Great Depression Reflection

Imagine this. You wake up one morning in the year 1929, in your luxurious, pricey mansion. You then make your way downstairs to eat that nice big breakfast. Then you kiss your family good bye and head off to your fancy job. You come home that evening and suddenly you’re flat broke. Meaning all your money and life’s savings vanished. Unreal right? Well it was real for hundreds of families on October 29, 1929. The day the stock market crashed and when America’s confidence was challenged greatly.

Many consider the Great Depression a tragedy but few actually know the ways in which it actually affected the people who lived through it. One way it affected the people of the time is the hopelessness it brought. During the early 1920's many men returned from the "Great War" jaded and angry. The same effect was seen in most people during the depression. It was this hopelessness that spawned modernist literature and thought. Another way the depression affected the everyday man was the loss of homes. Many homes were foreclosed during the depression and this left many homeless. In fact the "Okies" were people left homeless after farm foreclosures. The last way the depression affected people was the broken homes it caused. The number of father's leaving their families rose dramatically during

In the years leading to 1930, the Great Plains experienced a healthy amount of rain. The drought began in 1930 when the rain ceased. That year proved tough for farmers in the Great Plains, but they had no idea what was yet to come. In 1931, dust storms began to sweep through the Great Plains. Behind the dust, families stayed hidden inside their homes using wet clothes and such to guard the window sills and door frames. The families affected by the Dust Bowl were trapped inside of their homes for the six years of raging dust storms. The Great Depression was a number of years that consisted of workers being laid off, no job openings available, and an overall economic low in the United States. The Great Depression, which started in the years leading up to the drought, resulted in poor living conditions, including little to no income, scarce food, and unclean water. The Dust Bowl amplified those conditions for the affected families. (Steinbeck, Lewis, “Dust Bowl”

The Great Depression, however inevitable, took the world by surprise when the stock market crashed in 1929. At first people did not fully understand the state of the economy, they could not wrap their heads around the transition from popping champagne bottles to eating bread crumbs for dinner. People were expecting a quick fix to the problem, assuming their lives to go back to normal after a few months, tragically underestimating the situation America was in. As a result, no one was prepared to properly combat the extreme shortage of food, jobs, and money in the years to come.

The Great Depression affected Americans no matter their educational stance or social class. For example, a college educated woman named Vera had extreme problems with acquiring a job. Due to her inexperience, no one would hire her. The didn’t care if she had a college

"10 Things You May Not Know About the Dust Bowl." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 08 Feb. 2016

When most people hear the phrase “The Great Depression” they only associate it the crash of the stock market and the hard times that followed. Here in the Midwest, when we think of the Great Depression we also think of the Dust Bowl and the Dirty Thirties. The Great Depression was a very climactic end to a series of poor choices that greatly affected the entire United States.

The journal article begins by introducing an African American couple who resided in Russellville, Kentucky. James Wright held an occupation as a corn cutter while his wife Gladys worked as a cook in a white home. The time span of their journey occurred at the beginning of the great depression all the way through World War II. Seeking better employment opportunities, James traveled to Louisville. Although, his first couple trips were in vain. His resilience and determination eventually lead to a job working for International Harvester. During an era of many trials and tribulations, James found a way to support himself and his family by migrating from a rural to an urban area. By sharing this anecdote the author establishes a mood of hardship

In The Greatest Generation Grows up: American Childhood in the 1930’s, Kirste Lindenmeyer argues that the children of the Great Depression were the targets of and influenced the social and political change during the depression. Lindenmeyer does this by using many first-hand accounts to support her claim. Lindenmeyer then uses the lack of work as a chapter to also support her argument. Another point that Lindenmeyer successfully uses is the change in educational policies and regulations to reinforce her claim on the political side of it. There is a point that can hurt some of Lindenmeyer’s sources is that some of her primary sources were taken note of many years after the Great Depression.

The Great Depression was a period of economic turmoil in the United States that lasted from 1929 until the end of World War II. The Great Depression reflected the economic crisis of the Stock Market’s sudden crash despite America’s economic steadiness for nearly a decade during the Roaring Twenties. Two long term causes of the Great Depression were the poor management and infrastructure of the banks and the overall production of agriculture. Farms prior to the Great Depression over produced during World War I in order to feed European nations, armies, and that overall process costed money. Corn and wheat were popular at the time for mass production which led to an increase of farmers taking out loans in order to expand the land. As more crops

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 Great Depression was a time of economic loss. People lost their homes, and lost everything they had earned. It affected the middle and low class americans, and the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. People in upper classes even dropped to the lower class. It began on October 29, 1929, and the leading cause was the crash of the stock market. Everyone who put their money into stocks had lost everything they had, including the Braddock family. In the movie Cinderella james braddock and his family show the struggle of life during the great depression. Overall Cinderella Man showed many of the different aspects we covered, and was worth the watch during the class.

Tarrant County College has a traveling exhibit about the Dust Bowl that is sponsored by Ohio State Library, American Library Association, Mount Holyoke, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. This traveling exhibit is in a decent location, has a great display, and gives out a lot of information about the Dust Bowl.

The Great Depression was a time of great economic tragedy during the 1930’s. October 24, 1929 was the day of the stock market crash, causing economical shortage everywhere, even globally, and this scared everyone, including the rich. This day was/ is known as “Black Thursday”, where over 2.9 million shares were traded. On “Black Tuesday”, five days later, more than 16 million more shares were traded in another wave of panic. Many investors then lost confidence in their banks and demanded deposits in cash which forced the banks to liquidate loans in order to supplement their on hand cash reserves. By 1933, around 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half of the country’s banks had failed. This stopped Americans from purchasing which then led to less production of goods and decreased the amount of needed human labor. In the end, millions of shares ended up worthless, and those investors who had bought stocks with borrowed money were wiped out completely.

Many children had to quit school in order to help support their families, even if they only sold apples and pencils on the city streets – every little bit helped. In response to this tragedy, when President Roosevelt took office in 1933, he feverishly created program after program, known as the “New Deal.” These programs were created to give relief, create jobs, and stimulate economic recovery for the United States.