A Historical Moment In American History: The Great Depression

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The Great Depression American History 06/07/2012 The great depression was a time of debt. The depression caused many families to have family problems that started with the loss of jobs and the lack of money. I choose this topic because it is a historical moment in history. The year was 1929. This is the start of the biggest national crisis since the civil war. 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. The stock market was very popular in the 1920s, and was said to be an easy way to make money. When the stock market crashed all who has invested lost their money.…show more content…
A strong believer in rugged individualism, Hoover did not think the federal government should offer relief to the poverty-stricken population. Focusing on a trickle-down economic program to help finance businesses and banks, Hoover met with resistance from business executives who preferred to lay off workers. Blamed by many for the Great Depression, Hoover was widely ridiculed: an empty pocket turned inside out was called a Hoover flag, the decrepit towns springing up around the country were called Hoovervilles. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the rich governor from New York, offered Americans a New Deal, and was elected in a landslide victory in 1932. He took quick action to attack the Depression, declaring a four-day bank holiday, during which Congress passed the Emergency Banking Relief Act to stabilize the banking system. During the first 100 days of his administration, Roosevelt laid the groundwork for his New Deal remedies that would rescue the country from the depths of despair. The New Deal programs created a liberal political alliance of labor unions, blacks and other minorities, some…show more content…
By 1933, almost half of those banks had failed. Two economists of the 1920s, Waddell Catchings and William Trufant Foster, popularized a theory that influenced many policy makers, including Herbert Hoover, Henry A. Wallace. It held the economy produced more than it consumed, because the consumers did not have enough income. Thus the unequal distribution of wealth throughout the 1920s caused the Great Depression. According to this view, the root cause of the Great Depression was a global over-investment in heavy industry capacity compared to wages and earnings from independent businesses, such as farms. The solution was the government must pump money into consumers' pockets. That is, it must redistribute purchasing power, maintain the industrial base, but re-inflate prices and wages to force as much of the inflationary increase in purchasing power into consumer spending. The economy was overbuilt, and new factories were not needed. The common view among economic historians is that the Great Depression ended with the advent of World War II. Many economists believe that government spending on the war caused or at least accelerated recovery from the Great Depression, though some consider that it did not play a very

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