The Great Depression

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The Great Depression
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Events Leading to The Great Depression

• After a brief period of recovery
• after the war, the 1920s had been
• a cultural and economic boom time
• Many old traditions had been
• done away with, industry was growing
• and the quality of life had improved
• Thus, people were optimistic when Herbert Hoover
  was elected President in 1928

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Events Leading to the Great Depression

• All was not as it seemed however
• Quality of life was greatly improved by items
  purchased on credit
• Industry was booming, but wages were not
• Investors were putting too much faith in the
  stock market
• The disparity between the wealthy and the poor
  was huge

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The Stock market crash

• For most of the 1920s, the stock market had been
  characterized by a long period of rising stock
  prices ( a bull market)With the optimism that
  came with the election of Herbert Hoover, they
  rose higher than ever
• Unfortunately by late 1929, the market was
  running out of new customerspeople started to
  worry and thus started selling their stock
• As people got scared, they sold their stocks
  faster and faster and prices fell further and
  further
• On Black Tuesday, October 29th, stocks fell lower
  than ever, losing 10 15 billion dollars in
  valuetwo weeks later they had lost 30 Billion in
  value a sum equal to the total wages earned by
  Americans that year

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Consequences of the Crash

• As people lost all the money they had invested in
  stocks, banks were unable to give people the
  money they had saved
• This, coupled with the fact that many banks and
  credit companies called in their accounts
• (people had to pay back their loans) meant that
  people became very poor, very quickly
• The Hoover Administration ignored the problem at
  first stating that it would only last 60 days
• It lasted for almost a decade

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Life During the Depression
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Life in the City

• As the economy
• crumbled, people
• lost their jobs, income
• And as a result, their
• Homes
• The result was the creation of hoovervilles-
  shanty towns with make shift shelters set up
  throughout major cities

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Breadlines

• Apart from being homeless, people would wait for
  hours and hours in breadlines just to get a
  scrap of food

If you happened to be one of the first ones in
line, you didnt get anything but water that was
on top. So wed ask the guy that was ladling out
soup into the bucketseverybody had to bring
their own bucket to get the souphed dip the
greasy water stuff off the top. So wed ask him
to please dip down to get some meat and potatoes
from the bottom of the kettle. But he wouldnt do
it.
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Life in the MidwestThe Dust Bowl

• From 1934 to 1940 severe drought ravaged Kansas,
  Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado.
• When the drought destroyed the crops, there was
  nothing to hold the soil of the wind-swept and
  treeless plains. The area became known as "The
  Dust Bowl."

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• By 1935, winds reaching 60 miles per hour whipped
  the dirt into gigantic clouds as high as 1,000
  feet blocking the sun. Dust reached the
  president's desk in Washington and even reported
  by ships 500 miles out to sea. Storms blanketed
  highways in impenetrable clouds of swirling dust
  stranding motorists.

• With the land literally blown away, farmers left
  the area. By the end of the decade almost half
  the population, an estimated 300,000 from
  Oklahoma alone, migrated..

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Migrant Workers
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Migrant Work

• Families forced out of their farms moved to
  California in hopes of finding seasonal work
• If they were lucky, they found work, but
  conditions were often no better than at home

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The Bonus Army

• While all of this was going on, Veterans asked
  for some help too
• After World War I they had been promised money,
  but not until 1945
• During the Wake of the depression, they asked for
  their money ahead of time and protested outside
  of Washington DC.
• They lost the fight and the current U.S. Army was
  set on them in order to make them go away

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• The fiasco with the Bonus Army was the last straw
  for Americans
• In the 1932 election, democrat Franklin Delano
  Roosevelt won the presidency and would eventually
  become one of the most popular presidents in all
  of American history.

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