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It is Women’s History Month. One thing that is absent from the financial discussions of the past is how did women cope? I think of that time with images of flappers dancing, bread lines and hundreds of men on Wall Street looking solemn. Yet there were women in America in 1929.
They are invisible on a surface level but our great-grandmothers and grandmother do have information for their children’s children.
How Did Folks Know What Was Happening?
Well it was hard to hide the fact that 25% of the population was unemployed or displaced. Between the environmental problems of The Dust Bowl and the failure of at least 4,000 or more banks word got around. What jobs there were paid low wages. Some business exploited workers by working them excessive hours.
In 1929 there was newspapers, radio and movies, President Roosevelt made use of both radio and the newsreels to convey his messages. You can listen to him explain in 1933 what the government was doing about the banking crisis or watch a 1933 newsreel video about moving forward toward fairer wages and labor.
I have to be honest here, there was a lot of propaganda swinging both ways in most public media, the journalistic ethics thing had not fully kicked in yet. The citizens at the time would have behaved as we did. Many ignored the warnings or thought it was partisanship at best. Some stood by their current President, Herbert Hoover, who expressed Republican beliefs of capitalism, meaning that government should not be involved in the process of commerce any more than necessary.
Perhaps Herbert got a partially bum rap. He felt that charities and the private sector should have step in to assist Americans. Some did, most did nothing or could not handle the amount of people needing assistance. Hoover did act and implemented assistance programs to help farmers, businesses and public works projects; the same as Roosevelt. There were limits to what he felt he could do. He honored his beliefs but at what cost?
In 2009 we no longer have movie newsreels but 24 hour TV news networks, the Internet and social media. Yes there is radio but it is no longer a unifying source of information. What has remained the same is only when the crisis came knocking on an American’s specific door did most Americans paid attention and start to ask questions. What has also stayed the same is the consistent carping on the role of government to aid or impede the recovery process. Well enough about the men folk.
How Did Women Adapt and Cope 1929?
According to the U.S. Census in 1920 there were 123,202,624 people in the country. The earnings of the average American were low to begin with and most were just making it before the depression. In 1935 the majority of Americans made between $250 and $2,500 a year. They weren’t big spenders. By necessity most Americans were already frugal. They were now being joined by portions of the former middle class. People had to be resourceful or go hungry.
If you were already broke or poor the depression made living more difficult but you probably had the basic skills to handle the situation. David Griner’s great aunt keep a daily diary of her life as a teenager during the depression. He has transferred it into a Twitter feed. Genny Spencer seemed to have lived a normal life on the farm. Writer Errol Ury has a page on his website of young people who did and did not survive the Great Depression easily. There is a collection of photographs and historical text about how rough the road and rails were for teens.
At the Norfolk Women’s Oral History Project you can read an interview of a “Senior Citizen” who speaks honestly of what was really going on in her life at the time.
Interviewer: Umm -- What kind of clubs or social gatherings did you go to?
Senior Citizen: None. No. No. Well, I'll tell you. My first husband was very active in the Republican Party and he participated in things like that. But when President Roosevelt was running, I think the first time. No, that's right. Because it was in '32. He wanted me - Mrs. Roosevelt was coming to a place not to far from where we lived. So, he wanted me to meet her. And I did. And she
