What Caused The Great Depression Dbq Analysis

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Working every day, for very little pay. That pretty much sums up what life was like for almost everyone during the devastation that plagued the entire world. The Great Depression, which was an international crisis that occurred in 1929 all the way up to the 1930’s, successfully hit the world by surprise. The Say’s Laws firmly believed that the law of supply and demand would eventually make everything better, and that government action was not needed to help get things back to the way they were. However, that was definitely not the case this time around. Because of the great economic prosperity the Roaring Twenties brought, many people did not anticipate such a drastic change to happen in such a short period of time. This left many curious and…show more content…
In Harry J. Carman and Harold C. Syrett’s, A History of the American People, they state that, “As more investors put their money into securities (stocks) in hope of making a quick profit on a speculative rise in stocks, the characters of the New York Stock Exchange was fundamentally altered” (Doc F). Because of the rise in stocks during this period were so high, many people did not have any reasons to believe that it would drop or change anytime soon. So rather than seeing this as a business and investment opportunity to make money, they saw it as an opportunity to gamble to make quick money. In addition, they also explain that, “Liberal margin requirements permitted the investor to enter the market in a shoestring. By buying on margin, the investor had to pay a fraction of the quoted price of any particular security. The additional money needed to cover the purchase was supplied by the broker, who obtained these funds from a bank with which he had deposited his customer’s stock as a collateral” (Doc G). While people thought of this as a good idea at the time, buying on a margin really caused more damage than good once the stock market began to crash. So rather than earning money, they were losing more money than they put in, which inevitably caused problems because they could not successfully pay the bank all the money that they owed. However, as bad as that may seem, being in debt was

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