Introduction |
Questions to Consider |
Source |
Related Links
Depression and the New Deal
(1929-1942)
Introduction
One man wrote to a newspaper in 1932, I am forty-eight; married twenty-one years; four children, three in school. For the last eight years I was employed as a Pullman conductor. Since September, 1930, they have given me seven months part-time work. Today I am an object of charity. . . . My small, weak, and frail wife and two small children are suffering and I have come to that terrible place where I could easily resort to violence in my desperation.
The figures in this chart can only begin to suggest the widespread human misery caused by mass unemployment.
Questions to Consider
- How is this chart measuring unemployment?
- The chart starts with the 1929 Stock Market Crash and ends right after the United States entered World War II. According to the chart, when was unemployment at its highest?
- Why were they being moved?
- According to the chart, when was unemployment at its lowest?
- One of the goals of the New Deal was to lower unemployment. From the information presented on this chart, does it appear to have been successful?
- What event listed on the chart did more than the New Deal to end the nation's unemployment problem? Why was it more successful?
Source
Source:
Thomas A. Bailey, David M. Kennedy, and Lizabeth Cohen.
The American Pageant, 11th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998), 818.
Related Links
- New Deal Network
A database of photographs, political cartoons, and texts from the period.
