The Great Depression
Leading up to the Depression
It all started in the early 1920's after the first World War (also known as the first modern war) with a huge boom in our stock market. It was the beginning of a new age with an economy starting to be dominated by big banks and corporations to invest in. There were a few problems. One of the main problems is the average American and American business wasn't educated enough and responsible enough to handle this new era. People couldn't handle the availability to invest in almost anything they please and take out large loans so freely. Also the Federal Reserve and the big banks didn't do anything to stop this. They didn't put in any rules or regulations to control this. All of this led to the worst economic downwards spiral in modern history.
The Beginning of the Depression
The depression started in October 1929 with the stock market crashing. This led to dramatic inflation and multiple businesses failing overnight. In five months, 1.5 million people lost their jobs raising the number of unemployed people to 3.2 million. That might not seem like much now, but that was a bunch of people for a country with only about 60 million people in the labor class. There was barely any way to help the poor and starving because there was no government relief program, but luckily there were private programs to save people from extremely deadly poverty. Because of extreme poverty, you had millions of people move to find work. A lot went out west around California in hopes of finding good work there but most would go anywhere and everywhere they could to feed their families.
The End of the Depression
Fast forward to 1939, the beginning of the second World War, and unemployment is near 20%. You then start to see major defense threats to the United States. You have threats in the Pacific from Imperial Japan and our European allies were being threatened by Nazi Germany. So, Roosevelt took it up to defend our country. The depression was no longer our main problem because if we're not free or even living then it doesn't matter if you're dirt poor or not. The government started hiring everyone they could to help the defense effort and they started massive government spending on defense. This is just what our country needed because 17 million jobs ended up being created and major corporations and companies were at work again. So the defense effort took care of almost all the jobs immediately with several million more jobs to follow the next few years.
Above: A man lost all his money on the stock market during the crash and now he's so desperate he's selling his car.
Below: As her children hide their faces from the camera, the mother looks on after all has been lost.
Above: Almost all Americans were very angry about how the country was going at this time.