The Great Depression Essay

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.

The Great Depression is probably one of the most misunderstood events in American history. It is routinely cited, as proof that unregulated capitalism is not the best in the world, and that only a massive welfare state, huge amounts of economic regulation, and other interventions can save capitalism from itself. The Great Depression had important consequences and was a devastating event in America, however many good policies and programs became available as a result of the great depression, some of which exist even today.

Following the economic boom of the 1920s, there was a period of economic depression. The United States and its citizens were greatly affected. There were many economic problems that occurred such as unemployment rate rising tremendously and many more. Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt were presidents during that time and dealt with the economic problems. They helped create programs to financially stabilize the country again. The Great Depression ended when the United States entered World War II.

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

How does one keep faith in a country during times of destitute and agony? In 1929, the stock market crashed. Poverty struck the country fast like the huge dust storms in the west. The new president, F.D.R, promised to relieve, recover and reform the country with various organizations. Churches and other groups set up food lines. F.D.R’s main goal was to put every American to work. The dilemmas of the Great Depression were soon set out to be handled by actions by the federal and state governments.

Life during the Great Depression was very different from life today. Many people were living on the streets in shanties, which were houses made of cardboard and scraps of wood. Milk and sugar were luxuries; you couldn’t buy them unless you were very wealthy. Often, men tried to sell apples in the street, just to make a few cents. Unemployment was a giant problem during the 30s. By 1933, Canada’s unemployment rate was at 30%. One in five Canadians were dependent on government relief to sustain their lives.

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.

Many people were poor in the great depression. Your parents would have lost their jobs and money because many businesses went out due to the stock market crash. You would have lost all your money because due to the stock market crash, various banks went out of funds then closed. The Americans lost so much money.They lost 30 million dollars when the stock market fell.

If there can be any period in time described as hell for America, the Great Depression is argubly the best contender for the description. There were six main causes of the Great Depression, which were: bank failures; the stock market crash; Reduction in Purchasing Across the Board; American Economic Policy with Europe; the increasing gap of socio-economic power between the rich and poor; and upcoming drought conditions. At the start of the Great Depression the president was Herbert Hoover, who believed that that the American public would only truly be out of the Great Depression through “rugged individualism” - the idea that the US citizens would only succeed though their own efforts. In other words he believed that people should not be “babied”

The late 1930s were a time of great suffering and uncertainty in the United States. The country was crippled by effects of the Great Depression; the result was a massive decline in jobs and economic stability that dramatically impacted both rural and urban communities. Millions of Americans were out of work, unable to support their families. State organizations and charities were unable to meet the growing needs of the people and many were left to fend for themselves. The Great Depression brought with it a legitimate, tangible fear about the future of America and its citizens. Upon the outcry of the American people a “New Deal” was struck giving the citizens of America a lifeline of hope in the ever-growing State. The New Deal was a succession of programs, organizations and laws, enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, directly addressing the issues of jobs, welfare and uncertainty through direct federal involvement. The creators of the New Deal worked across party lines to reshape the norms of state involvement whilst making a great legislative effort to turn the declining economy around. The New Deal reshaped the federal government’s relationship with its citizens in a time of economic uncertainty helping to grow the State in a time of peace.

During the Great Depression roughly 25% of the workers were 15 years old or younger, 20% of the children were starving and didn’t have access to new clothes and other necessities and about 40% of the young adults 16-24 were either unemployed or not in school. This shows that a great majority of the youth living during this time were not able to experience a normal childhood where they went to school and came home to play with their friends, because they had to work and were not able to attend school and get a proper education. Most of the kids also went to bed starving because their families could not afford to pay for food. Living as a child during the Great Depression was incredibly challenging

     The Great Depression was a huge economic downfall in North America and involved many other industrialized countries of the world. The Depression began in 1929 and lasted for about ten years. Millions of people lost their jobs along with many businesses going bankrupt. The common misconception of the Great Depression is people think that the stock market crash was the main cause for it. There were many causes for the Depression; unequal distribution of money during the 1920’s was the main cause of the Depression. This unequal distribution happened on many different classes of people. The imbalance of money is what created such an unstable economy. The stock market was doing much worse than people thought

Freedman discusses the lives of the American children affected by the economic and social changes of the Great Depression. Middle-class-urban youth, migrant farm laborers, boxcar kids, and children whose families found themselves struggling for survival. Freedman also writes about the faced challenges like unemployment, insufficient food, and shelter. Drawing on memoirs, diaries, letters, and other firsthand accounts, and illustrated with archival photographs. Freedman’s book features the voices of those who endured the Depression.

From 1929 to 1945, two catastrophes occurred: the Great Depression and World War II. American political leaders established a cause-effect relationship between economic collapse and total war, based on these two events, which defined their policy approach in the post-war period. In the 1930s, American leadership, and most importantly, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came to view economic decline, political radicalization, and instability as forming a vicious cycle that led to utter chaos and war. Although FDR did not know the future consequences of the economic fallout, he did know that breaking the cycle was of systemic importance. FDR’s policy platform, known as the New Deal, disregarded the historical wariness for government intervention and boldly connected economic security to freedom. Essentially, he attempted to push the American system to its limit in order to save it. Even with conservative elements constantly attempting to restrain his initiatives, FDR expanded his focus in the latter years of the 1930s to include international affairs as war broke out in Europe, Africa, and Asia. FDR and other government elites openly talked about the responsibility America had to build a new world order.

The Depression affected the varying economic and social classes in different ways. The experience of the Depression obviously had a negative impact on the country as a whole but some groups of society were still able to flourish. In addition to economic and social class, geographic location also played a role in experience of Americans during the Depression. Those unlucky citizens that lived in the Great Plains states were also dealing with the effects of the Dust Bowl during this time. Some citizens were lucky enough to find themselves working in Depression proof jobs such as the cigarette and shoe manufacturing industries (Kennedy, p. 163). However, most people had to adjust to a new norm of searching for subsistence level or even