Life During The Depression Era

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The causes of the Great Depression are as widely varied as they are disputed. The general discrepancy among opinions on the subject is partly due to ideological bias (one does not want to blame their own respective party or ideology, leading to defensiveness, denial, et cetera). However, there are a few causes that are listed by most sources as causing the Great Depression.

While most herald the stock market crash on October 29, 1929 as the official beginning of the Great Depression, the signs had begun to take shape approximately half a year or more earlier. According to TheGreatDepressionCauses.Com, there was a false sense of prosperity before the Great Depression, when in reality, 60% of the population was living below the poverty line, and the top 5% of earners accounted for 33% of the income ("Causes of the Great Depression" par. 2). This imbalance of wealth may have contributed to the Great Depression. Also among the major factors were wild speculation by overzealous investors, leading to and coupled with excessive buying on the margin. Finally, the declining European economy after WWI affected our seemingly prosperous one as well.

According to the Southern Illinois University Museum website, some of the factors that instigated the Great Depression also served to exacerbate it. For example, supply and demand is one of the most basic economic principles. When the supply exceeds the demand, as in the case of agricultural production and consumption prior to the Depression era (SIU par. 3), the balance of the system is shaken and will soon result in surpluses and loss of sales, among other things. These things both weaken an economy and subdue an already-weakened one.

Some effects of the Depression are exhibited in the poster above. It resulted in a massive drop in American confidence in their own country, government, banking system, and even in themselves. It resulted in mass poverty and the closing of 11,000 of America's then-numbered 25,000 banks ("Causes of the Great Depression par. 1) and, as TheGreatDepressionCauses.Com's effects page states, in the long-term, it resulted in things such as an expanded role of government due to New Deal measures and other legislation, mass migrations in order to find work, and some level of societal and psychological change among the citizens of the United States ("Effects of the Great Depression" pars. 3-7).

This is the era John Steinbeck lived in and wrote about, and it is important to understand this so that we can better understand his works, himself, our past, and our future.