Great Depression Dbq

The United States economy has seen many ups and downs in its lifetime. The economy is currently starting to gain momentum and digging itself out of the hole it was in a decade ago. Many claim that the recession we were in a decade ago was awful; the recession is nothing compared to the depression the US was in nearly a century ago. The Great Depression officially began in 1929 and ended in 1939. Despite this the US starting getting into trouble in the mid 1900’s and the pain of the depression remained long after 1940. There was no one main cause to the Great Depression but rather several factors that led up to the fall of the US economy. Some of the causes were: a decline in the construction industry, the stock market crash of 1929, banking

In the mid 1900’s there was a boom in the construction market. People began remodeling their homes; some building their dream homes. Businesses were looking to expand. The reason for this was the economy was doing well, people were earning more money and businesses were more profitable. This would soon change and real wages would begin to fall and real GDP would fluctuate. (Balcilar, Gupta, Miller). In the article titled Housing and the Great Depression we see how a sharp decline in construction was an indicator of the declining economy. What was once a prosperous field of work in the early 1900’s came to a halt by 1928 just before the official start of the Great Depression. As real wages began to fall we see that people have less and less money to either expand their businesses or their homes. This is because of the wealth inequality there was at the time. The upper class (investors, business owners, ect.) began to hold on to their wealth rather than have it “trickle

This was something done by president Hoover which essence was implementing very high tariffs. There was an array of products that were being taxed, one of the main products was the agriculture sector. In Heinz sight this tariff would be a great idea because it would promote the economy within our nation and would keep the gold reserves here in the US. Unfortunately this was not the case, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff did more harm than good. Other nations returned the favor with tariffs of their own. What was needed at the time was more trade, with less trade that meant less production. In order for businesses to stay afloat that meant having to decrease production which meant reducing their amount of workers which in turn meant that there were fewer jobs. And because there were less jobs that meant less income and more people out on the streets. Hoover’s hope of promoting the American economy quickly vanished because the Smoot-Hawley Tariff increased the severity of the