Great Depression Essay

In 1930, about a year after the Great Depression began, the rate of unemployment was eight-point-seven. Two years later, the rate of unemployment had grown to twenty-three-point-six percent (Lainer 13). That is the equivalent of one in four people being unemployed. Most people don’t realize how much the Depression affected not only the stock market, but it affected the amount of money people's pay checks, the number of jobs that they were offered, and much more. When most people think about the Great Depression, they just think of the stock market crash. There are many more parts of it than just that. The Great Depression was the greatest financial disaster to ever occur in the United States for many reasons, including when the entire stock

People truly came together to help each other during the Great Depression.

In October of 1930, the Stock Market crashed. The Stock Market crash caused a domino effect of disasters for businesses in the U.S. As mentioned before, the rate of unemployment jumped significantly from 1930 to 1932. This event was very harmful to the United States economy because the Stock Market is pretty much what holds the United States economy together. Even the New York Stock Exchange floor was chaotic. Everyone was shouting. Why? Stock prices were falling. People wanted to sell their shares. They wanted their money out of the stock market. They were afraid of losing it (Wilkins 6). It helps people make a profit off of other companies and make easy money without having to do much. Because the stock market crashed, it caused people and thousands of businesses to lose a ton of money. This eventually caused companies to let many people go. Most large businesses were able to hold on, meanwhile, smaller businesses that weren’t as large and strong weren’t able to hold on and eventually went out of business. The Stock Market crash also had a very disastrous effect on the food supply. U.S. farmers were suffering too. Farmers had exported

The land became so dry that the soil turned to dust, hence the name. The Dust Bowl began in 1930 and lasted for six years until 1936. Approximately seven thousand people were killed by starvation, accidents leaving the Midwest in hopes of building a new life somewhere else, or from dust pneumonia. Dust pneumonia is a respiratory disease brought on by tiny nonorganic molecules in the dust-blown wind. It is still seen today. Because of poor crop prices and high machinery expenses, additional submarginal lands that do not allow profitable farming were put into production. Farmers were beginning to abandon soil conservation methods. These events were the beginning of the major soil erosion that would result in the Dust Bowl. Lots of people tried to evacuate the Plains on account of the Dust Bowl. By 1940, the toll of people who had left was up to two-and-a-half million. By the Fall of 1933, the government was giving people Federal Aid. By 1937, twenty-one percent of the rural population living in the Plains were given federal emergency