October 29, 1929 was the worst day of many American’s lives. That was the day the stock market crashed and the Great Depression was launched. At first, the President, and other politicians thought it would end after just a few months but it turned out to be the absolute worst stock market crash in the history of America. America lost 14 billion dollars on that one detrimental day and by the end of the week, America lost a flabbergasting 30 billion dollars. Today, that would be the equivalent to exactly $377,587,032,770.41. This also happens to be almost ten times more than America’s budget at the time and that much money had not even been spent during World War 1 (“Great Depression”).
Money was not the only thing in short supply during Depression. Food was in such short supply in the Great Depression that over seven million people died of undernourishment, which is about how many deaths occurred during the Holocaust in Europe. This was such a shock to so many of the people who had just experienced the abundant “roaring twenties”. Sickness was also a sudden killer in the Depression. Tuberculosis and pneumonia were raging and money was so tight that getting a doctor was out of the question for many Americans. Although famishment and illness were largely responsible for many deaths, they were not the main cause for death in the 1920s to the 1940s. (Gold 18)
The number one cause for death in the Great Depression was suicide. After the initial shock of the crash there was a sky rocket in suicides. As a result of the increase in suicides hotel managers would ask if the clients needed a room for sleeping or for jumping. Many committed suicide because of the growing unemployment and the inability to support themselves o...
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Works Cited
"Amazon.com: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (9780066211701): Amity Shlaes: Books." Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & More. Web. 18 Jan. 2012. 16 Jan. 2012. .
Gold, Christina Anne Sheehan. Hoovervilles: Homelessness and Squatting in California during the Great Depression. 1998. Print. Page 17-19.
"Great Depression." Random Facts | Fun Trivia | Interesting Insight. Web. 18 Jan. 2012. 2 Jan 2012. .
Hawkins, William. “Panic Control.” The Washington Times. 12 Dec 2008. 27 Dec 2012.
McElvaine, Robert S. The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941. [New York, N.Y.]: Times, 1984. Print. Page 36.
Nishi, Dennis. The Great Depression. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven, 2001. Print. Page 24.
McElvaine, Robert S., ed. 1983. Down & out in the great depression: Letters from the forgotten man. Twenty-fifth Anniversary ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
"Social and Cultural Effects of the Depression." Ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.
Pindar, Ian. "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes." The Guardian, August 9, 2009.
The Great Depression often seems very distant to people of the 21st century. This article is a good reminder of potential problems that may reoccur. The article showed in a very literal way the idea that a depression can bring a growing country to its knees. The overall ramifications of the event were never discussed in detail, but the historical significance is that people's lives were put on hold while they tried to struggle through an extremely difficult time.
Gene Smiley, "Great Depression." The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.2008. Library of Economics and Liberty. 12 May 2014. .
Nelson, Sheila. Crisis at Home and Abroad: the Great Depression, World War II, and Beyond,
Kindleberger, Charles P. The World in Depression, 1929-1939. Vol. 4. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
McElvaine, Robert S, ed. Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1983.
The Great Depression America 1929-1941 by Robert S. McElvaine covers many topics of American history during the "Great Depression" through 1941. The topic that I have selected to compare to the text of American, Past and Present, written by Robert A. Divine, T.H. Breen, George M. Frederickson and R. Hal Williams, is Herbert Hoover, the thirty-first president of the United States and America's president during the horrible "Great Depression".
Smiley, Gene. Rethinking the Great Depression. American Ways Series. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2004.
Watkins, T.H. The Great Depression: America in the 1930's. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1993.
"Unit 11 The 1930s: The Great Depression." Welcome. New Jersey State Library, 12 Jan. 2011. Web. 17 Apr. 2014. .
One main cause for the Great Depression, is that there was extreme unemployment percentages. The highest reaching nearly 25% in 1933. One place, and people were specifically hit the hardest during the Depression, were the coal miners in Kentucky. “There were whole towns whose people had not a cent of income” (Doc.B). Many people had no way of making any income what so ever, and would have to revert to killing pets and other animals for a source of food. “Children were reported so famished they were chewing up their own hands. (Doc. B) Even in much bigger cities, like New York, there would be lines of hundreds to thousands of people, just standing, waiting to get a few pieces of bread, and water. Millions of Americans could no afford a place to live and had to create and live in Hoovervilles so much of the depression. (Doc A).
Schultz, Stanley K., and William P. Tishler. "The Crash and the Great Depression." American History 102. 1999. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. 17 Oct. 2011 .
"Great Depression in the United States." Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2001. CD-ROM. 2001 ed. Microsoft Corporation. 2001