Causes Of The Great Depression

There have been many catastrophic events in the United States. Some helped the nation come together. Although others broke our country and made it feel almost impossible to recover. The Great Depression was one of the longest and deepest economic slumps to occur in the world. The Great Depression started in the summer of 1929 with what was thought at the time a small recession. Stock prices slowly climbed and production of goods slowed down. In October of 1929 the stock market crashed. Around 14 million U.S. citizens were unemployed and almost all banks had failed. March 4, 1933 the country elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt to be the thirty-second president of the United States. Roosevelt developed a plan and a resolution. He created the New
With more than 15 million people out of work, not being able to make payments, foreclosures destroyed families leaving them with no shelter. As the government failed to provide relief for their families, many blamed Hoover for the economic disaster. Being desperate for shelter, people built little shanty towns, which were called “Hoovervilles.” Hoovervilles were constructed of multiple people in one area with all of their hand constructed homes. These shanties were mainly built out of materials such as cardboard, tar paper, glass, lumber, tin and whatever materials they could gather from around the area. Most homes did not last long at all and needed constant repair. Some did not even create a shanty. Instead they dug a hole in the ground and provided themselves with some kind of roofing. Other homeless people found space in empty conduits and water mains. Some hoovervilles could be up to the size of the population of Washington D.C. St. Louis, Missouri was home to one of the largest and longest lasting hoovervilles. They were mainly built next to a water source. As some hoovervilles were small, they didn’t have much organization compared to bigger hoovervilles. St. Louis had and unofficial mayor, church and social institutions. This was a very sturdy hooverville because it was ran on private donations, until 1936 when it was wiped
Often times digging through trash if there was no soup kitchen or bread lines local. Farmers wouldn’t normally have to worry about the depression since they can just grow food for themselves. This was not the case for these farmers. In the 1930’s the Dust Bowl devastated the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl was a drought that wiped out 150,000 square miles of farms. Farmers had dug out land and exposed a vast majority of space to potentially grow grain during World War 1. As the drought began, drying out all dug up space, high winds began to pick up all the loose dirt. The winds pushed the dirt up and around for miles. The dust storms destroyed farms and all of their crops. The storms were called black blizzards. These storms choked cattle, blew away crops and drove 60% of the population out of the area.
By the fall of 1930, 4 waves of banking panic had begun. Investors losing confidence in their banks improving, ordered banks to give cash deposits and liquidate their loans. By early 1933 thousands of banks had failed and closed. Hoover’s administration tried to support the failed banks with government loans. The objective was for banks to be able to distribute loans to businesses so they could hire back