the great depression
The Roaring 20s was suppose to help with business boom, change in life, and prohibition, but it didn't work. It just led us here to we know as The Great Depression. The Great Depression caused lots of emotional problems for all family's. It had their six or seven year olds working in the oil rigs, farmers land, and even traveling the world looking for work.
Causes of the Great Depression |
There was lots of causes in The Great Depression. Some of them were living on credit, uneven distribution, and one of the main things was the Stock Market Crash. Everybody was living on the credit because it was a arrangement that would let you buy now and pay later. Which made it easier for business to encourage Americans to pile up on large consumer debts. Many people had trouble paying of these debts. Which faced them with debt and cut back on spending. During the 1920s, uneven distribution made rich people richer and poor more poor. More than 70 percent of nations families earned less than $2,500 per year. Then they considered the minimum amount needed for decent standard of living. Families that would earn twice as much could not afford many of the household products that manufactures produced. This unequal distribution of income meant that most Americans couldn't participate fully in the economic advances in the 1920s. Then the Stock Market Crash hit. Investors quickly sold their stocks and pulled out. On October 24, market took a plunge and investors panicked and unloaded their shares. That wasn't even the worst. On October 29, as we all know it as Black Tuesday the bottom fell out of market and the nations confidence. Additional millions could not find buyers. So people who had bought stocks on credit were stuck with the huge debts as the prices plummeted, while others lost most of their savings.
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Depression in the City |
As the stock market crash happened it began depression in the cities. In cities across countries people lost jobs, were evicted from their homes, and ended up in the streets. Even some slept in sewer pipes, wrapping themselves in newspaper to fend off the cold. People built makeshift shacks out of scrap materials. Before long, numerous shantytowns, which were little towns consisting of shacks and sprang up. Every day the poor would dig up through garbage cans or begged. Soup kitchens would offer free and low-cost food and bread lines. People would be waiting to receive food provided by charitable organizations or public agencies, that became a common sight.
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Depression in the Countryside |
There was a big drought that began in the early1930s. During this drought farmers from Texas to North Dakota had to use tractors to break up their grasslands and plant millions of acres for new farmland. Farmers had then exhausted themselves by overproduction of crops, and grasslands became unsuitable for training. Also when the drought began, there were a few tress and little grass that was able to hold the soil down. One windstorm in 1934 picked up millions of tons of dust from the plains and carried it to the East Coast cities. The region that was hit the hardest was parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, which became known as the Dust Bowl. Plagued by dust storms and evictions, and thousands of farmers and sharecroppers left their land behind. They packed up a few belongings and families headed west following Route 66 heading to California. Some of the migrants known as Okies found work as farmhands. Others continued to wander in search of work. At the end of the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of farm families had migrated to California and other Pacific Coast states.
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the New Deal |
The New Deal was a phrase taken from a campaign speech in which Roosevelt had promised "a new deal for the American people." New deal policies focused on three general goals, which were relief for the needy, economic recovery, and financial reform. As Roosevelt took office he launched a period of intense known as the Hundred Days lasting from March 9th to June 16 in 1933. Congress passed more than 15 major pieces of the New Deal legislation. Laws and others that followed significantly expanded the federal governments role in the nations economy. Congress took another step to reorganize the banking system by passing the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. Which established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. (FDIC) The FDIC provided federal insurance for individual bank accounts of up to $5,000, reassuring millions of bank customers that their money was safe. Congress and the president also worked to regulate the stock market. Which people had lost faith because of the crash in 1929. Federal Securities Act, passed in May 1933, required corporations to provide complete information on all stock offerings and made them liable for any misrepresentations. The Public Works Administration created in June 1933 as part of the National Industrial Recovery Act provided money to states to create jobs chiefly in the construction of schools and other community buildings. These programs failed to make sufficient dent in unemployment, President Roosevelt established the Civil Works Administration in November 1933.
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Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover was born to a Quaker family in Iowa. Hoover was an orphan at his early age. His life that he had was a rags-to-riches. Hoover worked his way to get through the University of Stanford. Then after getting through Stanford he was able to make a fortune using a mining engineer and consultant in China, Australia, Europe, and Africa.
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Hardship for Children
Children were also the ones that were suffering during the 1930s. They had a lack of money to be able to get full meals. They didn't have money for health care. Milk had consumption declined across the country, and clinics as well as hospitals reported a dramatic rise in malnutrition and diet-related diseases, such as rickets. Child-welfare were slashed from cities and states cut their budgets to face the dwindling resources. Falling taxes also caused schools to cut the year shorter and some schools even shut down. Many teenagers would look for a way out of suffering. Few hundred thousands of little boys and girls hopped aboard the American trains to find their way out of suffer, search of work, adventure, and even poverty. These "wild boys" were kids from poor farmers and out-of-work miners, and parents who had lost everything they had. (pg 476)
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franklin d. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt a man who was born into a wealthy New York family. Roosevelt entered the politics as a senator in the 1910, which later became assistant secretary of the navy. IN 1921, Roosevelt was stricken with polio and was partially paralyzed from his waist down. Roosevelt struggled standing on his one after that, but was soon able to recover and regain to stand on his legs by using leg braces. In 1928, Roosevelt became governor of New York. After he became governor he "would not allow bodily disability to defeat his will," he went on to the White House in 1933. Roosevelt always being interested in people, he gained greater compassion for others in result of his own physical disability. |
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt being a niece to Theodore Roosevelt and a distant cousin from her husband, Franklin, Eleanor Roosevelt lost her parents at an early age. She was raised by her grandmother that was very strict. Being first lady Eleanor Roosevelt urged the president to take stands on the controversial issues. Being a popular public speaker, Roosevelt was interested in child welfare, housing reform, and equal rights for women and minorities. Presenting a booklet on human rights to the Untied Nations in 1958, she said "Where, after all, do human rights begin?...[In] the world of the individual person: the neighborhood....the school...the factory, farm or office where he works." (pg 489)
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With all these problems it just wasn't working for anybody. So people started going back to old ways and it wasn't good for them. It was just going to led them into another war. We know it as World War II.