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The Great Depression: 1930S
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The Great Depression hit farmers especially hard. Many had gone into debt to buy machinery and land, and now could not make their payments. Low crop prices wiped out potential profits. In addition to the usual challenges of agriculture, a great drought took place in 1931 and 1932 in the Midwest and the South and turned much of the trans-Mississippi West into a dust bowl. Nevertheless, if farmers couldn't make a profit selling their products, at least they could still eat, so most stayed put. In contrast to popular images of farmers leaving the land, the 1930s actually had the lowest rate of migration from farms to cities.
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Beginning initially in the 1930s... some students of the Great Depression have examined the unusually high level of process innovation in the 1920s and the lack of product innovation in the decade after 1925. The introduction of new production processes requires investment but may well cause firms to let some of their workforce go; by reducing prices, new processes may also reduce the amount consumers spend. The introduction of new products almost always requires investment and more employees; they also often increase the propensity of individuals to consume. The time path of technological innovation may thus explain much of the observed movements in consumption, investment, and employment during the interwar period. There may also be important interactions with the monetary variables discussed above: in particular, firms are especially dependent on bank finance in the early stages of developing a new product.
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The New Deal - The New Deal Network is an educational guide to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The New Deal Network is sponsored by the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and the Institute for Learning Technologies at Teachers College/Columbia University. NDN is funded in part through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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While Highmark was formed in 1996, the company's history goes back to the Great Depression of the 1930s. To ensure the availability of funds to pay for hospital and medical services, respectively, the Hospital Association based in Pittsburgh sponsored the formation of the organization later known as Blue Cross of Western Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Medical Society backed the founding of Pennsylvania Blue Shield. In 1996, Highmark was formed through the consolidation of the two Blue Plans.
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In 1937, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) reported that drought was the principal reason for economic relief assistance in the Great Plains region during the 1930s (Link et al., 1937). Federal aid to the drought-affected states was first given in 1932, but the first funds marked specifically for drought relief were not released until the fall of 1933. In all, assistance may have reached $1 billion (in 1930s dollars) by the end of the drought (Warrick et al., 1980).
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Probably because of Senator Elmer Thomas’s great interest in the plight of agriculture, his papers contain a substantial amount of material on drought relief and conservation. His Legislative Files, again under “Agriculture and Forestry Committee,” contain folders on both droughts. For the 1930-1931 one, there are correspondence, clippings, press releases, hearing transcripts, legislation, and reports that inform researchers on conditions as well as relief efforts primarily carried out by the Red Cross (see box 1, folders 63, 66, 67, and 71). For the 1934-1940 spell, several boxes contain folders titled “Drouth” or “Soil Conservation” under “Agriculture and Forestry.” In addition to conditions and relief, there is ... information on “feed and seed” loans (box 16, folder 2), Indian drought relief (box 21, folder 69), and Oklahoma soil conservation projects (box 16, folders 33-58). Additional documents can be found under “Appropriations Committee” and elsewhere.
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1930S