In the book “The Great Depression and The New Deal” by Anne Schraff. The Great Depression was a hard time for everyone mainly the lower class citizens. The Great Depression all started when the stock market was flooded with stocks. This all occurred during the “Roaring Twenties”.
The decade started out great the economy boosted troops are back from war and more women were entering the workforce. The first radio advertisement came out. Other inventions like the vacuum cleaner and the electric wash machine are becoming new products. Banks are also starting to give out a lot of loans so more people can buy these new products. During these times Henry Ford invents the very first T model which makes life a lot easier for many people. All of these things were making companies have a lot of money and the average american is making a good amount too. So people have all this money from buying stocks and this is where they start investing the money in to all kinds of businesses and companies. This is where and why the stock market becomes a well known place and thing in history. Everyone is doing this so investors are finding it very easy to make money on stocks. Everyone including cooks, shoe shiners and taxi men are starting to invest and buy stocks. Everyone is investing and buying stocks now.
Their is so much money to be made people are taking out loans to invest even more. The banks are wanting to invest money so they borrow money from customer banks accounts to buy stocks. During all of this we experience flapper culture, prohibition and the rise in jazz music. By 1929 America’s total wealth has doubled. Investments are up 218% since 1922. Stocks are rising so fast that companies can’t keep up or justify their stock prices. Production begins to slow down.
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People are not buying the T model anymore and people aren’t buying as many things. People don’t think anything of it and keep buying and investing in stocks. This brings the U.S. to October 24, 1929 also known as “Black Thursday”. This will be the start of the Great Depression. 12.9 million shares will be sold which will later be raised to 16.4 million. The Market will lose 14 billion dollars in 1 day. Some shares are know worthless, people lost their life savings and american that borrowed to invest are completely financially doomed. This is the Great Depression. The worst economic downfall in the history of the industrialized world. Many lose their jobs as companies shut down. It’s not just investors that are hit banks that borrowed money was all lost in the markets too. People only get back 10 cents for every dollar they had in their accounts.
Banks across the country shit down and unemployment was at its highest level in U.S. history at 24.9%. By this point bread lines, soup kitchens and homelessness were a common site. If you invested borrowed or even just held money in a bank the depression found a way to financially hurt you. Time will be rough in the 1930’s. Franklin D. Roosevelt did little to boost the economy. In fact until the Third Reich in Germany their we would see the end to the crisis. The Great Depression isn’t just felt in America it was felt around the world. With this we saw the rise of Hitler who used the despair of german people as a rallying call. Which led to the creation of the Nazi party and the start of the second world war. In 1939 good things came from the depression too. In the beginning of the new deal Eleanor Roosevelt reached out to african americans. She was even friends with a few african americans.
Black Americans have mostly all voted Republican since Abraham Lincoln. This was all about to change with the advent of the New Deal. one of the African American friends Eleanor had was Mary McLeod Bethune Franklin Roosevelt Appointed her to a major advisory spot in the government. This led to more African Americans Showing at White House functions.
The year 1934 began with spirit flagging. Industrial production was declining and about 20% of the labor force was still out of work. A lot of people were strongly against Roosevelt the New Deal just wasn’t going as planned. Herbert Hoover’s speeches suggests that the government was growing and becoming too powerful it was starting to become a threat to the liberties guaranteed under the constitution. In August 1934 the American Liberty League was formed. Conservative lawyers and democratic politicians like Al Smith joined with big business to rock the New Deal.
President Roosevelt was getting a lot of hate and a lot of people were starting to not support him and go against him. Such as Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, he supported Roosevelt in 1932 but he joined in on saying the president wasn’t doing enough to better this country and he could do better or other people could take his place. Huey Long claimed Henry Wallace’s ideas were better and he even went on to say that his own ideas were better than Roosevelts. Long favored free homesteads, free education and cheap food. Long felt every american should be guaranteed annual income of 2000 dollars as a part of the “Share Your Wealth” program. In the end the Great Depression may have been the worst downfall in U.S. History but our country has learned a lot from it and we have done a lot better with our country to try and prevent it from happening again. We learned valuable lessons and will probably never make this mistake again if it is up to our government leaders today.
The New Deal Lasted from March 1933 to the end of 1938. The New Deal might not have ended the Great Depression but it started a whole new and better economy for the whole world in the “The Great Depression and The New Deal” By Anne E. Schraff she tells a good story about the Great Depression and the New Deal she really lays it out well i think she did a good job with this book and I would recommend it for anyone interested in the Great Depression or the New Deal.
