First, news coverage of inflation surged in April 1933. Across five major daily newspapers, the number of news articles containing the terms inflation or inflationary more than tripled from January to April. The rise is even more dramatic if compared with 1932. In April 1933, the daily average number of news articles containing the terms inflation or inflationary was seven times higher than the 1932 daily average. This evidence indicates a surge in public discussion about inflation in the spring of 1933.
By the 1930s the radio was becoming a staple in many American homes. For the first time, citizens did not have to wait until the evening paper to get the latest news -- radios brought breaking news right into people's living rooms. The airwaves carried talk about jobs and the economy during the Great Depression, but Americans also heard news about incredible advances in science and technology, celebrities of aviation exploration, and political changes afoot in Europe. Read more about some of the breaking news events of the 1930s.
1930s depression news articles
The Great Depression in Washington State Project is a multimedia website that explores this important decade. Here you will find detailed accounts of issues, incidents, institutions, and people, along with hundreds of photographs, documents, and news articles from the period. This site is part of the Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium based at the University of Washington.
In a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labor, and the most productive industry in the world, many found it hard to understand why the depression had occurred and why it could not be resolved. Moreover, it was difficult for many to understand why people should go hungry in a country possessing huge food surpluses. Blaming Wall Street speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the nation.
Gregory directs an online collection of multimedia history projects called the Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium. Through essays, interviews, photographs, newspaper articles and other documents you can explore the history of the Great Depression in Washington state, strikes and the labor movement, the Communist movement, work on the waterfront and much more. All the stories in this column come from the project; I encourage you to dig in further yourself.
In France, very slow population growth, especially in comparison to Germany continued to be a serious issue in the 1930s. Support for increasing welfare programs during the depression included a focus on women in the family. The Conseil Supérieur de la Natalité campaigned for provisions enacted in the Code de la Famille (1939) that increased state assistance to families with children and required employers to protect the jobs of fathers, even if they were immigrants.[64]
New Zealand was especially vulnerable to worldwide depression, as it relied almost entirely on agricultural exports to the United Kingdom for its economy. The drop in exports led to a lack of disposable income from the farmers, who were the mainstay of the local economy. Jobs disappeared and wages plummeted, leaving people desperate and charities unable to cope. Work relief schemes were the only government support available to the unemployed, the rate of which by the early 1930s was officially around 15%, but unofficially nearly twice that level (official figures excluded Māori and women). In 1932, riots occurred among the unemployed in three of the country's main cities (Auckland, Dunedin, and Wellington). Many were arrested or injured through the tough official handling of these riots by police and volunteer "special constables".[166]
If we contrast the 1930s with the Crash of 2008 where gold went through the roof, it is clear that the U.S. dollar on the gold standard was a completely different animal in comparison to the fiat free-floating U.S. dollar currency we have today. Both currencies in 1929 and 2008 were the U.S. dollar, but analogously it is as if one was a Saber-toothed tiger and the other is a Bengal tiger; they are two completely different animals. Where we have experienced inflation since the Crash of 2008, the situation was much different in the 1930s when deflation set in. Unlike the deflation of the early 1930s, the U.S. economy currently appears to be in a "liquidity trap," or a situation where monetary policy is unable to stimulate an economy back to health.In terms of the stock market, nearly three years after the 1929 crash, the DJIA dropped 8.4% on August 12, 1932. Where we have experienced great volatility with large intraday swings in the past two months, in 2011, we have not experienced any record-shattering daily percentage drops to the tune of the 1930s. Where many of us may have that '30s feeling, in light of the DJIA, the CPI, and the national unemployment rate, we are simply not living in the '30s. Some individuals may feel as if we are living in a depression, but for many others the current global financial crisis simply does not feel like a depression akin to the 1930s.
Many people in Newfoundland and Labrador worked in the fishery or the forest and mining industries when the Great Depression broke out in 1929. As world trade declined during the 1930s, all three sectors suffered heavy losses. The country's iron ore exports fell from 1.6 million tons in 1930 to 194,000 tons in 1933. Newsprint exports to the United Stated also dropped from $9.1 million in 1930 to $4.1 million in 1935. There was an increased demand for newsprint from Britain, but pulp and paper companies still had to decrease wages and lay off employees to maintain profits.
An editorial by two American feminists who insisted that the economic depression of the Thirties had knocked the wind right out of the Women's Movement. They argued that some of the high ground that was earned in the preceding decades had been lost and needed to be taken back; their points are backed up by figures from the U.S. Census Bureau as well as other agencies. Much column space is devoted to the employment discrimination practiced by both state and Federal governments in favor of single women at the expense of the married. It is grievously made clear that even the sainted FDR Administration was one of the cruel practitioners of wage inequality. CLICK HERE to read about the pay disparity that existed between men and women during the 1930s.
The US jobs report for April brings sobering, if not unexpected news: The country has lost 20.6 million jobs since mid-March, resulting in an unemployment rate of 14.7%, a level not seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
RELATED CONTENT Douglas Irwin on the Great Depression and the Gold Standard Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth College talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the role the gold standard played in the Great Depression. Irwin argues that France systematically accumulated large amounts of gold in the late 1920s and 1930s, imposing massive deflation on the rest of the world. Drawing on a recent paper of his, Irwin argues that France's role in worldwide deflation was greater than that of the United States and played a significant role in the economic contraction that followed. Read This Article SHARE POST: Enter your email address to subscribe to our monthly newsletter: RELATED CONTENT Douglas Irwin on the Great Depression and the Gold Standard Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth College talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the role the gold standard played in the Great Depression. Irwin argues that France systematically accumulated large amounts of gold in the late 1920s and 1930s, imposing massive deflation on the rest of the world. Drawing on a recent paper of his, Irwin argues that France's role in worldwide deflation was greater than that of the United States and played a significant role in the economic contraction that followed. Read This Article COLLECTION: ECONOMIC HISTORY
In her new book, Melita M. Garza, who teaches journalism at TCU in Fort Worth, tracks the coverage of immigrants by the three newspapers operating in San Antonio in the 1930s: a Spanish language daily, a locally owned paper published in English and an English language daily owned by a giant media corporation. 2ff7e9595c
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