Heartbreaking Images Of American Life During The Great Depression

Snapshots of suffering

At the beginning of the 1930s, the United States was cast into the Great Depression. Over the next decade, millions of Americans were plunged into poverty, and thanks to increasingly cheap and accessible cameras this horrendous socio-economic downturn was photographed for posterity. These pictures now provide snapshots of the lives of ordinary Americans during the unprecedented crisis, from the chaos of the Wall Street Crash to the escapism of The Wizard of Oz.

Click or scroll through our gallery and join us as we reveal the most astonishing and somber images from the Great Depression... 

1929: Disaster on Wall Street

There were few signs of impending economic disaster during the 1920s, a decade so prosperous that Americans called it the Roaring Twenties. Easy credit meant that it wasn’t just traders who could make a quick buck on the Wall Street Stock Exchange trading floor, pictured here.

Ordinary Americans with little understanding of the financial markets were caught up in the speculation, and the boom years came to an abrupt end in 1929 when rumors of an impending recession caused investors to begin selling their stocks.

1929: Black Thursday

The stock market crash began on Thursday October 24 1929, now known as Black Thursday. Stock prices plunged as panicking traders tried to sell off their stocks before they dropped further, which only pushed the going rate even lower.

The vicious cycle saw the market drop 13% on the following Monday ('Black Monday'), and another 12% on the Tuesday ('Black Tuesday'). Traders who previously made gigantic sums suddenly found themselves losing everything, like poor Walter Thornton pictured here.

1930: Minigolf takes off

Away from Wall Street, the effects of the crash took time to materialize, and life initially continued as normal. For many American families, that involved a weekend round of minigolf.

More than 30,000 minigolf courses were built during the 1930s, with prices ranging from 25 to 50 cents per round – a reasonable price, even when belt straps had to be tightened. The best players were invited to play at minigolf tournaments in stadiums like this one in Chicago.

1930: The banking crisis deepens

Squeezed by the loss of business after the Wall Street Crash, several high-profile banks were in trouble by the end of 1930 and worried customers flocked to withdraw their savings while they still could. These bank runs made the situation worse, and hundreds of banks closed their doors for good, including the American Union Bank in New York (pictured).

Little help was on hand for the unlucky Americans who couldn't get their money back and many lost their entire life savings.

c. 1930: Queuing for aid

As workers tumbled into poverty thanks to rapidly rising unemployment and, in some cases, the total loss of their savings, they were forced to rely on the state for help. Local government initiatives to feed and shelter those in need were overwhelmed by crowds of people, like this long queue of men patiently waiting for a free dinner at a municipal boarding house in New York.

1931: Soup kitchens provide a lifeline

As the government became overwhelmed with requests for aid, voluntary organizations did their best to step into the breach. Local benefactors across the country set up facilities to provide simple but nutritious fare. 

This soup kitchen served an average of 2,200 hungry Chicagoans every day – and the man who funded it was notorious gangster Al Capone, who fed the people of his city to improve his public image.

1931: The first hunger march

The occasional free meal wasn’t enough for most unemployed workers, who wanted the government to provide more support. In December 1931, 1,670 hunger marchers converged on Washington DC, having set out in four columns from Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, and St Louis.

They insisted that the government provide financial relief and insurance, but political leaders in Congress refused to meet with them and the marchers returned home no better off than when they left. 

1932: The rise of the radio

During the 1930s, the proportion of American households with radios grew from roughly 40% to 83%. Families like this one temporarily left their cares behind by tuning into the latest exploits of the Lone Ranger and the Green Hornet.

Kids enjoyed Dick Tracy and Little Orphan Annie, while sports fans listened to broadcasts of baseball and boxing, and politicians made use of the new medium to speak directly to voters.

1932: President Herbert Hoover

President Herbert Hoover failed to recognize the severity of the Depression when it first struck and he tried to keep the federal government out of direct relief efforts.

In May 1932, President Hoover finally got to his feet and promised greater state aid for poverty-stricken Americans in a news conference at the White House. It was too little, too late. Most voters had already made their minds up that Hoover was to blame for the dire state of the country.

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1932: The Bonus Army marches on Washington

In the summer of 1932, between 10,000 and 25,000 First World War veterans (estimates vary) and their families marched on Washington DC and set up camp in the capital. The demonstrators demanded the immediate pay-out of insurance bonuses earned during the war to alleviate the effects of the Depression.

These bonuses had been approved by Congress but were not yet due in full, and the Senate rejected a bill that authorized the payment. However, President Hoover couldn’t ignore the starving former servicemen right outside his gates.

1932: The Bonus Army is evicted

Embarrassed by the presence of so many campaigners and disquieted by the unrest, the government authorized the army and police to evict the demonstrators by force. General Douglas MacArthur used tanks and tear gas to remove the veterans, who did not go quietly, and at least one former soldier was killed by gunfire.

Though the demonstrators were moved on and their camp burned, the sight of former servicemen being attacked by the country they served was a political blow for Hoover.

c.1932: Hoovervilles spring up across the country

The Bonus Army camp wasn’t the only temporary settlement that arose during the Depression. Hundreds of shantytowns cropped up on the outskirts of cities as unemployed workers were evicted from their homes and built shelters out of whatever they could lay their hands on.

Named Hoovervilles after the increasingly unpopular President Hoover, the shantytowns in St Louis and Seattle (pictured here) were particularly large, with thousands of inhabitants.

1933: President Roosevelt’s inauguration

Few were surprised when Americans voted for new leadership in the 1932 Presidential Election. Herbert Hoover had presided over the biggest economic crisis in the country’s history, while his opponent, Franklin D Roosevelt, promised to tackle the Depression by increasing state aid for the poor and taking a more active role in the economy. Roosevelt’s campaign ended in a landslide win: he carried 42 of the 48 states and, as shown here, took the oath of office in March 1933.

c. 1933: The New Deal

Among President Roosevelt’s campaign promises in the 1932 election was a "new deal for the American people." During a busy first hundred days in power, Roosevelt created several new federal agencies in the hope of kickstarting the economy.

These workers for the new Civilian Conservation Corps were paid to build a road – one of a wide range of new state-run projects that also included building irrigation canals, planting trees, and constructing infrastructure in federal and state parks.

1933: Sharecropper strikes hinder production

Not every worker lost their job during the Depression, but those who remained employed were often still impacted by the crash, and some agitated for change to help them cope. Spurred on by the New Deal, employees banded together to argue for better conditions.

The Sharecroppers' Union was founded in Alabama in 1931, and in 1933 California's sharecroppers went on strike, refusing to harvest the year's valuable cotton crop. Here, picketers near Tulare watch for workers crossing the line and breaking the strike.

1934: Building California's roads

As the Depression continued, President Roosevelt pushed for more money to be spent on job creation projects, but his critics complained that the money was being wasted. These workers from the Civil Works Administration are building the Lake Merced Parkway Boulevard in San Francisco, but an inflated workforce made the road-building process inefficient and expensive.

Site managers struggled to find enough meaningful jobs and some laborers were set useless tasks like digging and refilling ditches and breaking rocks with sledgehammers.

c. 1935: Board games become big business

Board games like Scrabble and checkers (pictured) were a popular and cheap form of recreation, and they were joined in 1935 by a new smash hit: Monopoly. The irony of a game that celebrated the rich getting richer while the poor went bankrupt wasn’t lost on most players – indeed, it was originally devised as a warning about the evils of capitalism – but they enjoyed the escapism and value for money of a game that families could play over and over.

c. 1935: Soapbox racing takes off

A way for energetic kids to have fun without spending money, soapbox derbies – racing homemade karts down hills – spent the early 1930s evolving into an all-American championship sponsored by Chevrolet. Boys (girls couldn’t compete until 1971) raced in regional qualifiers like this one in Los Angeles, hoping to win a spot in the national Soap Box Derby in Akron in Ohio, first held there in 1935.

1935: Homelessness is widespread

As the Depression continued to bite, unemployed workers who were unable to pay rent found themselves cast onto the streets. Many made their way to large cities like New York (pictured) and San Francisco in search of work.

Unable to pay for even the simplest hostels, they roamed the streets and found shelter under bridges, in culverts, or camped in alleys and doorways. Some cities turned a blind eye to the homeless; others turfed them out and hoped they’d move on.

1935: Volunteers serve Thanksgiving dinner

The Volunteers of America was an organization formed to combat poverty in the 1890s, but during the Depression it was nigh impossible to cater to everybody in need. The volunteers advertised job opportunities in employment bureaus, staffed penny pantries where every item cost one cent, and ran soup kitchens to feed those who couldn’t even afford that.

The 1935 Thanksgiving dinner served to more than 3,000 homeless New Yorkers (pictured here) included 1,500 lbs of turkey and 400 pies.

1936: The Dust Bowl spells disaster for farmers

Mass westward migration over the previous century had turned millions of acres of formerly uncultivated land into vast fields of wheat and corn, but the beginning of the Depression coincided with a terrible drought, and the bare fields lacked the deep-rooted grasses that could have held the soil in place. When the winds picked up, the soil simply blew away, putting more than 35 million acres of farmland out of commission and bringing into being the so-called 'Dust Bowl.'

1936: Dust storms engulf the plains

The dust storms, nicknamed 'black blizzards' blew across the country in vast clouds, as shown here in Texas. The grubby air covered windows in New York and coated the decks of ships on the Atlantic.

President Roosevelt extended his New Deal to include tree planting and reforestation of farmland, but the Dust Bowl only began to ease when regular rainfall patterns resumed in 1939.

1936: Migrant Mother makes history

Two and a half million people were forced away from the Dust Bowl states – among them a woman called Florence Thompson who spent time at a migrant camp in Nipomo, California. It was there that famous documentary photographer Dorothea Lange spotted her huddled in a tent with her children and her anxious expression came to epitomize the Depression era.

Thompson had already left the camp by the time she became famous and was only identified in 1978 – until then, she was simply known as Migrant Mother.

1936: The rise and fall of Charles Coughlin

Franklin D. Roosevelt won four consecutive presidential elections by huge margins, but the United States wasn’t totally devoid of political debate. One of his loudest critics was Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest who split from the Democrats in 1934 and set up the National Union for Social Justice to challenge Roosevelt’s New Deal. 

His words clearly had an audience – in this image, 26,000 people attend one of his speeches in Cleveland, Ohio. Coughlin moved steadily to the right and eventually became a mouthpiece for Nazi propaganda in America.

1936: Difficult Christmases

Belts were fastened so tight that many families didn’t have cash to spare for Christmas in the 1930s, and the festive fare at this Christmas dinner in Iowa was potatoes, cabbage, and pie.

That said, some new Christmas traditions began during the Depression. In 1931, Santa Claus featured in published Coca-Cola adverts for the first time and a free storybook given away to customers at one store in 1939 introduced the world to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

1938: Stealing to survive

Crime rates rose during the Depression as desperate Americans used any means to support themselves and their families. Petty theft increased as ordinary folk took what they needed to survive, like this child stealing coal in West Virginia. Over 600,000 train passengers were caught dodging fares.

Organized crime was also on the up, and armed robbers Bonnie and Clyde embarked on a violent crime spree until they were killed by police in an ambush in Louisiana.

1938: Off to see the Wizard

Despite the Depression, the movies remained a relatively affordable form of escapism: ticket prices dropped through the decade and the percentage of people making weekly trips to the cinema never dipped below 40%. Movie-goers flocked to see a host of new films as the industry switched from silent movies to talkies, though the economic crisis still influenced what was shown on screen.

1939's The Wizard of Oz (shown here during filming) was a tale of self-reliance and survival in an unfamiliar world.

1939: Evictions are common

Under the sharecropper farming system, agricultural laborers were given a house and a plot to farm, but they then had to split their profits with their landowners. And when President Roosevelt’s New Deal offered government funds to mechanize farms, landowners responded by laying off their workers.

Tenant farmers who lost their jobs were also kicked out of their homes, like these unfortunate sharecroppers who were evicted from New Madrid in Missouri and joined hordes of displaced workers seeking new lives elsewhere.

1939: The plight of 'the Okies'

Between 1935 and 1940, a quarter of a million Oklahomans traveled 1,300 miles to California, but they didn’t get a very warm welcome. Many settled in the San Joaquin Valley in search of agricultural work, but competition for jobs was intense and many ended up in tents and shantytowns.

'Okies' soon became a derogatory term for any poor migrants making their way to California, like this family of cotton pickers walking by the side of a highway from Phoenix, Arizona to San Diego.

1942: America at war

The economy started to rebound in 1939, but still hadn't truly recovered when the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor catapulted the US into the Second World War in 1941. Suddenly the economy was gearing up for wartime, and more than 12 million young men found employment in the armed forces, with a similar number of jobs created in industry to supply the troops with weapons and ammunition. This included jobs for women, like this machinist in an aircraft factory in Texas.

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