The great depression... (unemployed, wages, generation, school)

[TheHurricaneKid]

How did people react to the onslaught of so many people depending on government programs and charity?
Why did those people do a few different things such as community gardening and such?
Aside from the ww2 BOOM, were there any other signs of workers developing skills , emerging technologies to put people to work, etc.

What were the various complaints from the conservatives and liberals at that time?

[ovcatto]

Originally Posted by TheHurricaneKid

How did people react to the onslaught of so many people depending on government programs and charity?

Not terribly different than today.

I was given book of the New Yorker's cartoons from the magazine's inception and those from the Great Depression its pretty funny how the attitudes on the left and the right are pretty much mirror images of today.

[TheHurricaneKid]

If it's not terribly different, why did we need the NAZIs to turn the poorest and laziest generation into the greatest generation?

[ovcatto]

Originally Posted by TheHurricaneKid

laziest generation...?

Did I get suckered into a troll thread?

[Memphis1979]

The complaint from the conservatives at the time was that they could run all of FDRs social programs better, cheaper, and with less government oversight.

The complaint before that was that conservatives weren't doing anything, lazzie faire. Hands off.

The war ended the depression, it developed technology, and destroyed the rest of the industrialized world, except for the united states. So we had everything going for us. Its why we still sit on top of the world.

[TheHurricaneKid]

Originally Posted by ovcatto

Did I get suckered into a troll thread?

No you didn't. If the political circumstances are similar to the conditions today, and if we have plenty of people calling the unemployed and welfare dependent people lazy, then surely the unemployed people depending on charity were even lazier because they were even more dependent on charity and programs back then.


So how did this seemingly unemployed and dependant generation turn into the greatest generation?

[middle-aged mom]

Massive 8 year deficit spending created and sustained the Works Progress Admin ( WPA) between 1935-1943. It put about 8 million, mostly unskilled men at low wages, even for that time. Work was primarily focused on infrastructure projects, roads, bridges, tunnels, parks, schools and more. The cost, expressed in current $, was in the range of $250 billion. The program ended due to a labor shortage as a result of war.

The WPA also employed artists to pain murals and write poetry.

The WPA was not able to employ everyone and millions relied on government assistance to survive.

Those with money and/or jobs were very vocal about government spending.

[Memphis1979]

Originally Posted by middle-aged mom

Massive 8 year deficit spending created and sustained the Works Progress Admin ( WPA) between 1935-1943. It put about 8 million, mostly unskilled men at low wages, even for that time. Work was primarily focused on infrastructure projects, roads, bridges, tunnels, parks, schools and more. The cost, expressed in current $, was in the range of $250 billion. The program ended due to a labor shortage as a result of war.

The WPA also employed artists to pain murals and write poetry.

The WPA was not able to employ everyone and millions relied on government assistance to survive.

Those with money and/or jobs were very vocal about government spending.

My grandfather, child of the depression, looked at it as giving hope. Giving a man a job, any job, was better then nothing. My family were small farmers, so they didn't need assistance, they had plenty to eat. Of course there were 16 people in a 4 room house also.

The war ended the depression, but Roosevelt kept us from falling apart, until the war began.

[squarian]

Originally Posted by middle-aged mom

Works Progress Admin

And its little brother, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which at one point or another in the 1930s employed my grandfather and two great-uncles. Similar to the WPA, but more focused on wilderness/rural projects - lots of campgrounds in the western states were laid out by CCC men, for example.

[middle-aged mom]

Originally Posted by Memphis1979

The complaint from the conservatives at the time was that they could run all of FDRs social programs better, cheaper, and with less government oversight.

The complaint before that was that conservatives weren't doing anything, lazzie faire. Hands off.

The war ended the depression, it developed technology, and destroyed the rest of the industrialized world, except for the united states. So we had everything going for us. Its why we still sit on top of the world.

There are endless similarieties between the Great Depression and Recession.
The Great Plains states were hit hard by the drought/dust bowl throughout the 30's. Millions lost their homes/farms due to this ongoing natural disaster and relatively primitive farming techniques. Many turned to migrant farming, working for starvation wages in other states.