1.
Resettlement Administration
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Roosevelt established the RA under Executive Order 7027, as one of the New Deals alphabet agencies, and Tugwell became its first and only head. The new organization had four divisions, Rural Rehabilitation, Rural Resettlement, Land Utilization, however, Tugwells goal of moving 651,000 people from 100,000,000 acres of agriculturally exhausted, worn-out land was unpopular among the majority in Congress. This goal seemed socialistic to some and threatened to deprive influential farm owners of their tenant workforce, the main focus of the RA was to now build relief camps in California for migratory workers, especially refugees from the drought-struck Dust Bowl of the Southwest. This move was resisted by a share of Californians, who did not want destitute migrants to settle in their midst. After facing enormous criticism for his management of the RA. On January 1,1937, with hopes of making the RA more effective, the Weedpatch Camp now on the National Register of Historic Places, was built in 1936 south of Bakersfield, California, not by the RA but the FSA. The camp inspired John Steinbecks 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath, a 1940 film adaptation directed by John Ford, a Tony Award-winning play and an opera. In the face of Congressional criticism, in September 1937 it was folded into a new body, the Farm Security Administration, Farm Security Administration Dust Bowl Meriam, Lewis. Relief and Social Security The Brookings Institution, presented by the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center and Mills Music Library Special Collections
2.
Federal Emergency Relief Administration
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The Federal Emergency Relief Administration was the new name given by the Roosevelt Administration to the Emergency Relief Administration which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had created in 1933. FERA was established as a result of the Federal Emergency Relief Act and was replaced in 1935 by the Works Progress Administration, under Hoover, the agency gave loans to the states to operate relief programs. One of these, the New York state program TERA, was set up in 1931 and headed by Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt asked Congress to set up FERA—which gave grants to the states for the same purpose—in May 1933, and appointed Hopkins to head it. Along with the Civilian Conservation Corps it was the first relief operation under the New Deal, basically, it gave grants and loans to states. FERAs main goal was to alleviate household unemployment by creating new unskilled jobs in local, jobs were more expensive than direct cash payments, but were psychologically more beneficial to the unemployed, who wanted any sort of job, for self-esteem, to play the role of male breadwinner. From May 1933 until it closed in December,1935, FERA gave states and localities $3.1 billion, FERA provided work for over 20 million people and developed facilities on public lands across the country. FERA operated a variety of work relief projects, including construction, projects for professionals. Workers education, a form of education, emphasized the study of economic. When the FERA created its adult education program in 1933, workers education classes were included, between 1933 and 1943 thirty-six experiment programs in workers education were launched,17 of them lasting over ten years. With as many as two thousand teachers employed at one time, officials estimated that the program reached at least one million workers nationwide until it was ended in World War II. Three distinct phases of a workers education program existed, FERA, Works Progress Administration. FERA and WPA workers education stimulated educational activities within the labor movement, for example, in Indiana this program was particularly popular among the new, more radical CIO unions. Federal workers education activities also encouraged union-university cooperation and laid the foundation for education at Indiana University. New Dealers designed the WPA Workers Service Program as the model for a Federal Labor Extension Service, similar to the existing federal agricultural extension program, ellen Sullivan Woodward was director of womens work for FERA and CWA. Most were unemployed white collar clerical workers, in July 1934, the FERA established a separate division for professional and nonconstruction projects. Project designers in the division for professional projects faced a challenge in creating effective. In 1935 she became assistant administrator of the WPA, where she directed the income-earning projects of some 500,000 women, poor people lacked enough food in the Depression, and farmers had too much. Although he criticized the welfare bureaucracy, Murray championed the states farmers and took credit for the food, seed
3.
Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act
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The Bankhead–Jones Farm Tenant Act of 1937 was passed on July 22,1937 and authorized acquisition by the federal government of damaged lands to rehabilitate and use them for various purposes. Most importantly, however, the law authorized a modest credit program to assist tenant farmers to purchase land, both the U. S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management manage some Bankhead-Jones lands. Some Forest Service Bankhead-Jones lands are National Grasslands and they repaid their loan of $1,495 in only five years. Ten Years of the Farm Tenant Purchase Program, journal of Farm Economics 31, 469-486. Statutes at Large,50, Part 1, 522-33
4.
New Deal
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The New Deal was a series of programs, including, most notably, Social Security, that were enacted in the United States between 1933 and 1938, and a few that came later. They included both laws passed by Congress as well as executive orders during the first term of the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Republicans were split, with opposing the entire New Deal as an enemy of business and growth. By 1936 the term liberal typically was used for supporters of the New Deal, from 1934 to 1938, Roosevelt was assisted in his endeavours by a pro-spender majority in Congress. In the 1938 midterm elections, however, Roosevelt and his supporters lost control of Congress to the bipartisan conservative coalition. Many historians distinguish between a First New Deal and a Second New Deal, with the one more liberal. The First New Deal dealt with the banking crises through the Emergency Banking Act. The Securities Act of 1933 was enacted to prevent a repeated stock market crash, the controversial work of the National Recovery Administration was also part of the First New Deal. The economic downturn of 1937–38, and the split between the AFL and CIO labor unions led to major Republican gains in Congress in 1938. Conservative Republicans and Democrats in Congress joined in the informal Conservative Coalition, by 1942–43 they shut down relief programs such as the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps and blocked major liberal proposals. Roosevelt himself turned his attention to the war effort, and won reelection in 1940 and 1944, the Supreme Court declared the National Recovery Administration and the first version of the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional, however the AAA was rewritten and then upheld. As the first Republican president elected after Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower left the New Deal largely intact, Johnsons Great Society used the New Deal as inspiration for a dramatic expansion of liberal programs, which Republican Richard M. Nixon generally retained. After 1974, however, the call for deregulation of the economy gained bipartisan support, the New Deal regulation of banking was suspended in the 1990s. The largest programs still in existence today are the Social Security System, the phrase New Deal was coined by an adviser to Roosevelt, Stuart Chase. Although the term was used by Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court. From 1929 to 1933 manufacturing output decreased by one third, prices fell by 20%, causing deflation that made repaying debts much harder. Unemployment in the U. S. increased from 4% to 25%, additionally, one-third of all employed persons were downgraded to working part-time on much smaller paychecks. In the aggregate, almost 50% of the nations human work-power was going unused, before the New Deal, there was no insurance on deposits at banks
5.
Great Depression in the United States
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The Great Depression was the worst economic times in American history. Though, it was not just in the United States it was a world wide conundrum, Great Depression began in August 1929, when the United States economy first went into an economic recession. Although the country spent two months with declining Gross Domestic Product, the Gross Domestic Rate is a very important part of the United States economy. It is so important because it represents each total dollar value of all goods and it was not until the Wall Street Crash in October 1929 that the effects of a declining economy were felt, and a major worldwide economic downturn ensued. The market crash marked the beginning of a decade of unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes. Although its causes are uncertain and controversial, the net effect was a sudden. The economy reached bottom in the winter of 1932–33, then four years of very rapid growth until 1937. The Depression caused major changes in America. Three years into the depression, President Herbert Hoover, widely blamed for not doing enough to combat the crisis, Roosevelts economic recovery plan, the New Deal, instituted unprecedented programs for relief, recovery and reform, and brought about a major realignment of American politics. The Depression also resulted in an increase of emigration of people to countries for the first time in American history. For example, some went back to their native countries, and some native US citizens went to Canada, Australia. It also resulted in the migration of people from badly hit areas in the Great Plains and the South to places such as California. Racial tensions also increased during this time, by the 1940s immigration had returned to normal, and emigration declined. A well-known example of an emigrant was Frank McCourt, who went to Ireland and it also shaped modern American literature, resulting in famous novels such as John Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. Banks began to fail in October 1930 when farmers defaulted on loans, there was no federal deposit insurance during that time as bank failures were considered quite common. This worried depositors that they might have a chance of losing all their savings, therefore, people started to withdraw money, the decreased money supply further aggravated price deflation, putting further pressure on already struggling businesses. The U. S. paper value lost an astonishing 40% value loss, the US governments commitment to the gold standard prevented it from engaging in expansionary monetary policy. High interest rates needed to be maintained, in order to attract investors who bought foreign assets with gold
6.
Sharecropping
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Sharecropping is a form of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land. Sharecropping has a history and there are a wide range of different situations. Some are governed by tradition, and others by law, legal contract systems such as the Italian mezzadria, the French métayage, the Spanish mediero, or the Islamic system of muqasat, occur widely. Sharecropping has benefits and costs for both the owners and the tenant and it encourages the cropper to remain on the land, solving the harvest rush problem. At the same time, since the cropper pays in shares of his harvest, owners and croppers share the risks of harvests being large or small and of prices being high or low. Because tenants benefit from larger harvests, they have an incentive to work harder, however, by dividing the working force into many individual workers, large farms no longer benefit from economies of scale. On the whole, sharecropping was not as efficient as the gang agriculture of slave plantations. In the U. S. tenant farmers own their own mules and equipment, and sharecroppers do not, Sharecropping occurred extensively in Scotland, Ireland and colonial Africa, and came into wide use in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era. The South had been devastated by war - planters had ample land, at the same time, most of the former slaves had labor but no money and no land - they rejected the kind of gang labor that typified slavery. A solution was the system focused on cotton, which was the only crop that could generate cash for the croppers, landowners, merchants. Poor white farmers, who previously had done little cotton farming, needed cash as well, jeffery Paige made a distinction between centralized sharecropping found on cotton plantations and the decentralized sharecropping with other crops. The former is characterized by political conservatism and long lasting tenure, tenants are tied to the landlord through the plantation store. Their work is heavily supervised as slave plantations were and this form of tenure tends to be replaced by wage slavery as markets penetrate. Decentralized sharecropping involves virtually no role for the landlord, plots are scattered, peasants manage their own labor, leases are very short which leads to peasant radicalism. This form of tenure becomes more common when markets penetrate, use of the sharecropper system has also been identified in England. It is still used in many poor areas today, notably in Pakistan. It has therefore been seen as an issue of reform in contexts such as the Mexican Revolution. Sharecropping agreements can however be made fairly, as a form of tenant farming or sharefarming that has a variable rental payment, there are three different types of contracts
7.
American Farm Bureau Federation
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The American Farm Bureau Federation, commonly referred to as the Farm Bureau, is a nonprofit organization and describes itself as the largest general farm organization in the United States. The stated mission of AFBF is working through our grassroots organizations to enhance and strengthen the lives of rural Americans and to build strong, AFBF is headquartered in Washington, D. C. There are 50 state affiliates and one in Puerto Rico, the Farm Bureau movement officially started in 1911 when John Barron, a farmer who graduated from Cornell University, worked as an extension agent in Broome County, New York. He served as a Farm Bureau representative for farmers with the Binghamton, the effort was financed by the U. S. Department of Agriculture and the Lackawanna Railroad. The Broome County Farm Bureau was soon separated from the Chamber of Commerce, other farm bureaus on a county level formed across the country. In 1914, with the passage of the Smith–Lever Act of 1914, farmers meeting in Saline County, Missouri, were the first to form a statewide Farm Bureau in 1915. The initial Bureaus had a social and educational function furthering the extension service efforts, the American Farm Bureau was formally founded in 1919 in Chicago, Illinois. Its initial organization papers said, The purpose of Farm Bureau is to make the business of farming more profitable, Farm Bureau should provide an organization in which members may secure the benefits of unified efforts in a way which could never be accomplished through individual effort. - Statement originally approved by Farm Bureau members in 1920, the American Farm Bureau Federation relocated its headquarters from Park Ridge, Illinois, to Washington, D. C. in 2003. Each November since 1986, AFBF has reported the results of a survey on the average retail cost of a classic Thanksgiving dinner, including a 16-pound turkey. In 2012, the cost was $49.48, an organization independent of the Farm Bureau called FBL Financial Group based in West Des Moines, Iowa, sells insurance under the brand names of Farm Bureau Financial Services. It also uses the Farm Bureau logo, nationwide Mutual Insurance Company began as an insurance company for members of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation. It continues to serve as a provider to Farm Bureaus in nine states. The Farm Bureau and its affiliates also own American Agricultural Insurance Company, a reinsurer, and American Farm Bureau Insurance Services. The Farm Bureaus opposition to climate change related regulation began with cap-and-trade regulation measures, the climate change session at its 2010 national meeting was entitled Global Warming, A Red Hot Lie. and featured climate change skeptic Christopher C. Horner, a lawyer for the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, a largely industry-backed group that strongly opposes limits on greenhouse gases, U. S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack stated that farmers have more to gain from cap and trade than they stand to lose. The Bureaus recent stance on climate change is an evolution of earlier positions, Farm Bureau no longer denies climate change, but remains opposed to non-market based solutions. The Farm Bureau continues to argue that carbon and emission restrictions will raise costs of energy, according to a 2012 article in The Nation, the AFBF retains twenty-two registered lobbyists
8.
Collective farming
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Collective farming and communal farming are various types of agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise. This type of collective is often an agricultural cooperative in which member-owners engage jointly in farming activities, the process by which farmland is aggregated is called collectivization. In some countries, there have been state-run and cooperative-run variants, for example, the Soviet Union had both kolkhozy and sovkhozy, often denoted in English as collective farms and state farms, respectively. In general, collective farming is contrasted with family farming and with arrangements in which land was owned by landlords or aristocrats. Notable examples of collective farming include the kolkhozy that dominated Soviet agriculture between 1930 and 1991 and the Israeli kibbutzim, both are collective farms based on common ownership of resources and on pooling of labour and income in accordance with the theoretical principles of cooperative organizations. They differ radically, however, in the application of the cooperative principles relative to freedom of choice, a small group of farming or herding families living together on a jointly-managed piece of land is surely one of the most common living arrangements in all of human history. This has co-existed with, and competed with, more forms of ownership. Private ownership came to predominate in much of the Western world, the process by which Western Europes communal land became private is a fundamental question behind views of property, is it the legacy of historical injustices and crimes. Karl Marx believed that what he called primitive communism was ended by exploitative means he called primitive accumulation, by contrast Libertarian thinkers say that by the homestead principle, whoever is first to work on the land is the rightful owner. A calpulli consisted of a number of extended families with a presumed common ancestor. Each calpulli owned the land and granted the individual families the right to farm parts of it, the Huron had an essentially communal system of land ownership. The French Catholic missionary Gabriel Sagard described the fundamentals, the Huron had as much land as they need. As a result, the Huron could give families their own land, any Huron was free to clear the land and farm on the basis of usufruct. He maintained possession of the land as long as he continued to actively cultivate, once he abandoned the land, it reverted to communal ownership, and anyone could take it up for themselves. The Iroquois had a communal system of land distribution. The tribe owned all lands but gave out tracts to the different clans for further distribution among households for cultivation, the land would be redistributed among the households every few years, and a clan could request a redistribution of tracts when the Clan Mothers Council gathered. Those clans that abused their allocated land or otherwise did not take care of it would be warned, land property was really only the concern of the women, since it was the womens job to cultivate food and not the mens. The Clan Mothers Council also reserved certain areas of land to be worked by the women of all the different clans, food from such lands, called kěndiǔgwǎge hodiyěntho, would be used at festivals and large council gatherings
9.
Great Depression
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The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, in most countries it started in 1929 and it was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how far the economy can decline. The depression originated in the United States, after a fall in stock prices that began around September 4,1929. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by an estimated 15%, by comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s, however, in many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II. The Great Depression had devastating effects in both rich and poor. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%, unemployment in the U. S. rose to 25% and in some countries rose as high as 33%. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries, farming communities and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by about 60%. Facing plummeting demand with few sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as mining and logging suffered the most. Even after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 optimism persisted for some time, john D. Rockefeller said These are days when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of my life, depressions have come, prosperity has always returned and will again. The stock market turned upward in early 1930, returning to early 1929 levels by April and this was still almost 30% below the peak of September 1929. Together, government and business spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the period of the previous year. On the other hand, consumers, many of whom had suffered losses in the stock market the previous year. In addition, beginning in the mid-1930s, a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the U. S, by mid-1930, interest rates had dropped to low levels, but expected deflation and the continuing reluctance of people to borrow meant that consumer spending and investment were depressed. By May 1930, automobile sales had declined to below the levels of 1928, prices in general began to decline, although wages held steady in 1930
10.
Recession
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In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction which results in a general slowdown in economic activity. Macroeconomic indicators such as GDP, investment spending, capacity utilization, household income, business profits, and inflation fall, while bankruptcies, in the United Kingdom, it is defined as a negative economic growth for two consecutive quarters. Recessions generally occur when there is a drop in spending. This may be triggered by events, such as a financial crisis, an external trade shock. Governments usually respond to recessions by adopting expansionary macroeconomic policies, such as increasing money supply, in a 1979 New York Times article, economic statistician Julius Shiskin suggested several rules of thumb for defining a recession, one of which was two down consecutive quarters of GDP. In time, the rules of thumb were forgotten. Some economists prefer a definition of a 1. 5-2 percentage points rise in unemployment within 12 months, in the United States, the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research is generally seen as the authority for dating US recessions. Almost universally, academics, economists, policy makers, and businesses defer to the determination by the NBER for the dating of a recessions onset. In the United Kingdom, recessions are generally defined as two consecutive quarters of economic growth, as measured by the seasonal adjusted quarter-on-quarter figures for real GDP. The exact same recession definition applies for all states of the European Union. These summary measures reflect underlying drivers such as employment levels and skills, household savings rates, corporate investment decisions, interest rates, demographics, when these relationships become imbalanced, recession can develop within the country or create pressure for recession in another country. Policy responses are often designed to drive the economy back towards this ideal state of balance, a severe or prolonged recession is referred to as an economic depression, although some argue that their causes and cures can be different. As an informal shorthand, economists refer to different recession shapes. The type and shape of recessions are distinctive, japan’s 1993–94 recession was U-shaped and its 8-out-of-9 quarters of contraction in 1997–99 can be described as L-shaped. Korea, Hong Kong and South-east Asia experienced U-shaped recessions in 1997–98, recessions have psychological and confidence aspects. For example, if companies expect economic activity to slow, they may reduce employment levels, such expectations can create a self-reinforcing downward cycle, bringing about or worsening a recession. Consumer confidence is one used to evaluate economic sentiment. The term animal spirits has been used to describe the factors underlying economic activity
11.
GDP
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Gross Domestic Product is a monetary measure of the market value of all final goods and services produced in a period. Nominal GDP estimates are used to determine the economic performance of a whole country or region. The OECD defines GDP as a measure of production equal to the sum of the gross values added of all resident and institutional units engaged in production. ”An IMF publication states that GDP measures the monetary value of final goods and services - that is. Total GDP can also be broken down into the contribution of industry or sector of the economy. The ratio of GDP to the population of the region is the per capita GDP. William Petty came up with a concept of GDP to defend landlords against unfair taxation during warfare between the Dutch and the English between 1652 and 1674. Charles Davenant developed the method further in 1695, the modern concept of GDP was first developed by Simon Kuznets for a US Congress report in 1934. In this report, Kuznets warned against its use as a measure of welfare, after the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, GDP became the main tool for measuring a countrys economy. The switch from GNP to GDP in the US was in 1991, the history of the concept of GDP should be distinguished from the history of changes in ways of estimating it. The value added by firms is relatively easy to calculate from their accounts, but the value added by the sector, by financial industries. GDP can be determined in three ways, all of which should, in principle, give the same result and they are the production approach, the income approach, or the expenditure approach. The most direct of the three is the approach, which sums the outputs of every class of enterprise to arrive at the total. The income approach works on the principle that the incomes of the factors must be equal to the value of their product. This approach mirrors the OECD definition given above, deduct intermediate consumption from gross value to obtain the gross value added. Gross value added = gross value of output – value of intermediate consumption, value of output = value of the total sales of goods and services plus value of changes in the inventories. The sum of the value added in the various economic activities is known as GDP at factor cost. GDP at factor cost plus indirect taxes less subsidies on products = GDP at producer price, for measuring output of domestic product, economic activities are classified into various sectors. Subtracting each sectors intermediate consumption from gross output gives the GDP at factor cost, adding indirect tax minus subsidies in GDP at factor cost gives the GDP at producer prices
12.
Wall Street Crash of 1929
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The crash, which followed the London Stock Exchanges crash of September, signaled the beginning of the 12-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries. The Roaring Twenties, the decade that followed World War I and led to the crash, was a time of wealth, while the American cities prospered, the overproduction of agricultural produce created widespread financial despair among American farmers throughout the decade. This would later be blamed as one of the key factors that led to the 1929 stock market crash, despite the dangers of speculation, many believed that the stock market would continue to rise forever. On March 25,1929, after the Federal Reserve warned of excessive speculation, two days later, banker Charles E. Mitchell announced his company the National City Bank would provide $25 million in credit to stop the markets slide. Mitchells move brought a halt to the financial crisis and call money declined from 20 to 8 percent. Despite all these economic trouble signs and the breaks in March and May 1929, stocks resumed their advance in June. The market had been on a run that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average increase in value tenfold. Shortly before the crash, economist Irving Fisher famously proclaimed, Stock prices have reached what looks like a high plateau. The optimism and financial gains of the bull market were shaken after a well publicized early September prediction from financial expert Roger Babson that a crash was coming. The initial September decline was thus called the Babson Break in the press and this was the start of the Great Crash, although until the severe phase of the crash in October, many investors regarded the September Babson Break as a healthy correction and buying opportunity. On September 20, the London Stock Exchange crashed when top British investor Clarence Hatry and many of his associates were jailed for fraud, the London crash greatly weakened the optimism of American investment in markets overseas. In the days leading up to the crash, the market was severely unstable, periods of selling and high volumes were interspersed with brief periods of rising prices and recovery. On October 24, the market lost 11 percent of its value at the bell on very heavy trading. Several leading Wall Street bankers met to find a solution to the panic and chaos on the trading floor. The meeting included Thomas W. Lamont, acting head of Morgan Bank, Albert Wiggin, head of the Chase National Bank and they chose Richard Whitney, vice president of the Exchange, to act on their behalf. With the bankers financial resources behind him, Whitney placed a bid to purchase a block of shares in U. S. Steel at a price well above the current market. As traders watched, Whitney then placed similar bids on other blue chip stocks and this tactic was similar to one that ended the Panic of 1907. It succeeded in halting the slide, the Dow Jones Industrial Average recovered, closing with it down only 6.38 points for the day
13.
Deflation
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In economics, deflation is a decrease in the general price level of goods and services. Deflation occurs when the inflation rate falls below 0%, Inflation reduces the real value of money over time, conversely, deflation increases the real value of money – the currency of a national or regional economy. This allows one to buy goods and services than before with the same amount of money. Economists generally believe that deflation is a problem in a modern economy because it may increase the value of debt. Deflation may also aggravate recessions and lead to a deflationary spiral, Deflation is distinct from disinflation, a slow-down in the inflation rate, i. e. when inflation declines to a lower rate but is still positive. In the IS–LM model, deflation is caused by a shift in the supply and demand curve for goods and this in turn can be caused by an increase in supply, a fall in demand, or both. When prices are falling, consumers have an incentive to delay purchases and consumption until prices fall further, when purchases are delayed, productive capacity is idled and investment falls, leading to further reductions in aggregate demand. Deflation is also related to risk aversion, where the risk-adjusted return on assets drops to near zero, investors and buyers will hoard currency rather than invest it, even in the most solid of securities. This can produce a liquidity trap or it may lead to shortages that entice investments yielding more jobs, a central bank cannot, normally, charge negative interest for money, and even charging zero interest often produces less stimulative effect than slightly higher rates of interest. In a closed economy, this is because charging zero interest also means having zero return on government securities, in an open economy it creates a carry trade, and devalues the currency. A devalued currency produces higher prices for imports without necessarily stimulating exports to a like degree, Deflation is the natural condition of economies when the supply of money is fixed, or does not grow as quickly as population and the economy. When this happens, the amount of hard currency per person falls, in effect making money more scarce, and consequently. Deflation also occurs when improvements in production efficiency lower the price of goods. Competition in the marketplace often prompts those producers to apply at least some portion of these cost savings into reducing the price for their goods. When this happens, consumers pay less for goods, and consequently deflation has occurred. There was inflation during World War I, but deflation returned again after that war, most nations abandoned the gold standard in the 1930s. There is less reason to expect deflation, aside from the collapse of asset classes. Studies of the Great Depression by Ben Bernanke have indicated that, in response to decreased demand, a structural deflation existed from the 1870s until the cycle upswing that started in 1895
14.
Causes of the Great Depression
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The causes of the Great Depression in the early 20th century have been extensively discussed by economists and remain a matter of active debate. They are part of the debate about economic crises. However, historians lack consensus in determining the relationship between various events and the government economic policy in causing or ameliorating the Depression. The initial stock market crash triggered a panic sell-off that made the market go even lower. The timing of the crash coincided with news that the import tariff on manufactured products was losing support in Congress. Current theories may be classified into two main points of view and several heterodox points of view. First, there are theories, from Keynesian and institutional economists who argue that the depression was caused by a widespread loss of confidence that led to underconsumption. The demand-driven theories argue that the crisis following the 1929 crash led to a sudden and persistent reduction in consumption. Once panic and deflation set in, many believed they could avoid further losses by keeping clear of the markets. Holding money therefore became profitable as prices dropped lower and an amount of money bought ever more goods. Related to this explanation are those who point to debt deflation causing those who borrow to owe more in real terms. There are also heterodox theories that reject the explanations of the Keynesians. Some new classical macroeconomists have argued that labor market policies imposed at the start caused the length. The Austrian school of economics focuses on the effects of money supply. Marxian economists view the Great Depression, with all other economic crises, as a symptom of the classism, the two classical competing theories of the Great Depression are the Keynesian and the monetarist explanation. There are also heterodox theories that downplay or reject the explanations of the Keynesians. There is consensus that the Federal Reserve System should have cut short the process of monetary deflation, if the FED had done that the economic downturn would have been far less severe and much shorter. In his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money and he argued that there are reasons why the self-correcting mechanisms that many economists claimed should work during a downturn might not work
15.
Walker Evans
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Walker Evans was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evanss work from the FSA period uses the large-format and he said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are literate, authoritative, transcendent. Many of his works are in the permanent collections of museums and have been the subject of retrospectives at such institutions as The Metropolitan Museum of Art or George Eastman House. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Jessie and Walker, Walker Evans came from an affluent family and his father was an advertising director. He spent his youth in Toledo, Chicago, and New York City and he attended The Loomis Institute and Mercersburg Academy before graduating from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1922. He studied French literature for a year at Williams College, spending much of his time in the schools library, after spending a year in Paris in 1926, he returned to the United States to join the edgy literary and art crowd in New York City. John Cheever, Hart Crane, and Lincoln Kirstein were among his friends and he was a clerk for a stockbroker firm in Wall street from 1927 to 1929. Evans took up photography in 1928 around the time he was living in Ossining and his influences included Eugène Atget and August Sander. In 1930, he published three photographs in the poetry book The Bridge by Hart Crane, in 1931, he made a photo series of Victorian houses in the Boston vicinity sponsored by Lincoln Kirstein. In May and June 1933, Evans took photographs in Cuba on assignment for Lippincott, the publisher of Carleton Beals The Crime of Cuba, there Evans drank nightly with Ernest Hemingway, who loaned him money to extend his two-week stay an additional week. His photographs documented street life, the presence of police, beggars and dockworkers in rags and he also helped Hemingway acquire photos from newspaper archives that documented some of the political violence Hemingway described in To Have and Have Not. Fearing that his photographs might be deemed critical of the government and confiscated by Cuban authorities and he had no difficulties when returning to the United States, and 31 of his photos appeared in Beals book. The cache of prints left with Hemingway was discovered in Havana in 2002, in 1935, Evans spent two months at first on a fixed-term photographic campaign for the Resettlement Administration in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. From October on, he continued to do work for the RA and later the Farm Security Administration. Its detailed account of three farming families paints a moving portrait of rural poverty. Evanss photographs of the families made them icons of Depression-Era misery, in September 2005, Fortune revisited Hale County and the descendants of the three families for its 75th anniversary issue. Evans continued to work for the FSA until 1938 and that year, an exhibition, Walker Evans, American Photographs, was held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. This was the first exhibition in the devoted to the work of a single photographer
16.
Arthur Rothstein
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Arthur Rothstein was an American photographer. Rothstein is recognized as one of America’s premier photojournalists, during a career that spanned five decades, he provoked, entertained and informed the American people. His photographs ranged from a baseball game to the drama of war. Rothstein was born in Manhattan, New York City, and he grew up in the Bronx and he was a graduate of Columbia University, where he was a founder of the University Camera Club and photography editor of the Columbian. Following his graduation from Columbia during the Great Depression, Rothstein was invited to Washington DC by one of his professors at Columbia, Rothstein had been Strykers student at Columbia University in the early 1930s. In 1935, as a senior, Rothstein prepared a set of copy photographs for a picture source book on American agriculture that Stryker and another professor. The book was never published, but before the year was out, Tugwell, Stryker hired Rothstein to set up the darkroom for Strykers Photo Unit of the Historical Section of the Resettlement Administration. Arthur Rothstein became the first photographer sent out by Roy Stryker, during the next five years he shot some of the most significant photographs ever taken of rural and small-town America. The Resettlement Administration became the Farm Security Administration in 1937, later, when the country geared up for World War II, the FSA became part of the Office of War Information. The photographs made during Rothsteins five-year stint with the Photo Unit form a catalog of the agencys initiatives, enacted in July, the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act gave the agency its new lease on life as the Farm Security Administration. Stryker planned to visit Alabama and asked Rothstein to wait for him, the residents of Gees Bend symbolized two different things to the Resettlement Administration. On the other hand, the agenda for rehabilitation implied a view of the residents as the victims of slavery. Unlike the subjects of many Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration photographs, the photographs do not show the back-breaking work of cultivation and harvest, but only offer a glimpse of spring plowing. At home, the residents do not merely inhabit substandard housing but are engaged in a variety of domestic activities, the dwellings at Gees Bend must have been as uncomfortable as the frame shacks thrown up for farm workers everywhere, but Rothsteins photographs emphasize the log cabins picturesque qualities. This affirming image of life in Gees Bend is reinforced by Rothsteins deliberate, there does not seem to have been a Life magazine story about Gees Bend, but a long article ran in the New York Times Magazine of August 22,1937. It is illustrated by eleven of Rothsteins pictures, with a text that draws heavily upon a Resettlement Administration report dated in May, the story extols the agencys regional director as intelligent and sympathetic and describes the Gees Bend project in glowing terms. Reporter John Temple Graves II perceived the project as retaining agrarian —, in 1940 Mr. Rothstein became a staff photographer for Look magazine but left shortly thereafter to join the OWI and then the US Army as a photographer in the Signal Corps. In 1947 Mr. Rothstein rejoined Look as Director of Photography and he remained at Look until 1971 when the magazine ceased publication
17.
Cimarron County, Oklahoma
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Cimarron County is the westernmost county in the U. S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2010 census, the population was 2,475 and its county seat is Boise City. Located in the Oklahoma Panhandle, Cimarron County contains the community in the state that observes the Mountain Time Zone. Black Rock Mesa, the highest point in the state, is in the northwest corner of the county, throughout most of its history it has had both the smallest population and the lowest population density of any county in Oklahoma. Cimarron County was created at statehood in 1907, before the Oklahoma Organic Act was passed in 1890, the area had belonged to what was known as No Mans Land, also referred to as the Public Land Strip. This was a lawless area, with no organized government. In 1890, the became known as Beaver County, Oklahoma Territory. Informally, it was known as the Oklahoma Panhandle, there were only two communities in the strip. One, Carrizo, had 83 residents in 1890, while the other, otherwise, the land was used primarily by sheepherders from New Mexico. Seven communities vied to become county seat after statehood, Boise City, Cimarron, Doby, Hurley, a county election in 1908 selected Boise City. Railroads came late to this part of Oklahoma, the Elkhart and Santa Fe Railway built a line from Elkhart, Kansas through Cimarron County in 1925. It completed the link into New Mexico in 1932, the same company built a line from Colorado to Boise City in 1931 and extended it into Texas in 1937. This line still operates and in 2000 was part of the BNSF system. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 1,841 square miles. It is the fourth-largest county in Oklahoma by area and it also has Oklahomas highest point at 4,973 feet on the Black Mesa. The northern part of the county is drained by the Cimarron River, the man-made Lake Carl Etling lies inside Black Mesa park. A location 300 yards east of Rt. 287/385 and 1.75 miles south of the Cimarron River is the place in the US less than 27 miles from five different states,26.99 miles from Kansas, New Mexico
18.
Dorothea Lange
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Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration. Langes photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography, born of second generation German immigrants on May 26,1895, at 1041 Bloomfield Street, Hoboken, New Jersey, Dorothea Lange was named Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn at birth. She dropped her name and assumed her mothers maiden name after her father abandoned the family when she was 12 years old. The other was her contraction of polio at age seven which left her with a right leg. It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me, ive never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it. Lange graduated from the Wadleigh High School for Girls and was educated in photography at Columbia University in New York City and she was informally apprenticed to several New York photography studios, including that of the famed Arnold Genthe. In 1918, she left New York with a friend to travel the world. By the following year she had opened a portrait studio. She lived across the bay in Berkeley for the rest of her life, in 1920, she married the noted western painter Maynard Dixon, with whom she had two sons, Daniel, born in 1925, and John, born in 1930. With the onset of the Great Depression, Lange turned her camera lens from the studio to the street, in December 1935, she and Dixon divorced and she married economist Paul Schuster Taylor, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. For the next five years they documented rural poverty and the exploitation of sharecroppers and migrant laborers – Taylor interviewing and gathering economic data, distributed free to newspapers across the country, her poignant images became icons of the era. One of Langes most recognized works is titled Migrant Mother, the woman in the photo is Florence Owens Thompson. In 1960, Lange spoke about her taking the photograph, I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history and she told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields and she had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, there was a sort of equality about it. After Lange returned home, she told the editor of a San Francisco newspaper about conditions at the camp, the editor informed federal authorities and published an article that included the photos
19.
Rexford Tugwell
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Tugwell served in FDRs administration until he was forced out in 1936. He helped design the New Deal farm program and the Resettlement Administration that moved subsistence farmers into small rented farms under close supervision and his ideas on suburban planning resulted in the construction of Greenbelt, Maryland, with low-cost rents for relief families. He was denounced by conservatives who said his government-imposed planning violated the values of individualism, Roosevelt appointed Tugwell as Governor of Puerto Rico during World War II, and later president of the United Fruit Company. He became a professor at universities, with lengthy service at the University of Chicago. He wrote twenty books, covering the politics of the New Deal, biographies of politicians, issues in planning. Rexford Tugwell was born in 1891 in Sinclairville, New York, in his youth, he gained an appreciation for workers’ rights and liberal politics from the works of Upton Sinclair, James Bryce, Edward Bellamy, Frederick Winslow Taylor, and Charles Richard van Hise. Tugwell began studying economics in graduate work at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, at university, he was influenced by the teaching of Scott Nearing and Simon Patten, as well as the writings of John Dewey in philosophy. After graduation, Tugwell served as faculty at the University of Washington, American University in Paris. Tugwells approach to economics was experimentalist, and he viewed the industrial planning of World War I as a successful experiment and he advocated agricultural planning to stop the rural poverty that had become prevalent due to a crop surplus after the First World War. This method of controlling production, prices, and costs was especially relevant as the Great Depression began, in 1932 Tugwell was invited to join President Franklin Roosevelts team of advisers known as the Brain Trust. After Roosevelts inauguration in 1933, Tugwell was appointed first as Assistant Secretary and he helped create the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and served as its director. The AAA included a domestic allotment program, which paid farmers to reduce their production by roughly 30% so that reduced supply would increase the price they received. It was funded with a tax on processing companies that used farm commodities, Tugwells department managed the production of key crops by adjusting the subsidies for non-production. This was especially necessary given the damage of the 1930s Dust Bowls. He additionally played a key role in crafting the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, in April 1935 Tugwell and Roosevelt created the Resettlement Administration, a unit of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Directed by Tugwell, the RA sought to create healthy communities for the unemployed by relocating them to new communities for access to urban opportunities. Some of the RAs activities dealt with conservation and rural aid. Then go back into the cities and tear down whole slums and she believed that he underestimated the strengths of complex urban communities and caused too much social displacement in tearing down neighborhoods that might have been renovated
20.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and emerged as a figure in world events during the mid-20th century. He directed the United States government during most of the Great Depression and he is often rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U. S. Presidents, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Roosevelt was born in 1882 to an old, prominent Dutch family from Dutchess County and he attended the elite educational institutions of Groton School, Harvard College, and Columbia Law School. At age 23 in 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt, and he entered politics in 1910, serving in the New York State Senate, and then as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. In 1920, Roosevelt was presidential candidate James M. Coxs running mate and he was in office from 1929 to 1933 and served as a reform governor, promoting the enactment of programs to combat the depression besetting the United States at the time. In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover in a landslide to win the presidency, Roosevelt took office while in the United States was in the midst of the worst economic crisis in its history. Energized by his victory over polio, FDR relied on his persistent optimism and activism to renew the national spirit. He created numerous programs to support the unemployed and farmers, and to labor union growth while more closely regulating business. His support for the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 added to his popularity, the economy improved rapidly from 1933–37, but then relapsed into a deep recession in 1937–38. The bipartisan Conservative Coalition that formed in 1937 prevented his packing the Supreme Court, when the war began and unemployment ended, conservatives in Congress repealed the two major relief programs, the WPA and CCC. However, they kept most of the regulations on business, along with several smaller programs, major surviving programs include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Wagner Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Social Security. His goal was to make America the Arsenal of Democracy, which would supply munitions to the Allies, in March 1941, Roosevelt, with Congressional approval, provided Lend-Lease aid to Britain and China. He supervised the mobilization of the U. S. economy to support the war effort, as an active military leader, Roosevelt implemented a war strategy on two fronts that ended in the defeat of the Axis Powers and initiate the development of the worlds first atomic bomb. His work also influenced the creation of the United Nations. Roosevelts physical health declined during the war years, and he died 11 weeks into his fourth term. One of the oldest Dutch families in New York State, the Roosevelts distinguished themselves in other than politics. One ancestor, Isaac Roosevelt, had served with the New York militia during the American Revolution, Roosevelt attended events of the New York society Sons of the American Revolution, and joined the organization while he was president
21.
Socialism
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Social ownership may refer to forms of public, collective, or cooperative ownership, to citizen ownership of equity, or to any combination of these. Although there are varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them. Socialist economic systems can be divided into both non-market and market forms, non-market socialism aims to circumvent the inefficiencies and crises traditionally associated with capital accumulation and the profit system. Profits generated by these firms would be controlled directly by the workforce of each firm or accrue to society at large in the form of a social dividend, the feasibility and exact methods of resource allocation and calculation for a socialist system are the subjects of the socialist calculation debate. Core dichotomies associated with these concerns include reformism versus revolutionary socialism, the term is frequently used to draw contrast to the political system of the Soviet Union, which critics argue operated in an authoritarian fashion. By the 1920s, social democracy and communism became the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement, by this time, Socialism emerged as the most influential secular movement of the twentieth century, worldwide. Socialist parties and ideas remain a force with varying degrees of power and influence in all continents. Today, some socialists have also adopted the causes of social movements. The origin of the term socialism may be traced back and attributed to a number of originators, in addition to significant historical shifts in the usage, for Andrew Vincent, The word ‘socialism’ finds its root in the Latin sociare, which means to combine or to share. The related, more technical term in Roman and then medieval law was societas and this latter word could mean companionship and fellowship as well as the more legalistic idea of a consensual contract between freemen. The term socialism was created by Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the founders of what would later be labelled utopian socialism. Simon coined socialism as a contrast to the doctrine of individualism. They presented socialism as an alternative to liberal individualism based on the ownership of resources. The term socialism is attributed to Pierre Leroux, and to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud in France, the term communism also fell out of use during this period, despite earlier distinctions between socialism and communism from the 1840s. An early distinction between socialism and communism was that the former aimed to only socialise production while the latter aimed to socialise both production and consumption. However, by 1888 Marxists employed the term socialism in place of communism, linguistically, the contemporary connotation of the words socialism and communism accorded with the adherents and opponents cultural attitude towards religion. In Christian Europe, of the two, communism was believed to be the atheist way of life, in Protestant England, the word communism was too culturally and aurally close to the Roman Catholic communion rite, hence English atheists denoted themselves socialists. Friedrich Engels argued that in 1848, at the time when the Communist Manifesto was published, socialism was respectable on the continent and this latter branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany
22.
Dust Bowl
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The drought came in three waves,1934,1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the high plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years. During the drought of the 1930s, the unanchored soil turned to dust, which the prevailing winds blew away in huge clouds that sometimes blackened the sky. These choking billows of dust – named black blizzards or black rollers – traveled cross country, reaching as far as the East Coast and striking such cities as New York City and Washington, on the Plains, they often reduced visibility to 1 metre or less. While the term the Dust Bowl was originally a reference to the area affected by the dust, today it is usually used to refer to the event. The drought and erosion of the Dust Bowl affected 100,000,000 acres that centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and touched adjacent sections of New Mexico, Colorado, the Dust Bowl forced tens of thousands of families to abandon their farms. The Dust Bowl area lies principally west of the 100th meridian on the High Plains, elevation ranges from 2,500 feet in the east to 6,000 feet at the base of the Rocky Mountains. The area is semiarid, receiving less than 20 inches of rain annually, the region is also prone to extended drought, alternating with unusual wetness of equivalent duration. During wet years, the soil provides bountiful agricultural output. The region is subject to high winds. During early European and American exploration of the Great Plains, this region was thought unsuitable for European-style agriculture, the lack of surface water and timber made the region less attractive than other areas for pioneer settlement and agriculture. The federal government encouraged settlement and development of the Plains for agriculture via the Homestead Act of 1862, an unusually wet period in the Great Plains mistakenly led settlers and the federal government to believe that rain follows the plow and that the climate of the region had changed permanently. Waves of European settlers arrived in the plains at the beginning of the 20th century, a return of unusually wet weather seemingly confirmed a previously held opinion that the formerly semiarid area could support large-scale agriculture. At the same time, technological improvements such as mechanized plowing, for example, in the Llano Estacado of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas, the area of farmland was doubled between 1900 and 1920, then tripled again between 1925 and 1930. The agricultural methods favored by farmers during this period created the conditions for large-scale erosion under certain environmental conditions, when severe drought struck the Great Plains region in the 1930s, it resulted in erosion and loss of topsoil because of farming practices at the time. The drought dried the topsoil and over time it became friable, without the indigenous grasses in place, the high winds that occur on the plains picked up the topsoil and created the massive dust storms that marked the Dust Bowl period. The persistent dry weather caused crops to fail, leaving the plowed fields exposed to wind erosion, the fine soil of the Great Plains was easily eroded and carried east by strong continental winds. On November 11,1933, a very strong dust storm stripped topsoil from desiccated South Dakota farmlands in just one of a series of severe dust storms that year. Beginning on May 9,1934, a strong, two-day dust storm removed massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the worst such storms of the Dust Bowl, the dust clouds blew all the way to Chicago, where they deposited 12 million pounds of dust
23.
Okie
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An Okie is a resident, native, or cultural descendant of Oklahoma. Like most terms that disparage specific groups, it was first applied by the dominant cultural group and it is derived from the name of the state, similar to Texan or Tex for someone from Texas, or Arkie or Arkansawyer for a native of Arkansas. In the 1930s in California, the term came to refer to very poor migrants from Oklahoma, the Dust Bowl and the Okie migration of the 1930s brought in over a million newly displaced people, many headed to the farm labor jobs advertised in Californias Central Valley. Dunbar-Ortiz argues that Okie denotes much more than being from Oklahoma, by 1950, four million individuals, or one quarter of all persons born in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, or Missouri, lived outside the region, primarily in the West. Prominent Okies in the 1930s included Woody Guthrie, most prominent in the late 1960s and 1970s were country musician Merle Haggard and writer Gerald Haslam. S. Californians began calling all migrants by that name, even though many newcomers were not actually Oklahomans, the migrants included people from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Colorado and New Mexico, but were all referred to as Okies and Arkies. More of the migrants were from Oklahoma than any state. Ben Reddick, a free-lance journalist and later publisher of the Paso Robles Daily Press, is credited with first using the term Oakie, in the mid-1930s and he noticed the OK abbreviation on many of the migrants license plates and referred to them in his article as Oakies. The first known usage was an unpublished private postcard from 1907, many West Coast residents and some politically motivated writers used Okie to disparage these poor, white migrant workers and their families. The term became well-known nationwide by John Steinbecks novel The Grapes of Wrath, will Rogers, a famous movie star and political commentator from Oklahoma remarked jokingly that the Okies moving from Oklahoma to California increased the average intelligence of both states. Once the Okie families migrated from Oklahoma to California, they often were forced to work on farms to support their families. Because of the pay, these families were often forced to live on the outskirts of these farms in shanty houses they built themselves. These homes were set up in groups called Squatter Camps or Shanty Towns. Indoor plumbing was inaccessible to these migrant workers, and so they were forced to resort to using outhouses. Unfortunately, because of the space allotted to the migrant workers, their outhouses were normally located near the irrigation ditches. These irrigation ditches provided the Okie families with a water supply, due to this lack of sanitation in these camps, disease ran rampant among the migrant workers and their families. However, what native Californians failed to realize at the time was that these Okie migrant farm workers did not always live in the conditions that the Dust Bowl left them in. In fact, often these families had owned their own farms and had been able to support themselves
24.
Weedpatch Camp
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Weedpatch Camp was built by the Farm Security Administration south of Bakersfield, California in 1936 to house migrant workers during the Great Depression. Several historic buildings at the camp were placed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 22,1996, Weedpatch Camp has its origins in the migrations during the drought that caused the Dust Bowl in the mid-1930s. Oklahoma was especially hard hit by the drought and many of the farmers there left and they migrated to California where they moved from farm to farm looking for work as farm laborers. They were joined by other migrant workers from Texas, Arkansas, Housing for the migrants consisted of either squatter camps or camps established by the farmers and growers. Because of the lack of hygiene and security that these types of camps offered, the FSA also provided help locating work. The first administrator of Weedpatch Camp was Tom Collins, between April 1935 and December 1936, the federal governments New Deal Resettlement Administration had relocated many struggling rural and urban families to planned communities. Weedpatch Camp, however, was constructed by the Works Progress Administration under the auspices of the FSA and it was located on the outskirts of the small towns of Arvin and Weedpatch. The camp now is located in an area of Kern County just south of Bakersfield. Later, the tents were replaced by permanent wood frame shacks. The buildings are single story frame structures. There are three remaining from the camp that make up this National Register of Historic Places property, the community hall, the post office. The latter two buildings were moved next to the community hall to form the beginnings of a park on the property. In 2007, the exteriors of the library and post office buildings were renovated, the camp is significant in the history of California for the migration of people escaping the Dust Bowl. These migrants were known by the term of Okie and were the subject of discrimination from the local population. The plight of the Okies and a description of Weedpatch Camp were chronicled by novelist John Steinbeck in his book The Grapes of Wrath, the book is dedicated to camp administrator Collins. The novel was adapted into a 1940 film directed by John Ford, a Tony Award-winning play, the camp was subsequently taken over by the Kern County Housing Authority who administers it as the Sunset Labor Camp to assist migrant farm workers. Washington, DC, Department of the Interior, National Park Service,1995, on file at the National Park Service and at the California Office of Historic Preservation
25.
The Grapes of Wrath
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The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they are trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with thousands of other Okies, they seek jobs, land, dignity, the Grapes of Wrath is frequently read in American high school and college literature classes due to its historical context and enduring legacy. A celebrated Hollywood film version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was made in 1940, the narrative begins just after Tom Joad is paroled from McAlester prison, where he had been imprisoned after being convicted of homicide. On his return to his home near Sallisaw, Oklahoma, Tom meets former preacher Jim Casy, whom he remembers from his childhood, when they arrive at Toms childhood farm home, they find it deserted. Disconcerted and confused, Tom and Casy meet their old neighbor, Muley Graves, Graves tells them that the banks have evicted all the farmers, but he refuses to leave the area. The next morning, Tom and Casy go to Uncle Johns, consequently, the Joads have no option but to seek work in California, described in handbills as fruitful and offering high pay. The Joads put everything they have into making the journey, although leaving Oklahoma would violate his parole, Tom decides it is worth the risk, and invites Casy to join him and his family. Traveling west on Route 66, the Joad family find the road crowded with other migrants, in makeshift camps, they hear many stories from others, some returning from California, and the group worries about lessening prospects. The family unit dwindles, too, Granpa dies along the road, and they bury him in a field, Granma dies close to the California state line, led by Ma, the remaining members realize they can only continue, as nothing is left for them in Oklahoma. Reaching California, they find the state oversupplied with labor, so wages are low, the big corporate farmers are in collusion, and smaller farmers suffer from collapsing prices. Nonetheless, as a Federal facility, the camp protects the migrants from harassment by California deputies, in response to the exploitation, Casy becomes a labor organizer and tries to recruit for a labor union. The remaining Joads work as strikebreakers in an orchard, where Casy is involved in a strike that eventually turns violent. When Tom Joad witnesses Casys fatal beating, he kills the attacker, the Joads later leave the orchard for a cotton farm, where Tom is at risk of being arrested for the homicide. Tom bids his farewell and promises to work for the oppressed. Rose of Sharons baby is stillborn, Ma Joad remains steadfast and forces the family through the bereavement. With rain, the Joads dwelling is flooded, and they move to higher ground, in the final chapter of the book, the family takes shelter from the flood in an old barn. Inside, they find a boy and his father, who is dying of starvation
26.
Puerto Rico
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Puerto Rico, officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and briefly called Porto Rico, is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the northeast Caribbean Sea. It is an archipelago that includes the island of Puerto Rico and a number of smaller ones such as Mona, Culebra. The capital and most populous city is San Juan and its official languages are Spanish and English, though Spanish predominates. The islands population is approximately 3.4 million, Puerto Ricos rich history, tropical climate, diverse natural scenery, renowned traditional cuisine, and attractive tax incentives make it a popular destination for travelers from around the world. Four centuries of Spanish colonial government transformed the ethnic, cultural and physical landscapes primarily with waves of African captives, and Canarian. In the Spanish imperial imagination, Puerto Rico played a secondary, in 1898, following the Spanish–American War, the United States appropriated Puerto Rico together with most former Spanish colonies under the terms of the Treaty of Paris. Puerto Ricans are natural-born citizens of the United States, however, Puerto Rico does not have a vote in the United States Congress, which governs the territory with full jurisdiction under the Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act of 1950. As a U. S. territory, American citizens residing on the island are disenfranchised at the level and may not vote for president. However, Congress approved a constitution, allowing U. S. citizens on the territory to elect a governor. A fifth referendum will be held in June 2017, with only Statehood, in early 2017, the Puerto Rican government-debt crisis posed serious problems for the government. The outstanding bond debt that had climbed to $70 billion or $12,000 per capita at a time with 12. 4% unemployment, the debt had been increasing during a decade long recession. Puerto Ricans often call the island Borinquen – a derivation of Borikén, its indigenous Taíno name, the terms boricua and borincano derive from Borikén and Borinquen respectively, and are commonly used to identify someone of Puerto Rican heritage. The island is also known in Spanish as la isla del encanto. Columbus named the island San Juan Bautista, in honor of Saint John the Baptist, eventually traders and other maritime visitors came to refer to the entire island as Puerto Rico, while San Juan became the name used for the main trading/shipping port and the capital city. The islands name was changed to Porto Rico by the United States after the Treaty of Paris of 1898, the anglicized name was used by the US government and private enterprises. The name was changed back to Puerto Rico by a joint resolution in Congress introduced by Félix Córdova Dávila in 1931, the ancient history of the archipelago known today as Puerto Rico is not well known. The scarce archaeological findings and early Spanish scholarly accounts from the colonial era constitute the basis of knowledge about them. The first comprehensive book on the history of Puerto Rico was written by Fray Íñigo Abbad y Lasierra in 1786, the first settlers were the Ortoiroid people, an Archaic Period culture of Amerindian hunters and fishermen who migrated from the South American mainland
27.
Documentary photography
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It is typically covered in professional photojournalism, or real life reportage, but it may also be an amateur, artistic, or academic pursuit. The term document applied to photography antedates the mode or genre itself, photographs meant to accurately describe otherwise unknown, hidden, forbidden, or difficult-to-access places or circumstances. The earliest daguerreotype and calotype surveys of the ruins of the Near East, Egypt, the US Government published Survey photographs in the annual Reports, as well as portfolios designed to encourage continued funding of scientific surveys. This period decisively shifted documentary from antiquarian and landscape subjects to that of the city, the refining of photogravure methods, and then the introduction of halftone reproduction around 1890 made low cost mass-reproduction in newspapers, magazines and books possible. The figure most directly associated with the birth of this new form of documentary is the journalist, Riis was a New York police-beat reporter who had been converted to urban social reform ideas by his contact with medical and public-health officials, some of whom were amateur photographers. Riis used these acquaintances at first to gather photographs, but eventually took up the camera himself, riiss documentary photography was passionately devoted to changing the inhumane conditions under which the poor lived in the rapidly expanding urban-industrial centers. His work succeeded in embedding photography in urban reform movements, notably the Social Gospel, in 1900, Englishwoman Alice Seeley Harris traveled to the Congo Free State with her husband, John Hobbis Harris. There she photographed Belgian atrocities against local people with an early Kodak Brownie camera, in the 1930s, the Great Depression brought a new wave of documentary, both of rural and urban conditions. During the wartime and postwar eras, documentary photography increasingly became subsumed under the rubric of photojournalism, in the 1970s and 1980s, a spirited attack on traditional documentary was mounted by historians, critics, and photographers. Sekula emerged as a champion of these photographers, in critical writing, since the late 1990s, an increased interest in documentary photography and its longer term perspective can be observed. Nicholas Nixon extensively documented issues surrounded by American life, south African documentary photographer Pieter Hugo engaged in documenting art traditions with a focus on African communities. Antonin Kratochvil photographed a variety of subjects, including Mongolias street children for the Museum of Natural History. Fazal Sheikh sought to reflect the realities of the most underprivileged peoples of different third world countries, documentary photography generally relates to longer term projects with a more complex story line, while photojournalism concerns more breaking news stories. Since the late 1970s, the decline of magazine published photography meant traditional forums for such work were vanishing, many documentary photographers have now focused on the art world and galleries of a way of presenting their work and making a living. Traditional documentary photography has found a place in dedicated photography galleries alongside other artists working in painting, sculpture and modern media
28.
Camera angle
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The camera angle marks the specific location at which the movie camera or video camera is placed to take a shot. A scene may be shot from camera angles simultaneously. This will give a different experience and sometimes emotion, the different camera angles will have different effects on the viewer and how they perceive the scene that is shot. There are a few different routes that an operator could take to achieve this effect. The typical shot measurements unit is the milliframe, milliframes are used to calculate how much the shot should be moved to perfect the camera angles. However, the size of a milliframe is almost impossible to calculate since it is not a physical measurement. Where the camera is placed in relation to the subject can affect the way the viewer perceives the subject, there are a number of camera angles, such as a high-angle shot, a low-angle shot, a birds-eye view and a worms-eye view. A Viewpoint is the apparent distance and angle from which the camera views and they also include the eye-level camera angle and the point of view shot. A high-angle shot is a shot in which the camera is physically higher than the subject and is looking down upon the subject. The high angle shot can make the subject look small or weak or vulnerable while a shot is taken from below the subject and has the power to make the subject look powerful or threatening. A neutral shot or eye-level shot has little to no effect on the viewer. This shot is when the camera is level or looking straight on with the subject, a point of view shot shows the viewer the image through the subjects eye. Some POV shots use hand-held cameras to create the illusion that the viewer is seeing through the subjects eyes, birds eye shot or birds-eye view shots are taken directly above the scene to establish the landscape and the actors relationship to it. When considering the camera one must remember that each shot is its own individual shot. There are many different types of shots that can be used from these angles, there are extreme long shots which are extremely far away from the subject and might not even show a person at all. Extreme long shots are usually done in an angle so the viewer can look down upon a setting or scene. Extreme longs shots are used mainly to open the scene or narrative, the rest of the shots are most typically done in an eye level or point of view shot although it is possible to do any shot with any angle. There is the shot which shows the subject even though the setting still dominates the picture frame
29.
Roy Stryker
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Roy Emerson Stryker was an American economist, government official, and photographer. He is most famous for heading the Information Division of the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, after serving in the infantry in World War I, Stryker went to Columbia University where he studied economics. He used his photography to illustrate his economics texts and lectures, at Columbia, he worked with Rexford Tugwell, and when Tugwell became part of the Resettlement Administration, Stryker followed him. Tugwell and Stryker refocused the attention of the Resettlement Administration to document the problems of the heartland, the RA was renominated the Farm Security Administration, and Stryker set up the photodocumentary project. Strykers greatest contribution to the FSAs photographic project was as a manager, the photographers involved attested to the fact that Stryker was expert at getting good work out of them. He made sure that the photographers were well briefed on their assigned areas before being sent out, however, Stryker has been criticized for his heavy-handed editing methodology, which involved physically defacing negatives by punching holes in them. Stryker also made sure that mainstream publications had access to FSA photographs and this both helped focus public attention on the plight of the rural poor and set up the commercial careers of his photographers. Overall, from 164,000 developed negatives some 77,000 different finished photographic prints were made for the press, plus 644 color images. During World War II, the unit of the FSA was reassigned to the Office of War Information and put to more propagandistic uses for one year. At the same time, the US Congress disbanded the FSA, Stryker resigned and went to work for Standard Oil in its public relations documentary project from 1943 to 1950. After suggesting topics he wanted documented, Stryker gave his photographers the freedom to pursue their individual approaches to their subjects, as with all his projects, Stryker was adamant that his staff understand their subjects and their context before going out on an assignment. From 1950 to 1952, Stryker worked to establish the Pittsburgh Photographic Library, in 1960, the collection was transferred to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. After leaving the PPL, Stryker directed a project at Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation. Thereafter, he accepted consulting jobs on occasion and conducted seminars on photo-journalism at the University of Missouri, Stryker eventually returned to the west in the 1960s. He died in Grand Junction, Colorado, the Standard Oil Collection – A digital collection of photographs from the documentary project directed by Roy E. Stryker
30.
Gordon Parks
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Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks was an American photojournalist in the 1940s through 1970s—particularly in issues of civil rights, poverty and African-Americans—and in glamour photography. He is best remembered for his photos of poor Americans during the 1940s, for his photographic essays for Life magazine. Parks also was an author, poet and composer, Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas, the son of Sarah and Jackson Parks, on Nov.30,1912. He was the youngest of fifteen children and his father was a farmer who grew corn, beets, turnips, potatoes, collard greens, and tomatoes. They also had a few ducks, chickens, and hogs and he attended a segregated elementary school. Parks related in a documentary on his life that his teacher told him that his desire to go to college would be a waste of money, when Parks was eleven years old, three white boys threw him into the Marmaton River, knowing he couldnt swim. He had the presence of mind to duck underwater so they wouldnt see him make it to land and his mother died when he was fourteen. He spent his last night at the family home sleeping beside his mothers coffin, seeking not only solace, soon after, he was sent to St. Paul, Minnesota, to live with a sister and her husband. He and his uncle argued frequently and Parks was finally turned out onto the street to fend for himself at age 15, struggling to survive, he worked in brothels, and as a singer, piano player, bus boy, traveling waiter, and semi-pro basketball player. In 1929, he worked in a gentlemens club, the Minnesota Club. There he not only observed the trappings of success, but was able to read books from the club library. When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 brought an end to the club, he jumped a train to Chicago, while working as a waiter in a railroad dining car, he began seeing the portfolios of photographers in picture magazines, and decided to become a photographer. At the age of 25, Parks was struck by photographs of migrant workers in a magazine and he bought his first camera, a Voigtländer Brillant, for $7.50 at a Seattle, Washington, pawnshop and taught himself how to take photos. The photography clerks who developed Parks first roll of film applauded his work and prompted him to seek a fashion assignment at a clothing store in St. Paul, Minnesota. Those photographs caught the eye of Marva Louis, wife of boxing champion Joe Louis. She encouraged Parks to move to Chicago in 1940, where he began a portrait business and he began to chronicle the citys South Side black ghetto and, in 1941, an exhibition of those photographs won Parks a photography fellowship with the Farm Security Administration. Upon viewing the photograph, Stryker said that it was an indictment of America, and he urged Parks to keep working with Watson, however, which led to a series of photographs of her daily life. After the FSA disbanded, Parks remained in Washington, D. C. as a correspondent with the Office of War Information and he was unable to follow the group in the overseas war theatre, so he resigned from the O. W. I
31.
Louise Rosskam
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Louise Rosskam was a photographer for the Farm Security Administration and the Standard Oil Company during the mid-20th century. Together with her husband, Edwin Rosskam, the pair documented American life during the Great Depression. The Rosskams were part of a group of talented photographers hired by Roy Stryker, Louise Rosskam was born into a large Jewish family, the youngest of eight children in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1910. Her father was Morris Rosenbaum, who had emigrated from Hungary at age fourteen and her mother was Hannah Rottenberg from New York. In 1929, Louise met Edwin Rosskam, an artist and aspiring photographer who would help Louise develop her talent, in 1933, Louise graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Biology. Many of their photos taken while working for the Government agencies are now in the archives of the Library of Congress, in 1948, the Rosskams published Towboat River, a photographic book detailing life on the Mississippi River. Residents of Roosevelt, New Jersey, the Rosskams had two daughters, Anita and Susan, Louise Rosskam died in New Jersey in 2003
32.
Ben Shahn
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Ben Shahn was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He is best known for his works of realism, his left-wing political views. Shahn was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, then occupied by the Russian Empire and his father was exiled to Siberia for possible revolutionary activities in 1902, at which point Shahn, his mother, and two younger siblings moved to Vilkomir. In 1906, the family immigrated to the United States where they rejoined Hessel and they settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, where two more siblings were born. His younger brother drowned at age 17, Shahn began his path to becoming an artist in New York, where he was first trained as a lithographer. Shahns early experiences with lithography and graphic design is apparent in his prints and paintings which often include the combination of text. Shahns primary medium was egg tempera, popular among social realists, although Shahn attended New York University as a biology student in 1919, he went on to pursue art at City College in 1921 and then at the National Academy of Design. After his marriage to Tillie Goldstein in 1924, the two traveled through North Africa and then to Europe, where he made the traditional artist pilgrimage, there he studied great European artists such as Henri Matisse, Raoul Dufy, Georges Rouault, Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee. Contemporaries who would make a impact on Shahns work and career include artists Walker Evans, Diego Rivera. Shahn was dissatisfied with the inspired by his travels, claiming that the pieces were unoriginal. Shahn eventually outgrew his pursuit of European modern art, and redirected his efforts toward a realist style which he used to contribute to social dialogue. The twenty-three gouache paintings of the trials of Sacco and Vanzetti communicated the political concerns of his time, the Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti was exhibited in 1932 and received acclaim from both the public and critics. This series gave Shahn the confidence to cultivate his personal style, Shahns subsequent series of California labor leader Tom Mooney won him the recognition of Diego Rivera. In May and June 1933, he served as an assistant to Diego Rivera while Rivera executed the Rockefeller Center mural, Shahn had a role in fanning the controversy, by circulating a petition among the workers. Also during this period, Shahn met photojournalist Bernarda Bryson, who would become his second wife. Although this marriage was successful, the mural, his 1934 project for the Public Works of Art Projects, fortunately, in 1935, Shahn was recommended by Walker Evans, a friend and former roommate, to Roy Stryker to join the photographic group at the Farm Security Administration. As a member of the FSA group, Shahn roamed and documented the American south together with his colleagues Walker Evans, like his earlier photography of New York City, Shahn’s FSA work can be viewed as social-documentary. Similarly, Shahn’s New Deal art for the FSA and Resettlement Agency exposed American living and working conditions and he also worked for these agencies as a graphic artist and painter
33.
John Collier Jr.
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John Collier Jr. son of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs with the same name, was an American anthropologist and an early leader in the fields of visual anthropology and applied anthropology. His emphasis on analysis and use of photographs in ethnography led him to significant contributions in other subfields of anthropology. His book, Visual Anthropology, Photography as a Research Method is one of the earliest textbooks in the field and is still in use today and he is also notable as someone who overcame significant learning and hearing impairments to succeed on a larger stage. John Collier Jr. born May 22,1913 in Sparkill, New York, was the son of Lucy Wood Collier and his father is famous as the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs during the New Deal. John Jr. grew up largely in Taos, New Mexico, when it became evident that he could not perform in school, his family permitted to him spend considerable time, when in New Mexico, living with family friends in the Taos Indian Pueblo. During the periods he was in California, he came under the influence of Capt, Leighton Robinson, a retired English master in sail, who provided seamanship training to John. He was also apprenticed to the Western painter, Maynard Dixon. He spent considerable time in the Dixon / Lange household in San Francisco during his early and mid teens and was trained in a range of painting techniques. When in Taos he also received training from the artist Nicolai Fechin. In 1943, he married Mary Elizabeth Trumbull, who became a long term partner in his photographic and their son, Malcolm Collier, also became an anthropologist who eventually collaborated with his father on a new edition of Visual Anthropology. Other sons include Robin Collier, Vian Collier, and Aran Collier, only after a brief, unproductive enrollment at the California School of Fine Arts, where he took more painting classes, did he turn to photography. He was largely self trained, except for some instruction in studio techniques from Sara Higgins Mack, in 1939, after working for a period in San Francisco, he opened a photographic studio in Taos, using what had been Paul Strands darkroom and studio. After leaving Standard Oil at the end of 1946, Collier worked as a free lance photographer in New Mexico, in 1950 he was hired by Alexander H. Leighton of Cornell University as part of a multi-disciplinary team investigation of community mental health in the Maritimes of Canada. Leighton challenged Collier to formalize methodologies for the use of photography in social science research, the work with Leighton laid the intellectual foundation for the later development of the methodologies for visual anthropology for which Collier is known. Collier later worked for Cornell in the Southwest and independently recorded the Cornell Vicos project in Peru during 1954 and 1955. He then free lanced out of New Mexico before moving to California in 1959, where he began a career as a teacher at San Francisco State University. Colliers work in the field of anthropology was influenced by Roy Stryker and Alexander H. Leighton. George Spindler, the founder of anthropology, chose Colliers book Visual Anthropology for early inclusion in his series of basic books in anthropology
34.
Sheldon Dick
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Sheldon Dick was an American publisher, literary agent, photographer, and filmmaker. He was a member of a wealthy and well-connected industrialist family and he published a book by poet Edgar Lee Masters, and made a documentary about mining that has been of interest to scholars. Dick is best known for the photographs he took on behalf of the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, sheldon Dick was the son of Albert Blake Dick, a wealthy manufacturer of mimeograph machines in Chicago, and Mary Henrietta Dick. He married Dorothy Michelson, the 21-year-old daughter of scientist Albert Abraham Michelson, in 1927, on returning to the United States, the couple lived in New York, their daughter, also named Dorothy, was born shortly thereafter. Mrs. Dick filed for divorce in April 1932, and stated in her suit that the couple had separated for a year. The divorce was concluded within a day, and she received custody of the child, Dick was active as a publisher at the time, working with another minor publisher, C. Louis Rubsamen. Only one volume bore his name as an imprint, a book of poems, The Serpent in the Wilderness, by Edgar Lee Masters, published in a fine-press limited edition in 1933. It was large and made with attention to detail, but with some mistakes, the worst of which was the accidental binding of manuscript pages into some copies. A positive review in The New York Times describes the book as an attractive piece of work. Masters biographer Herbert K. Russell blames the failure in part on Dicks poor judgment. Dick married Mary Lee Burgess in 1933, she would later assist in his documentary work and his first recorded activity as a photographer took place around this time, shortly after his failure in publishing, he took photographs for a book on Mexico, published in 1935. The book was not well-received, however, and a states that The group of photographs adds little to the volume. In other words, it is a town and your pictures must tell it. Instead, many of Dicks photographs are interiors, bars, critic Collen McDannel has pointed out that, particularly in regard to his treatment of religion, Dicks work is different from most of the FSA file. His composition transgresses common assumptions about men and religion and therefore appears to be less documentary, Dick worked relatively briefly for the FSA, in 1937 and 1938. He supported himself, submitting his photographs for payment of one dollar a year, in the 1965 interview, Stryker says, I went through twice, the pictures were lousy, just plain lousy It didnt work out. He tried two or three things for us and it didnt work. During the period of his association, however, he travelled as widely, because Dick was not a full-time employee of the FSA, his travels are not well documented, but they can be inferred from the photographs he took
35.
Ann Rosener
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Ann Rosener was an American photojournalist who is remembered for her photographs of home front activities for the Farm Security Administration in 1942–43. The daughter of parents in the San Francisco area, Rosener graduated from Smith College in 1935. From about June 1941 until June 1943, she photographed for the Farm Security Administration in Washington, maryland, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and California. Her images cover women handling mens jobs and girls producing gas masks or working as mechanics and she also illustrated stories showing how Americans were working together to build tanks and planes, irrespective of creed or colour. Many photographs show the efforts of handicapped workers and her obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle refers to her striking photos highlighting the sudden breakthrough of women in industry, performing work that had long been a male preserve. In the 1950s, Rosener worked as a photographer in Hollywood. From 1964, she worked for Stanford University designing exhibition catalogues, from 1977, she published works by little-known writers. She died in Menlo Park in May 2012
36.
Jack Delano
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Jack Delano was an American photographer for the Farm Security Administration and a composer noted for his use of Puerto Rican folk material. Delano was born as Jacob Ovcharov in Voroshilovka village, Podolie Governorate, near Vinnytsia, Russian Empire and moved, with his parents and younger brother, the family arrived at New York on July 5,1923 on the boat SS Homeric. Between 1924 and 1932 he studied graphic arts/photography and music at the Settlement Music School, after being awarded an art scholarship for his talents, he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where, from 1928 until 1932, he studied illustration and continued his musical training. While there, Delano was awarded the Cresson Traveling Scholarship, on which he chose to travel to Europe, after graduating from the PAFA, Delano proposed a photographic project to the Federal Art Project, a study of mining conditions in the Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania anthracite coal area. Delano sent sample pictures to Roy Stryker and applied for a job at the Farm Security Administration Photography program FSA, through the help of Edwin Rosskam and Marion Post Wolcott, Stryker offered Delano a job at $2, 300/year. As a condition of the job, Delano had to have his own car and drivers license, before working at the FSA, Delano had done his own processing and developing but did neither at the FSA. Other photographers working for the FSA include Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, in 1943 FSA was eliminated as budget waste and subsumed into the Office of War Information. He travelled to Puerto Rico in 1941 as a part of the FSA project and this trip had such a profound influence on him that he settled there permanently in 1946. Between 1943 and 1946 he served in the U. S. Army Air Forces, with his wife Irene he worked in the Community Division of the Department of Public Education producing films, for many of which Delano composed the score. Delano also directed Los Peloteros, a Puerto Rican film about poor rural kids, the film remains a classic in Puerto Rican cinema. Jack Delanos musical compositions included works of every type, orchestral, ballets, chamber, choral and his vocal music often showcases Puerto Rican poetry, especially the words of friend and collaborator Tomás Blanco. Blanco, Délano and his wife Irene collaborated on childrens books and his score for the film Desde las nubes demonstrates an early use of electronic techniques. Most of his works composed after he moved to Puerto Rico are notable for using folk material in a classical form. In 1957, Delano helped found Puerto Ricos first publicly funded television station, WIPR where he also acted as a station producer, composer. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie, New Grove Dictionary of American Music, composers of the Americas, biographical data and catalogs of their works, volume 19, pp 22–27. Cabán-Vales, Musiké Jack Delano at Find a Grave Cuatro sones de la tierra by mezzo-soprano Laura Virella and pianist Nathaniel LaNasa
37.
Russell Lee (photographer)
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Russell Lee was an American photographer and photojournalist, best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration. His technically excellent images documented the ethnography of various American classes and cultures, the son of Burton Lee and wife Adeline Werner, Lee grew up in Ottawa, Illinois and went to the Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana for high school. He earned a degree in engineering from Lehigh University in Bethlehem. He gave up an excellent position as a chemist to become a painter, originally he used photography as a precursor to his painting, but soon became interested in photography for its own sake, recording the people and places around him. Among his earliest subjects were Pennsylvanian bootleg mining and the Father Divine cult, in the fall of 1936, during the Great Depression, Lee was hired for the federally sponsored Farm Security Administration photographic documentation project of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. He joined a team assembled under Roy Stryker, along with Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Lee created some of the iconic images produced by the FSA, including photographic studies of San Augustine, Texas in 1939, and Pie Town, New Mexico in 1940. He worked for the United States Department of the Interior in 1946 and 1947 and he created over 4,000 photographs of miners and their working conditions in coal mines. In 1946, Lee completed a series of focused on a Pentecostal Church of God in a Kentucky coal camp. While completing the DOI work, Lee also continued to work under Stryker, some 80,000 of those photographs have been donated by Exxon Corporation to the University of Louisville in Kentucky. In 1947 Lee moved to Austin, Texas and continued photography, in 1965 he became the first instructor of photography at the University of Texas. In 2016 Lee Elementary, a school in the Austin Independent School District, will be renamed Russell Lee Elementary in honor of the photographer, replacing the original namesake, Robert E Lee. Brisco - A Guide to the Russell Lee Photograph Collection, University of Texas Russell Lees FSA Photos of Pie Town, New Mexico Museum of Art
38.
Carl Mydans
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Carl Mydans was an American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration and Life magazine. Mydans grew up playing on the Mystic River near Medford, near Boston, Mydans became devoted to photography while in college at Boston University. While working on the Boston University News he abandoned childhood dreams of being a surgeon or a builder in favor of journalism. His first reporting jobs were for The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, after college, he went to New York as a writer for American Banker and then in 1935 to Washington to join a group of photographers in the Farm Security Administration. There he worked with photographers like Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn to document the conditions of the American rural workers. It was the Great Depression, and the poorest of Americas poor were devastated by the economic downturn, in 1936, he joined Life as one of its earliest staff photographers and a pioneering photojournalist. Mydans recorded photographic images of life and death throughout Europe and Asia during World War II travelling over 45,000 miles, in 1941, the photographer and Shelley Mydans were the first husband and wife team on the magazines staff. After their release, Mydans was sent back into Europe for pivotal battles in Italy, by 1944, Mydans was back in the Philippines to cover MacArthurs return. Some asserted that it must have been staged, but Mydans resolutely defended the photograph as entirely spontaneous, no one I have ever known in public life had a better understanding of the drama and power of a picture, Mydans, said about MacArthur. Mydans also captured the signing of Japans surrender aboard the U. S. S, but he also photographed the war from the viewpoint of the ordinary soldier or sailor. Resourceful and unruffled, Mr. Mydans sent back pictures of combat that even now define how some remember World War II, Korea, and other conflicts, noted the New York Times. Despite his two years in captivity, Mydans bore no ill will toward the Asian nation, and accepted an assignment to head Time-Lifes Tokyo bureau with his wife. Time-Life was the publisher of Time, Life and other top magazines, in 1948, he just happened to be in the city of Fukui when a destructive earthquake struck, some of his shots were taken on the street while buildings were collapsing around him. After covering the Korean War, Mydans traveled the globe for the two decades for Life before the publication folded in 1972. When it was relaunched several years later, he was listed as one of its contributing photographers. He died on August 16,2004, of failure at his home in Larchmont, New York. Widowed in 2002, Mydans was survived by his daughter, Misty, a California attorney, and his son, Seth, IN THE SHADOW OF THE CAPITOL. Photographs by Carl Mydans for the U. S. Resettlement Administration, edited and with text by Tom Clark
39.
John Vachon
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John Felix Vachon was an American photographer. Vachon was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the son of Ann Marie and he graduated from Cretin High School. He received a degree in 1934 from the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul. In about 1938 he married Millicent Leeper who was known as Penny, Vachon married Françoise Fourestier in 1961. Vachon served in the United States Army in 1945, Vachons daughter, Christine Vachon, is a noted independent film producer. John Vachons first job at the Farm Security Administration carried the title assistant messenger and he was twenty-one, and had come to Washington from his native Minnesota to attend The Catholic University of America. By 1937 Vachon had looked enough to want to make photographs himself and his weekend photographs of everything in the Potomac River valley were clearly the work of a beginner, but Stryker lent him equipment and encouraged him to keep at it. Vachon received help as well from Walker Evans, who insisted that he master the view camera, and Arthur Rothstein, in October and November 1938, Vachon traveled to Nebraska on his first extensive solo trip. He photographed agricultural programs on behalf of the FSAs regional office and pursued an extra assignment from Stryker, the city of Omaha. He was a photographer for the Office of War Information in Washington, D. C. from 1942 to 1943, after serving in the army in 1944–45, in 1947 Vachon joined the Photo League, where he wrote book reviews for Photo Notes and participated in many exhibition. Between 1945 and 1947 he photographed New Jersey and Venezuela for Standard, Vachon became a staff photographer for Life magazine, where he worked between 1947 and 1949, and for over twenty five years beginning in 1947 at Look magazine. In 1953 Vachon took the first pictures of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio when Monroe cured a sprained ankle near Banff, when Look closed in 1971 he became a freelance photographer. In 1973, he won a Guggenheim fellowship, in 1975 he was a visiting professor at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He died in 1975 in New York at age 60, John Vachon, A Register of His Papers in the Library of Congress. Oral history interview with John Vachon,1964 Apr, post-World War II Photos of Poland by John Vachon from the JDC Archives
40.
Marion Post Wolcott
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Marion Post, later Marion Post Wolcott, was a noted American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression documenting poverty and deprivation. Marion Post was born in New Jersey on June 7,1910 and her parents split up and she was sent to boarding school, spending time at home with her mother in Greenwich Village when not at school. Here she met artists and musicians and became interested in dance. She studied at The New School, Post trained as a teacher, and went to work in a small town in Massachusetts. Here she saw the reality of the Depression and the problems of the poor, when the school closed she went to Europe to study with her sister Helen. Helen was studying with Trude Fleischmann, a Viennese photographer, Marion Post showed Fleischmann some of her photographs and was told to stick to photography. While in Vienna she saw some of the Nazi attacks on the Jewish population and was horrified, soon she and her sister had to return to America for safety. She went back to teaching but also continued her photography and became involved in the anti-fascist movement, at the New York Photo League she met Ralph Steiner and Paul Strand who encouraged her. Stryker was impressed by her work and hired her immediately, posts photographs for the FSA often explore the political aspects of poverty and deprivation. They also often find humour in the situations she encountered, in 1941 she met Leon Oliver Wolcott, deputy director of war relations for the U. S. Department of Agriculture under Franklin Roosevelt. They married, and she continued her assignments for the FSA and she found it difficult to fit in her photography around raising a family and a great deal of traveling and living overseas. In the 1970s, a renewed interest in Wolcotts images among scholars rekindled her own interest in photography, in 1978, Wolcott mounted her first solo exhibition in California, and by the 1980s the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art began to collect her photographs. The first monograph on her work was published in 1983 and she was an advocate for womens rights, in 1986, Wolcott said, Women have come a long way, but not far enough. Speak with your images from your heart and soul, looking for the Light, The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott. Marion Post Wolcott, A Photographic Journey, albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press,1989. The Photography of Marion Post Wolcott Website created by Wolcotts daughter, hosted on J. David Sapirs site Fixing Shadows, available online, http, carmel, CA, Friends of Photography,1983. Prose, Francine, The Photographs of Marion Post Wolcott, an extensive anthology of Marion Post Wolcotts photography edited by her daughter, Linda Wolcott-Moore. FSA Photos, including many by Wolcott, posted by Library of Congress on Flickr Commons Website, oral history interview with Marion Post Wolcott,1965 Jan
41.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
42.
John Steinbeck
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John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American author of 27 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, the multi-generation epic East of Eden, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath is considered Steinbecks masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies, the winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been called a giant of American letters. His works are widely read abroad and many of his works are considered classics of Western literature, most of Steinbecks work is set in southern and central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists, Steinbeck was born on February 27,1902, in Salinas, California. He was of German, English, and Irish descent, johann Adolf Großsteinbeck, Steinbecks paternal grandfather, shortened the family name to Steinbeck when he immigrated to the United States. The family farm in Heiligenhaus, Mettmann, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, is still named Großsteinbeck and his father, John Ernst Steinbeck, served as Monterey County treasurer. Johns mother, Olive Hamilton, a school teacher, shared Steinbecks passion for reading and writing. The Steinbecks were members of the Episcopal Church, although Steinbeck later became agnostic, Steinbeck lived in a small rural town, no more than a frontier settlement, set in some of the worlds most fertile land. He spent his summers working on ranches and later with migrant workers on Spreckels sugar beet farms. There he learned of the aspects of the migrant life and the darker side of human nature. He explored his surroundings, walking across local forests, fields, while working at Spreckels Sugar Company, he sometimes worked in their laboratory, which gave him time to write. He had considerable mechanical aptitude and fondness for repairing things he owned, Steinbeck graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and went on to study English Literature at Stanford University near Palo Alto, leaving, without a degree, in 1925. He travelled to New York City where he took odd jobs while trying to write, when he failed to publish his work, he returned to California and worked in 1928 as a tour guide and caretaker at Lake Tahoe, where he met Carol Henning, his first wife. They married in January 1930 in Los Angeles, where, with friends, the elder Steinbecks gave John free housing, paper for his manuscripts, and from 1928, loans that allowed him to write without looking for work. When those sources failed, Steinbeck and his wife accepted welfare, whatever food they had, they shared with their friends. Carol became the model for Mary Talbot in Steinbecks novel Cannery Row, in 1930, Steinbeck met the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who became a close friend and mentor to Steinbeck during the following decade, teaching him a great deal about philosophy and biology. Ricketts, usually quiet, yet likable, with an inner self-sufficiency
43.
James Agee
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James Rufus Agee was an American novelist, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, he was one of the most influential critics in the U. S. His autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family, won the author a posthumous 1958 Pulitzer Prize, when Agee was six, his father was killed in an automobile accident. From the age of seven, Agee and his younger sister, the most prominent of these was located near his mothers summer cottage two miles from Sewanee, Tennessee. Saint Andrews School for Mountain Boys was run by the monastic Order of the Holy Cross affiliated with the Episcopal Church. It was there that Agees lifelong friendship with Episcopal priest Father James Harold Flye, a teacher at St. Andrews. As Agees close friend and mentor, Flye corresponded with him on literary and other topics through life and he published the letters after Agees death. Agees mother married St. Andrews bursar Father Erskine Wright in 1924, Agee went to Knoxville High School for the 1924–1925 school year, then traveled with Father Flye to Europe in the summer, when Agee was sixteen. On their return, Agee transferred to a school in New Hampshire. Soon after, he began a correspondence with Dwight Macdonald, at Phillips Exeter, Agee was president of The Lantern Club and editor of the Monthly where his first short stories, plays, poetry and articles were published. Despite barely passing many of his high school courses, Agee was admitted to Harvard Universitys class of 1932. There Agee took classes taught by Robert Hillyer and I. A. Richards, his classmate in those was the poet and critic Robert Fitzgerald. Agee was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Advocate and delivered the class ode at his commencement, in 1934, he published his only volume of poetry, Permit Me Voyage, with a foreword by Archibald MacLeish. In the summer of 1936, during the Great Depression, Agee spent eight weeks on assignment for Fortune with photographer Walker Evans, while Fortune did not publish his article, Agee turned the material into a book entitled Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. It sold only 600 copies before being remaindered, another manuscript from the same assignment discovered in 2003, titled Cotton Tenants, is believed to be the essay submitted to Fortune editors. The 30,000 word text, accompanied by photographs by Walker Evans, was published as a book in June 2013 and its excellence should enhance his reputation. A significant difference between the works is the use of names in Cotton Tenants, Agee assigned fictional names to the subjects of Famous Men in order to protect their identity. In 1941, he became Times film critic, in 1942-1948, he worked as a film critic for The Nation
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Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
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Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is a book with text by American writer James Agee and photographs by American photographer Walker Evans, first published in 1941 in the United States. The work documents the lives of impoverished tenant farmers during the Great Depression, although it is in keeping with Evans work with the Farm Security Administration, the project was initiated not by the FSA, but by Fortune Magazine. The title is from a passage in the Wisdom of Sirach that begins, Let us now praise famous men and it was the time of U. S. President Franklin Roosevelts New Deal programs designed to help the poorest segments of the society. Agee and Evans spent eight weeks that summer researching their assignment, as he remarks in the books preface, the original assignment was to produce a photographic and verbal record of the daily living and environment of an average white family of tenant farmers. Agee considered that the work, though based in journalism. At other times, as when he lists the contents of a sharecroppers shack or the meager articles of clothing they have to wear on Sunday. Scholars have noted that the books ambitious scale and rejection of traditional reporting runs parallel with the creative, non-traditional programs of the U. S. government under Roosevelt. Agee argues with literary, political, and moral traditions that might mean nothing to his subjects but which are important for the larger audience and the larger context of examining others lives. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men has won praise over the years and is routinely studied in the U. S. as a source of both journalistic and literary innovation. Reading the book inspired Aaron Copland to write his opera, The Tender Land, David Simon, journalist and creator of acclaimed television series The Wire, credited the book with impacting him early in his career and informing his practice of journalism. This was common in photography of this time period, throughout the book, Agee and Evans use pseudonyms to obscure the identity of the three tenant farmer families. However Evans photos that are archived in the Library of Congress American Memory Project have the names of the photographic subjects. * There is disagreement over whether the name is properly spelled Tengle or Tingle. The Library of Congresss spelling is used here, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-618-12749-6 Fortune Magazines David Whitford returns to Hale County Alabama Maharidge, D. and Williamson, and their children after them, the legacy of Let us now praise famous men. 1990 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, a Grand Lady and Some Famous Men - Some brief notes on the sequel, with modern-day photographs, by the Marion Military Institutes Archivist
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This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the 