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"Local Council of Unemployed Has 230 Members" article from the Greenfield Daily Recorder-Gazette newspaper

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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The Greenfield Council of the Unemployed was one town's response to the economic and social crisis of the Great Depression. Council members, who were unemployed, volunteered their labor on projects such as cutting firewood to be distributed to Greenfield, Massachusetts, citizens in need of home heating fuel. Female council members made clothing for the unemployed. The Council also coordinated the collection and distribution of donated goods to those in need. The Depression sparked a wide variety of voluntary and self-help efforts in communities because very few Federal or state programs to aide the increasing numbers of unemployed existed at the beginning of the Depression. These programs relieved pressure on local governments which, by the early 1930s, were already financially strapped.

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