Hey y'all! My name is Claire Merritt Ruth. I am the wife of the famous Yankee player that won 4 world series in 10 seasons, Babe Ruth. We got married in 1929, right before the Great Depression hit. For you all who don't know what the Great Depression is, well its a time period where every American needed a little bit of hope in their lives.

You would think that being married to the American hero at the time of the Great Depression, that we would be all fine. That is not at all one bit true. We had indeed lost a lot. Babe had to sign a contract with a price that was decreased by over half and ended up to be $50,000. I know this may seem extremely high, but we weren't used to this and it's all because of the Great Depression.

There were many causes to The Great Depression and those included Bank failures, which lost all of our trust in banks, drought conditions which turned in to a huge Dust Bowl, reduction in purchasing across the board, and most importantly The Stock Market Crash of 1929. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 left everyone broke. There were people living in Hoovervilile in tiny self-made shacks, begging for jobs. Babe and I were scared because we spent all of our money the previous years and now we only had $50,000 left. We had to make changes in our life and cut off all of our maids, nannies, chefs, etc.

We wanted our daughters to live a great life, but we didn't know how we were ever going to recover from this time, no one did. Our daughter Dorothy was old enough to go work a small job as a flower girl, so she could at least make a little bit of money. We lived in an urban economy, so it wasn't as hard to find a job vs people living in a rural economy.

I will tell you that President Herbert Hoover was something else. He was a great guy because Babe and I met him in the White House after his first world series, but his choices during the Great Depression were horrible. There was no help coming from him and the government because he believed in lassiez-faire," letting the economy work itself out.

I ain't gonna lie to you, we were all relieved when President Franklin D. Roosevelt came into presidency. Roosevelt changed our lives as he had promised us a thing called the New Deal. This New Deal would give us a safe banking system, jobs for us to work, and most importantly hope.

President Roosevelts creation of The New Deal helped everyone tremendously. Jobs were very needed at this time at Roosevelt gave us jobs so that we could support our family. Babe had to quit baseball and had to start working for the CCC. We need money desperately and this job helped us out a lot.

As soon as we started gaining money again, we finally decided to put our money in a savings account. Roosevelt gained our trust back into the banking system as it was not so great before. Even though we were making money, we still couldn't afford to buy a house on our own, even a small one.

Eventually, with President Roosevelts help, we got back up on our feet and started to live the way we lived before. Babe was able to sign a contract in baseball again with $150,000 which put us over the moon. It was a tough time period in which no one should have gone through in their life.

Thank You