The context of the Great Depression is World War 1 and the Roaring 20’s. When the war was ending, a new era of prosperity began to come to America. The stock market exchange started to expand because more people started to trade. The Great Depression was caused by installment plans and unemployment.
During the Great Depression, unemployment rates shot up due to many losing their jobs. document 4 shows unemployment in the United States, non-farm employee unemployment rates were much higher than civilian labor force including farmers. The war started and helped the rates go down because people were needed in order to produce things for war and send them out. It was mainly women that were put into the factories because the men were needed to go out and fight in the war; the rates dropped to 10
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Many people began to buy things that they couldn’t afford. Document 6 goes into detail about installment plans, during this time people started to put things on layaway so that they could purchase them at a later time. This is because they couldn’t afford the things they wanted, this caused a demand for more products going back to mass production making the things cheaper and more affordable. Document 8 talks about items being expensive but the seller convinced them to put the things on layaway so in that way they were still making money. This is how the sellers were advertising the things to the buyers in order to get them to purchase from them. Document 10 speaks about how because people couldn’t afford the things they were trying to get, the bills got too large, being one of the main causes of the Great Depression. Their debt started stacking up but it wasn’t a problem anymore the way it was in times before these. Everybody constantly went into debt because they bought the things they couldn’t afford more than they needed. This is why these documents and topics explain the main causes of the Great