What Caused The
Great Depression?
The great depression was caused by people going into debt. To stat off, people wanted to have fancy things that they could not afford. This passage shows just that, "With debt no longer as shameful, people bought an installment (lay away). Three out of every four radios where purchased on installment plan, 60 per cent of all automobiles and furniture” (doc 6). This first passage is showing that people will buy more things that they cannot afford because society says that it is ok to be in debt. Which in turn would be the biggest down fall America has ever seen so far? This next passage is showing that even though people have no money left, “We, it seems, have abolished the business cycle; when people have bought all they can afford they go on buying” (doc 10). In this passage, the author is trying to say that the American people don’t have that much money but yet is why the market crashed. People spent all their money and then some. My final example is a passage that it tells everyone can be rich if they invest in the market, “If he invest in good common stocks and allows the dividends…to accumulate, he will at the end of twenty years have at eighty thousand dollars and an income from investments of around four hundred dollars a month. He will be rich.”(Doc 2). This passage is saying that if you invest in the market you will become rich off your investment. But what know one say it coming was the market crash. People lost everything that they invested in; witch the people in the magazine told them that it would be a good investment. So inconclution the great depression was caused by people not having money to pay back stores for what they knew they could not afford in the first place.
