The Harsh Recession After The Crash Of 1929

When the stock market collapsed other disasters soon followed but it was not just investors who were affected. The consequences were devasting.

Prices rapidly fell, trade withered, goods were stacked up unsold, factories closed, wages were cut and millions of people lost their jobs. As the Depression hit harder, the chances of finding work became increasingly remote.

For many, life now became a grey, discouraging struggle for mere survival. Millions found themselves in absolute poverty. The US had no public welfare provision at the time, so hundreds of thousands of Americans had no choice but to join a line and queue up for free soup, provided by churches and charities.

A survivor of the hardships remembers the humiliating effort to find a new job.

“I would get out and maybe hustle fifteen places a day, banging on warehouse doors, trying to find a job - but it was impossible. I ended up selling apples on the Wall Street……”

“There was nothing that struck the imagination more than seeing a soup line of five hundred people……and two days later a thousand people. It just kept on growing . To stand in line at any place like soup kitchens where you are trying to get something free is very humiliating. Of course later it becomes a way of life, you don’t care anymore because everybody else is there”

This sense of helplessness was a reality very different from the public image of the United States. During the early years of the century, millions of Europeans had emigrated to the USA, full of confidence about their prospects there.

John Takman reached Chicago from Sweden only weeks before the Wall Street Crash.

“I saw the misery all around me. Tens of thousands of people evicted from their apartments, whole families and old people sitting in rocking chairs on the sidewalk, nowhere to go , no food, nothing except the small things they had with them and I couldn’t stand it”