WORKERS MOVEMENTS

Workers in 1930s and the Workers Today

Workers in 1930s and the Workers Today

Introduction

During the Great Depression, American workers protested, rioted, and struck. During the current recession, they have quietly accepted layoffs and pay cuts. The depression movements of the unemployed and of industrial workers followed a period of economic breakdown that produced distress and confusion in the daily lives of millions of people, and produced contradiction and confusion in the posture of elites. They were among the masses of the unemployed, and their struggle had to take another form, in another institutional context.

Discussion

The dark period of economy dawned on America on October 29th, 1929, when the most lucrative sector, the stock market, which for decades had ensured the quickest and simplest way to become rich, fell prey of bankruptcy. The crash of stock market thrust America in the state of utter hopelessness and despair. There was no hope of recovery for the stock market to rise again after the crash; the nation was in a dreadful state. Investors in the endeavor of sparing themselves from further demolition and devastation were trying their best to sell all stock, but all they lacked were buyers (Siklos, 2001).

The strongest brunt of the Great Depression was individual anguish and suffering. The standards of living and total production drastically deteriorated. Even in an industrial country like America the labor force was unable to find jobs. People not only lost their work but also their life-long savings. The time of the Great Depression is reckoned as the darkest period of human living after the civil wars. Industries and businesses could not evade from the crisis, and they were equally affected. Likewise, other sectors even the industries, and businesses lost much of their capitals in either stock market or banks. The only way for them to ...