{"id":2064,"date":"2016-08-14T02:41:39","date_gmt":"2016-08-14T02:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/?p=2064"},"modified":"2026-02-18T07:44:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T07:44:15","slug":"migration-in-the-great-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/migration-in-the-great-depression\/","title":{"rendered":"Migration in the Great Depression: A Detailed Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Migration in the Great Depression<\/a> was an important aspect of the era of the 1930s. For instance, the economic hardships of the time led to millions of people seeking new work and housing opportunities in different areas of the country. As well, the devastation of the Dust Bowl<\/a> led to numerous farming families seeking new lives in other avenues of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

WHAT WAS THE GREAT DEPRESSION?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The\u00a0Great Depression\u00a0was a significant event in world history and was of particular importance to American history.\u00a0 It was a worldwide economic recession that occurred primarily during the 1930s.\u00a0 A recession is a term that refers to a general economic downturn resulting in high levels of unemployment and a loss in consumer spending.\u00a0 As a result, during the Great Depression, many people struggled to find work while businesses struggled to survive with an overall reduction in the sales of goods and services.\u00a0 Historians have identified several different causes of the events of the Great Depression<\/a>, including: the stock market crash of 1929<\/a>, the purchasing of stocks on margin, the wide income gap between the wealthy and the poor, the loss of consumer spending, the failure of banks to deal with the crisis, protectionism<\/a> and the weather conditions of the American Midwest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Great
Unemployed people lined up outside a soup kitchen opened in Chicago in February of 1931.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

MIGRATION IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION – WORK AND HOUSING<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A key feature of the Great Depression in the United States was the high levels of unemployment that resulted from the Stock Market Crash of 1929<\/a>.\u00a0 For example, at the heights of the Great Depression the unemployment rate reached as high as 25%.\u00a0 Due to this high level of unemployment, life for many people in the Great Depression was difficult.\u00a0 In particular, poverty among the working-class was widespread during the Great Depression and it impacted their lives in several ways including: housing, travel, and quality of life.\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, the lack of income meant that people could not afford basic housing.\u00a0 Many people had their homes or farms foreclosed on by the banks.\u00a0 This means that because the people could not make payments the bank forced them out of their property.\u00a0 As such, the Great Depression caused many people to search for other ways of life and led to high levels of homelessness.\u00a0 For instance, a common feature of the Great Depression in the United States was the establishment of shantytowns or \u2018Hoovervilles<\/a>\u2019.\u00a0 These shantytowns were often built on the edges of major cities, and were named after United States President Herbert Hoover<\/a>.\u00a0 He was the President during the start and early years of the Great Depression in the United States and was blamed for many of the hardships by the working-class people.\u00a0 At the height of the Great Depression, there were thousands of Hoovervilles across the United States and hundreds of thousands of people made their homes in these shantytowns.\u00a0 Life in these Hoovervilles was difficult and caused many people to migrate throughout the United States in search of better opportunities elsewhere.\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Hoovervilles
A Hooverville in Seattle in 1933. (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

MIGRATION IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION – DUST BOWL<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Migration was a central component of life for many struggling working-class people in the United States during the Great Depression.\u00a0 This was likely best seen in the events of the Dust Bowl<\/a> from the American Midwest. The Dust Bowl is the term used to refer to the drought conditions that occurred across North America during the 1930s and the time period of the Great Depression.\u00a0 Also referred to as the Dirty Thirties, the Dust Bowl affected over 100,000,000 acres of agricultural land across Canada and the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the United States, it was generally centered on farms in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.\u00a0\u00a0 This region of the United States was a historically dry area and received a relatively low amount of rain per year.\u00a0 As well, the area had a thin layer of top soil that had traditionally only supported dry grasses.\u00a0 As such, it was not ideal for extensive farming which was one of the causes for the devastation of many farms at the time.\u00a0 For example, farming practices used at the time that led to the \u2018over-farming\u2019 of the region included: deep plowing and mechanization. When strong winds hit the region, it quite literally caused entire fields to be swept away across the country.\u00a0 The dust was lifted high into the air and caused a blackening of the sky, and many people referred to them as \u2018black blizzards\u2019.\u00a0 Throughout the 1930s, many wind storms destroyed the farms on the plains of Canada and the United States, and were so powerful that dust affected major cities, such as: Chicago and New York.\u00a0 Because of the Dust Bowl, many families were forced from their farms.\u00a0 Farmers had already been struggling due to small family farms being bought out and replaced by larger ones which relied more on mechanization.\u00a0 As such, when the drought hit the area many were unable to pay their debts and forced off of the land by the banks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In total, the Dust Bowl left over half a million Americans homeless and caused a migration of over three million people out the American Midwest.\u00a0 Famously, many of them relocated to the west coast in hopes of finding employment in other agricultural work, but were often met with the harsh unemployment caused by the Great Depression, which was devastating all parts of the country at that time.\u00a0 Entire families loaded all of their belongings onto their vehicles as they made the arduous journey out of the drought-stricken area.\u00a0 The Dust Bowl migration remains the largest migration in United States history, which occurred over a relatively short period of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Dust
Dust storm near Stratford, Texas on April 18th, 1935. (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Migration in the Great Depression played an important role in the life of millions of people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[57,66,15],"class_list":["post-2064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-great-depression","tag-american-history","tag-great-depression","tag-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2064"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5449,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064\/revisions\/5449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}