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Urban America During The Great Depression: A Social Analysis

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Life in urban America during the Great depression affected every person, every race, and every community. The number of homeless rose exponentially. The homeless formed little communities called Hoovervilles. (Shultz, 2014). They made shelters out of whatever scraps they could glean. Rural America was hit differently, it had natural disasters on top of the economic disasters. Dust bowls, droughts led to crop failures. Therefore, many farmers moved West seeking better living conditions. President Hoover’s grandiose ideas and his attempts to stabilize the country drove the Americans towards democratic beliefs. (Shultz, 2014). Moreover, Hollywood had a contributing factor in the shift towards democratic beliefs. They used movies to further their
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The wealth during the 1920s left Americans unprepared for the economic depression they would face in the 1930s. The Great Depression occurred because of overproduction by farmers and factories, consumption of goods decreased, uneven distribution of wealth, and overexpansion of credit. Hoover was president when the depression first began, and he maintained the government’s laissez-faire attitude in the economy. However, after the election of FDR in 1932, his many alphabet soup programs in his first one hundred days in office addressed the nation’s need for change.

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The Great Depression by Robert S. McElvaine is pretty straightforward. In the beginning, the book compares the economic crisis of 2008 with the roots of the Great Depression in 1929. He believed that politicians in the twentieth century did not learn their lesson from before. The book also depicts the lives of people during The Roaring Twenties and how the downfall of the economy and overproduction lead to mass unemployment and struggling families. McElvaine’s point of view on the Great Depression was considerably biased.

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Yes, concerns about major social and political revolution were justified at the time of the Great Depression. After the stock market crashed, banks failed as well as a result of millions of Americans withdrawing their money. Unemployment ensued because of the rapid decrease of consumer spending. These all mostly affected the working class, since they were the ones who went out of work when the Depression hit. Additionally, the big disparity of wealth between the rich and poor encouraged the Depression; 32% of the country’s wealth went to the richest 5% of people, while only 10% when to the poorest 42%.

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Hoovervilles could be understood as an enormous tent city within New York's Central Park. This era was known as the Great Depression, the worst economic downturn in U.S. history. Franklin D. Roosevelt responded in a diligent way mainly due to the fact that Roosevelt introduced The New Deal, which included many programs that served as benefactors to the public. Furthermore, Roosevelt's responses were quite effective because the unemployment rate decreased during his presidency. Lastly, the role of the federal government changed because they became more indulged in the lives of its citizens.

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The experience that the majority of urban and rural Americans shared together during the depression was a flat out lack of income. The differences were very few, but in the cities, the depression was more prominently visible because of a higher percentage of the population (Schultz 2014). Besides the lack of income and employment, most Americans underwent periods of time being extremely hungry. In the cities, people spent hours waiting in breadlines and were losing their homes to only end up living on the streets in communities referred to as "Hoovervilles" nicknamed after the president (Schultz 2014). In the country, families suffered because of unusual droughts of the 1930 's that caused crops to fail miserably meant the already indebted farmers commonly lost their properties.

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Imagine living in a refugee camp. Every day you work really hard trying to get a job, and provide for your family, but to no avail. Every night you are extremely tired, but have a hard time sleeping because it is freezing cold. You wake up again, and go through this cycle of trying to get a job, house, and sleep. Hoovervilles are very similar to refugee camps.

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During the Great Depression a Midwestern phenomenon called the Dust Bowl affected many lives of newly settled Americans throughout the Great Plains region. Otherwise known as the “Dirty Thirties”, a storm of dry weather caused farmers and villagers to abandon their homes in hope to survive the deadly threat of the storm. The Dust Bowl was a big contributing factor to the Great Depression agriculturally, and economically. During the 1930’s America suffered extreme temperatures. A drought forming across all farm lands due to failure of successful crop rotation cause dust to form.

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"Dust Bowl" conditions obliterated three hundred million tons of topsoil, equal to 3,000 hundred-acre farms. Farm families moved west to find jobs in California. The Depression created hard times for all Americans. Failure and helplessness dropped like a shroud over the spirit of a starving nation; the suicide rates increased as people lost hope of employment in hopes of feeding their families. Farmers began to destroy their crops or let them rot in the

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Both, urban and rural Americans suffered during the Great Depression, but not in the same way. Many urban Americans had to deal with living in large communities of homes made out of cardboard boxes due to homelessness and lack of food in the cites (Schultz, 2013). At the same time, rural Americans were losing their farms due to the crops as a result of the drought. The Great Depression was a perfect time for the Communist Party of the United States to thrive, as a large portion of Americans believed that Capitalism was the cause of the whole thing.

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The Great Depression The Great Depression was by far one of the worst times of America’s history, and the world’s history. The Depression affected everyone except for the politicians and the wealthy. During the depression a lot of people lost their jobs which caused the unemployment rate to sky rocket to 14% of America’s population was unemployed, and the number would stay their till World War 2, and the depression started in the 1920’s. Middle class workers were hit the hardest in the depression. Most of the middle class citizens lost their jobs.

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The Great DepressionTopic: the great depressionQuestion: How did the great depression affect americans?Thesis statement:The great depression affected americans because it destroyed their economy. Millions of families lost theirs savings as many banks collapsed in the 1930’s. The Great Depression was the worst economic drop of all times in the industrial world1. The Great Depression began because of a stock market crash in 1929 and came to end ten years later in 1939, around 15 million americans were unemployed and about half of the American banks failed. It was one of the darkest era in the United States.

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One of the most world-changing moments in the world at the end of the 1920's was the Great Depression. Although some might have benefited from it, the Great Depression was also the event that caused the economy to become depressed due to many changes in the world. The Great Depression caused extreme poverty, severe number of unemployed people and homelessness. In picture two, it shows how there's a homeless man sitting there with a little baby.

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According to Simone M. Caron, during the great depression, the longest and deepest depression in the history of the USA from 1929 until 1939, so many changes occurred in all fields which led to people losing their jobs and not being able to support their families, thus, more and more Americans learned about birth control and used it as a manner to limit family size, therefore the population. As stated by History.com Staff, the great depression has arisen shortly after the stock market crash in October 1929 as consumer lost confidence in the stock market crash and decreased their spending, which piled up merchandise and slowed the production rate and caused businesses to fire their workers and throughout the years it became worse and worse.

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The economic downturn caused by the Great Depression negatively impacted society. This devastating time period led to changes in family life, overcrowding and health issues. With many adults left unemployed, most families began to struggle. All of the sudden, money was gone which stressed everyone. Since no one in the family was making money, families had to make dramatic changes.

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The Great Depression The Great Depression was a period of time in the 1930s where a massive wave of unemployment, bank failure, and the stock market crash. the great depression is often remarked as the worst economic decline ever. “the years of the Great Depression marked the worst period of poverty and hardship in the twentieth century, both in North America and abroad.” (Great Depression) Its significance in american history can be described as a crisis.

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