Ask the children what they want to do when they grow up, and common answers will still include police officer, firefighter, and teacher. Still, there are many other career options open to people, especially as technology creates new jobs.

What Primary Sources Can Tell Us about Work People Do 
By examining the types of items people use on and off their jobs, and what they earn from their work, we can learn more about the work people do. 

• Written Forms – Charts can organize and provide information about who does which chores when. People sometimes use picket signs to protest when they don’t feel they’re being treated fairly at their jobs.
• Physical artifacts - The tools that people use on their jobs tell us a lot about what they do. The coins and bills that people earn and spend are tokens of services rendered.
• Images – Photographs and pictures can provide clues as to how jobs and careers have changed between the past and present. 

 Primary Sources 

A Photograph of a California Depression-Era Migrant Town

A line of stores in Central Valley, California (1940)

Business enterprises in Central Valley, California

Between 1933 and 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt put into effect a program called “The New Deal.” Its purpose was to put people back to work, and thus counteract the impact of the nation’s Great Depression. One of the agencies created under The New Deal was the Farm Security Administration (FSA). In addition to granting small farmers and tenant farmers money to purchase farms, the FSA also hired photographers to document the lives of farmers, migrant workers, and owners of small businesses. The image shown here, shot by FSA photographer Russell Lee was also taken in California’s Central Valley in 1940. Dorothea Lange’s photograph of a migrant mother and her children this is item 1 of 100 when a search is done within American Women: A Gateway to Library of Congress Resources for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States -  “Dorothea Lange, migrant worker, Nipoma California”] is perhaps the most famous image to come out of the project. It was taken in Nipoma, California, in California’s Central Valley in 1936.

Woman buying candy

 

 Background Information 

Good Business Practices: Assessing a Community’s Needs 

In today’s congested world, most people are only a short drive away from a movie theater, post office, supermarket, and restaurants. We can access local, national, and international news from a TV, radio, and the Internet. And if the car breaks down or needs gas, there is usually a service station nearby that can help us out. But what do people do when they do not live near such services? And what did they do long ago when today’s essentials were either non-existent or considered luxuries? In this activity, children will think about the types of businesses they consider most important to have nearby.

 

 Classroom Activity 

What Kinds of Businesses Does Our Community Need?

1. Distribute a copy of the photograph of the line of stores in California’s Central Valley to each child. Ask the children if they know what kinds of stores are shown. If the children are able to identify any of the ones in the picture, ask them how they know what it is.

2. Read aloud what the signs in the photograph say. Then ask:

• What kinds of items do you think you would find in each of the buildings shown here?
• What kinds of jobs do you think that the people who work in these places do?
• Imagine you lived in this community and these were the only stores near you. Would you be able to get everything that you can in your community? What kinds of things might it be difficult to get? Which things do you think you might miss the most?

3. Distribute art supplies (crayons, markers, and drawing paper) to each child, and tell the class to imagine that they are starting a new town out in the middle of nowhere. What kinds of stores would they like to see opened up first? Using the photograph as a model, have the children draw their own small line of stores—including at least four, such as are shown in the picture. Help the children to label the signs on the stores that they draw. Then ask the children to explain why they selected the businesses they did.