Slavery Black people were discriminated and were made slaves White folks would force them to pick the cotton they grew for little money This helped the farmers make more money when the stocks dropped Photo by national museum of american history.
The Great Depression A time period when the stock market collapsed. The Great Depression lost almost thirty billion dollars. All of this because of unemployment and starvation. Many of the people depended on charity as their money source. Photo by B Tal. African Americans In the 's African Americans were still mistreated They had a law that their curfew was at 10 p. Historians now generally agree that, nationwide, the Great Depression did not begin with the stock market crash, but with a more gradual decline in key economic sectors.
American agriculture had been struggling as early as , when commodity prices fell steadily from post- World War I highs. In Alabama, cotton prices dropped to the lowest levels since the s. By , industries, the backbone of prosperity in the "Roaring Twenties," experienced a decline in consumption as farmers could no longer afford to buy consumer goods and the overall market for goods had become fairly saturated.
As industries scaled back production, they fired workers, leading to increased unemployment, which peaked at 25 percent in and hovered around that mark throughout much of the s. Alabama's already limited non-farm employment fell 15 percent between and Without income, people could no longer buy the goods that buoyed the American economy.
The situation worsened as the Congress passed tariffs in to encourage domestic consumption. In turn, America's trading partners enacted tariffs of their own, leading to a sharp drop in international trade and more economic woes for the nation's farmers and producers. When the stock market crashed in late October , many Americans, and certainly many Alabamians, were already experiencing economic hardship. Tengle Children in Hale County In the years after the Civil War , Alabamians, like many southerners, lived on the edge of poverty, a result of the disruption of the plantation economy and the subsequent rise of widespread sharecropping and farm tenancy , low-wage industry, and a lackluster economy.
The devastation of cotton crops by the spread of the boll weevil and a decline in cotton prices because of international competition further depressed the state's economy by the s. Alabama's farm families experienced the first pangs of Depression when cotton prices plummeted. The commodity began its fall in early , from a high of 35 cents per pound to less than 5 cents per pound by Unable to make a living on cotton, some farmers left to find work in cities.
Others fell deeper into debt and tenancy. Between and , the number of landowners fell from around 96, to 75,, a decline that was harsher for white farmers than black farmers. In fact, black ownership of land increased slightly during the latter s, a result of falling land prices and African Americans returning to the South in a brief reverse of the Great Migration.
Black farmers still tended to own smaller, less profitable farms than white owners, however. Nevertheless, the number of tenant farmers increased universally, from , to , over the course of the decade. Many farm families lived on the brink of starvation and bankruptcy during good years, so the Depression forced those on the land to focus on long-term survival. Farmers ate less meat and more filling and inexpensive starches, like beans and corn, and wore clothes made out of burlap feed and fertilizer sacks.
Tenants and sharecroppers moved to find better contracts and travelled farther and more often as the Depression worsened. Having less food, fewer clothes, and little money, rural Alabamians ceased going to school, church, and other social functions. Industries were hit later by the Depression, so some farmers left their land for the mills and mines of cities such as Birmingham , Huntsville , and Anniston. But when the Depression spread into the cities in the early s, the state witnessed an urban exodus, with many people who had fled land turning back to sharecropping and tenant farming or returning to family land.
In fact, the s serve as a demographic anomaly, as thousands of laid-off workers relocated to the countryside in the hopes of surviving off of the land. This shift from town to country placed new pressure on land that was already stressed from inefficient farming practices, a reliance on soil-depleting cash crops, and soil erosion.
When combined with historically low commodity prices and a lack of credit, these conditions made it even more difficult for farm families to survive. Alabama's industrial sector, centered in the Birmingham District, had expanded in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, and its collapse during the Great Depression devastated the state's economy even further. Of nearly 3, mines and mills operating in the state in , only half were still in operation in as an abrupt decline in national demand and international trade led to a drop in production.
Employment in iron and steel industries fell by 28 percent from to Because, as Norrell said, it "was really the only cash crop that people knew. Many of the farmers packed up and headed for the cities. But there were few jobs there, at least until war production ramped up in the late s and early s. According to the Alabama Department of Archives and History , Birmingham's employment dropped in the s from a high of , full time employees to only 15, The federal government issued a number of responses to these problems.
The agency encouraged good farming practices, which would preserve and maintain quality soil. Other programs paid farmers not to grow certain crops, or to plow under portions of their crops.
The federal government also protected large swaths of land, making them into national forests and taking them out of agricultural production. They now consist of nearly , acres, combined. Meanwhile, the. The idea behind the program was that subsistence farming would allow the relocated families to work part time at another job. Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.
All rights reserved About Us. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local.
Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site.
0コメント