The Tariff placed high taxes on imports leading to a decline in international trade. The United States held many loans with European countries that began to default. Reduction in international market spending in the US, coupled with the high tariffs placed on foreign countries led to unemployment abroad and foreign countries were forced to impose their own tariffs on other countries (Kelly, n.d.). The Great Depression was perhaps most devastating to the individual and family. The Depression was recorded to have decreased the marriage rate which helped lead to a decline in the birth rate.
This means that the prices for stock were too high, far higher than they were really worth, then they fell drastically. People who had borrowed money to buy high-priced stocks (intending to sell the stocks at a profit and repay lenders), went bankrupt. That’s further expounding on what I said about buying on margin. Black Tuesday also marks the beginning of the great depression (Regan3). Living conditions during this time were unsanitary and horrible.
This ruined the farmers of Rome which in result, they drifted to cities that helped add more unemployment to the cities. With farmers moving to the cities and the abundance of slaves, this helped keep wages low (Document 3). That caused many citizens to become poor and have less money to buy materials to help business owners make money and pay tax to the government. Lastly, Germanic/barbarian invasions are another cause of the fall of Rome. The
According to Paul Alexander Gusmorino, the main cause of the drastic downfall was the combination of unequal distribution of wealth and the extensive stock market speculation that took place in the later years of that decade. Speculation is a key term in this area of history. To put it simply, speculation is an involvement in risky business transactions in an attempt to quickly gain large amounts of wealth. The imbalance of wealth led to an unstable economy, while the stock excessive speculation kept the stock marker falsely high, eventually leading to a large crash. Authoritative figures tried to help out the economy in any way they could, but not all ended up helping.
There is no doubt that here in America we are dealing with one of the greatest economic downfalls. It is said that 46.2 million Americans are now living in poverty. This is due to the shrinking number of jobs, the rise of the working poor, the dependency on the government is raising, health cost (the biggest threat of all) are crippling American families, and more and more children, our nations future, are living in poverty or close to poverty. Due to the recession in America people are forced to do what is necessary in order to survive. For many businesses and companies one of the easiest ways to save money has been by reducing the number of employees.
Furthermore during this time Americans had a surplus of goods and services from which to choose, and the money with which to purchase them. However,the economic boom brought high inflation, which kept poorer citizens from saving any money, the lowest-paid workers in the country were the farm workers, with sales clerks and unskilled labourers .Happy, a sales clerk, Biff an aspiring farmworker , and Willy Loman a man with a dwindling sales career reflect the mental state of the American People of the time that battled to achieve Capitalist success i.e. acquiring material possessions as the basis of social approval. Willy loman in particular was effected by the Capitalist ideal , he believed that being "well liked" and a great salesman would make him a man worth remembering . But at the age of sixty- three and nearing retirement, Willy is seen as a man who gave all of his life to a business, "I'm tired to death" only to be thrown in the scrap-heap and as a house holder whose pattern of life was interwoven with instalment plans with which he could hardly catch up.
This left the ordinary people with much less land to live on and much less opportunity. This shows inequality between the different classes of this time period. Another thing to show inequality between the different classes in the period of 1865 to 1900 was the new version of the reaper invented by Cyrus McCormick. This was expensive and not all could afford it, once again showing unequal opportunity. This led to a disadvantage for the poorer folk and left them with much more labor.
Crop prices fell by over fifty %. People went hungry because so much food was produced that production became unprofitable. Others were unemployed because they had produced more than could be sold. Huge numbers of Americans had their lives upset by the Depression. Tens of thousands of migrant farm workers travelled the nation looking for employment.
80% of Russia’s population was made up of peasants and most of them lived in poverty. As the population grew rapidly, 98 million in 1885 to 125 in 1905, an attempt to provide land for each peasant family made the size of peasant landholdings fall. As if this wasn’t enough there were several harvest failures which resulted in severe famine. This greatly angered peasants, who in jacqueries, attacked government officials and encouraged the start of the revolution. Also, compared to other European countries, Russian agriculture was still backward.
The Swing Riots occurred following a period of depression in Britain, so hunger and oppression was widespread. Fathers could no longer afford to feed their families from the low wages they were paid, and resentment towards employers was high. The Swing Riots presented workers with the opportunity to demand higher wages and many took this opportunity. The industrial revolution was also taking place at this time, and machinery often replaced men on the farms, as it was a more economically efficient way of farming. A government policy of enclosure was implemented, which greatly upset traditional, rural societies.