1930s & The Great Depression

The 1930s
After the boom and gleeful financial enthusiasm of the 1920s, the stock market crashed in October 1929. Many banks failed in the following years, and widespread panic led to a worldwide depression. Alabama was the worst off of any state in the South (and perhaps the country). Alabama farms (of which there were more than 200,000) had already been struggling through the 1920s with boll weevils (cotton-eating beetles) and declining cotton prices. Employment declined immensely during the period.

Alabama voted to elect Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 and to re-elect him in 1936, 1940, and 1944. His New Deal program, which the first instance of the federal government intervening so heavily to affect the economy, helped to put many Alabamans back to work using government money.


The Great Depression
Timeline:
1924: Stocks on Wall Street begin rising hugely in comparison to the rest of the market.
1929: Herbert Hoover becomes president, business inventories are high. A recession begins in August as production begins to fall. In October, the stock market crashes, and $16 billion is lost
1930: Tariffs are introduced, unemployment skyrockets to 8.7%.
1931: Unemployment zooms to 15.9%.
1932: Unemployment: 23.6%. Ten thousand banks have failed since 1929. Manufacturing output was only 54% of what it was in 1929. Roosevelt easily defeats Hoover in the presidential election.
1933: The first of FDR's New Deal programs are put into place, including the National Recovery Administration (a group dedicated to creating fair practices and setting prices across industry, labor, and government).
1934: The Securities and Exchange Commission is created. Economic recovery begins.
1935: The NRA is deemed illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court. Congress authorizes the creation of the Works Progress Administration.
1937: FDR cuts some spending and economic recovery halts. Unemployment is only at 14.3%.
1939: World War II begins.
1941: The United States enters World War II; the Depression ends.
1945: World War II ends, the United States exits as a world superpower.

Peacolia Barge, a black woman born in 1923, who lived on the outskirts of Birmingham:
We were always poor, but the Depression was definitely worse. People who had had jobs lost them or, like my father, were laid off for periods of time. And if you worked, the pay was often something like 3 or 4 dollars a week. What my mother always said that people used the old plantation skiffs to survive: growing gardens, canning, making absolutely everything and buying almost nothing.
Links:
Hyper History: Detailed economic timeline of the Depression.
The New Georgia Encyclopedia: Great overview of the effect of the Depression on Southern life.
American Cultural History: A weird little hodgepodge of 1930s life and culture.
The Freeman: Very detailed article on the economics of the Depression.