21 vintage photos show how desperate and desolate America looked during the Great Depression
· Business Insider
AP Photo
- The Great Depression was the worst economic crisis in US history, with unemployment reaching 25%.
- When the pandemic hit in 2020, Americans hadn't felt that level of economic tragedy in a century.
- These photos reveal what life looked like in the bleak 1930s after the stock market crashed.
During the Great Depression, the most tragic economic collapse in US history, more than 15 million Americans were left jobless and desperate for an income.
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By 1932, nearly one in four Americans was out of a job, and by 1933, unemployment levels reached an estimated 25%.
For comparison, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the US unemployment rate spiked to 14.7% in April 2020.
President Donald Trump's tariff policies and military operations have prompted concerns about another possible period of economic uncertainty already marked by rising prices and a volatile stock market.
These photos reveal how desolate the country looked during the Great Depression, when food and job lines stretched for blocks.
The Great Depression was the worst economic tragedy in American history.A "soup kitchen" in Chicago, opened for the hungry and homeless by gangster Al Capone during the Depression in 1930.Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images
The crisis resulted in skyrocketing rates of unemployment, hunger, and desperation.
Following a period of booming prosperity in the 1920s, the Great Depression began when the US stock market crashed in 1929.People gather on the sub-treasury building steps across from the New York Stock Exchange in New York on "Black Thursday," Oct. 24, 1929.AP
Known as Black Thursday, the 1929 crash was attributed in part to a vast imbalance of wealth between the rich and poor, a fervent production of goods, little to no wage gains, an increase in personal debt, and government mismanagement.
Over the course of the decade, more than 15 million Americans lost their jobs.Robley D. Stevens, 30-year-old victim of the Depression, wears a sign that reads: "I am for sale. I must have work or starve," while standing on a sidewalk in Baltimore, Md., in Aug. 1931.AP
The effects of the Great Depression could be felt into the early 1940s.
The unemployment rate jumped at a shocking rate.This aerial view shows a long line of unemployed people, numbering about 5,000, waiting outside the State Labor Bureau building, which houses the State Temporary Employment Relief administration, in New York City, Nov. 24, 1933.AP
From 1929 to 1930, unemployment rose from fewer than 3 million to 4 million, according to figures cited by the University of Houston's Digital History archive. In 1931, it doubled to 8 million, and by 1932, unemployment levels reached a staggering 12.5 million.
By 1932, one out of every four US workers was unemployed.Several vagrants ride a freight car hanging over the side while others lay in the shade behind them during the Great Depression.Getty Images
Thousands of Americans lost their homes, and hundreds of thousands attempted to travel through the country on foot or by boxcar to find work, according to the Library of Congress.
Those who were fortunate enough to remain working often suffered large pay cuts and decreased hours.Hunger marchers from various sections of Massachusetts march through Lancaster, April 26, 1932.AP
By 1932, 75% of all remaining workers were on a part-time schedule, according to the University of Houston's Digital History archive.
Families who were unable to pay rent were frequently evicted from their homes.Evicted sharecroppers and their possessions along Highway 60 in New Madrid, Missouri, during the DepressionArthur Rothstein/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
People without homes looking for work on public trains were kicked to the curb.
The struggle for money became so desperate that families across the country often lived in crowded shacks.Scene of a group of men and a boy standing outside a shack in a shantytown in the 1930s.American Stock/Getty Images
Some families inhabited caves or sewer pipes out of desperation.
During the winters of 1932 and 1933, an estimated 1.2 million Americans were homeless.A war veteran sleeps on the sidewalk as his wife sits wrapped in blankets in Washington D.C. on July 29, 1932 during the Great Depression.AP
The population of the US at that time was about 125 million, according to the US Census Bureau.
In an effort to save money, families planted their own gardens, canned foods, bought old bread, sought out soup kitchens, and stopped buying common items like milk.The line up for free soup distributed by the Salvation Army Soup Kitchen, which was warmly welcomed when it visited Gateshead, 30th January 1934.Staff/Mirrorpix/Getty Images
Many also sacrificed medical and dental care because they couldn't afford it.
Food banks became commonplace.In this 1932 file photo, long line of jobless and homeless men wait outside to get free dinner at New York's municipal lodging house during the Great Depression.AP
Lines for food ration programs and free meals exploded across the country.
At the beginning of the Depression, President Herbert Hoover largely dismissed the stock market crash as a "passing incident in our national lives."US President Herbert Hoover appeals to the nation as he speaks during a conference of welfare and relief mobilization in Washington, D.C., Sept. 15, 1932.AP
Hoover did not believe in offering federal aid to the impoverished or using the power of the federal government to manage prices or currency, according to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Americans grew angry, and Hoover became widely blamed for the economic turmoil.A Hooverville in Seattle, Washington.Getty Images
Impoverished people living in shantytowns across the country started referring to them as "Hoovervilles," and empty pockets turned inside out were known as "Hoover flags."
Desperate Americans threatened with hunger and starvation began organizing marches and labor riots.Over 10,000 unemployed people join in a "hunger march" as they mass at the Los Angeles Plaza Historic District to listen to the exhortations of Communist speakers, in Los Angeles, Calif., Oct. 4, 1933.AP
In 1932, 20,000 veterans of World War I marched to the Capitol to demand the payment of bonuses that they were scheduled to receive in 1945, according to the Library of Congress. The bill to do so did not pass in Congress.
The following year, 10,000 unemployed people joined a "hunger march" in Los Angeles.
The Depression also had a negative impact on family life as many couples delayed their marriages or postponed having children.A poor mother of seven children is photographed in California.Library of Congress
Throughout the decade, separation rates grew. By 1940, there were 1.5 million American women living apart from their husbands, according to the University of Houston's Digital History archive.
Children were adversely affected, as well.