The Great Depression was a worldwide economic catastrophe that started when the stock market crashed in late October 1929. The depression lasted until about 1939 when World War II jumpstarted the American economy. The great depression had catastrophic effects on people, banks, and the government, but also brought out the good in people.
Many people were affected by the Great Depression. Many of John Steinbeck’s novels are set during the Great Depression. Of Mice and Men is a novel about two men, George and Lennie, trying to find work during the Great Depression. During the book, the two have to keep looking for work. They often envision what their lives would be like when they got more money. “’Someday—we're gonna get the jack together and we're gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an' a cow and some pigs…” George and Lennie’s plans are cut short when Lennie is killed. This is when it is revealed that George never believed that the farm would ever exist.
Vera was a college-educated woman in New York City who was deeply affected by the Great Depression. Ruth L. Porterfield
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Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president elected in 1933, said in his inaugural address that “Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.” Roosevelt felt that the government should put as many people to work as possible. “It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural