The Great Depression was the deepest and longest-lasting economic downfall in the history of the United States. (Document A) It began soon after the stock market crash of October 1929 and lasted a decade. During the Great Depression consumer spending and investment decreased. Thus causing declines in industrial output and the rising of unemployment. (Document E) By 1933 the Great Depression reached its prime, over thirteen million Americans were unemployed and nearly half of the country’s banks had failed. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected into office in November 1932. He immediate tried to lessen the effects of the Great Depression with the programs of the New Deal? Programs such as Works Progress Administration, Tennessee …show more content…
The cause of the Great Depression was not caused by one problem alone, but several joint problems. The Great Depression was caused by a large percentage of Americans investing in the stock market, installment buying and the multiple bank failures.
At President Calvin Coolidge’s last Annual Message to Congress in 1928 he ended his opening paragraph with “The country can regard the present with satisfaction and anticipate the future with optimism.” (Document B) Unbeknownst to him and the American people, just a year later the United States would start a decade long depression. The Great Depression started off with the stock market crash on October 29, 1929. (Document D) The stock market crash was one of the problems that caused the depression because of the amount of people that invested in the stock market. So many people invested in the stock market because it proved to be beneficial. Many people were able to
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Before the roaring twenties when people had bought all they could afford they would stop buying. During and after the roaring twenties when people had bought all they could afford they would keep spending. (Document M) People kept spending because debt was no longer thought as shameful. “Consumers bought goods on installment at a rate faster than their income was expanding, but it was inevitable that a time would come when they would have to reduce purchases, and the cutback in buying would sap the whole economy.” “Three out of every four radios were purchased on the installment plan, 60 per cent of all automobiles and furniture.” (Document H) So many Americans were installment buying and gathering debt even though sixty percent of Americans were living at, or below the property line of two thousand dollars. (Document K) Since consumers were unable to pay off the debt the companies inevitably lost money. Companies lost so much money that some were forced to lay off workers and even shut down. Over spending and installment buying along with the stock market crash led to many people not only losing their savings but also their
The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to mid 1940s. It was a time of misery and suffering for everyone around the world. The stock market crash caused millions of people to end up without a job and hungry. Up to 7 million people worldwide lost their lives. This devastation made many families start over and begin again.
The Great Depression was an economic downturn in America that lasted from 1929 until about 1939, making it the longest lasting depression ever experienced by the industrialized world. The stock market crash caused a chain reaction that involved problems such as unemployment, deflation, an increase in debt, and general poverty for lower class citizens. Attempts at escaping the depression weren’t altogether successful. In fact, most of the efforts resulted in high consumer debt as well as over optimistic loans given to the public by banks and business investors. The Depression caused severe political changes in the US as well as its obvious economic failures. After three years of the depression, Herbert Hoover lost the presidential election
The great Depression was a major crash in the history of the United States. The crash of the stock market in October 1929 was the significant cause of the great depression. People began to panic and big businesses were not able to handle the outcome. As a result, many companies dismissed workers, which left the workers with no money. People halted to purchase goods and businesses were running in loss. Furthermore, after the world war one, many European nations owed huge amount of money to the United States. The economy of these nations was shattered and had no way of paying back the
The Great Depression was a difficult time for all the American people. It was a time of unemployment, falling wages, and hope for recovery (“Chapter 27”). Some of the causes of the Great Depression were government policies, economic factors, and the gold standard (“Chapter 27”). Other reasons included the fall of the stock market, overseas investments, and the investments in Florida real estate (Farless). The president at the time of this difficult time was President Herbert Hoover. When the Great Depression started, Herbert Hoover took matters into his own hands. President Herbert Hoover came up with multiple recovery attempts.
Historians argue what caused the Great Depression, some say it was due to the stock market, others say it may be the war debt or overproduction. To believe the Great Depression was caused by only one event is naive. It was caused by a multitude of problems that the government failed to fix.
The first main cause of the Great Depression was The Stock Market Crash of 1929. On October 29, 1929 the New York Stock Exchange experienced a huge downfall that was detrimental to the US economy. For example, in Document 3 the title of the newspaper article is, “Stock prices Slump $14,000,000,000 In Nationwide Stampede To Unload Bankers To Support The Market Today.” These losses that occurred because of this crash were probably the most devastating ever experienced in the stock market. Because of
Since the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, the United States of America has experienced a great amount of changes from then to now. One example of change in America occurred during a time of great prosperity. In the 1920’s America experienced a time of enjoyment and where no one fretted over money. However, after the stock market crash in 1929, America entered the Great Depression, forever altering history. The Great Depression caused many people to lose their jobs and many people did not how to get their next meal. This was a time of great change. Another change occurred when the United States came out of the Great Depression, a time of great suffering, into World War II. The second world war caused America to stop
The two sources are both primary because they are documented letters by individuals who wrote letters to prominent people in certain positions of authority during the “Great Depression.” The first letter was written by a taxpayer from Hornell, New York March 7, 1934 and the other letter was written by a male (D.B.P.) during the timeline reference of 1929-1939. The questions the first letter raises are about the relief agencies in the United States and the possible need for investigation of the type of work the agencies were performing. The other questions dealt with are the agencies giving relief to ignorant foreigners who might not be citizens deserving of assistance because they were here in the United States by illegal means. The first letter considering the frame of reference during the time of the “Great Depression” of 1929 – 1939 digressed toward immigration and
As prices would go down farmers produced more to try and make up for it, except that as they produced more prices dropped. Fourth was that the bands were unstable. They would loan out way too much money riskily and have a low amount of reserves since there was little enforcement for these types of bank regulation. The one who was supposed to regulate them was a large business owner himself and he wasn’t to keen on interfering with business. Wo when the economy slowed down and people went back to the banks to get their money there was none to take, forcing the banks to start calling back in loans and foreclosing on people. Even with that banks still didn’t have enough money so they had to close, leaving a lot of people without money. Fifth was overspeculation which included a lot of consumer credit and margin buying. This fits in with the last explanation of what happens when the banks had to start calling in loans, but no one had the money to pay it so many were foreclosed on. Sixth was that there was a sort of overconfidence in the American people. They had this false belief that the economy was going to keep growing so they failed to save enough money to withstand the slowdown. All of these weaknesses in the 1920’s economy led to a greater slowdown of the economy leading into the Great Depression.
The United States had just gained victory from World War I and was thriving. The period known as the roaring 20s was a time of success and materialism. Consumers were buying more and more products and spending money on credit. People were frivolously spending money and buying stock in the stock market. Although things may have appeared to be a time of success and prosperity, a storm was brewing and there were underlying weaknesses in the economy.
Imagine all of a sudden being out of a job and becoming bankrupt, and your country going into a depression. In 1929 until the late 1930's the Great Depression took place and many countries were affected by it, the Great Depression was an economic depression. The cause of the Great depression was the crash of the Stock Market in 1929. The Great Depression affected the US in a way that increased unemployment by 25% and increased the amount of homeless people. In this essay I will be analyzing the responses of President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration to the problems of the Great Depression. I will also be talking about how effective these responses were, and how they changed the role of the federal government. I believe that the responses to the Great Depression were very effective in bringing the country out of the Great Depression.
The Great Depression of 1929 was a horrible time where American and its people had to suffer from poverty and hunger. The reasons for the Depression as stated on page 4, were “...a number of serious weaknesses in the economy.” examples such as people borrowing money they could not give back, wealthy making more money, and even the cost of WW1 cause problems. These all lead up to the U.S. stock market crash of 1929, were “thousands of investors were ruined and confidence in the economy was destroyed. ”(page 4)
After a while, many businesses went bankrupt, leaving business owners with bills that went unpaid. Luckily, after World War I ended, America had become one of the world’s leading creditors. By this time, Americans, with full confidence of being prosperous forever, were increasingly investing in stocks. Unexpectedly, in the days of 29 October 1929 the stock market had crashed. Banks that had invested heavily on stock market and real estate now had lost most of their money. There is only little money left in the country by now; the period of Great Depression had arrived
Many people think that the Great Depression was caused solely by the stock market crash. Anybody who tells you this probably didn’t pass U.S. History in high school. The fact is, the Great Depression was caused many different factors. Four of which were overproduction, uneven distribution of wealth, protective tariffs, and the four “sick industries” of the 1920’s.
The Great Depression of 1929 is said to have many causes. In an article on about.com Martin Kelly states there were five main causes of the Great Depression. First is the stock market crash