The Great Depression was a period of economic and social devastation that started in the US with the Wall Street stock exchange collapse on October 29th, 1929, the day that has come to be well-known as Black Tuesday.
The great depression facts, record that these poorest and hardest of times which were to follow, would last for many years, until the beginning of the Second World War, at which time many nations began pouring huge sums of money into the new war driven economy, eventually bringing the unprecedented worldwide slump to a end.
What must be remembered certainly is that in the days, there’s no social support. When you’re penniless and hungry, there’s nowhere or no-one to turn to. It’s in such circumstances as these that one of the most shocking depression statistics emerged, that 50% of all children did not have adequate food, shelter, clothing, or medical care.
For most people, too poor to put food on the table, the only recourse was the soup kitchen, where people queued all day long for a bowl on meager, thin, watery soup. People were reduced to scavenging amongst the rubbish bins for something, anything to eat.
Industry ground to a standstill, almost. Since people did not have money, they could not afford to purchase anything. In the absence of income from sales, companies have been forced to lay off workers and, finally, go into liquidation.
It’s African-Americans that were always first to lose their livelihoods. For those who have had the chance to stay in work, wages have been dreadfully low. Depression pictures reveal that the average wage for a farm worker was $216 per year, whilst a doctor earned $3822.29.
The president at the beginning of the great depression was Herbert Hoover and as it can now be imagined, he was not a popular man, being considered by many for doing too little and not managing to avert the crisis.
Hoover’s name was taken and used to nickname several consequences of the time like the settlements or shanty towns that sprang up everywhere being called “Hoovervilles”; or the soup “cocktail” that starving people would make when they went into a restaurant, diverted the waitresses attention, made a soup from whatever was left on the table tops (water, tomato sauce, salt, pepper) and drink it while her attention was still diverted, a concoction that came to be known as “Hoover Soup”. A pitiful but true great depression fact.
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