The Great Depression Story Book

The 1930s was the worst decade that I have lived through I was a farmer on the Great Plains all I was planting was wheat just like all the other farmers on the Great Plains. We planted wheat back to back so much that it depleted the soil and the markets had so much wheat that the bottom fell out of the price for wheat and it came a drought for three years. That also harmed all the cattle I had they were starving to death because there was nothing for them to eat because nothing would grow but the government stepped in and were giving one dollar a cow and that’s what I sold all my cattle for. When the drought came the dirt was so depleted and dry that when the wind would blow the dirt and dust would just make a big black cloud of dust and dirt.

Our houses would be coated with dirt all in the house my wife nearly went insane trying to keep our house clean because it happened almost every day and it started causing problems with my children and making them sick and to begin with nobody knew what the problem was and the doctors started calling it dust pneumonia children were getting very sick from this and it killed a few kids. It was hard living on the plains but no matter what the dust kept on coming.

I left home in 1932 because of the Great Depression I lost my job and I couldn’t pay my bills I didn’t feel good about leaving my family but I felt I had no other option at the time. When I got to the point that I couldn’t make enough to feed my kids I felt ashamed and the only way I could loose that feeling was to leave home and be a hobo. Me and some other hoboes would jump on train cars and ride them until they stopped and then we would get off and look for work we also walked we walked a lot and that wasn’t the life I wanted but it was the only way I knew to stay alive at the time. We would work anywhere just to make a dollar to get by for the time being it was a very rough time for me but I was not the only one it was every body except rich business men and other rich people.

Probably the worst economic thing that happened was bank failures. The reason the banks failed was because the banks loaned out all of the money and when people went to get their money out of the bank it was all gone which forced a lot of banks to shut down and cost a lot of people a lot of money and not counting the employees at the banks that lost their jobs when the banks shut down. When banks start shutting down you know its rough and it was and it was even worst for the owners of the banks because they were in so much debt they didn’t know which way to turn either. It was tough for bank owners during the Great Depression.

Even though times were rough the only thing that kept our hopes up were president Roosevelt’s fire side chats. He really brought us comfort to the American people by telling us he knew things were rough and that he was doing everything in his power to bring the Great Depression to an end for the United States. Every Sunday evening my family and other families would sit by the radio and listen to Franklin Roosevelt tell us what he had done that week to help bring the depression to an end. These fire side chats helped a lot of people from going crazy because it gave us that little bit of hope that the depression wouldn’t last forever.