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.

Harold Ickes Wrote the Relief Checks (New Outlook, 1935)

When Harold Ickes (1874 – 1952) assumed his post as FDR’s Secretary of the Department of the Interior he found himself in charge of three distinct governmental concerns. The first of these elements to be lorded over was the public lands (mines, forests and Indian reservations). His second responsibility was involved with the drilling of oil. The third and most observed cell in his official asylum was that of Administrator of Public Works Three Billion Dollar Fund. He was under instruction to spend this as rapidly as possible…It would give work to the workless, get money into circulation and encourage business.


Click here to read about President Harry Truman…

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Putting An End To Child Labor (Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

A column that recalls the failed efforts to banish child labor by adding a prohibitive amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The effort had the backing of the the American Federation of Labor and the National Child Labor Committee and was opposed by forces on Capitol Hill who felt that the issue was best addressed by each individual state. The opposition was composed of the American Bar Association, The Farm Bureau Federation, the Daughters of the American Revolution and Cardinal William Henry O’Connell of the Boston Archdiocese.

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Child Labor (New Outlook Magazine, 1933)

As you can read in this article, you’ll find that child labor throughout most of the Thirties had not been eradicated fully and was very much alive in some of the more brutal parts of the nation. That said, you might be surprised to know that the proposed amendment to the constitution concerning the ban on child labor (18 and bellow) has never been ratified by the Congress even to this day. When this column was written the proposed amendment was already nine years old and the politician who penned it held that the legislation was similar Prohibition in that it attempted to impose a moral code upon the American people. He believed that this was matter best left to the states; he further pointed out that the recently passed National Recovery Act had abolished child labor by fiat (and when the NRA was invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1935, child labor abuses increased a small degree).

Child labor was finally brought under control with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.

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The Plummeting Salaries (New Outlook Magazine, 1933)

In this article, Dorothy Dunbar Bromley (1896 – 1986) addressed one of the preeminent issue of her day: the rapidly decreasing salaries of the American worker:

If we are fatuous optimists, it is because we have only the vaguest idea of how appalling the situation is. We have read a great deal about the return of of the garment sweatshop of fifty years ago, with the same abominable conditions and the same exploitation of women and children for a few cents an hour, or for no pay at all…


More on this exploitation can be read here…

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The Poor Are Everywhere (The Chicagoan, 1932)

Three years into the Great Depression a citizen of Chicago realizes that there is nowhere he can go to escape the uneasy presence of the hungry poor in his city:

They’re on the boulevards and in the parks. They’re on the shady streets in nice neighborhoods and around the corner from expensive restaurants. You can tell they’re starving by looking at them. Their nerve is gone – they don’t even beg. You see thousands every day… Young men and old women never begged in this country before.

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The Forgotten Child (Literary Digest, 1935)

This magazine article from 1935 documented the Federal aid that was made available for America’s poorest children. The malnutrition visited upon the boys of America’s indigent would render some of them unfit for military service in World War II.

With nearly one-sixth of the nation’s child population in families dependent upon emergency relief, welfare agencies call for a solution of their grave problem.

The problem was laid before the recent National Conference on the 1935 Needs of Children held under the auspices of The Parent’s Magazine in New York City. Before them Katherine F. Lenroot, Chief of the United States Children’s Bureau, made one of her first public appearances since taking office:

…These children have a right to expect that Federal, State, and community relief policies of 1935 will provide more adequately for essential items in the family budget.


Another article about children of the Great Depression can be read here…

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When the Depression Caught Up With Doctors (Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)

Some people have maintained that doctors weren’t hit so hard by the economic slump. The claim was that people couldn’t help getting sick and their misfortune was the doctor’s gravy. But the Committee on the Cost of Medical Care, a non-governmental committee, of which Secretary Wilbur is chairman, reports a rapid decline in the income of doctors during the Depression… In 1930, the first [full] year of the Depression, physician’s incomes decreased 17% and they have been decreasing ever since.


The author also included some other elements gleaned by the committee – such as the average sum paid by the families in their study, the approximate cost of the nation’s medical bills and an approximation concerning the number of medical professionals at work in 1931.


During the Depression, many doctors and nurses worked entirely for free; to read about that, click here…

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