Between 1929 and 1939, the entire industrialized world was caught in
the grip of the biggest financial crisis in history -- the Great Depression. While
the Great Depression was horrible for those who lived through it,
the U.S. would look very different today if it hadn't happened.
When the stock market crashed and banks started failing, many people lost everything.
But here's the weird thing — according to Forbes, there were seven families who not only started
companies during the Great Depression but were also hugely successful. They were so successful,
in fact, that they're worth a combined $31.9 billion today. Who are we talking about?
For starters, it was George Jenkins who quit his job at the grocery chain Piggly Wiggly
to start his own store in 1930. That's Publix, and they now do $29 billion in annual sales.
Then there's the McKee family, who started selling cakes from their car. That company grew
to be Little Debbie. The Gallos crushed grapes and made wine in their shed, and the E&J Gallo family
is now worth $9.7 billion. J.R. Simplot worked a patch of land in Idaho and after perfecting
a freezing process he started selling fries — they now supply a third of the country's fries.
Also on the list are Columbia Sportswear, Hess oil and gas, and the Stephens investment group.
The 1910 essay, "The Moral Equivalent of War," suggested that instead of conscripting
the young men of a nation and training them to be soldiers, they could be recruited instead to work
on various infrastructure projects. That idea was put into place in Europe after World War I,
and the National Park Service says President Franklin D. Roosevelt took
a page from that playbook when he created the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC.
It was a massive success, and PBS says that throughout the 1930s,
around 3 million men between 18 and 25 years old were hired for $1 a day. They lived in work camps
across the country, were given classes in things like engineering, first aid, and auto repair,
and if it wasn't for their hard work, the landscape would look very different.
Today, it's estimated that half of the trees ever planted in the U.S. were planted by CCC workers.
They developed most of the nation's parks, building roads and hiking trails to make
them accessible, along with visitors' centers, amphitheaters, swimming pools,
and other recreational facilities, and even built dams and created lakes.
Gradually, the CCC came to an end at the beginning of World War II,
when the nation's young men were needed for another sort of service.
Housing maps would look different
In 1968, the Fair Housing Act made it officially illegal to discriminate against anyone trying to
rent, buy a home, or finance a purchase based on race, nationality, religion, skin color, or sex.
The reason that federal law and those protections are in place today goes back
to the Great Depression. In 1917, the Supreme Court outlawed city ordinances that had been put
in place to ensure some areas remained segregated. According to ThoughtCo., those were replaced by
"Racially restrictive covenants"
which were basically agreements between area property owners
that resulted in the same segregation.
"I think the property values will immediately go down if
they are allowed to move in here in any number."
Fast forward to 1934. That's when the federal government first got involved
with housing schemes, thanks to the creation of the Federal Housing Administration, or FHA.
It was part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal,
and it initially didn't work as planned, so the FHA almost immediately introduced redlining.
Redlining is the process of color-coding housing grids
to determine where the most secure investments would be,
and it was absolutely race-based. An area only got a green designation if they were free of -
"foreigner or Negro."
At the other end were red neighborhoods, which were largely populated by minorities. Redlining
still continues today, but now, at least there's legal protections put in place to try to stop it.
Prohibition is one of those things that, in hindsight,
was a pretty dumb idea for all sorts of reasons — including the fact that CNBC
notes that during the run of Prohibition, the federal government not only lost an
estimated $11 billion in revenue but also spent more than $300 million to enforce the laws.
Once the Great Depression hit, more and more people started turning to the shadow economy
created by the now-illegal liquor trade. On the plus side,
doctors made out like bandits and prescribed about $40 million in "medicinal" whiskey.
The 21st Amendment put an end to Prohibition in 1933, and while there were a slew of
reasons it was ultimately repealed, the Great Depression was a major one.
According to author Garrett Peck, the Great Depression allowed anti-Prohibitionists to
add another layer onto their arguments - when Prohibition kicked off, it put around 250,000
people out of work. When Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for president, he made it clear that making
booze legal would massively increase federal revenue and put people to work... so win-win.
According to the Department of Agriculture, the National School Lunch Program supplies children
from low-income or food-insecure families with free or reduced price lunches. In 2019, they
served almost 5 billion of those lunches, with about 75% being free or sold at a reduced price.
"It's sloppy joe day! It's sloppy joe day! I seriously think sloppy joe day is
my favorite day at school."
"Yeah it's the best!"
And that goes back to the Great Depression.
By 1900, most states had laws requiring parents to send their children to school,
and once children from all walks of life were eating in a cafeteria together,
it was clear who was struggling and who wasn't. Some cities started school lunch programs funded
by private welfare organizations, but Time says that it wasn't until need
became widespread during the Depression that the federal government got involved.
Under the auspices of the New Deal, the federal government started buying farmers' surplus crops.
Then, they hired scores of people to start cooking and serving students across the country,
and it was a win for everyone involved. The program struggled through the lean years of
World War II, but in 1946, the National School Lunch Act became permanent.
Every time anyone steps into a bank,
they're greeted by signs advertising that institution's connection to the FDIC.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation oversees the operation of banks,
and it also insures deposits that customers make. It was created alongside the Banking Act of 1933,
and it was designed to prevent exactly what had
happened to cause the Great Depression — widespread bank failure and insolvency.
Basically, the act separated commercial banks from investment banks. Then,
the FDIC collects money from banks across the country and puts it into a pool,
and if there are losses, that money is used to cover them.
And according to History, it has definitely paid. Around the 2007 financial crisis,
25 banks failed — but this time, there were safeguards in place.
At the time of the Great Depression, it looked as though labor unions were actually going to go
the way of the dodo. According to the Library of Congress, membership dropped by 2 million between
1923 and 1933, and a large part of that reason is that most labor unions still represented skilled
craftsmen instead of those who were working in fields of mass production and industry.
As part of his way to stabilize the job market and make industry more fair for workers,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt included a few pro-union laws in the New Deal. In 1933, they
passed the National Industrial Recovery Act, which allowed unions to make deals on behalf of their
members. That was followed by the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, which forced all businesses
to deal with any union supported by the majority of their employees. With this newfound power,
the Congress of Industrial Organizations broke off of the American Federation of Labor and started
representing unskilled laborers — workers who, until then, had never had an advocate.
"Are you feeling at all degraded or repressed?"
"Uh a little… we don't even have dental.”
"They don't even have dental…"
The Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, was originally founded in 1933, and,
according to History, the idea was that it was going to create
jobs for those working in the seven states of the Tennessee River Valley.
Those newly employed people would, in turn, develop commerce, agriculture and industry,
oversee the hydroelectric power supplied by the Wilson Dam, and care for the land.
The development of the TVA ended up being incredibly fortuitous, especially by around 1941.
The TVA's most obvious contribution to the war effort was power.
Their power stations ran factories that supplied a huge amount of material for the
military. They also powered another area that was part of the Manhattan Project.
The TVA also supplied nitrate for munitions and fertilizer for crops in the U.S. and
other Allied countries, and their mapping department also perfected the techniques
used in making maps for the Allies' military. A few months after President Franklin D. Roosevelt
was inaugurated in March of 1933, he chose the man he wanted to head up the Public Works
Administration or PWA. He then gave Harold Ickes $3.3 billion and tasked him with funding projects
that would modernize the nation's infrastructure, while putting a whole lot of people to work.
By 1939, the program had funded 34,000 projects, and after that year, the PWA's focus changed to
military projects. They were rolled into the Federal Works Administrator in 1943,
but before that, they built structures like New York City's Triborough Bridge,
San Francisco's Bay Bridge, DC's Federal Trade Commission Building,
and the Ellis Island Ferry Building, among thousands of others.
PBS says that communities were able to submit proposals for projects,
and while not all were accepted, PWA projects changed the landscape of the country.
In 2020, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that one in six
U.S. citizens received some kind of benefits from social security.
It doesn't just support retirees, it's also given to children who have lost their parents,
and it also insures workers in case of accidents or severe disability.
According to the Social Security Office of Policy, the idea of social security
had its roots in Germany in the 1880s, where workers paid into a program that
would protect them in the case of things like disability and prolonged illness,
as well as provide for them in old age. The problems that wage insurance solved
were a major problem even before the stock market crash, and historians argue that it
was the Great Depression that finally added enough fuel to the fire to get reform enacted.
Early on, America operated on what's called the gold standard,
which means that the economy relied on a set price for buying and selling gold,
which then dictated how much value paper money had - but all that changed with the Great Depression.
That's because the price of gold started rising, and people were both trading in
paper money for gold, then hoarding that gold because they no longer had any faith in banks
whatsoever. That's why President Franklin D. Roosevelt closed banks in March of 1933,
and put a stop to gold trading. Banks were required to turn all their gold over to
the Federal Reserve, and a month later, American citizens were ordered to do the same. As a result,
they got paper money, and Fort Knox accumulated what was the world's largest stash of gold.
Fast forward a few months, and Roosevelt made another proclamation — absolutely no
one was allowed to own gold. Even though it's perfectly legal to own gold today, it's safe
to say that without Roosevelt's crackdown, there would be a lot more floating around.
Who doesn't love a good chocolate chip cookie? They're right up there
with apple pie and baseball when it comes to things all-American,
which kind of makes it fitting that they came from a time of struggle and hardship.
They're a little unique in that people know exactly who invented them — Ruth Wakefield,
proprietor of the Toll House restaurant in Whitman, Massachusetts. She whipped up her first
batch in 1937 and it was exactly what the nation needed. Over the next few years, chocolate chip
cookies got insanely popular. For nearly a decade by that point, people had been going without. The
chocolate chip cookie was rich, sweet, decadent, and chocolatey, all in a super affordable little
package that gave those fortunate enough to bite into one a taste of what they had been missing —
"So pick up the cookie, dip it in the milk - and eat it."
- and, just like today, they're an accessible reminder that there are good things in life.
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