- Political cartoon + Primary sources -
Link to magazine illustration "No Laughing Matter" is an illustration that was published by Victor Anderson in the humor magazine, Life, on December 12, 1930. The illustration is of a woman, her husband, and their daughter all in one room. It shows the dad sitting down reading a newspaper about unemployment, and the young girl is talking to her mother. The caption reads, "Mama, it's so nice to have Daddy home all the time now". The purpose of the picture is to illustrate the hard times of the typical American family dealing with unemployment during the Great Depression. The illustration also addresses the irony of the perspective of children during the time; although the magazine attempted to use humor to get the message across, the title itself shows that the Great Depression was no laughing matter.
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link to interview + Audio "Organize Among Yourselves" is an interview about Mary Gale and unemployed organizing during the Great Depression, taken from the radio series, "Grandma Was an Activist". Gale, a relief worker, talks about her efforts as an advocate for the jobless and the poor and how she worked with Communist-led Unemployed Councils to help the unemployed during the Great Depression. She also describes how she worked as an investigator in a home relief bureau and pushed her clients to organize themselves and demand better treatment, while providing the people that she tried to help with money from her own pocket. The purpose of the interview is to show how the most radical active movements helped the jobless during this time.
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link to advertisement
"Stiff Upper Lip" is an advertisement that was published in Literary Digest on November 21, 1931. It was issued by the President's Organization on Unemployment Relief, calling for local voluntary charity to help the jobless during the Great Depression, rather than establishing federal relief programs. The advertisement includes an illustration of a man that is strong and ready to work and goes on to list all of the reasons why the employed should reach out and help their "neighbors", using encouraging messages to persuade them, and how they can do so. Overall, the purpose of the advertisement is to show the perspective of the government and how they attempted to help versus what the people actually needed. It shows Hoover's belief that relief was a local responsibility and that the government made no drastic effort to help those who suffered during the Great Depression. Instead, the government asked those who were lucky enough to stay afloat to give what they had to those in need. The picture also provides an insight into the desperate actions that people had to take in order to receive relief; because there was no National Agency/Fund for relief, people were forced to turn to local individuals for help.