What caused the Great Depression?Unbalanced foreign trade

overextended personal debt-easy credit

uneven distribution of income

Who was affected?

Nearly Everyone

• What is happening here?

• What do you see?

• How would you title this photo?

• What is happening here?

• What do you see?

• How would you title this photo?

What is happening here?What do you see?How would you title this photo?

What is happening here?What do you see?How would you title this photo?

• Arkansas Squatter's Shack in California during the Great Depression

Fear, Anxiety, unknowing…what is he thinking? How does he feel?

And him?

• What is happening here?

• What do you see?

• How would you title this photo?

In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I

explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no

questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had

been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children

huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so

she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular

Photography, Feb. 1960).

• Dorothea Lange (American) 1895- 1965) Migrant Mother, 1936, Photograph

Dorothea Lange (American) 1895- 1965) Migrant Mother, 1936, Photograph

What caused the Great Depression?Unbalanced foreign trade

overextended personal debt-easy credit

uneven distribution of income

Who was affected? Nearly Everyone

Hawley-Smoot Act

• an act signed into law on June 17, 1930, that raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels. Many countries retaliated with their own increased tariffs on U.S. goods, and American exports and imports plunged by more than half

Roosevelt’s First Hundred Days

• Pass legislation to get people back to work create jobs

• Calm the fears of his fellow Americans

“So first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance” FDR’s 1933 Inaugural Speech

• provided jobs for single men 18-25 housed in camps across the U.S.

promoted cooperation among businesses

National Recovery Act

• Work Progress – WPA – Posters• - a massive public works program

employing artists, teachers , writers, etc…

<PWA. Before it became WPA>

Grant Wood

Stone City

AmericanGothic

• FDR signing the Social Security Admn. Legislation into Law – a pension system for retired workers

• Labor woes – striking workers during the Great Depression. Wagner Act – ensured workers’ right to form unions and bargain collectively

United States v. Butler

• The Court found the Act unconstitutional because it attempted to regulate and control agricultural production, an arena reserved to the states

Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States

• A unanimous Court found this to be an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority.

Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan,

• The ruling was the first of several which overturned key elements of the Administration's New Deal legislative program

• ''nine old men'' of the Supreme Court, and the famous ''switch in time that saved nine.''

''pack'' the court-that is, to add one new justice for each one over 70, on the flimsy excuse that the nine justices were overworked (a plan made possible by the fact that the Constitution does not specify how many justices the court should have).

Rural Electrification

Norris Dam

“Modern Conveniences”

the stove top/oven