Bread lines became longer due to the amount of people who were going hungry.
People were not earning much money during The Great Depression. The labor force worked long hours with little pay. For example, saw mill employees made five cents an hour and textile mill employees made $2.39 for fifty hours. Children were forced to work as well. In Connecticut, children earned seventy-five cents for fifty-five hours of sweatshop work.
There were also many unemployed people during The Great Depression. Over thirteen million people lost their jobs during 1929 to 1936. Hourly wages had dropped down by fifty percent. there were no unemployment insurance. Many Californian children died of starvation. The farm area were affected as well as the urban cities. In Kentucky people lived off of weeds. Only one quarter of the unemployed population were on well fare. This is because the richer Americans were not willing to raise the taxes to offer support for the unemployed. .
Political views also changed during the Great Depression. Before the Great Depression, republicans held most of the government jobs. The first election following the 1929 crash, Democrats gained the most power in the country. Herbert Hover, disliked by the poor, became president in 1929. The presidency then went to Franklin Delano Roosevelt who led our nation out of the state of depression.
At least 10,000 banks had failed since 1929 and approximately two billion dollars of deposits were lost. The national income as a whole had declined by fifty percent. Manufacturing also declined by at least fifty percent.
Along with the unemployment amount, there was a dramatic increase in the amount of crime during the Great Depression. Many Americans tried to get easy money by taking part in robberies, kidnappings, and murders. In 1935, criminals outnumbered carpenters four to one, grocers six to one, and doctors twenty to one.
Out of all the criminals no one was loved except for John Dilinger.