Sarah J. Smith
HIST
Essay 3
The Great Depression was a hard time for most people in America. It was a time when most people had very little money, if any. One of the main reasons for the depression was because of the stock market crashed on Thursday, October 24, 1929 or also called Black Thursday. The sense of confidence was reflected in the stock market. Stock sales had risen steadily for several years and as demand rose, so did stock prices. Many business leaders saw that there was going to be no end to the bull market (upward trend in stock prices).
People in the market were buying and selling stock to make a quick profit. The people were margin buying (purchasing stock with borrowed money) and many thought that this would work if the bull market continued. The New Deal was the way that Franklin D. Roosevelt would get the U.S. out of the Great Depression. The New Deal is made of 15 new programs. Roosevelt’s program had three general ideas, which were relief, to ease the plight of citizens in economic distress, recovery, to restore the economy to health, and reform, to correct ills and injustices in American society. They restore hope, aided the unemployed, and gave the government a central role in regulating business and the economy and promoting public welfare.
In this photo it show a little boy sitting in front of his house which was made up of cardboard and what every else him family could find in the streets. His family lived in a small committee called a shantytowns or better known as Hoovervilles. Their life before the Great Depression was a lot better because they had running water and power. This father worked in the fields of a farm and they always had some thing to eat each day and now there are lucky if they get one hot meal a day. After the stock market crash people had one money to buy any of the produces that the farms were selling so then the farmer had to lay of all of his workers and one of them was this boys father. During the depression life on the farm changed dramatically. People in the city needed food but had no money to pay for it and then the farmer prices shrank and plummeted and farmers had extra food then they could sell. Well after the farmers had no money to pay for all their workers, they had to lay them off and the workers were forced to find nee essayw jobs.
But every body was laying people off and there was no need for the farms. Because of Hoover’s Philosophy (that the power and duty of the government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering) many people were left out to dry. The reason that people had no money to buy any of the food that the farmers were producing was because of the bear market (a downward trend in stock prices).
Many people in the city used the method called ” Get Rich Quick” were people would buy stock and then sell it to make quick profit. There house in the photo was bad, they had there fire place/ stove out side because if it was in the house then it could have caused a fire. There was no place to take a shower or even wash your hands. The people just had the things that they needed and there were no extras because they were always on the move to look for a job and if they were lucky then they might have found one. The unemployment was really bad and you were very lucky if you had a job.
Some of the New Deals that helped his family would have been the Agricultural Recovery, Works Progress Administration, and the Social Security Act and these were just a few of the programs the Roosevelt pass to help Americans get back on there feet. The Agricultural Recovery was proposed to the farmers to cut production in their fields. The Work Progress Administration created jobs for people the need relief. Social Security Act provided a system of unemployment compensation and retirement pensions. Well some of the negative aspects of the New Deal are that the Agriculture Recovery helped more of the farmers and not all the farmers’ helpers. The dust bowl is one thing that the farmers had to deal with, it was a 50 million acre region in the great plains that suffered a sever drought in the 30’s. When the s happened there was no water to e essaywater the crop in the fields and farmers could not farm their land.
His family was greatly effected by the Great Depression. The depression was felt all over the world but mainly in the States were the economy drop to the lowest that it has ever been in the US’s history. If it wasn’t for the New Deal then many of families would have starved to death and people would not have a place to call home. Thanks to Roosevelt and his New Deal the US and the economy slowly got back on their feet. But you can’t forget the 2nd New Deal which helped people get jobs. Many of people like this little boy’s parents were called Okies because they were people that traveled from the mid east to California looking for work but as they soon found out there was no work to be found. This changed people’s lives forever because it took a while for some people to get their life in order.