Great Depression DBQ
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(Be sure to BOLD your document #’s and highlight outside information) After the stock market crash of 1929, America went into a severe financial crisis known as the Great Depression. During this Great Depression, about 75% percent of American Families lived in poverty, and 25% of people lost their jobs and became unemployed. During this time, many banks went out of business too because people demanded their money back due to the Stock Market Crash. This caused a huge economic banking emergency. Two problems Americans faced during the Great Depression were unemployment and the banking crisis.
The first problem Americans faced during the Great Depression was unemployment. According to document
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When many people bought stocks on margin, with the mindset of “buy now pay later”, eventually caused the Stock Market Crash of 1929. When the stock market crashed in 1929, most people ran to their banks demanding their life savings back in cash, but the banks didn’t have enough money to do so, therefore they went out of business. This was the banking crisis. According to document 2, the caption reads, “Disbelief turned to panic as people besieged [stormed] the banks (this one was in New Jersey) trying to withdraw their life’s savings — often too late.” This helps demonstrate the mentality of many Americans who had their life’s savings in the bank, and how this conflict of banks going out of business started. In the picture, you can observe that there was a huge crowd of people outside of a bank in New Jersey, demanding their money. As more people began to show up to banks trying to withdraw their old deposits, the more the banks began to go out of business. Hoover thought that the banking crisis would naturally fix itself, and that the government shouldn't interfere. This was a problem because it didn’t fix itself and was progressively getting worse to the point where around 9,000 banks had to shut