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What Caused The Great Depression Essay

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You have probably heard about the Great Depression which was a tough time period that no one can forget. It lasted a total of 10 years through 1929 to 1939. The Great Depression was caused by many reasons however the main causes would be when the stock market crashed,the banks failed, and the dust bowl happened. It was a time when people lost their homes, jobs, and lots of money. First, the stock market crash of 1929. “It was four days in October when the industrial average dropped 25% it lost $30 billion but in today’s money that would be $396 billion” (The Balance).This then caused many people to lose jobs and withdraw money from the bank.When people were losing money some did not even have enough money for rent so they found a new way to live by building shacks and moving in with their families(Schlesinger). The Great Depression caused many people to lose everything so when when it finally subsided they were left nothing to go back to. Altogether the crash wipe many of people out, they were forced to sell business, cash in their life savings and scramble to find any little bit of money (The Balance). …show more content…

As it was stated earlier when the stock market crashed and hundreds of people withdrew their deposits from the bank (The Great Depression). With no jobs and losing home, people would take their families and try to find work elsewhere. In the 20’s an average of 70 banks failed every year but, in the year 1933 alone 4,000 banks failed (wessels). They all failed because the deposits were pulled out so their was nothing for the banks to do. “My mother lived through the Great Depression, her family of 11 children pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and moved to wherever there was work at the time and in rural Oklahoma, that wasn’t easy to find”(Norris). This is only one example on how people were forced to leave their homes to find work. When the stock market crashed it caused banks to fail and times became

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Due to the stock market crash, families became unable to pay for anything, allowing for the Great Depression

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On October 29, 1929, the Wall Street Journal stock market crashed causing an immense economic failure known as the great depression. The Great Depression is a time in which the whole world fell into one of the worst states it has ever been in, primarily in America. Millions lost their jobs Especially African Americans and the country almost instantly lost all of its wealth and the agricultural world struggled to survive. This lasted approximately 10 years eventually things did start to improve under the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt when he passed the New Deal. The New deal gave the public, loans and gave millions of people jobs which helped the economy.

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The Great Depression was an enormous economic downfall in the history of the United States and was also a very hard time for many Americans. People had lost jobs, markets went bad, banks had shut down, and unemployment rate has gone up. It had lasted from 1929-1939. During the next several years, buyer spending and investment had dropped, causing a decline in industrial output and raising the unemployment level. It began with the stock market crash on October 29 1929, which had lost millions of investors, markets had lost $30 billion dollars in two days, making it ten times more than the annual budget the U.S had spent for WWI, and prices were dropping until the end of November.

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There were far too many independent banks during the period of the Great Depression, and the problem with the surplus of independent banks was the lack of support they could provide each other. The Run on the Banks resulted in the fall of banks, and an overall lack of confidence in the banking system. The overuse of credit in the economy helped trigger the run on the banks by people taking out loans from banks and then not being able to afford the continual payments, leading them to withdraw their money and shut down the banks. The Stock Market Crash was also a major factor in the start of the Great Depression. People who were buying into the stock market were gambling their money into the stock market in the hopes of making a quick profit (B).

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In 1929, there was a loss of over $25 billion, and a significant number of people were in debt. Due to a lack of money, payments for necessities or basic needs like food, mortgage installments, and other purchases were impossible to afford. Furthermore, widespread unemployment resulted in bank closures due to people taking all their money out of there. All of this contributed to the stock market crash, which caused the Great Depression. It lasted a decade, during which many people struggled to make purchases that would ensure their survival.

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Unemployment rose to 25 percent and by 1933 fifteen million people were out of work (Henretta, 2009). 9,000 banks closed their doors, and 100,000 businesses failed (Henretta, 2009). When the banks failed it had an even more severe shock. Back then the government did not insure bank deposits so savings in failed banks simply vanished (Henretta, 2009). People that were less fortunate than others did what they could to survive.

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And finally, there's the consequences of the Great Depression, where a lot of people lost their jobs, and in some places, more than 20% of people were out of work. Many banks closed down, and people lost their money. This made it hard for people to buy things and caused a lot of financial problems. Because so many people lost their jobs and couldn't afford to pay rent, many ended up without homes and had to live in makeshift settlements called "Hoovervilles." Poverty levels went up, and millions struggled to afford even the basics like food and clothing.

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