The Great Depression

Find archive articles on the Great Depression from the 1930’s. Our site has great information from old magazine and newspaper articles on the Great Depression.

Farmers in Flight
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

A report from the regional directors of the Resettlement Administration (an arm of the FDR’s Department of Agriculture) stated that:


15,000 farmers have moved out of the Dakotas, Western Kansas and Eastern Montana, leaving soil which because a aridity or exhaustion could not yield any crop… [Having moved to the states of the Pacific Northwestern] Some of them are squatting in shacks and makeshift dwellings made of tree branches, stray boards [and] strips of tin.

Social Washington During the Depression
(Literary Digest, 1937)

Washington Society, long shackled, kicked the lid off last week, swung into the most dazzling season it has had since the Depression spawned bread lines, and knocked the wealthy back on their heels.

Money is spinning again; hostesses are plotting major campaigns; diamonds and pearls are coming out for renewed display; caviar and terrapin reign supreme once more…


Click here to read about American high society during the Depression years.

I936 Saw A Wee-Bit of Prosperity
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

This article sums up the income data that was collected by the U.S. Department of Commerce and published in June of 1937. The report stated that

The national income increased in 1936 by a larger amount, absolutely and relatively, than in 1935. Income produced rose to 63.8 billion dollars, an increase of 8.8 billion dollars, an increase over the 1935 total.


A chart has been provided.


Click here to read about the economic disaster that 1937 was

False Hope for 1937
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Perhaps it was the practice of magazine editors during the Great Depression to instruct their reporters to find hope where none existed; that must have been the case for this article. The unnamed journalist who wrote this slender column reported on a few rare cases involving real jobs with real salaries being offered to recent graduates; the reporter wished to believe that this was a sign that the end was nigh – but these few jobs were flukes. The author saw economic growth where there really wasn’t any at all, however he certainly made the case for its existence. The title link posted above leads to a passage from FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depressionstyle=border:none by Jim Powell that explains the true situation that existed in 1937, when unemployment stood at 20 percent by Summer.

Motor City Takes It On The Chin
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)

By August of 1932, the Great Depression had finally caught up with the American automobile industry:

For the first time in history auto production has fallen off. Last year’s output was 700,000 cars [fewer than the number produced just two years earlier.]


The research has shown that between the Fall of 1929 and 1932 American automobile manufacturing had decreased by 70%.

The Most Powerful American Men During the Depression
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1930)

In 1930 a seasoned diplomat and respected attorney by the name of James Watson Gerard (1867 – 1951) created quite a dust-up in Depression-era Washington when he took it upon himself to release his list of those Americans who he believed to have the most power on Capitol Hill. The reason his compilation turned as many heads as it did was because there wasn’t the name of a single elected official to be found on the list – not even President Hoover was mentioned (although his treasury secretary was, the millionaire industrialist Andrew Mellon).


Click here if you wish to read more on this subject and see Gerard’s list of the most powerful men in Cold War Washington.

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