When was the Great Depression in California?
1930s
California was hit hard by the economic collapse of the 1930s. Businesses failed, workers lost their jobs, and families fell into poverty. While the political response to the depression often was confused and ineffective, social messiahs offered alluring panaceas promising relief and recovery.
Why did people go to California during the Depression?
Migration Out of the Plains during the Depression. During the Dust Bowl years, the weather destroyed nearly all the crops farmers tried to grow on the Great Plains. Many once-proud farmers packed up their families and moved to California hoping to find work as day laborers on huge farms.
What was California like in the 1920s?
Migration west continued throughout the 1920s. California in particular drew people chasing the American Dream. Land was still cheap during the Twenties and agriculture was still a growing business. Whether you were looking for work or to establish yourself as a farmer, California was an attractive destination.
What was Los Angeles like in the 1930s?
Los Angeles was very much a white-dominated town in the 1930s. Housing and public facilities were segregated, and job discrimination was widespread. The Great Depression caused high unemployment in the region and exhausted the resources of private and public assistance.
How did California deal with the Great Depression?
Millions went hungry. In California, farm income in 1932 sank to less than half of its 1929 level. By 1933, building permits had plummeted to one-ninth of their peak in 1925. By 1934, more than 1.25 million Californians were on public relief-about one-fifth of the state’s population.
How did the Dust Bowl and Great Depression affect California?
The arrival of the Dust Bowl migrants forced California to examine its attitude toward farm work, laborers, and newcomers to the state. The Okies changed the composition of California farm labor. They displaced the Mexican workers who had dominated the work force for nearly two decades.
Why did Southern California grow so much in the 1920s?
Hispanic Americans Dislocations caused by the Mexican Revolution propelled many Mexicans northward, but once in California these immigrants encountered rampant discrimination. Middle- and upper-class Mexican men and women could often only find work as day laborers, farm workers, and maids.
What happened to California after WWII?
Post-War Economy The wartime economy reversed itself with the end of the war, and the country experienced a small depression with high unemployment. Employment in California had grown from 2.2 million in 1940 to a high of 3.3 million in 1943. It then declined to a little over 3 million by 1947.
What was La like in the 1920’s?
The 1920s was a prosperous era for Los Angeles, California, United States, when the name “Hollywood” became synonymous with the U.S. film industry and the visual setting of Los Angeles became famous worldwide. Plentiful job openings attracted heavy immigration, especially from the rural Midwest and Mexico.
When did the American migration to California explode?
Overview. The 1848 discovery of gold in California set off a frenzied Gold Rush to the state the next year as hopeful prospectors, called “forty-niners,” poured into the state. This massive migration to California transformed the state’s landscape and population.
Why was California not the promised land of migrants dream?
California was emphatically not the promised land of the migrants’ dreams. Although the weather was comparatively balmy and farmers’ fields were bountiful with produce, Californians also felt the effects of the Depression. Arrival in California did not put an end to the migrants’ travels.
How did the Great Depression affect California in the 1930s?
The Great Depression: California in the Thirties. California was hit hard by the economic collapse of the 1930s. Businesses failed, workers lost their jobs, and families fell into poverty. While the political response to the depression often was confused and ineffective, social messiahs offered alluring panaceas promising relief and recovery.
What was life like in the 1930s in California?
Depression Era: 1930s: Depression. Pages. When the U.S. stock market crashed in October 1929, it brought hard times to California, the nation, and the world. For businesses and millions of individuals, fear and failure became as commonplace as optimism and prosperity had been before the economic collapse.
How did the Great Depression affect the Central Valley?
In California, the Depression gave birth to bitter and sometimes violent struggles between labor and employers. Violence resulted when growers and the local police attempted to crush several Central Valley strikes. The 1934 San Francisco waterfront strike culminated in a day still known as “Bloody Thursday,”…
How many people in California were on public relief in 1934?
By 1934, more than 1.25 million Californians were on public relief-about one-fifth of the state’s population. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who promised a “New Deal for the American People,” soundly defeated incumbent president Herbert Hoover in the 1932 election.