The automobile industry in the 1930s suffered through the Great Depression as many other companies did as well. In 1936 William C. Durant, founder of General Motors, went bankrupt and endured many economic challenges; he was 1 million dollars in debt and continued to loose money rapidly. In chapter 7 of
The Grapes of Wrath the entrepreneurs seemed pretty desperate to sell all of the cars in the lot which reflects the situation that the industry was going through at that time.
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| Workers assembling cars in General Motors |
Much of the work done was done in a car assembly line in which one worker would put together one part of a car and then pass it on to another one where they add another part to the car and so on. However, most of these car companies only employed able-bodied men since it was a dangerous job (working with heavy machinery and metal) so by the time the Great Depression came and people were laid off, unemployment rose to 12 percent. Detroit, the capital of car manufacturing got the brunt of this fall. Many people in the Mid-West were desperate to escape the severe economic fall out and they all turned to automobiles to help them get away. This was a problem since not many cars were being produced and they had to settle for older and more unreliable cars. Individuals greedy for any sort of profit tried to manipulate these people into selling them lemons. Times were hard back then and halfway on the road these cars would break down and be unfixable.
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| Car parts going through an assembly line |
A detailed video of how dangerous and unrelenting car manufacturing was can be seen in this video:
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