Photos of the Great Depression
Photos of the Great Depression
Donald Stephens
American History II
Instructor John Cooney
The Great Depression started in 1929 after the crash of the stock market in October of that year. What sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out investors lasted for ten years until 1939. Many companies closed and laid off workers, at its lowest point in 1933 around 15 million American workers were unemployed and half of the American banks have failed. This essay will describe the photos in the essay by Uta Bayer.
When looking at the photos in the essay the first thing that comes to mind are the faces. Not a single person has a smile on their face, the faces you see show a sign of stress and worry. These faces worry about where the next meal will come from, or who will hire them. Many companies laid off millions of workers over the ten years of the Great Depression leaving many families without a source on income. The pictures of the children show hunger on their faces when they should be joyful. Many children of that period would be found standing outside of soup kitchens and on the streets looking for their next meal.
Looking through the photos you will see many of the homes or lack of homes of the people of the Great Depression. Many lived on the streets, the few that did have home were not homes but poorly built shelters. Many Americans lost their homes during the Great Depression and were forced to live on the streets or in camps. The camps were not much but did provide little shelter in the way of tents and tarps for the families to stay out of the elements of the weather. The families that did have houses were not better off, the houses were merely just shacks that were falling apart. Many of these homes were built with scraps that were found in the streets, many of these homes most likely did not have any source of heat and leaked. Some of the photos you can see actual houses on farms that are distressed and falling apart without any plants growing in ...
