Great Depression

Depression

Depression can affect people in many ways; however, one of the scariest emotions that the people of America faced in the late 1920’s was The Great Depression. The early 1920 was a time of great prosperity in the lives of most. The cause of the Great Depression was that Americans and our natural human ignorance made us think it would stay that way forever. America had just come out of the Great War and business was booming, along with agriculture and the stock market. The outlook for the future was great, but people failed to understand that economies can't be on the upside forever, it has to come down sometime. All of the signs of a depression were there; the farmers were producing too much, the uneven distribution of income, easy credit/huge debts, imbalance of foreign trade; people just didn't notice them. Not until October 29, 1929—better known as the Black Tuesday, when the bottom of the stock market fell out, taking millions of American lives with it. Even though anyone didn't admit it, they knew what was on the way. Then, America went into a panic, pulling money out of banks causing many to close their doors.

President Hoover tried hard to make the times better for the unemployed first by setting aside almost $800 million for public works like the now Hoover Dam. Conditions, however, failed to improve. His other policies, the Reconstruction Finance Corporate ion (RFC) and the Home Loan Bank Act also didn't make much difference. The election of 1932 made it clear that the American people were unhappy with Hoover.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the election on the Democratic ticket by a landslide. His promise of "a new deal" gave Americans hope for what he could do for them. Two days after his inauguration he ordered a 'bank holiday' for all the banks in the country to close. When they reopened, people felt safer putting their money in banks with the government backing them up. FDR's "New Deal" became what started the nation's turn around....