of race,
creed, color, or national origin, would be allowed to participate fully in the defense of the United
States.
World War II
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the United States declared
war on Japan. Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. a few days later, and the nation
became fully engaged in the Second World War.
U.S. involvement in the Second World War was quickly followed by a massive
mobilization effort. With millions of men and women serving overseas in the nation's armed
forces, most of those who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort in
whatever means was available to them. Women, who had worked as homemakers or had held
jobs outside military-related industries, took jobs in aircraft manufacturing plants, munitions
plants, military uniform production factories, and so on. As the need for steel and other resources
increased, American citizens participated in rationing programs, as well as recycling and scrap
metal drives. Americans also supported the war effort with their hard-earned dollars by
purchasing Liberty bonds. Sold by the U.S. government, the bonds raised money for the war and
helped the bond purchasers feel they were doing their part for the war effort.
The U.S. entry into the war helped to get the nation's economy back on its feet following
the depression. Although just ten years earlier, jobs were very difficult to come by, there were
now jobs for nearly everyone who wanted one. With the creation of 17 million new jobs during
the war, workers were afforded the opportunity to pay off old debts, as well as to begin saving
some of their earnings.
Not all Americans remaining at home gained favorably from the war. Fearing that Japan
might invade the West Coast of the United States, the government rounded up thousands of
Japanese Americans who lived on the West Coast, and confined them to internment camps. By
1948 when the internment program ended, tens of thousands of Japanese had suffered as
internees. In addition, German Americans, Italian Americans, Hungarians, Romanians and
Bulgarians were also interned.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. After the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the Second World War came to an
end. The war cost the lives of more than 330,000 American soldiers. Many more were
permanently injured or maimed.
The widespread prosperity of the 1920s ended abruptly with the stock market crash in
October 1929 and the great economic depression that followed. The depression threatened
people's jobs, savings, and even their homes and farms. At the depths of the depression, over
one-quarter of the American workforce was out of work. For many Americans, these were hard
times.
The New Deal, as the first two terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were
called, became a time of hope and optimism. Although the economic depression continued
throughout the New Deal era, the darkest hours of despair seemed to have passed. In part, this
was the result of FDR himself. In his first inaugural address, FDR asserted his "firm belief that
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." As FDR
provided leadership, most Americans placed great confidence in him.
The economic troubles of the 1930s were worldwide in scope and effect. Economic
instability led to political instability in many parts of the world. Political chaos, in turn, gave rise
to dictatorial regimes such as Adolf Hitler's in Germany and the military's in Japan. (Totalitarian
regimes in the Soviet Union and Italy predated the depression.) These regimes pushed the world
ever-closer to war in the 1930s. When world war finally broke out in both Europe and Asia, the
United States tried to avoid being drawn into the conflict. But so powerful and influential a
nation as the United States could scarcely avoid involvement for long.
When Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941,
the United States found itself in the war it had sought to avoid for more than two years.
Mobilizing the economy for world war finally cured the depression. Millions of men and women
joined the armed forces, and even larger numbers went to work in well-paying defense jobs.
World War Two affected the world and the United States profoundly; it continues to influence us
even today.
Americans React to the Great Depression
The Great Depression began in 1929 when, in a period of ten weeks, stocks on the New
York Stock Exchange lost 50 percent of their value. As stocks continued to fall during the early
1930s, businesses failed, and unemployment rose dramatically. By 1932, one of every four
workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans
destitute. With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes. The poor
congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the
nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in
futile search of jobs. Although few starved, hunger and malnutrition affected many.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most
productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had
occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand
why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street
speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily
in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the
nation.
