These will be very useful for your assignments. Please remember to think about issues of gender, class, nationality and so forth as you read. Make notes of points that might be useful in your assignment. Remember to keep information for your bibliography.
“I Remember . . .” – Reminiscences of the Great Depression
Memories of The Great Depression
Sevier County Remembers The Great Depression
This link will take you straight to nine pages of actual photos from the great depression in Australia. If you copy something for your assignment be sure to keep the description and URL for your assignment and bibliography.
On the television this week.
AIR AUSTRALIA: AUSTRALIA’S OWN – EP 2 OF 3
The second episode begins in 1928, with the historic flight of the Southern Cross across the Pacific Ocean, followed throughout the 1930s by the continuing struggle to maintain an Australian-owned aviation industry in the face of powerful international airline businesses.
Thursday 7 June 2007 8.30pm
ABC
Duration: 60 mins
Overseas borrowing to fund greater levels of farming, manufacturing, and mining.
Migration has increased to boost the workforce.
World trading ceased with the crash of the US stock market.
Unemployment figures.
1928 10.8%
1930 19.3%
1932 29.0%
1934 20.5%
1936 12.3%
1938 9.7%
Produce a line graph for this data.
Produce pie graphs for 1928 and 1932
Unions against the dole because;
People entitled to a job not benefits.
Government against the dole because of;
The cost.
Thought it created bludgers.
Thought it was up to charities to help the poor.
The Depression got worse and charities could not cope.
Subsidised health care was almost non-existent.
Government provided ration tickets as assistance for breadwinners out of work.
Called sustenance payments.
Widely known as “the susso”
ACTIVITY
Why do you think government gave people ration tickets for food instead of money?
The dole had a means test.
Singles got less than married people.
In 1932 you have to work for the dole in Victoria. Often it was building;
Roads
Bridges
Public buildings
In 1933 about 75% of unemployed men did relief work.
Jack Lang
NSW Premier from 1925 1927 and 1930 1932
Believed selfish capitalists and banks caused The Depression.
Wanted to refuse to pay debts to English banks and use money for social welfare programs in Australia.
He was dismissed by the NSW Governor in 1932.
Premier’s Plan – 1931
Reduce government spending my 20%
Cut wages and pensions by 20%
Lower interest rates.
Increase taxation.
Make payments on foreign debts.
ACTIVITY
Explain what the Premier’s probably hoped each of these would achieve to help in the Depression.
Here are the notes from year nine history today. We were starting to look at legal documents that marked changes to Australian democracy since 1788.
Australian Courts Act 1828 (UK)
Introduced trial by jury in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land.
Order-in-Council ending transportation of convicts
22 May 1840 (UK)
New South Wales ceased to be a penal colony.
Now a free colony.
Australian Constitutions Act 1850 (UK)
Separated Victoria from New South Wales.
Created a Legislative Council in Tasmania (two third elected)
Allowed for two houses of parliament in New South Wales.
Some places you can start to come up with stories.
Your own life.
Gossip
News stories
Novels, television shows, movies (maybe look at the story of a minor character)
Dreams
Today in English we just put our heads down and pens to paper and wrote. This sounds like a really simple and obvious idea but it is massively effective. You don’t have to keep everything you write but at least once it’s down on paper you can use it later.
The central question of the stories of stories is – could you kill someone you love?
In that moment it felt like he could never have been ready for a decision like this. The course of one lifetime is not enough to be genuinely ready.
Jack’s eyes were wide open and every single nerve in his body tingled. The whole world seems both incredibly real and completely unreal. It was like watching himself and everyone else in the room up on a movie screen. Somehow it was entirely removed and artificial but at once it was real, tangible and vivid. He could very literally taste the consequences of his decision in his mouth.
Time was running out. The clocks was very literally ticking and the seconds stretched out as all eyes were on him.
With the greatest of effort he made his mouth form the words.
“Small American thanks.”
Once the decision was made it seemed like the only thing he could have done in this situation. Jack surely did love a good Mexicana pizza but the truth, known to him and lovers of pizza everywhere, was that if you put too little chilli then it was bland but just a flake or two too much and you’d need a mouth forged of raw steel to eat the damn thing.
As the cheese set to work on his arteries the grease set to work on his t-shirt. An especially thick glob ran down the navy material, over the logo, hesitated, then dropped all of one foot to his shiny new mobile phone sitting on the cheap laminate.
It rang.
This song was first recorded in 1928 which makes it just before the Great Depression. In spite of this it describes how men who roamed searching for work lived and what they dreamed of in a better life.
One evening as the sun went down and the jungle fire was burning
Down the track came a hobo hiking and he said boys I’m not turning
I’m headin for a land that’s far away beside the crystal fountains
So come with me we’ll go and see the Big Rock Candy MountainsIn the Big Rock Candy Mountains there’s a land that’s fair and bright
Where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night
Where the boxcars are all empty and the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees
Where the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy MountainsIn the Big Rock Candy Mountains all the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft boiled eggs
The farmer’s trees are full of fruit and the barns are full of hay
Oh, I’m bound to go where there ain’t no snow
Where the rain don’t fall and the wind don’t blow
In the Big Rock Candy MountainsIn the Big Rock Candy Mountains you never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol come a-trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats and the railroad bulls are blind
There’s a lake of stew and of whiskey too
You can paddle all around ‘em in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy MountainsIn the Big Rock Candy Mountains the jails are made of tin
And you can walk right out again as soon as you are in
There ain’t no short handled shovels, no axes saws or picks
I’m a goin to stay where you sleep all day
Where they hung the jerk that invented work
In the Big Rock Candy MountainsI’ll see you all this coming fall in the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You can read more about it in the Wikipedia entry.
Big Rock Candy Mountain – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I was looking around for information about the development of democracy in Australia when I found this terrific site. It’s a bit dry but packed with information about key documents, especially legislation, which formed Australian political history. Better still in many cases it has images of the original documents and PDFs of their text.
Anakin Skywalker: Borderline Personality, Bipolar or Narcissist?
Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader, suffers from a controversial mental condition and could use some couch time in a shrink’s office, a team of researchers declared this week.
“He’s suffering. And he’s suffering from a disorder,” said Dr. Eric Bui, a psychiatrist in Toulouse, France, who co-wrote a study that diagnosed one of the most villainous and heroic characters in the Star Wars canon as having borderline personality disorder.
In the 1920s the stock market was popular.
Many people had invested in the stock market which seemed like easy money.
Many people did this with borrowed money.
As profits fell people suspected stocks were over-valued.
October 24 1929 – The stock market crashed.
12 million shares sold in one day.
Many people and businesses lost everything.
People, businesses and government stopped investing and spending fell sharply.
The Chain Reaction
Fall in demand for goods.
High tariffs stop overseas sales.
The recently poor cannot afford them.
then …
Company profits fall.
Wages are cut.
Some people are sacked.
then…
Demand falls further because more people can’t afford goods.
Profits fall.
Wages are cut.
More people are sacked.
and so on and so forth.
Today we were talking about killer opening sentences and really bad ones. The site below is for award for really bad opening sentences in books.
Factors which contributed to changes in social life during the Great Depression.
Role of class, ethnicity, gender, political affiliation and nationality in social experience.
The ways groups tried to protect their interests in difficult times.
We defined the following terms
class
ethnicity
gender
political affiliation
nationality
Today in English we worked on the seven stories. There are several versions of this and the one we worked on was this.
[wo]man vs. nature
[wo]man vs. man
[wo]man vs. the environment
[wo]man vs. machines/technology
[wo]man vs. the supernatural
[wo]man vs. self
[wo]man vs. god/religion
We have been pitching movies in English. We are going to work on this a bit so that everyone can get to the point of selling a story idea quickly and persuasively. In the meantime you might get a giggle out of this short comedy on YouTube, Movie Executive Dad.
You’ll need a fast internet connection at home to watch this at home. Don’t bother trying to watch it at school as YouTube is blocked.
