Great Depression
The Great Depression hit Nebraska hard, as grain and livestock prices fell in half, and unemployment was widespread in the cities. Governor Charles W. Bryan, a Democrat, was at first unwilling to request aid from the national government, but when the Federal Emergency Relief Act became law in 1933 Nebraska took part. Rowland Haynes, the state's emergency relief director, was the major force in implementing such national New Deal relief programs as the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and the Civil Works Administration. Robert L. Cochran, a Democrat who became governor in 1935, sought federal assistance and placed Nebraska among the first American states to adopt a social security law. The enduring impact of FERA and social security in Nebraska was to shift responsibility for social welfare from counties to the state, which henceforth accepted federal funding and guidelines. The change in state and national relations may have been the most important legacy of these New Deal programs in Nebraska.
Read more about this topic: History Of Nebraska
Famous quotes containing the word depression:
“Mental health data from the 1950’s on middle-aged women showed them to be a particularly distressed group, vulnerable to depression and feelings of uselessness. This isn’t surprising. If society tells you that your main role is to be attractive to men and you are getting crow’s feet, and to be a mother to children and yours are leaving home, no wonder you are distressed.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)