Chapter 5 The Great Depression and the Bombing of Pearl Harbor The economy was booming, things were great for many people for over six years. People were investing in the stock market and the government was doing fine. Until October 24, 1929, known as Black Thursday, when the stock market crashed. People began selling what they had for what they could get out of it. By Tuesday the 29th, Black Tuesday, banks were calling in loans due to complete collapse of the stocks. By mid-November, 30 billion in stocks completely evaporated. President Hoover told the nation that this was temporary and to maintain confidence in the U.S. economy to recover very quickly. By March 1930, 3.2 million people are unemployed. Hoover kept telling the people that this was temporary and things will fix themselves within six months. By November 6,000 people were selling apples on New York City street corners for five cents apiece. In January 1931, veterans from World War I were to receive a bonus of $1.00 per day for …show more content…
Roosevelt was elected President and with him comes new hope. This hope comes in the form of what Roosevelt called a New Deal. He began by having the banks take a four-day bank holiday and worked with Congress to come up with a way to save the banks. By the end of March 1933, three quarters of all the banks that were closed were reopened. Roosevelt created jobs for men between the ages of 17-27 to work fighting forests fires, and on federal land building roads and building parks. They worked for nine months and were housed in camp like settings. He also created Federal Relief Act to issue grants to help individuals with monetary situations that would enable them to open businesses and start programs that would employ people. Roosevelt also set up a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that would guarantee deposits. He set up agricultural programs aimed at assisting those areas that suffered from drought to reestablish the soil into working farmland once