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The photo for this week's assignment in combination with our current unit being Class in America, led me to search socio-economic levels to get an idea of the country's financial demographics to clarify my view of the four previous sites I searched. Health care is interdependent with income and income is interdependent with education. I think to some degree one's family influences education, income and healthcare. A household, or family, is placed in a socio-economic section of lower, middle, or upper class. This site explains the realization that there are more accurately 12 socio-economic levels in our society. If any of you read this page, I think you would agree that these classifications of financial lifestyles is mostly, if not completely, true.

When I first looked at this photo, the first thing that came to mind was the image of a hillbilly. As I searched the web for information about the photo I remembered visiting the tenement museum in the Lower Eastside, one of the things I remembered was Hard Times and the New Deal of the early mid 1930's. The New Deal came up when I typed in hillbilly in Hale County Alabama, which lead me to this site about Roosevelt and the New Deal. Since the onset of the Great Depression-initiated by the crash of the stock market in the fall of 1929-over $75 billion in equity capital had been lost on Wall Street, the gross national product had plunged from a high of $104 billion to a mere $74 billion, and U.S. exports had fallen by 62 percent. Over thirteen million people, nearly 25 percent of the workforce, were now unemployed. In some cities, the jobless rate was even higher. Caught in a web of despair, thousands of shabbily dressed men and women walked the streets in search of work, or a bit of food, doled out from one of the hundreds of soup kitchens set up by private charities to keep the wage-less from starvation. FDR's response to this unprecedented crisis was to initiate the "New Deal" - a series of economic measures designed to alleviate the worst effects of the depression, reinvigorate the economy, and restore the confidence of the American people in their banks and other key institutions. While the New Deal did much to lessen the worst affects of the Great Depression, its measures were not sweeping enough to restore the nation to full employment. Critics of FDR's policies, on both the right and the left, use this fact as a reason to condemn it. Conservatives argue, for example, that it went too far, and brought too much government intervention in the economy, while those on the left argue that it did not go far enough, and that in order to be truly effective, the Roosevelt Administration should have engaged in a far more comprehensive program of dire

This site reports the the correlation between the income gap and mortality rates. A chart is available revealing the life expectancy change in the last 20 years of the 20th century, including the difference between the life span of men and women. Cause for the financial separation in the U.S. isn't identified, but some ideas are that "Lower-income people are more likely to not have health insurance..." and "Smoking has declined more rapidly among people with greater education and income". In the appearance of the man in the photo, I definitely make the connection with him and not having poor health care and habits.

This site has statistical information concerning the many categories of people in the U.S. that are phased by the refusal by the Republican party to implement the Affordable Care Act throughout the whole country. It gives insight as to why the excluded states are left with citizens unable to receive healthcare from any source. Race, poverty, and location plays a role in how many in the country are harmed by this political decision. People living in stated excluded from the ACA have nowhere to turn for health care when they have employment, such as being a cashier, retail sales clerk, or waitress, that does offer health coverage to employees. This picture, after some time observing, makes me think possibly dental care could be helpful or simply a doctor to detect a malnutrition.

This page includes graphs and charts of data from 2005. Also, the page is one large list of statistics relating to daily spending, global income, children's health and mortality, problems concerning water availability and cleanliness, and U.S. spending on various goods. Again, looking at the photo, I think this link sheds light on how the many different global, national, individual financial facts are caused by and are the causes of such factors as unsafe and unsanitary living conditions, poor health care, or unsatisfactory education.

This site has two subsections in the About Slums section that 1)give information about what slums are and describes three characteristics of the slums and 2)the impacts that the slums have on 11 topics, including women education, political exclusion, and disasters. I simply think this link connects to this week's photo because looking at this person I imagine they would live in very poor living conditions, so "slums" in the term I searched.

This article takes you through the Great Depression and the affects it had on American workers. According to the article, 25% of all workers and 37% of all non-farm workers in the USA were unemployed by 1933. Roosevelt used the New Deal to put people back to work on public projects. But it wasn't until WWII that the US came out of the Great Depression and people could begin to rebuild and find new jobs.

This portrait was made by Walker Evans during the summer of 1936 when he and writer James Agee were on assignment for Fortune magazine. Their story on tenant farmers in the South was finally released as a book in 1941, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men". Critics of the time hailed the "naked realism" of Evans' stark portrayals, which would become iconic representations of American farming communities stricken by poverty during the Great Depression. This site is useful because it takes you in on the individual in the photo itself, allowing you to see the reverse effects of an unstable economy, in America where opportunity is to be boundless, especially for people that were considered the minority in this era.

This site explains the difference between women in different social classes. While upper class women were often shopping and being courted by various wealthy men, the lower class women were typically prostitutes just to survive or had a large family to take care of.

This website goes deep into the Great Depression, how it began and how it ended. Beginning with the stock market crash in 1929 and Black Tuesday and finally with FDR's New Deal America came out of the Great Depression. Many people lost their jobs and some their lives to constant poverty and hunger. It looks as though the woman in the photo was a victim.

This website gives more insight into the ever fading middle class in America today. The woman in the photo is part of the lower class. She is also from a time where there was only a third class and a first class. The last 50 years or so there developed a middle class where the majority of Americans fell into. This website shows you statistically how as of late the middle class has been slowly fading away yet again.

This site shows how social class still plays a big role in American society. Although today there is barely such thing as the middle class, you are either lower class or upper class. The image shows a woman who is clearly in the lower class and you can tell by her appearance. The image is most likely from the Great Depression and you can see by this site that almost nothing has changed in almost a century.

Even though farmers suffered from low prices, many were still in better shape than city dwellers. Farmers could at least grow their own food unlike people in the cities. Farmers banded together like a labor union to prevent various products like milk from reaching towns and cities in order to raise the prices. The effort did not really have any effect on prices. The government stepped in to pass a bill to help the farmers to reduce production and surplus products. Limits on sizes of crops and herds that farmers could produce were set and farmers that agreed to limit production were paid subsidies.

In 1937, several smaller steelmakers refused to sign union contracts providing workers with basic working conditions. The Steel Workers Organizing Committee organized a strike against these small steelmakers. The Chicago Police, protecting the wealthy interest confronted the strikers and fired shots into the crowd killing ten demonstrators.

This is a comprehensive photo gallery of images from the Dust Bowl. It shows in great detail and visualizes the hardships that farmers faced during the Great Depression as the weather prevented agriculture. The dust storms are very well documented in these photos.

This site discusses the life of two hundred and fifty thousand teenage "hoboes" who left home because they felt they were a burden to their families. It describes how some teenagers looked for adventure while others searched for jobs. All were searching for a better life. Education was not an option for these children during the depression so they had to "ride the rails" to find employment.

This is a pretty cool source, it is a series of interviews of people who lived through the great depression. The first interview in particular is of a man who grew up living in a sharecropping community. I've said it before but to be able to read the account of those who lived through a particular event really brings to life what we read about. In these interviews you hear about how hard life was for so many.

This site offers a collection of Evans' photos, all full of elements that if one were to be taken away, it would be incomplete. In a time of despair and hopelessness, Evans captured beauty and contradiction while providing a deeper insight to the world rather than what is on the surface.

This article by Time magazine (where he worked as an editor from the 1940's to the mid 1960's) shows several images taken by Walker Evans from the 1930's that are diverse in subject matter and composition. On this site I came to understand how the irony that makes Evans' photography so remarkable. This site is useful in exploring this image because it provides other images to compare and contrast.As well as providing a glimmer of an understanding into his personality.

This site contains contains an array of information on design, art, and photography. As it relates to this class, I found the site to me helpful because it puts Evans work in the historical context of the Great Depression.

This is a background into the style and history of the photographer of Allie Mae Burroughs, Walker Evans.  He was especially known for taking simplistic photographs and portraits of people in their natural surrounding and settings and by doing so Evans provided a documentary of what life was like in depression era America.  

This site contains a summary of who Walker Evans was and what his photography symbolizes. Within this site many images taken by Evans can be found along with essays and notes on the materials and techniques used.