Great Depression Dbq

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What Caused the Great Depression? BOOOM goes the stock market sending America into a frenzy that would take long to recover from. This was the worse they have ever seen. The Panic of 1893 was nothing compared to what the US had in store for them in the 30’s. In just a short span of time, so many people went broke, companies failed, lost jobs, and many struggled to eat. Some families even had their children take turns eating for a day or meal causing the children to become sick or extremely hungry. No human should have to go through that but the economy was just not in a position to support the people like how it is today. This was caused by many things but most importantly speculation, installment, and overproduction in many industries. Although …show more content…

Overproduction is when a company or producer makes more of the product than it can sell causing them to reduce the price to meet profit and lose money. Before and during the Great Depression this was a huge problem because of its effects on the owners. In the farm industry many people fell into this whole and had to pay repercussions. In 1930, overproduction in the farm industry caused the price of cotton and wheat to drop (Doc. 11). The depression was so bad that even though the prices dropped on many items and goods, people still couldn’t afford them. The result from that is that people were getting laid off left and right so the company could still make money once again. Now the people were in debt, still buying things on installment, but unemployed. “There was no apparent way of checking this downward spiral after it had been set in motion.” (Doc. G). A lot of people didn't see anything like this coming so they were so prone to stuff like this, because they were spending money and making mistakes like overproduction. Now the rich people couldn’t even buy the luxury things they used to before like a 35,000 boat (Doc. 8) because they now had to precisely manage their businesses so they wouldn’t fall into this bottomless pit. Not many faced this problem though because the rich were scarce in this time period. Only two percent of the US’s population of families was making over ten thousand dollars a year (Doc. 9). All-in-all overproduction was a really big cause of the Great Depression but it didn’t have a biggest negative

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