The Great Depression

Bank Fails

October 29,1929

  My husband and I went down to the bank yesterday to retrieve our money for the house and our farm. We were told we couldn’t get it because the stock market crashed yesterday leading many banks to close and our bank happened to be one of them. Without the money we will not be able to get the house and we are liable to get our farm taken and sold. The farm is where we made most of our money from we sold fruits and vegetables. Now we have to find another way to raise the money for the house and farm. we were gonna go and buy more seeds but now we cant we have to save all our money or start spending less. We have no money and no way to get none were are at risk of loosing our house and everything we owned. we are going down to the bank tomorrow to see if they can at least give us some money to put towards it but were not getting our hopes up. Maybe if we would’ve kept some money home and some in a bank or put money in different banks we would’ve still had money but we didn’t and we lost all of our money as a result.

jane udith

Dust bowl

April 7, 1939

Today is Friday were suppose to be expecting good weather but every since we started having dust storms we don’t. Daddy said we started getting sandstorms because of wheat which was the main crop was always planted and they planted to much causing the topsoil to be lose, plus it was really windy and the drought just added to it.  it can be sunny one minute then the sky will be filled with very dark clouds the next. We don’t go out much because of it. I have a little sister named Anna’lee she’s three years old and she’s really sick momma says its because of dust pneumonia. dust pneumonia is a very serious lung infection because of it my sister has difficulty breathing, she’s always coughing and she has chest pains .it’s the same thing that killed my two year old brother about two weeks ago.Sand is everywhere its in our beds, floor, cupboards, chairs, and even food wherever you can imagine and our house doesn’t even stay clean were always cleaning because of sand we have to wear masks even when we are in our house because there’s a lot of dust and to prevent dust pneumonia the doctor is suppose to be coming over today to check on my little sister but with another dust storm about to happen I don’t think he can .With every passing day my sister is getting worser and worser and with the doctor not coming over as much she’s most likely going to die its gotten so bad that she cant even sit up in bed. The doctor doesn’t even have sympathy we cant afford the medicine so he just comes to her and check her then leave I’m really hoping for a miracle one this storm will stop and two we would be able to afford medicine before the worst happens.

Beatrice green  

Hoovervilles

May 1,1936

It’s sad of the many people who get evicted out of their homes and have to find shelter under bridges, In culverts or on vacant public land where they built crude shacks It’s sad because I’m one of those people. it was a normal Tuesday my family and I were sitting around and talking when we heard a knock on the door he said that we were behind in our payments and if all of it didn’t get paid we would’ve gotten evicted he said we had a week and a week only with my dad being unemployed and my mom never had a job we were stuck it was even bad that we were under depression and we couldn’t go to the bank because all of them were closed we had no money we were broke and the little money we had went towards groceries my dad went around the neighbor hood asking friends and neighbors for money and could we move in which they replied no to both so we packed our backs we couldn’t take much because we didn’t have nowhere to live so weren’t sure where we were going to have a place to stay the night before the eviction we slept in our beds for the last time ate a good supper for the last time and said goodbye to the house we came to know and love the day of we started are long trek we didn’t have a car and if we did it wouldn’t made much difference if we didn’t have gas money so we grabbed what we could’ve carry and begun our journey while we were walking we saw what looked like little deserted houses we knocked on the door and surprisingly someone came to it they said welcome too hoovervilles we replied is there a place to stay he showed us a shack and we putted our stuff in it wasn’t like the home we lived in didn’t have much room but we made it work and  it was better than staying and sleeping outside.

Grace Thompson

Fireside Chats

March 12,1939

After every church service mamma prepares supper and we sit around and listen to the radio this is a normal every Sunday thing. But wasn’t normal was when president Roosevelt started speaking mama turned up the volume and we all gathered around. president Roosevelt said that that he was gonna make things better and with him being president the depression would go away, also people were gonna get more jobs and the banks would reopen. I have to admit that was the best news I heard an ages we started listening to the radio more often just to hear the president talk it was like he was one of us and he understood what we were going through he said everything we wanted to hear .He started letting us write him he wanted to know what was going on in our lives and how we were. We started noticing these changes two months later just like he promised there were more jobs dad got one and mom even got one and the banks reopened all of them and soon we had enough money to get more food for the house. Every Sunday he would speak to us telling us what was going on and what he was doing to stop it and somehow his plan always worked and it  went away without president Roosevelt we would probably still be in depression and wouldn’t know what to do even with the depression almost over he still let us write him and tell him what’s going on. thank you Mr. president

David Smith