Free Essays on Great Depression

The Great Depression and the New Deal. In 1932 almost 1500 banks failed, 32,00 businesses closed their doors and one-fourth of the labor force in the United States was unemployed. In that same year Franklin Delanore Roosevelt was elected president. He took office in 1933 with the economy and the nation in a severe depression. For the first three years of the Great Depression the government did very little to help the economy to recover. This all changed when FDR and his democratic administration took control. This administration initiated the "New Deal." This program brought together the federal and the state governments. The states received federal grants, which provided funding for such programs as public works projects, housing assistance, aid to families with dependent children, unemployment compensation and many other programs. These programs helped to eventually pull the economy and the nation out of the Great Depression. The main question is why the democratic administration and FDR felt these programs would work, and why they felt such a dramatic change in the role of the government was needed. For the answer we must turn to an economist by the name of John Maynard Keynes. He developed an economic theory that said that the forces of supply and demand operated to slowly in a serious recession, and the federal government should step in and help stimulate the economy. This theory became known as Keynesian Economics. In terms of the Great Depression the economy was at a serious imbalance because the public sector was saving more than usual and the business sector was not investing at a typical level. Therefore the government needed to step on and stimulate the economy. This stimulation was seen in the actions of the government in the "New Deal." Slowly but surely the steps taken by the government pulled the nation's economy out of the recession it faced for so many years. Fran... Free Essays on Great Depression Free Essays on Great Depression Great Depression was during 1929 through 1939. It was one of the hardest time people had gone through. There wasn’t money like there is now or transportation. I interviewed six different people on the day of 1-13-00. I learned many things; such as how there wasn’t food, money, clothing, transportation, and many other things during the time of the depression. I’m going to tell you stories I heard also my feeling on things. On the day of January 1st of 2000, I had gone to a nursing home by the name of Millers Mary Manor located on route 6 in Lake Station. There I had interviewed many different people: The fist one I’m going to tell you about was a man who went by the name Nicholas Georgeif. His age wasn’t spoken of. He was a teenager during the depression. His father worked on the farm as he attended school during the day. After school him and his sisters and brothers had helped on the farm. Back then money was tight you worked for a dollar a day or seventy-five cents to round up a heard of cattle. He served in the military for four years and two months. He didn’t talk much of how it was or had effected him during the time. He then became interested in photography and bought his first camera for a dollar. He told us how he remembered Franklin Roosevelt had put together a WPA it was a workers writers project. Roosevelt had gave those who didn’t have jobs a job on the WPA, they worked on highways and roads for around a dollar a day. Also Nicholas stated how he (Roosevelt) put together CC camps. Which is civilian conversational corps, for children to st ay of the streets and out of trouble. After Nicholas had been out of the military he became a photographer for a living. He also had taken pictures of Albert Einstein. To make a long story short†¦ He wasn’t shy back then. He walked up to Einstein’s door and stated who he was and wanted to take a picture of him. It went from there†¦ He had taken the picture met his wi... Free Essays on Great Depression The Great Depression and the New Deal. In 1932 almost 1500 banks failed, 32,00 businesses closed their doors and one-fourth of the labor force in the United States was unemployed. In that same year Franklin Delanore Roosevelt was elected president. He took office in 1933 with the economy and the nation in a severe depression. For the first three years of the Great Depression the government did very little to help the economy to recover. This all changed when FDR and his democratic administration took control. This administration initiated the "New Deal." This program brought together the federal and the state governments. The states received federal grants, which provided funding for such programs as public works projects, housing assistance, aid to families with dependent children, unemployment compensation and many other programs. These programs helped to eventually pull the economy and the nation out of the Great Depression. The main question is why the democratic administration and FDR felt these programs would work, and why they felt such a dramatic change in the role of the government was needed. For the answer we must turn to an economist by the name of John Maynard Keynes. He developed an economic theory that said that the forces of supply and demand operated to slowly in a serious recession, and the federal government should step in and help stimulate the economy. This theory became known as Keynesian Economics. In terms of the Great Depression the economy was at a serious imbalance because the public sector was saving more than usual and the business sector was not investing at a typical level. Therefore the government needed to step on and stimulate the economy. This stimulation was seen in the actions of the government in the "New Deal." Slowly but surely the steps taken by the government pulled the nation's economy out of the recession it faced for so many years. Fran... Free Essays on Great Depression Could the Great Depression of the mid 1920’s to late 1930’s have been prevented? Could we have prevented laying off 1/3 of the labor force and make people beg for minimum wage jobs during the 1930’s? Could we have prevented people panic selling their stalks in October of 1929 when the stalk market crashed? Could it be blamed on economic problems brought to us by WW1? I believe that the Great Depression could have been prevented and I have the answers to these questions and more in the following paragraphs. Many people prospered in the 1920’s but many did not. Prosperity was unequally shared the wealthy got wealthier and the poor got poorer. If you were rich you were rich that’s it, but if you were poor you were either a laborer or a farmer. However it wasn’t going to stay that way forever, on October 24,1929 people suddenly started selling there stalks. Over 12 million in stalks were lost on one day but New York bankers held the market. Five days later October 29, 1929 the market crashed again this time for good loosing over $30 billion was lost people named the day black Tuesday. The solution to this problem would have been very simple if the government at the time had any common sense at. All they would have to do is what the government following up the September 11, 2001 event did when everyone started to panic sell their stocks the president rallied all the head honchos of the country and made them make some sort of public message telling the people its ok we d on’t need to panic sell our stocks there is nothing bad going to happen you don’t need to sell your stalks.... Free Essays on Great Depression Great Depression in the United States, worst and longest economic collapse in the history of the modern industrial world, lasting from the end of 1929 until the early 1940s. Beginning in the United States, the depression spread to most of the world’s industrial countries, which in the 20th century had become economically dependent on one another. The Great Depression saw rapid declines in the production and sale of goods and a sudden, severe rise in unemployment. Businesses and banks closed their doors, people lost their jobs, homes, and savings, and many depended on charity to survive. In 1933, at the worst point in the depression, more than 15 million Americans- one-quarter of the nation’s workforce- were unemployed. The depression was caused by a number of serious weaknesses in the economy. Although the 1920s appeared on the surface to be a prosperous time, income was unevenly distributed. The wealthy made large profits, but more and more Americans spent more than they earned, and farmers faced low prices and heavy debt. The lingering effects of World War I (1914-1918) caused economic problems in many countries, as Europe struggled to pay war debts and reparations. These problems contributed to the crisis that began the Great Depression: the disastrous U.S. stock market crash of 1929, which ruined thousands of investors and destroyed confidence in the economy. Continuing throughout the 1930s, the depression ended in the United States only when massive spending for World War II began. The depression produced lasting effects on the United States that are still apparent more than half a century after it ended. It led to the election of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who created the programs known as the New Deal to overcome the effects of the Great Depression. These programs expanded government intervention into new areas of social and economic concerns and created social-assistance measures on the national level. The Grea... Free Essays on Great Depression In U.S. history, the severe economic crisis supposedly precipitated by the U.S. stock-market crash of 1929. Although it shared the basic characteristics of other such crises. The Great Depression was unprecedented in its length and in the wholesale poverty and tragedy it inflicted on society. Economists have disagreed over its causes, but certain causative factors are generally accepted. The prosperity of the 1920s was unevenly distributed among the various parts of the American economy farmers and unskilled workers were notably excluded with the result that the nation's productive capacity was greater than its capacity to consume. In addition, the tariff and war-debt policies of the Republican administrations of the 1920s had cut down the foreign market for American goods. Finally, easy-money policies led to an inordinate expansion of credit and installment buying and fantastic speculation in the stock market. The American depression produced severe effects abroad, especially in Europe, where many countries had not fully recovered from the aftermath of World War I; in Germany, the economic disaster and resulting social dislocation contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler. In the United States, at the depth (1932-33) of the depression, there were 16 million unemployed about one third of the available labor force. The gross national product declined from the 1929 figure of $103,828,000,000 to $55,760,000,000 in 1933. The economic, agricultural, and relief policies of the New Deal administration under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did a great deal to mitigate the effects of the depression and, most importantly, to restore a sense of confidence to the American people. Yet it is generally agreed that complete business recovery was not achieved and unemployment ended until the government began to spend heavily for defense in the early 1940s.... Free Essays on Great Depression The Great Depression was the worst economic decline ever in U.S. history. It began in late 1929 and lasted about a decade. Throughout the 1920’s, many factors played a role in bringing about the depression; the main causes were the unequal distribution of wealth and extensive stock market speculation. Money was distributed unequally between the rich and the middle-class, between industry and agriculture within the United States, and between the U.S. and Europe. This disproportion of wealth created an unstable economy. Before the Great Depression, the "roaring twenties" was an era during which the United States prospered tremendously. The nation's total income rose from $74.3 billion in 1923 to $89 billion in 1929. However, the rewards of the "Coolidge Prosperity" of the 1920's were not shared evenly among all Americans. In 1929, the top 0.1 percentage of Americans had a combined income equal to the bottom 42%. That same top 0.1 percentage of Americans in 1929 controlled 34% of all savings, while 80% of Americans had no savings at all. Automotive industry tycoon Henry Ford provides an example of the unequal distribution of wealth between the rich and the middle-class. Henry Ford reported a personal income of $14 million in the same year that the average personal income was $750. This poor distribution of income between the rich and the middle class grew throughout the 1920's. While the disposable income per capita rose 9% from 1920 to 1929, those with income within the top 1-percentage enjoyed an extraordinary 75% increase in per capita disposable income. These market crashes, combined with the poor distribution of wealth, caused the American economy to overturn. Increased manufacturing output throughout this period created this large and growing gap between the rich and the working class. From 1923-1929, the average output per worker increased 32% in manufacturing. During that same period of time average wages for manu...