Working women at first lost their jobs at a faster rate than men In the early years of the Depression many employers including the federal government tried to spread what employment they had to heads of households That meant firing any married woman identified as a familys sec ID: 573638
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“. . . Working women at first lost their jobs at a faster rate than men. In the early years of the Depression, many employers, including the federal government, tried to spread what employment they had to heads of households. That meant firing any married woman identified as a family’s “secondary” wage-earner... The teaching profession, however, in which women were highly concentrated and indeed constituted a hefty majority of employees, suffered pay cuts but only minimal job losses.”Source: David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear, Oxford University Press Slide2
"I left Oklahoma in 1925 and went to Oroville [California]. That's where them three girls' dad [Cleo] died, in Oroville, 1931. And I was 28 years old [in 1931], and I had five kids and that one [the baby in this photo, Norma] was on the road. She never even saw her daddy. She was born after he died. It was very
hard… I picked cotton in Firebaugh, when that girl there was about two years old, I picked cotton in Firebaugh for 50-cents a hundred. …We just existed! Anyway, we lived. We survived, let's put it that way. I walked from what they called a Hoover camp
…and
worked at a penny a dish down there for 50-cents a day and the leftovers. Yeah, they give me what was leftover to take home with me. Sometimes, I'd carry home two water buckets full. …I started to cook dinner for my kids, and all the little kids around the camp came in. 'Can I have a bite? Can I have a bite?' And they was hungry, them people was…”Migrant Mother. California Feb. 1936. photo Dorothea Lange, LOC.
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“. . . Children were reported so famished they were chewing up their own hands. Miners tried to plant vegetables, but they were often so hungry that they ate them before they were ripe. On her first trip to the mountains, Eleanor Roosevelt [the first lady—the wife of President Franklin Roosevelt] saw a little boy trying to hide his pet rabbit. “He thinks we are not going to eat it,” his sister told her, “but we are.” … Mountain people, with no means to leave their homes, sometimes had to burn their last chairs and tables to keep warm. A teacher in a mountain school told a little girl who looked sick but said she was hungry to go home and eat something. “I can’t,” the youngster said. “It’s my sister’s turn to eat.” In Chicago, teachers were ordered to ask what a child had had to eat before punishing him. Many of them were getting nothing but potatoes, a diet that kept their weight up, but left them lacking energy, crotchety [cranky], and sleepy. . .
.”
Source: Caroline Bird, The Invisible Scar, David McKay Company Slide4
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A Garment Worker in Harlem : … They ain never give me a chance t' wuk on 'me machines. Why? 'Cuz they keeps me fer
th' laborin' a the wuk. An' why? 'Cuz I know as well as you becuz a my culla. I ain
' never got a half chance t' make some decent dough. . . . I know I'm worth more. I knows every job on my finger tips an' I even shows others how t' do the job… No, mam; you knows this ain
' fair t' us but
whats
y'
gonna
do, huh?
Somethin's gotta be done--I knows that. This here's discrimination t' us cullud people. We gotta do ev'ry thin' an' get paid least. We knows th' job as well as any an 'me but they don' give us a chance t' do th' same wuk. Source: “American Life Stories” Manuscripts from the Federal Writer’s Project 1936-1940 (Library of Congress)Slide5
Americans wait in line in front of a
soupkitchen.
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A
breadline in Times Square, New York City
A house in a
shantytown
or
HovervilleSlide6
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The Depression changed the family in dramatic ways. Many couples delayed marriage - the divorce rate dropped sharply (it was too expensive to pay the legal fees and support two households); and birth rates dropped below the replacement level for the first time in American history. Families suffered a dramatic loss of income… This put a great deal of stress on families. Some reacted by pulling together, making due with what they had, and turning to family and friends for help… Other families did not fare as well, and ended up failing apart.Traditional roles within the family changed during the 1930s. Men finding themselves out of work now had to rely on their wives and children in some cases to help make ends meet. Many did not take this loss of power as the primary decision maker and breadwinner very well. Many stopped looking for work, paralyzed by their bleak (small) chances and lack of self-respect. Some became so frustrated that they just walked out on their families completely. A 1940 survey revealed that 1.5 million married women had been abandoned by their husbands.
Allen, Frederick Lewis, Since Yesterday: The 1930's in America (1940);
Leuchtenburg, William, Franklin D. Roosevelt and The New Deal (1963).Slide8
“I was not able to finish my education because of the problems. I was forced to live in various places with my older sisters.”
Source:
Creola
Steward, Denmark, S.C.
The Times and Democrat: Reflections
in Time
. Hughes, Cathy C., ed. Orangeburg, SC. pg.34.
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