Great Depression

The Great Depression was a time of extreme hardship for many around the world especially within Australia. It began before the market crash in prices and lasted until World War 2. Many people became unemployed with a record at 29%. Many lost their houses forcing families, women and men to relocate to alternative accommodation. Women were especially affected by the disastrous depression. The importance of their roles within the household increased. Women were kept busy finding food, providing for their family, working and Juggling between children.

Food What was the most common food available? Food In the Great Depression was very limited and scarce. Flower gardens were converted to vegetable gardens, mushrooms and blackberries were collected and fishing or rehabbing also became important if one lived in an appropriate area. The men usually took on the role of hunting, while the women stayed at home and cooked. For women It was particularly difficult, It was hard to create filling meals due to lack of ingredients. Bread and dripping, mince and soup was the most common food served in a variety of ways, it was the staple diet of many unemployed.

Another common and popular meal known throughout many Australian households was Golden syrup and treacle. Housing How did housing styles and architecture change through the great depression? During the great depression, there was a shortage of tradesmen. Ceilings of houses were lowered and the paneling became larger. The floor plan was much more simple and houses were smaller. Most were only one storey In height. The style of roof construction also changed. Many houses In that era had a “sleep out. ” A “sleep out” was an outside patio or area allowing people to sleep on, on a hot summer night.

It was also used for a healthy alternative to fresh air, as a common disease known back then was Tuberculosis and there was no cure. The front bricks were usually a very dark blue/black brick with brown “commons” on the side. The houses were very functional and well built for their time. Many people were evicted of their homes because they were unable to pay the landlord. The houses were left empty which then resulted in most situations becoming vandalized and damaged. What was the most common type of housing known throughout this time and seen In many suburbs across Australia?

The most common types of architecture included the California Bungalow, Agrarian, Spanish Mission and the Old English. Clothing Where did women shop and what did they wear during this era? The clothing of women during the sass’s reflected highly upon their social status and the levels of unemployment and poverty. Many high-class women shopped at large department stores including Grace Brothers and Meyer. They were influenced upon the high-end fashions seen throughout films. Charity balls were a perfect occasion to show off their new outfits.

In an autumn catalogue called Sears, It quotes “Thrift Is the spells of he day, reckless spending is a thing of the past. ” For the poor, clothing was usually hand-me-downs make from simple fabrics like cotton and wool. Women also began to 1 OFF How did women in particular entertainment themselves through the great depression? Much of the entertainment was centered within the home. Evenings were spent singing round the piano or playing cards. For those who were unable to afford outings, the radio was extremely popular. Sporting events became a main activity for many including Cricket and horse races such as the Melbourne Cup.

For the wealthy r those who were able to source full time work, charity balls and parties were held on Friday and Saturday nights in the city or middle-class suburbs. The poor did not attend these events; however for those who could, enjoyed the luxurious scenes, lavish food, tasteful drinks and extravagant dancing. Another popular source of entertainment included going to the cinemas. For many it was a place to escape their everyday life and sit back and relax. 95% of the films came from Hollywood. Live theatre was a cheap and effective source of entertainment. Many attended a performance by the comedian the clown Roy Rene.

Work How was finding work difficult for women? Throughout the great depression many women struggled to earn income and provide for their families. In 1932, the level of unemployment in Adelaide, South Australia was 29% according to http://aura. Anis. Du. AU/R/? Fun=dobbin-Jump- full=unisa25993 written by Rosemary Green. For women it was particularly difficult to find employment, wages were low and many found it hard to make a living. Most married women were expected to devote themselves to household work and caring for children, while on the other hand men worked to earn an income.

They also received a greater burden even after working all day they were expected to cook dinner and maintain house order. Loss of Job could’ve been disastrous, unemployment was a major issue causing poverty and the government did not fund women during the depression. What was the most common area of employment? Most women were restricted to only certain areas within the workforce. Women were still concentrated in traditional Jobs, the major area of employment being domestic service, industrial work in clothing and textile manufacturing, consumer goods, commerce and fiance and public and professional administration.

Therefore, small banks that gave the loans failed and big ankhs lost millions of dollars. In Industry, people bought all they could and factories produced too much so the companies had to lay off workers and the unemployment rate soared. The stock market then crashes because banks Invested peoples’ money In the stock market, but all of the money was gone. Everyone lost billions of dollars. After all of this had happened, the final cause that made everyone go crazy were the banks falling. The farmers couldn’t pay back loans. The factories couldn’t pay back loans.

The stock markets crashed. People were going to the banks and demanding for their money, but by the time they got there, the doors were already shut. Everyone thought, “What do we do now? We had lost everything we have lived for. ” During this time period, there were many horrific problems Americans had to face. Americans had become unemployed and could no longer afford to live in their homes. The individuals that lost their jobs and homes often moved into places called hoverflies. They were old, small, cold, and poorly taken care of homes that were made of scraps.

When the government failed to provide relief, President Hoover who was elected in 1932 to get the Americans out of the Great Depression was blamed for the intolerable economic and social conditions of the hoverflies. Great amounts of children died from starvation and malnutrition and some adults even killed themselves under the pressure because they could no longer take the Great Depression. They suffered a great deal. Many people ended up moving during the Great Depression to find a place more suitable for them.

After everyone had realized hat the Great Depression was doing to them, there were some things that started to change. Programs were made, people put in effort to change the society and world around them. People were taken out of poverty and like drastic lives Americans were living and facing. The Civilian Conservation Corps (ICC) was created to provide work for men between the ages of nineteen and twenty five. They were able to help national and state parks preserve the environment. Along with the ICC, the Agricultural Adjustment Act was formed. It hired people to build post offices, schools, ND public buildings.

Americans became artistes and painted murals In buildings. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was another program that helped Americans recover from the Great Depression. It provided work to build dams In rural areas for cheap electricity. As a result to all of these programs being made, the unemployment rate started to decrease and peoples’ lives started to go from terrible to somewhat normal again. There were a bunch of Individuals that also put time and effort Into helping Americans get out of this major crisis. President Hoover, for sure was one of he many people who helped.

He was completely unprepared for the task of guiding encouraged Americans not to panic and promised there would be no recession. Franklin Roosevelt main goal was to end the Great Depression. His New Deal programs and policies focused on the three Or’s: relief, recovery, and reform. Despite the fact that he was in a wheelchair his charm did much to convince Americans that they had “nothing to fear but fear itself. ” After the depression, Roosevelt successfully led the United States through World War II, was reelected to an unprecedented Ruth term in office.

Hey Long created a plan called “share our wealth plan. ” He believed in taxing the wealthy to give the money to the poor. He also wanted to limit the amount of money rich people had because he thought of it as unfair. Francis Townsend made a plan but it never went into effect, it didn’t pass Congress. He called it the pension plan. He wanted retired Americans to receive two hundred dollars each month to spend. Charles Slouching criticized Fad’s money and banking policies and wanted the government to nationalize the banks.

Even today, almost 70 years after Roosevelt introduced his New Deal the question of whether or not it was a success is still unanswered. “This nation asks for action and action now…. we must act, and act quickly” 1 Roosevelt came to his position as president at a time of crisis and had promised a ‘New Deal’ for the American people which would help America rebuild herself after the great depression. Roosevelt wanted to revive the economy and provide support for those who had been hit the hardest by the depression.

He promised to end prohibition, cut unemployment by creating new jobs for people and help the industries; businesses and farms recover from the depression2 The Roaring Twenties From America the 1920’s were an era of prosperity. America had wanted isolation from the rest of the world so tariffs had been introduced on all imported goods, which would have encouraged Americans to buy US goods. American would then be able to supply itself and consequently reduce overseas competition.

This demand for goods led to a period of mass production. The First World War had provided an opportunity for American companies to make large profits by selling weapons to America’s allies whose industrial production was comprised by their war economies. Also during WW1 France and Britain had relied on America to loan them money to fund the manufacture of their weapons to enable them to keep fighting the opposition in the war, these loans were still being paid off well after the war had ended. 3 The Fragility of the Boom

However this affluence could not last for ever, America was over producing which meant that the market would soon become saturated. Industries had produced thousands of goods but the demand was no longer there, as those who could afford the goods already owned them so consumption began to decline. The market for goods was also reduced due to the economical divide; America had been split into two halves; on one side the wealthy and on the other poverty stricken farmers and blacks that were working, so socialists would argue, so that the rich could indulge in luxuries.

Mass production contributed greatly to the downfall of the country, as it was not equally matched by mass consumption, which is a major factor in what caused the Wall Street crash of 1929. 4 “Billions of dollars’ worth of profits- and paper profits- had disappeared. The grocer, the window cleaner and the seamstress had lost their capital. In every town there were families which had suddenly dropped from showy affluence into debt”5 The end of an era

Although some experts had predicted the economical crash, the majority of people believed that the USA was so wealthy and so powerful that the boom would never end. Share prices had soared and people were encouraged to go on buying on credit. Hire purchase was so easily obtainable that few people realised that it was very dangerous to go selling on credit, as eventually people would not be able to make the repayments. Due to overproduction the market was gutted, and companies were going ‘bust’. The market could be ‘played’ by anyone, from a baker to a postman; they didn’t need any experience.

When it was realised that the stocks and shares were not doing as well as previous years, despite warnings from experts that they would improve, there was a massive loss in confidence and a mass panic. People became unsure of their investments and wanted to retrieve their shares. Panic stricken people were selling their stocks for a great deal less than what they were actually worth, prices plummeted and on October 24th 1929prices crashed. Over 13 million shares were sold and a further 500,000 on 29th October.

Shares dramatically lost value, ‘Electric bond and Share’ shares had fallen from $186 to $50 in just 2 months6; many had lost all that they had invested. 7 “The stock market was shaken to its foundations yesterday by the severest break in the history of Wall Street. The immediate cause of the debacle, which was entirely unexpected, was the forced liquidation of large brokerage accounts and furious bear attacks that chopped from $5,000,000,000 to $7,000,000 in values from shares. Trading on the floor of the Stock Exchange was virtually paralyzed…

For many people, the shock of the Wall Street crash was too much for them to take and some even committed suicide as they believed they had lost everything and would not be able to rebuild their life. The wealth and prosperity that America had gained during the ‘roaring’ twenties had not been shared equally between the American citizens, which had caused a lot of inequality, and resentment from the lower classes. As a result of this America plunged into depression, people began to realise that the economic problems would not go away unless they did something about it.

Wages fell and soon people did not have enough money to feed and clothe themselves and their family, the American population was no longer self-sufficient. “I have two boys to go to work. They haven’t got any shoes, no clothes. They can’t go to look for a job because they haven’t any shoes”9 Lower annual incomes had forced wives and older children who had not previously had to work, look for jobs. 10 Banks collapsed because people withdrew all their money from banks and kept it at home.

People had lost confidence in the financial system and instead of investing and spending people now began to save. 1 Roosevelt’s New Deal After the Wall Street Crash, the American people were looking for someone to pull them out of depression and so when Roosevelt offered them his New Deal they weren’t reluctant to oppose him, they saw him as their ‘saviour’12 Roosevelt promised the American public rapid action “The country needs, and unless I mistake its mood, demands bold experiments. Above all, try something”13 He knew that he had no time to waste and that the only way to relieve America from depression was to act quickly.

He guaranteed that his ‘New Deal’ would revive the economy and improve the standard of living in America. 14 An important factor we have to consider when discussing the success of the New Deal is that Roosevelt was and still is an extremely popular American figure so much of the evidence that is available for us to study is biased towards him. Due to this we have to make sure we consider the reliability and consistency of the sources we are studying. Roosevelt built up an incredibly respectable and honest image of himself so most of the sources, which are available to us, are biased towards him.

One of the sources that I have studied15 described the success of the TVA, however the director of the TVA wrote this source so is obviously going to be biased towards the new deal. Even though it contains facts and figures there is no way of telling if they are true. Roosevelt had the power to censor all kinds of media and also use the radio, television and newspapers as propaganda. However there was some opposition to Roosevelt although there are no sources to support their views; large businesses were not fond of Roosevelt or the New Deal as they saw it as the government interfering in things that were not their concern.

Also the wealthier members of society believed that because Roosevelt was a rich man they expected him to help them but instead he raised taxes on the well off and ignored their desires. 16 The start of WW2 would have had a dramatic effect on the economy of America although people tend to forget this and suggest that the recovery of America’s financial system was initiated solely by Roosevelt’s New Deal. Reforming the financial system Roosevelt decided that his New Deal would consist of different schemes and programs, and laws (known as the alphabet laws), which would bring about economic recovery.

Before Roosevelt could pass any new laws the banking emergency needed to be sorted out. On March 6th 1933 the Emergency Banking Act and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was enforced and all banks were shut down. This gave the government the opportunity to inspect the health of all banks and almost two thirds were re-opened soon after, as they were declared acceptable. The FDIC was formed by the congress to insure deposits up to $5000 and people began to put their money back into the banks and confidence gradually returned.

Faith had been re-established in American banks and people were no longer scared that they would lose all of their savings in a bank failure. After the Wall Street Crash all confidence in the banks had been lost but by introducing the FDIC and the Emergency banking Act Roosevelt was able to restore this trust. “Confidence and courage are the essentials in our plan. You must have faith; you must not be stampeded by rumours. We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system; it is up to you to support and make it work. Together we cannot fail”17.

The Federal Securities Act of May 1933 and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) were set up to regulate the stock market and required full disclosure of information on stocks being sold. The Congress also gave the Federal Reserve board the power to regulate the purchase of stock. Modernization of American Agriculture The Agriculture Adjustment Administration (AAA) was introduced to try and raise farm prices and used proceeds from a new tax to pay farmers not to raise specific crops and animals, lower production would in turn increase prices.

In May 1933 the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was established to help farmers and to create jobs in one of America’s least modernized areas. A hydroelectric power plant was reactivated and provided cheap electric power, flood control and recreational opportunities to the entire Tennessee River Valley. 18 The TVA involved ordinary people in the planning so that they would be taking part in making decisions, which affected their own future. “In ten years the dams TVA has built have made this region the second largest producer of power in the United States.

In 1944 the system will produce nearly half as much electricity as the utilities of the entire country produced in 1914. “19 Between 1935 and 1943 the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was set up and provided work for 8 million Americans, it decreased the rate of unemployment and the workers constructed or repaired schools, hospitals and airfields. 20 The Farm Security Administration (FSA) loaned more than $1 billion to farmers and set up camps for migrant workers. The FSA aimed to assist sharecroppers, tenant farmers and migrant labourers.

One success of the FSA was that it brought the problem of poverty to national attention. Supporting the people of America The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was led by Harry Hopkins who believed that men should be put to work and not be given charity. This agency sent funds to depleting local relief agencies and also funded public work programs, within two hours $5million were given out and deteriorating relief programs were revitalized. The Civil Works Administration (CWA) gave the unemployed jobs building or repairing roads, parks, airports and other public places.

This not only provided a physical boost to its 4million workers but also a psychological one. 21 Roosevelt had succeeded in creating more jobs, which helped reduce the number of unemployed, to 7. 7 million by 1937 from 12. 83 million just 4 years before. 22 The CWA and FERA also helped repair many public places, which was a beneficial, step in rebuilding America. The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of June 1933 was formed to boost declining prices and to help businesses and workers. NIRA allowed trade associations in many industries to write codes regulating wages, working conditions, production and prices.

If all employers in each competitive group agree-to pay their workers the same wages-reasonable wages-and require the same hours-reasonable hours-then higher wages and shorter hours will hurt no employer. Moreover, such action is better for the employer than unemployment and low wages, because it makes more buyers for his product. That is the simple idea which is the very heart of NIRA”23 The Public Works Association (PWA) was a part of the NIRA and often regarded as one of the best parts launched projects such as the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River and gave the unemployed jobs helping enforce these new programs.

Roosevelt placed a lot of efforts into reducing the rate of unemployment, which is why so many of his proposals were focused around creating new jobs. The Civilian conservation Corps (CCC) was an environmental program, which positioned 2. 5million unmarried men in work, maintaining and restoring forests, beaches and parks. The workers only received $1 a day but they also got free board and job training. During 1934 and 1937 the CCC funded similar programs for over 8,500 women. These programs taught men and women to live independently and significantly increased their self-esteem. We have here one of the best [CCC] camps that could possibly be established. The country and the hills here make you think there is no such thing as a city…. It sure beats ‘Brother can you spare me a dime’. “24 The great depression had left many people homeless, which was why the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) was set up. It helped people keep their houses by refinancing the mortgages of middle- income homeowners and also tried to help those without a home find suitable accommodation.

During the depression many people families had been forced out of their homes because they could no longer afford to keep their houses, the HOLC can be considered as a success as the number of homeless people did decrease and the problem had been largely overcome. In 1935 the National Labour Relations Act (Wagner Act) was launched to legalise practices allowed only unevenly in the past, such as closed shops in which only union members could work. It authorized workers to form trade unions and the act also set up the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) to enforce its provisions.

The Fair Labour Standards act of 1938 was a long awaited triumph for the socialists who wanted to reform American society. The act enforces a set minimum wage and a maximum number of hours that people are allowed to work and also banned child labour. The depression had caused a lack of confidence among the people and the Social Security Act of 1935 helped millions of Americans feel more secure. It established a system that provided pensions for workers, benefits for survivors of industrial accidents, unemployment insurance and aid for mothers, children, the blind and the physically disabled.

The Black community had always been severely discriminated against so Roosevelt displayed genuine sympathy for Black aspiration so to gain support from the minority groups. The National association for the advancement of coloured people (NAACP) brought an impressive number of churches, academics, labour unions and other liberal groups into the anti lynching mob. 26 In 1934 the Indian Reorganization Act was passed which ended the sale of tribal lands. This act restored ownership of unallocated lands to Native American Groups, which caused a very positive outcome for Native Americans.

Benefits of the New Deal Roosevelt’s New deal was considered a great success by the people of America, he had managed to convince them that it would be able to overcome the great depression and his confidence reflected upon them and everyone had great faith in his New Deal. “Nothing can stop the President’s program, nothing will even hamper the presidents program… the power of this people, once aroused and united in a fixed purpose, is the most irresistible force in the world”27 On the surface it appeared that the New Deal had been a victory.

It gained such dedicated support from the American public that their confidence had been fully restored. A noticeable achievement of the New Deal was the Fair Labour Standards Act, which had established a minimum wage and a maximum hours policy. President Roosevelt had carefully planned his New Deal in such a way that the problems of the depression would be overcome as soon as possible and restore America’s financial status. All of the schemes in Roosevelt’s New Deal were aimed to bring relief to as many people as it could and to bring the support quickly.

One of the main reason’s why the New Deal did achieve some significant changes was that the American public was convinced that it would work and trusted Roosevelt and believed he would be able to rebuild the economy. When the Banks reopened after the Emergency banking act, many people began to reinvest their money in the reopened banks, which showed that they had confidence that there would not be another economical collapse. Opposition to the New Deal However, the New Deal was not entirely a success; it faced a lot of opposition primarily from the rich and the republicans.

The republicans opposed the increase in presidential power and believed it was leading to dictatorship and critised Roosevelt for high government spending. The Supreme Court was constantly suggesting that the laws which were included in the New Deal were unconstitutional. Full employment and dramatic reductions in poverty were not achieved until 1942-43, when 13,000,000 men and women were serving in the armed forces and the United States were supplying huge amounts of war materials and food to America’s allies, which meant that America’s economic power was being restored. 28

The New Deal failed to promote real economic recovery and it had taken massive government borrowing, investment and spending to end the depression. Despite Roosevelt’s numerous attempts to restore America’s economy with the NRA and the AAA the New Deal never completely succeeded in overcoming the economical problems caused by the depression. The National Industrial Recovery Act stopped the tailspin of prices for a short while although as wages rose so did prices and consumers began to buy fewer goods. The Continuous cycle of overproduction and under consumption put business back into a slump.

Some businesses felt that the codes enforced by the NIRA were too complicated and difficult to understand and believed the act was too rigid. The Agriculture Adjustment Administration was quite a controversial program as farmers were told to kill off certain animals and destroy crops; many people could not believe that the government was condoning such horrific action when there were American people who were starving. Although the Tennessee Valley Authority had been successful in creating new jobs for hundreds of people the results were not as dramatic as the government had claimed.

Only 3 out of every 100 farms had electricity and the levels of Malaria and vitamin deficiency had increased and at a dangerous level. The average wage of a farmer was 40% of the national wage and many farmers were in a great amount of debt. The TVA had been very much involved with the richer farmers who didn’t really did its help and had ignored the needs of the poorer, less fortunate farmers, “The land-grant colleges were closely tied to the interests of the richer farmers. They had little or nothing to do with the poor, mainly black tenant farmers.

The services offered by the TVA-advice on new farming developments, fertilisers and marketing- were monopolised by the richer, white farmers. “29 Most of the programs and schemes which were put forward by Roosevelt had limited funds and only made slight differences to the state of America. The New Deal did not extend to all deprived Americans and excluded the minority groups. There was never a Civil Rights program, which caused massive Black demonstrations and pressurized the government to establish fair employment practises although it refused to end discrimination in the armed forces.

The New Deal was an extremely difficult period of time for black families, by 1933 half of black workers were without a job and those who did have jobs were discriminated against as the National Recovery Administration had made it legal to pay white people more than the blacks. 30 Republican opponents of Roosevelt criticised the Social Security Act, as they believed that it was destroying the traditional culture of America. Many thought that the government did not have the right to intervene with people’s lives by making them pay taxes for Social Security.

However contradicting to this some liberals felt that the payments should have been bigger to provide more social security to the American people. The New Deal had given assistance to those on the border of poverty like the blue collar workers and commercial farmers but had offered much less to those who were in permanent poverty. The New Deal did not succeed in lifting the nation entirely out of depression and in 1939 there were still 10 million people unemployed. 31 “Although much of the advances that were made came as a result of government spending… he nation had barely reached the 1929 level of production a decade later, and there were still nearly ten million men and women unemployed. “32 Was the New Deal a success? The New Deal undoubtedly brought changes to the economy of America although there were most probably other factors, which contributed to the restoration of the American financial system. The economy of America had always previously, and still today been very unsteady, the national income is forever changing and sometimes falls and often rises.

There is no proof, and we will never know whether the wealth of America would have restored itself without the help of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Also the start of the Second World War would have brought a remarkable change to the nation’s revenue. The country would have concentrated on producing military goods for their allies, which would have provided more jobs and in turn would have slowly revived America’s financial system. “During Franklin Roosevelt’s first term, the New Deal did not cure the underlying economic problems.

It was the war that did that. Within a matter of months, six million workers found new jobs”33 By 1943 unemployment had been reduced to just 1. 07 million from almost 13 million at the height of the depression. 34 Without the New Deal, however, the country would still have been in a state of recession, and might have been unable to help with the war effort at all. Generally, Roosevelt’s New deal had been a success; it had brought to America a great change, which contributed greatly to the restoration of the country.

Child labour was prohibited and a national wage and maximum hours legislation was established. By the time that the New Deal had ended organised labour had more imperative and influential position in American society than it had ever had before. The New Deal had to a great extent reduced the reputation and power of big businesses and put a significant number of measures to stabilise America’s economy. It had re-established the public’s assurance in society introduced new laws and schemes to help prevent a new depression.

In conclusion, the extent of which Roosevelt’s New Deal was a success will forever remain unknown. President Roosevelt was a great inspiration to the American people in the 1930’s and still today is remembered as one of America’s greatest and most influential presidents. Although many may critise the New Deal and the way that Roosevelt dealt with the problems of the depression, there is no way of telling whether or not America would be the super power it is in the present day if Roosevelt hadn’t have proposed his schemes and policies which were contained in his New Deal.

9. 04 The Great Depression A. Heading: * Address (imaginary) * City, State (imaginary) * Date (Month, Day, Year in the 1930s) B. Greeting: Dear ________: C. Body Your letter should focus on the following aspects of your life: * Paragraph 1: In the introduction to your letter, identify two causes of the Great Depression. Utilize the web sites in the Resource section. Explain how the Great Depression has affected you and your family. Use specific details from the web sites (For example, how did Black Tuesday affect your family or relatives? What is your standard of living? * Paragraph 2: a. Describe your family. Who are your brothers, sisters, relatives? What do your parents and relatives do for a living? b. Choose one of your relatives that has a job set up by FDR’s New Deal. (For example, an uncle might be employed by the WPA). Choose a specific program within the New Deal—do not simply reference the New Deal in general. Describe the job with details. What is the purpose of the organization? * Paragraph 3: c. Describe your school, classes, and teachers. Who are your friends? . Describe the town where you live. Who are your neighbors? Describe important celebrations, events, and people. Where do you like to hang out or play? * Paragraph 4: e. What is happening in the nation politically and economically? Look carefully at the date of your letter. Include specific details from the resources. f. What is happening in the nation’s culture? Tell about music, radio programs, movies, sports. (Minimum of two specific details from the timeline according to the date of your letter. ) * Paragraph 5: a.

What are your dreams for the future? b. What do you think the world will be like? c. How do you think the events of the Great Depression will affect you? | 76 Fort Street Johnston, West Virginia January 15, 1936 Dear Home Owner, My name is Frank Rollins and one day you will find this letter in my old house as part of a time capsule to be opened in the year 2007. It will hopefully help you and others understand what life is like for the people living through the tough economic times of today and hopefully will help you appreciate the many things that you may have.

It will help you understand that standards of living can change very rapidly in times of economic turmoil and that what was once taken for granted can just as easily slip through your hands as if it wasn’t there. It will also hopefully help you understand just how quickly things change. Most importantly, I hope this letter helps you appreciate that the people in your lives are so much more important than the things. I am writing this letter as one final activity in this wonderful home where we have lived for 12 years. I am 33 years old, married to a beautiful woman, and we share 5 children between the ages of 5 and 11.

We bought this house as our first home and thought that we would live here to raise all of our children. It is a wonderful neighborhood and the people here are friendly and kind. We have made friends that we will have for life and our children have too. Today is a very sad day for my entire family and for the friends that we have made. Unfortunately, we have to move because we can no longer afford to pay for the house that we treasure so much. Times are tough in this country and although we thought we would make it, things have changed. I was once the manager of the town’s bank and I made a very good living.

We have been able to live in this affluent white collar neighborhood, be part of the country club and send our kids to private school where they were around other kids with the same standard of living. I worked hard to earn the wage that I did and I moved up the ladder in a meticulous manner so that I could maintain stability and growth. I wanted to provide my wife and children with the best that life has to offer and I was successful until October 29th, 1929, Black Tuesday. That was a day that changed my future and my destiny. It was the day that the stock market crashed and that people lost much of what they had.

It was the day that caused panic for everyone, but bank managers in particular were in a predicament that was not too pleasant. Money just seemed to disappear and everyone blamed us. What they didn’t understand is that a bank is a business and somehow we had to pay our bills too. We had lent money and lent money and lent money and now, as people couldn’t pay it back, we were really in a pickle. It was a tough day followed by a rougher few years. I saw people’s houses be taken from them and people were just crushed. I was not able to help because the bank didn’t have any more money to lend.

Roosevelt had placed a temporary close on banks to figure out who could legitimately stay open and who had to close for good. My bank stayed open for a while, but the time came 3 months ago when the doors had to close. You see, what happened is that people got really comfortable spending their money and other people’s money. Borrowing started, lots of borrowing, and people no longer lived with debt. It became a way of life. Then, people wanted more and more stuff. This was all in the 1920’s by the way when all of these new things were being manufactured and people were in awe of the new technology.

As people bought it, more stuff was made until there was too much stuff on the store shelves. People had started to smarten up a little bit and they stopped buying. Production continued and the businesses were paying the price for that over production. When businesses have to pay, they cut costs somewhere else. In this case, it was in laborers. So people got laid off and were now out of work. The whole thing spiraled out of control and devastated the entire country. At the time, Hoover was our President and although he gets blamed for a lot of this stuff, it wasn’t really him who was to blame.

He could have been more alert to what was happening I guess, but it was hard for anyone to see. He lost the election last year when Roosevelt was brought in with the promise of the New Deal. The New Deal is the promise for everything to be put back together financially in the country. It is the promise for jobs and for businesses to get back on their feet and for the country to become prosperous again. Will it work? It is hard to say becuae we are in the beginning phases of it. Roosevelt is definitely doing what he can to help the American people though.

He has puts programs in place that are funded by the federal government that will insure that another Black Tuesday doesn’t happen. He has the FDIC which insures people’s banks deposits, the Works Progress Administration to offer jobs building new highways, the Social Security Administration to help people who are elderly or retired and about 12 other programs beyond that. They are all there to offer education, work and insurance that people’s money is safe. I think it will be several years before we know what will come of all of this but we will keep our fingers crossed that things get better.

I will actually benefit from Roosevelt’s new deal as I begin my job as a highway builder next week. It will not provide the private school education that my kids are used to, or the continuation at the country club, but it would be unfair if it did. It is not the government’s job to provide me with anything but I am really happy that it will help me provide food to my family. Right now, every little bit helps. I look at this opportunity as a way to appreciate what I had and to look forward to gaining it back one day. I will do that as things get better and people get more in touch with the realities of what they have.

It will be a while before banks are trusted and there are some people who still hold me personally accountable for their losses. That is the worst feeling in the world because I pride myself on honesty and integrity. The highway building will be a good respite and a way for me to get in better touch with what I will do in the future. My children will begin in the public school on Monday too. It will be the beginning of our new life with all kinds of changing happening next week. They will go to a one room school instead of a school where each grade is separated.

Their teacher seems so nice though and I think they will benefit from their time learning together instead of apart. They will go from 8am til 12 pm and return home for lunch and to do their homework, chores and play. What my wife and I have stressed to them is how lucky we are to have each other, good health, and grandparents who have a home big enough for all of us to stay in. There are many less fortunate than us who don’t have a place to go and they don’t have food to put on their table. That is the ultimate tragedy really, isn’t it?

We will still have a radio to listen to and we will continue to dance the way that we used to at night after listen to Roosevelt’s fireside chat. We dance in hope that the promises he is making will come true and we dance to celebrate life. Some nights we listen to the baseball games and root for Babe Ruth. He is the ultimate baseball of all time. We also read together so that our minds can keep growing and as a way to entertain ourselves. Sometimes we act out the stories in our family just for fun. One of my daughters has a flare for the dramatic and she loves to be an actress.

She loved going to the movies when we could afford it, and I can’t wait to be able to take her again when times are a little better. The other kids like to play baseball in the yard with the kids in neighborhood, climbing trees and swimming at the country club. I suppose we will have to go to the river to swim for the time being and the new experience will be a great one for all of us. What I want you to know as you read this letter is that times are tough and in history, people should be aware of how tough times are for some people and how they got that way.

I hope that you cherish the people in your life more than the things that you can have and that you make sensible choices when spending money that you have worked hard for. I believe that people should try to live without debt for the trivial things in life. Clothing, cars and things of that nature should be paid for without using someone else’s money. I understand that houses are very expensive and that in normal circumstances people must borrow money for them and that one expense is the only one that should leave you owing someone else money.

There will temptations in life and pressures from others to spend money you don’t have, but I beg of you not to do it. I am giving up my home tomorrow and I am thankful the most for the wife and children. The things we have accumulated are only reminders of how I could have saved that money and been paying for my home right now. Be grateful for health and cherish the smiles that you see as people pass you by. Maybe one day, I will rebuy this old home of ours, and maybe it will be one of my grandkids who opens this time capsule letter.

That would be the ultimate gift, but for now, I can only hope that the people who move in here enjoy it as much as we did and that they have good fortune and prosperity. And 70 years from now, in 2007, I hope that all of Roosevelt’s new programs have worked and that we, in the worst of financial times, have made it right for future generations. Change is not a bad thing, it lays the groundwork for new and better times. Best wishes to you and your family. I hope that you enjoy our home as much as we did. Sincerely, Frank Rollins

Mrs. Russell Cause and Effect Essay English 101-80 Great Depression What caused the Great Depression, the worst economic depression in US history? It was not just one factor, but instead a combination of domestic and worldwide conditions that led to the Great Depression. The causes and effects of the Great Depression was huge across the world, here are three top causes and effects of the Great Depression. Stock Market Crash of 1929 was one of the major causes that led to the Great Depression.

Two months after the original crash in October, stockholderzs had lost more than $40 billion dollars. By the end of 1930, the stock market tried to regain some of its losses but it was not enough and America truly entered the Great Depression. Throughout the 1930s, over 9,000 banks failed. Bank deposits were uninsured and thus as banks failed people simply lost their savings. Surviving banks was unsure of the economic situation and concerned for their own survival, stopped being as willing to create new loans.

This exacerbated the situation leadig to less and less expenditures. When the stock market crashed, and the banks failed and unemployment levels reached higher and higher pointsw people understandably stopped spending money, which also deeped the economic crisis as demand for products and services slowly stopped. First effect is Stock Market and Banking regulations, after the stock market crash of 1929 and collapse of more then 40% of American banks, strict trading and banking regulations put in place.

For financial protection newly formed Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for financial protection. Second effect is when Franklin D. Roosevelt’s introduced programs between 1933 and 1930, designed to help America pull out of the Great Depression by addressing high rates of unemployment and poverty. FDR and Congress introduced regulationzs and subside: the cornerstones of the New Deal wetre the Public Works Administration and the National Recovery Administration.

Third effect is when many people learned some valuable things about managing their money and doing the best they could with what they had. Children grew up to be very imaginative and inventive. They appreciated the things they had access to in their life because they never forgot just how little they once had. The Great Depression ended in the 1939 as the world increased the production of the war materials with the outbreak of WWII. War production increased jobs and hence large amounts of money were reintrodu ced to circuklate in the economy.

The expansion of credit in the early part of the twentieth century caused a dramatic upswing in the amount of installment buying among people that could not necessarily afford to repay the debt. The increase in people incurring debt led to the Great Depression because people chose to incur debt rather than invest for their future. This caused a deficiency of money within the investment sector and a collapse of the economic system because of the debt heaviness of the American people. Ford Motor Company pioneered the installment plan of buying by offering cars on installment, allowing virtually everyone to own a car.

Prior to this, people paid their debts with cash or check, and credit was a rare commodity. Over time, companies aimed to get their products to the consumer, rather than to make sure the consumer could afford the product. The overall effect on the economy was it led to the collapse and the Great Depression. Credit was used to purchase consumer goods, that is, tangibles that could be seen and used immediately. These goods would also be used to enhance the prestige of an individual. The stock market was something intangible.

Most individuals could not see how the machinations of the market related to them on Main Street, as they felt their money did not make a difference in the way things were run. Additionally, large investors leveraged themselves against the market, hedging themselves and their fortunes on a turn of the market wheel. When they saw the market beginning to turn downward, they pulled their money and there was no leverage left in the economy, as the average citizen had tied their money into personal possessions. In other words, it was the rich that held the market up because they could afford to pay cash.

The credit boom ended up being a bust to the overall economy because it did little to allow the average person to invest in the markets. Works Cited Eichengreen, Barry and Kris Michener. “The Great Depression as a Credit Boom Gone Wrong. ” BIS Working Papers Sept, 2003 45-51. 05 Mar 2009 . Murphy, Sharon. “The Advertising of Installment Plans. ” Essays in History 371995 1-12. 5 Mar 2009 <http://www. etext. virginia. edu/journals/EH/EH37/Murphy. html>. Postrel, Virginia. “The Case for Debt. ” The Atlantic Online November 2008 1-4. 5 Mar 2009 <http://www. theatlantic. com/doc/print/200811/debt>.

In America Few Americans in the first months of 1929 saw any reason to question the strength and stability of the nation’s economy. Most agreed with their new president that the booming prosperity of the years just past would not only continue but increase, and that dramatic social progress would follow in its wake. “We in America today,” Herbert Hoover had proclaimed in August 1928, “are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poorhouse is vanishing from among us. “

In mid-October, 1929, the average middle-class American saw ahead of him an illimitable vista of prosperity. The newly inaugurated president, Herbert Hoover, had announced soberly in the previous year that the conquest of poverty was no longer a mirage: “We have not yet reached our goal, but given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, and we shall soon with the help of God be within sight of the day when poverty will be banished from the nation. ” This was the economic promise interwoven with what a popular historian would call the American Dream.

More complacently, Irving Fisher and other economists in the confidence of Wall Street assured the citizen that he was dwelling upon “a permanently high plateau” of prosperity. Only fifteen months later, those words would return to haunt him, as the nation plunged into the severest and most prolonged economic depression in its history. It began with a stock market crash in October 1929; it slowly but steadily deepened over the next three years until the nation’s economy (and, many believed, its social and political systems) approached a total collapse.

It continued in one form or another for a full decade, not only in the United States but throughout much of the rest of the world, until war finally restored American prosperity. In the autumn of 1929, the market began to fall apart. On October 21, stock prices dipped sharply, alarming those who had become accustomed to an uninterrupted upward progression. Two days later, after a brief recovery, an even more alarming decline began. J. P. Morgan and Company and other big bankers managed to stave off disaster for a while by conspicuously buying up stocks to restore public confidence.

But on October 29, all the efforts to save the market failed. “Black Tuesday,” as it became known, saw a devastating panic. Sixteen million shares of stock were traded; the industrial index dropped 43 points; stocks in many companies became virtually worthless. In the weeks that followed, the market continued to decline, with losses in October totaling $16 billion. Despite occasional hopeful signs of a turnaround, the market remained deeply depressed for more than four years and did not fully recover for more than a decade.

The sudden financial collapse in 1929 came as an especially severe shock because it followed so closely a period in which the New Era seemed to be performing another series of economic miracles. In particular, the nation was experiencing in 1929 a spectacular boom in the stock market.  In February 1928, stock prices began a steady ascent that continued, with only a few temporary lapses, for a year and a half. By the autumn of that year, the market had become a national obsession, attracting the attention not only of the wealthy, but of millions of people of modest means.

Many brokerage firms gave added encouragement to the speculative mania by offering absurdly easy credit to purchasers of stocks. It was not hard to understand why so many Americans flocked to invest in the market. Stocks seemed to provide a certain avenue to quick and easy wealth. Between May 1928 and September 1929, the average price of stocks rose more than 40 percent. The stocks of the major industrials, the stocks that are used to determine the Dow Jones Industrial Average, doubled in value in that same period.

Trading mushroomed from two or three million shares a day to more than five million, and at times to as many as ten or twelve million. There was, in short, a widespread speculative fever that grew steadily more intense. A few economists warned that the boom could not continue, that the prices of stocks had ceased to bear any relation to the earning power of the corporations that were issuing them. But most Americans refused to listen. The depression of the stock market impressed the general public with the idea that it would depress general business. Because of a psychological consequence, it did, but it should not have.

There are 120,000,000 persons in the country and at the maximum not more than 10,000,000 were involved in stock market transactions. The remaining 110,000,000 persons suffered no loss. The bulk of the population may not have suffered the loss of stock investments, but there were plenty of other ways to calculate loss, and by the end of 1929, with unemployment rising, with shops and factories ornamented by closed or out of business signs, and, perhaps most terrifying of all, the closing of the nations banks, taking with them millions of dollars in deposits. More than 9,000 American banks either went bankrupt or closed their doors to avoid bankruptcy between 1930 and 1933. Depositors lost more than $2. 5 billion in deposits.

Two-hundred and fifty six banks failed in the single month of November 1930, and further yet on December 11, when the United States Bank, with deposits of more than $200 million, went under. It was the largest single bank failure in America history up to that time, and contributed no little portion to an economic hangover in which, in the words of banker J. M. Barker, “cupidity turned into unreasoning, emotional, universal fear”. The misery of the Great Depression was, then, without precedent in the nation’s history.  The most searing legacy of the depression was unemployment, which mounted steadily from the relatively low levels experienced between 1922 and 1929. The percentage of the civilian labor force without work rose from 3. 2 in 1929 to 8. 7 in 1930, and reached a peak of 24. 9 in 1933. The estimates of unemployment amongst non-farm employees, which include the self-employed and unpaid family workers are even higher.

These are horrifying figures: millions of American families were left without a bread-winner and faced the very real possibility of destitution.  Within a few months after the stock market collapse of October 1929, unemployment had catapulted from its status of a vague worry into the position of one of the country’s foremost preoccupations. Unemployment increased steadily, with only a few temporary setbacks, from the fall of 1929 to the spring of 1933.

Even a cursory reference to the several existing estimates of unemployment will amply show the rapidity with which unemployment established itself as an economic factor of the first order of importance. 12 By 1932, a quarter of the civilian labor force was unemployed and the number was still rising. State and local relief agencies lacked sufficient funds to meet the demands of families for bare sustenance. Discouraged by continual turn-downs, the unemployed had stopped looking for jobs.

On good days in the great cities the jobless sat on park benches reading discarded newspapers, and many who had lost their homes slept in the parks. While some families managed to stay in their homes and apartments, even though they failed to pay the rent or mortgage interest, others were evicted. To keep some semblance of a home, families built shelters from discarded crates and boxes on vacant land or in the larger parks. Municipal authorities, unable to provide adequate help, were forced to adopt a tolerant attitude against these squatters.

As time passed the structures became more elaborate and habitable, but older children were inclined to wander away and look for opportunities elsewhere.  Fifty years after his presidency and twenty after his death, Herbert Clark Hoover remains the person most Americans held responsible for the economic calamity that struck after 1929. Few of our political leaders have been more ridiculed and vilified during their tenure in office. By 1931, new words and usage based on his name had entered the country’s cultural vocabulary: Hooverville”: a temporary bivouac of homeless, unemployed citizens. “Hoover blankets”: the newspapers used by people to keep warm at night while sleeping in parks and doorways. “Hoover Flags”: empty pants pockets, turned inside out as a sign of poverty. “Hoover wagons”: any motor vehicle being pulled by a horse or mule In the heat of the 1932 election, hitchhikers displayed signs reading “If you don’t give me a ride, I’ll vote for Hoover. ” From the New York Times, October 22, 1932

Fifty-four men were arrested yesterday morning for sleeping or idling in the arcade connecting with the subway 45 West Forty-second Street, but most of them considered their unexpected meeting with a raiding party of ten policemen as a stroke of luck because it brought them free meals yesterday and shelter last night from the sudden change in the weather. From the New York Times, September 20, 1931 Several hundred homeless unemployed women sleep nightly in Chicago’s parks, Mrs. Elizabeth A. Conkey, Commissioner of Public Welfare, reported today.

She learned of the situation, she said, when women of good character appealed for shelter and protection, having nowhere to sleep but in the parks, where they feared they would be molested. “We are informed that no fewer than 200 women are sleeping in Grant and Lincoln Parks, on the lake front, to say nothing of those in the other parks,” said Mrs. Conkey. “I made a personal investigation, driving park to park, at night, and verified the reports. ” The commission said the approach of winter made the problem more serious, with only one free woman’s lodging house existing, accommodating 100.

These are just two of the many stories that came of the poverty of the depression. Not quite three and a half years had passed since the stock market crash, had plunged the United States, and most of the world, into the worst economic debacle in Western memory. Industrial output was now less than half the 1929 figure. The number of unemployed, although difficult to count accurately, had mounted to something between 13 and 15 million, or a recorded high of 25 per cent of the labor force-and the unemployed had 30 million mouths to feed besides their own. Hourly wages had dropped 60 per cent since 1929, white-collar salaries 40 per cent.

Farmers were getting less than 50 cents a bushel for wheat. The stark statistics gave no real picture of the situation-of the pitiful men selling apples on city street corners; of the long lines of haggard men and women who waited for dry bread or thin soup, meager sustenance dispensed by private and municipal charities; of the bloated bellies of starving children; of distraught farmers blocking the roads to dump milk cans in a desperate effort to drive up the price of milk. “They say blockading the highways illegal,” said an Iowa farmer. “I says, ‘Seems to me there was a Tea Party in Boston that was illegal too. The suffering extended into every area of society. In the industrial Northeast and Midwest, cities were becoming virtually paralyzed by unemployment. Cleveland, Ohio, for example, had an unemployment rate of 50 percent in 1932; Akron, 60 percent; Toledo, 80 percent. To the men and women suddenly without incomes, the situation was frightening and bewildering. Most had grown up believing that every individual was responsible for his or her own fate, that unemployment and poverty were signs of personal failure; and even in the face of national distress, many continued to believe it.

Unemployed workers walked through the streets day after day looking for jobs that did not exist. When finally they gave up, they often just sat at home, hiding their shame.  An increasing number of families were turning in humiliation to local public relief systems, just to be able to eat. But that system, which had in the 1920s served only a small number of indigents, was totally unequipped to handle the new demands being placed on it. In many cities, therefore, relief simply collapsed. New York, which offered among the highest relief benefits in the nation, was able to provide families an average of only $2. 9 per week. Private charities attempted to supplement the public relief efforts, but the problem was far beyond their capabilities as well. As a result, American cities were experiencing scenes that a few years earlier would have seemed almost inconceivable. Bread lines stretched for blocks outside Red Cross and Salvation Army kitchens. Thousands of people sifted through garbage cans for scraps of food or waited outside restaurant kitchens in hopes of receiving plate scrapings. Nearly 2 million young men simply took to the roads, riding freight trains from city to city, living as nomads.

The economic hardships of the Depression years placed great strains on American families, particularly on the families of middle-class people who had become accustomed in the 1920s to a steadily rising standard of living and now found themselves plunged suddenly into uncertainty. It was not only unemployment that shook the confidence of middle-class families, although that was of course the worst blow. It was also the reduction of incomes among those who remained employed. Economic circumstances forced many families, therefore, to retreat from the consumer patterns they had developed in the 1920s.

Women often returned to sewing clothes for themselves and their families and to preserving their own food, rather than buying such products in stores. Others engaged in home businesses taking in laundry, selling baked goods, accepting boarders. Many households expanded to include more distant relatives. Parents often moved in with their children and grandparents with their grandchildren, or vice versa.  The public did not understand the causes or solutions of unemployment, but people could judge polices by results.

They had little tolerance for anyone who said current polices were working when, in fact, more jobs were being lost. One indication of how desperate the situation was came in June when Chicago mayor told one House Committee that it still had a choice: it could send relief, or it could send troops.  With local efforts rapidly collapsing, state governments began to feel new pressures to expand their own assistance to the unemployed. Most resisted the pressure. Tax revenues were declining along with everything else, and state leaders balked at placing additional strains on already tight budgets.

Many public figures, moreover, feared that any permanent welfare system would undermine the moral fiber of its clients.  People never enjoy paying taxes. With the lower incomes of the depression came widespread demand for retrenchment and lower local taxes. Indeed, many local citizens and property owners were quite unable to pay their taxes at all. Since a large part of the revenues of local government is spent for public education, it was perhaps inevitable that the tax crisis should produce cutbacks in schools. Many communities decreased their school spending severely.

In effect, they passed the burden on to the teachers, the students, or both. No one will ever be able to calculate the cost to American civilization that resulted from inadequate education of the nation’s children during the Great Depression. The colleges’ problems were somewhat different. Although the budgets of almost all colleges, public and private, were not what they should have been, a greater problem was that of students who were destitute. Rare was the college that did not have several cases of severe student poverty. Thousands of students in the 1930’s made important sacrifices to stay in college.

Because the students of the depression constituted, on the whole, a hungry campus generation they gave college life a new and earnest tone. The goldfish gulpers may have got the big headlines in the late 1930’s, but they were not typical depression undergraduates.  During the first two years of the depression the schools did business about as usual. By September, 1931, the strain was beginning to tell. Salary cuts were appearing even in large towns, and the number of pupils per teacher had definitely increased. Building programs had been postponed.

In a few communities school terms had been considerable shortened, and in others some of the departments and services were being lopped off. But, on the whole, the school world wagged on pretty much as usual. During the 1932-33 term the deflation gathered momentum so rapidly that many communities had to close their schools. By the end of last March nearly a third of a million children were out of school for that reason. But the number of children affected, shocking as it is, does not tell the story so vividly as does the distribution of the of the schools.

Georgia had 1,318 closed schools with an enrollment of 170,790, and in Alabama 81 percent of all the children enrolled in white rural schools were on an enforced vacation. In Arkansas, to site the case of another sorely pressed state, over 300 schools were open for sixty days or less during the entire year. By the last of February more than 8,000 school children were running loose in a sparsely settled New Mexico. And over a thousand west Virginia schools had quietly given up the struggle.  The downswing which began in 1929 lasted for 43 months.

The ‘Great Depression’ has the dubious distinction of being the second longest economic contraction since the Civil War, second only to that which began in 1873 and continued for 65 months. The length of a depression, however, can only give a limited indication of its impact; the amplitude and national ramifications of 1929-33 give those years a special importance. Economists, historians, and others have argued for decades about the causes of the Great Depression. But most agree on several things.

They agree, first, that what is remarkable about the crisis is not that it occurred; periodic recessions are a normal feature of capitalist economies. What is remarkable is that it was so severe and that it lasted so long. The important question, therefore, is not so much why was there a depression, but why was it such a bad one.  America had experienced economic crises before. The Panic of 1893 had ushered in a prolonged era of economic stagnation, and there had been more recent recessions, in 1907 and in 1920. The Great Depression of the 1930s, however, affected the nation more profoundly than any economic crisis that ad come before not only because it lasted longer, but because its impact was far more widely felt. The American economy by 1929 had become so interconnected, so dependent on the health of large national corporate institutions, that a collapse in one sector of the economy now reached out to affect virtually everyone. Even in the 1890s, large groups of Americans had lived sufficiently independent of the national economy to avoid the effects of economic crisis. By the 1930s, few such people remained. Some economists argue that a severe depression could have been avoided if the Federal Reserve system had acted more responsibly.

Instead of moving to increase the money supply so as to keep things from getting worse in the early 1930s, the Federal Reserve first did nothing and then did the wrong thing: Late in 1931, it raised interest rates, which contracted the money supply even further. At the time, a substantial majority of Americans and nearly all foreigners who expressed opinions on the subject believed that the Wall Street stock market crash of October 1929 had triggered the depression, thereby suggesting that the United States was the birthplace of the disaster.

The connection seemed too obvious to be a coincidence. Many modern writers have agreed; for example, the French historian Jacques Chastenet says in Les Annees d’Illsions: 1918-1931, “After the stock market crash on the other side of the Atlantic came an economic crisis. The crisis caused a chain reaction in the entire world.  Many years after it ended, former President Herbert Hoover offered an elaborate explanation of the Great depression, complete with footnote references to the work of many economists and other experts. The “primary cause” was the war of 1914-18. In four-fifths of the “economically sensitive” nations of the world, including such remote areas as Bolivia, Bulgaria, and Australia, the downturn was noticeable long before the 1929 collapse of American stock prices. Unsolved economic and social problems, accumulated over many years, made the Great Depression more of a culture crisis than can be measured in new laws or economic statistics.

Americans had always been confident that the unique virtues of their society-its stronger economic base, its more alert citizenry, and its higher moral principals-would protect it from the evils and failures of Europe and would inevitable lead to new levels of civilization. In spite of the derision of a few artists and intellectuals, this “American Dream” still persisted in the 1920’s. Somewhere in the dark passages of the Great Depression, as the forces of world history weakened belief in the uniqueness of the United States as a nation set apart, the dream faded and became indistinct.

While America would recover economically and would rise to new heights of material achievement scarcely thought possible in the 1929, the myth of a unique destiny would never regain its old force and certainty. Henceforth Americans would share some of the realistic disillusionment of Europeans, some of the sense that survival alone was an achievement in a world not necessarily designed for the triumph of the human spirit.