America Was The Cause Of The Great Depression

When Black Tuesday hit Wall Street on October 29, 1929, investors traded around 16 million shares on the New York Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost. This wiped out thousands of investors. This sent America and the rest of the industrialized world into one of the greatest economic tragedies. It would be named the Great Depression and world last from 1929 through 1939.

The Great Depression halted banks and began shutting them down. Banks started to slowly go out of business but the rate rapidly increased day after day. Once people, most importantly farmers, had less money to spend, banks began to fail at alarming rates. Without people spending money, banks held no purpose. This is what caused them to fail. In just the

first 10 months of 1930, 744 banks failed. “During the 20s, there was an average of 70 banks failing each year” (livinghistoryfarm.org). That number multiplied by 10 once the Great Depression began. During the 30s, there were 9,000 banks that failed. It was estimated that 4,000 banks failed in the single year of 1933.
The stock market crash through Hoover into a whirlwind of a mess. He aimed all of his focus on trying to fix the economy. According to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, he ¨He founded government agencies, encouraged labor harmony, supported local aid for public works, fostered cooperation between government and business in order to stabilize prices, and struggled to balance the budget¨ (gilderlehrman.org). I believe Herbert Hoover did lots to try to bring the hardships of the Great Depression down. It is extremely difficult to try to stabilize the economy after the stock market crash. If no one is spending money, then no one is making money. This is what killed the American economy during the Great Depression