State Historical Society of Iowa
The United States had experienced several major economic swings before the Great Depression in the 1930s. During World War I, the U.S. government had vigorously encouraged farmers to expand crop and livestock outputs to feed the army and U.S. allies in Europe. They guaranteed high prices and appealed to the farmers' patriotism through slogans like "Food Will Win the War." Farmers borrowed to buy new machinery to replace the labor lost by sons and hired hands drafted into the military.
In 1920, with the war over and the demand for farm goods decreasing, the U.S. government with little warning announced that it was ending price supports. The farmers, however, continued to produce at near record levels creating surplus commodities that sent prices plummeting. Until then, land prices had been rising rapidly as farmers and non-farmers saw buying farms as a good investment. With the collapse of farm prices, the land bubble burst, often dropping the market value of the land well below what the investor owed on it. The post-war depression did not start with the Stock Market Crash of 1929. For the Midwest, it started in 1921, and farmers and the small towns that depended on the land were hit hard.
In the 1920s, only slightly less than half of the U.S. population lived on farms. When farmers were not making money, they could not buy the products that factories were making. When factories couldn't sell their products, they laid off their workers. The workers could not buy the factory output either, meaning more lay-offs, and the country fell into a downward spiral.
However, not everyone saw the pattern emerging. Many thought that because the stock market had been on a sustained upswing, it was a good place to invest money. When it became obvious that the price of stocks far outpaced their productive capacity, investors lost confidence and began selling before prices dropped further. Panic ensued, and the market dropped sharply. With factories closing and banks failing, unemployment continued to rise. Without the safety nets of today like Social Security, many families found themselves without income, losing their homes and facing poverty. The situation during the 1920s was bad; it got much worse in the 1930s.
Farm families were often better suited to weather hard times than town residents. Farmers could grow their own food in large gardens and raise livestock to provide meat. Chickens supplied both meat and eggs, while dairy cows produced milk and cream. Many women had sewing skills and began producing much of their family's clothing. Wherever they could, families cut down on expenses. A major problem was taxes, which had to be paid in cash. Families that could not pay taxes sometimes lost their homes and farms. The state and governments slashed costs wherever they could. Schools cut teachers' salaries. Many people remember that while they had little money, they didn't feel humiliated because everyone around them also was poor.
The federal government began to provide relief to offset the impact of the Depression. Iowan Henry Wallace, a corn scientist and farm journal editor, was named secretary of agriculture. He saw that low prices were brought about by surplus production. The federal government adopted a policy that would guarantee farmers a higher-than-market price for their crops and livestock if they would reduce their production. The Agricultural Adjustment Act began sending much needed checks to farmers who would sign up for the system, and the money was a great stimulant to the economy. It saved many a farm from foreclosure.
The environment also seemed hostile to the farmers during the 1930s. The winters of 1934 and 1936 were especially long and cold. The summer of 1936 saw one of the worst droughts ever recorded and crops dried up in the fields. Livestock died for lack of food and water.
West of Iowa, on the Great Plains, lands that could no longer sustain the grasses that held the soil in place began to lose topsoil to the strong hot winds. So much dust was picked up that soon great dark clouds, not of rain but of soil particles, began to drift eastward. Iowa was never hit as hard by the Dust Bowl as Kansas and Oklahoma, but the clouds of dust that blocked out the sun and found their way through any cracks in the house around windows or doors left a lasting impression on those who lived through them.
Times were tough through the entire decade of the 1930s. While government programs helped, it was the start of World War II and the renewed demand for manufactured goods and farm products that lifted the United States out of the worst economic period in its history. It was, however, at a heartbreaking cost in American lives.
| Great Depression and the Dust Bowl Source Set Teaching Guide |
| Printable Image and Document Guide |
A crowd of people standing outside of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after the stock market crash of 1929. It was on "Black Tuesday," October 29, 1929, that investors traded around 16 million shares on the NYSE in a single day that resulted ...
This is an interview by W.W. Tarpley, who was a finance officer in the U.S. Treasury, of Raymond Tarver. Tarver gives his personal account of the effects of the closing of the bank he worked in during the Great Depression.
Interview with George Mehales by R.V. Williams. Through this oral history interview, George shares stories of his life including what happened to him during the stock market crash of October 1929.
All parts of the nation were faced with the worst economic depression in history in 1929. Iowans suffered along with the rest of the nation. This video from Iowa Public Television explains causes and effects of the stock market crash of 1929.
The Fall 1978 edition of The Goldfinch was entirely devoted to The Great Depression. In the opening article, Iowa historians chronicle how overproduction by farmers and factories, a carry-over from World War I, and increased land prices led to a serious c...
This edition of The Goldfinch highlights many different work situations in Iowa, with one article focusing on job challenges during the Great Depression.
Many factors led to the Dust Bowl. An increased demand for wheat during World War I, the development of new mechanized farm machinery along with falling wheat prices in the 1920s, led to millions of acres of native grassland being replaced by heavily disk...
This young man in overalls is removing drifts of soil from the highways near Guymon, Oklahoma. These piles of soil blocked roadways throughout the area during the Dust Bowl.
This photograph shows a Dust Bowl farmer raising his fence to keep it from being buried under drifting sand in Cimarron County, Oklahoma.
Packing winds of 60 miles per hour, the loose topsoil was scooped up and mounded into clouds of dust hundreds of feet high. People hurried home, because being caught outside could mean suffocation and death. The dust and darkness stopped all forms of tran...
During the Great Depression, a series of droughts combined with non-sustainable agricultural practices led to devastating dust storms, famine, diseases and deaths related to breathing dust. This caused the largest migration in American history.
A federal study found that the migrants were spending all they earned on gasoline and housing, with nothing left to feed themselves or their children. The Roosevelt administration answered this by setting up camps to house migrants. The large number of wo...
This interview of migrant worker Imogene Chapin, conducted by Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin, addressed what life was like in the Arvin Farm Security Administration (FSA) Camp. During the Great Depression, a series of droughts combined with non-sustain...
This interview with Flora Robertson was conducted by ethnographers Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin. Robertson talks about the drought, grasshoppers and dust storms she experienced in Oklahoma. She also recites her poem about migrating from Oklahoma to C...
This photograph is an example of self-resettlement in California. This Oklahoma farm family is waiting along a highway between Blythe and Indio. Forced by the drought of 1936 to abandon their farm, they set out with their children to drive to California. ...
This photograph shows a dispossessed Arkansas farmer who is working on a small shack for his family to live in. These people resettled themselves at the dump outside of Bakersfield, California.
This photograph shows a farmer pumping water from a well to his parched fields in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. One possible solution to the dust problem during this time period in America is irrigation.
The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was created in 1935 as an effort to overcome poverty in rural areas. Under the Department of Agriculture, the FSA helped with rural rehabilitation, farm loans and subsistence homestead programs. This photograph shows...
This 1931 letter is from a girl, Martha Fast, to First Lady Lou Henry Hoover. In the letter, Martha, who is writing from California, asks for clothing from the First Lady as says she has to wear the same dress every day because of the poverty her family i...
This document is the response letter from First Lady Lou Henry Hoover's secretary to Martha Fast. Fast, a young girl in California, wrote a letter to Hoover a few days earlier asking for clothes
This photograph shows workmen in the Norris Dam powerhouse as they are installing a generator. The Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933 was created during the Great Depression to hire people to build dams and power plants. The Tennessee Valley Authority...
The Reforestation Relief Act, gave jobs to 250,000 young men in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). This swimming pool in the photograph was created by a CCC dam in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania.
Participants in the National Youth Administration work project program mixing cement for sidewalk repair.
Many people living in rural areas during the Great Depression had better access to a variety of foods because they grew their own fruits and vegetables and canned them so that they would have them during the winter months. Women often learned this skill o...
Mr. Hills and his wife tend to young vegetables growing in their large garden. Living in a rural area provided people with more land and the opportunity to grow their own food.
Many people bought baking flour in fifty-pound sacks. Once the flour was used up, resourceful people found other uses for the cloth sacks.
This photograph by Dorothea Lange is part of a well-known collection taken of Florence Thompson with several of her children during the Dust Bowl. Mrs. Thompson is 32 years old and has seven children. The photo collection, known as the "Migrant Mothe...
This mother had given birth to the baby on the bed while she had an advanced infection. The baby, at time picture was taken, was ten days old. The baby slept in the same bed with the mother and she was caring for both it and the small child by her side.
Mother and baby sit on a wooden porch swing of their home in Paulina, Louisiana. Two other young children sit nearby.
Soup kitchens popped up in cities all over America, including Dubuque, Iowa, during the Great Depression. People in need of food assistance would sometimes wait a long time in line to get a bowl of soup to eat at the soup kitchen or take soup home to shar...
This Library of Congress collection was created by Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin, both ethnographers, who provide a glimpse into the everyday life and cultural expression of people living through a particularly difficult period of American history, the Great Depression and Dust Bowl era. This collection features photos, audio and documents of their work.
This guide offers historical context, teaching suggestions, links to online resources and more about the Dust Bowl era in America.
Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" photographs of Florence Thompson and her children have become an icon of the Great Depression. This resource provides additional background information about Lange's collection.
This webpage provides an overview of special collections held by the Library of Congress and links to other resources.
There are over 10 videos available at history.com that focuses on different aspects of the Great Depression. Videos and additional resources include a look at such topics as the Stock Market Crash of 1929, The Roaring '20s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, among many others.
This resource from the Library of Congress takes a look at July 8, 1932 — the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell to its lowest point during the Great Depression. It also provides information about the Dust Bowl and life in America after the stock market crashed.
This children's book takes place in 1932 Akron, Ohio, where a 13-year-old Rudy wants to help his parents during the Great Depression but doesn't know where to turn. Rudy learns of other boys are heading west to seek their fortunes, and he hops a train to live the hobo life while he "rides the rails" to California.
Leah's Pony by Elizabeth Friedrich:This picture book is set during the Dust Bowl and shows how Leah and her family overcome their impoverished situation through a penny auction.
Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp by Jerry StanleyThis book, which is full of photographs from the Dust Bowl era, tells the true story that took place at the emergency farm-labor camp immortalized in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
The Lucky Star by Judy YoungThis children's book from the "Tales of Young Americans" series is set in 1933, as millions of Americans are out of work. The story is about a young girl named Ruth who is dealing with struggles that her family encounters during the Great Depression.
Listed below are the Iowa Core Social Studies content anchor standards that are best reflected in this source set. The content standards applied to this set are elementary-age level and encompass the key disciplines that make up social studies for fourth-grade students.
| No. | Standard Description |
| SS.4.7. | Explain causes of conflict or collaboration among different social groups. |
| SS.4.9. | Explain how enforcement of a specific ruling or law changed society. |
| SS.4.11. | Describe how scarcity requires a person to make a choice and identify costs associated with that choice. |
| SS.4.12. | Using historical and/or local examples, explain how competition has influenced the production of goods and services. |
| SS.4.13. | Compare and contrast different ways that the government interacts with the economy. |
| SS.4.14. | Explain the reasons why the costs of goods and services rise and fall. |
| SS.4.15. | Identify factors that can influence people's different spending and saving choices. (21st Century Skills) |
| SS.4.17. | Create a geographic representation to illustrate how the natural resources in an area affect the decisions people make. |
| SS.4.18 | Describe how environmental and cultural characteristics influence population distribution in specific places or regions. |
