Great Depression Essay

The Great Depression was a worldwide economic slump that affected people of all sorts. In the United States, the unemployment rose to an all time high of 25% in 1933. These were desperate times, and desperate measures were taken just so you could get by. Because of these desperate measures, the culture of the country changed. As Lawrence Friedman put it, “Poverty and social disorganization were eating away at the country’s social fabric.”.

The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1941 and juxtaposed some of the best and worst aspects of the human experience. On one hand, the Great Depression destroyed lives; as a result of the Great Depression, millions of people lost their jobs, their homes, and their ways of life. On the other hand, the Great Depression forced people to work together in order to survive; according to Doris Lindberg, “People helped each other.” Additionally, the Great Depression fostered a hardworking, thrifty, and tenacious character among those who survived it. Doris Lindberg is one of the survivors.

The Great Depression was devastating to many people. From 1929 - 1939 life was a struggle. This all began when the stock market crashed in 1929 causing a great effect on people. Most stopped using banks and no longer trusted them. Jobs were scarce and people looking for them were plentiful.

The Great Depression was a roughly 10-year period in the early twentieth century that was shaped by the United States’ national economic crisis, but affected the global economy, as well. It began in 1929, when the stock market first crashed and stock prices began to fall, but only 2% of Americans owned stock and were affected at this time. (1:48) It wasn’t until tens of thousands of people began to withdraw money from banks and hundreds closed across the country, leaving 28 states bank-less (5:32) that the population truly began to suffer. Unemployment rates skyrocket and more and more people begin to go bankrupt, with 34 million Americans left with no source of income by 1932.

The great depression was a very hard time for almost all Americans. In 1930 there were 5 million people unemployed and it was up to 13 million by the end of 1932 in America. Almost all of America was classified as poor and didn’t have a living wage and most of America was falling apart. The three most impactful reasons that the Great Depression happened in the United States was because of the stock market crash, unregulated banking institutions, and overextension of credit/excess consumerism.

Many people delayed their marriages, and some couples did not divorce because they simply could not afford the cost of it. The people that lived in the more urban areas made makeshift towns; they called these “hoovervilles.” They made these out of whatever they could find; scrap lumber and metal. If they lived there they were not considered homeless. Rural areas in the Midwest were also hit hard by the economy and the weather.

The Great Depression era was one of the most severe hardships in United States history. The amount of suffering that ordinary Americans endured during the Depression was unprecedented. The Depression caused big businesses like Ford to layoff much of their workers during the Depression. This massive unemployment caused millions of workers to lose their homes and their livelihoods, puting Americans in destitute situations of extreme poverty. During the Depression the contemporary safety nets that existed to help take care of people when disaster struck had dried up and was unable to assist everyone.

The Great Depression had a lasting impact on US economic development, leading to increased regulation of the banking and financial systems. It changed the face of American politics; people were in desperate need of financial security, and the power of the federal government to regulate the economy became of paramount importance. This ushered in a new era of

Its effects were felt across the country, and many individuals and families found themselves struggling to make ends meet. Unemployment rose to unprecedented levels, and poverty became widespread. Many

Without money to eat, they had to go to places on the street to get bread and soup. They also had to live in run down places called Shanty Towns. They didn’t have money to eat, so how are they going to be able to afford a house? These Shanty Towns were made of cardboard, scrap metal, dirt, and sometimes even grass. President Herbert Hoover said to all the people in the USA that they would be fine and they would get through it.

According to Shleas, the Great Depression had major impacts on America life, American values and American Government. First of all, the Great

The majority of people made under 2,000 dollars a year (Document 9) which was considered the bare minimum to live off of, the buy all of the basic essentials. These people didn’t have any money to spend on luxury items and couldn’t buy on credit. During this time, some companies priced their goods at a higher price than the majority of people made in a year, like boats that were priced anywhere from 10,000 dollars to 35,000 dollars (Document 8). With nobody to buy from them, these businesses were left without a profit and began going bankrupt. An average family before the depression with two people working full time jobs only made around twenty dollars a week (Document 7).

The Great Depression was a period of an economic disaster that lasted from 1929 to 1939. The effects of the depression varied across the nation and had a significant impact on all the different classes of the society. The following investigation will explore the impacts of Great Depression on the daily lives of middle-class Americans. Middle-class Americans were severely affected by the Depression mostly because they stood in the most convenient place of the societal ladder, they were neither poor nor wealthy. So, when Depression struck, the middle-class almost disappeared from the ladder because the economic crisis was massive and affected their lifestyles drastically.

In what ways did the Great Depression affect the American people? After a decade of economic prosperity, what seemed like an era that defined the concept of the American dream, quickly came to an end when the stock market on Wall Street collapsed in 1929. The aftermath of the events that occurred on Wall Street would put its heavy mark on the years to follow among the citizens of the United States. Banks closed down, unemployment rose and homelessness increased. It was a widespread national catastrophe that had its impacts on both poor and rich.

The Great Depression The Great Depression was by far one of the worst times of America’s history, and the world’s history. The Depression affected everyone except for the politicians and the wealthy. During the depression a lot of people lost their jobs which caused the unemployment rate to sky rocket to 14% of America’s population was unemployed, and the number would stay their till World War 2, and the depression started in the 1920’s. Middle class workers were hit the hardest in the depression. Most of the middle class citizens lost their jobs.