Descriptive Essay: Life During The Great Depression

The Great Depression was 10 years of horror, filled with unemployment, starvation, and sadness. It started with people who thought the sky was falling.
There was too much- too many businesses, too many products, just... too much! Too much supply... and not enough demand. Everyone was a part of the raging stock market; they wanted to get rich too! It seemed as though it would just keep going up and up and up. There were some people who said that they should "stand back, cover your ears and watch out"1. But many were too intent on getting money to care whether the market crashed; as long as they got in and got out with a pocket of money, it was good for them.
Well, guess what happened? The big "prosperity balloon"2 finally burst. It

went down just a little bit-what would have been a regular, minor downfall-and everyone started to freak out thinking that it was going to go wa-a-a-a-a-a-y down. It probably wouldn't have, if they hadn't gone Henny Penny; "The sky is falling!" and sold their shares. The thing is, the stocks most likely would have regulated themselves out as they always had if everyone hadn't dropped everything and sold all their shares.
And perhaps things would've gone alright if the banks hadn't been so irresponsible, betting on the stocks, and loaning people so much more money than they actually had. A thing called "fractional-reserve banking"3 is when the banks give loans or make investments with more money than they actually have. For example (I don't know if this is true, I'm just using it as an example), a bank has $100 and someone needs a loan for $700. The bank would be able to give them that loan because of the fractional-reserve banking system which allows them to give more money than they actually have.
During this "panic," everyone had a debt to someone-either the banks, other people they borrowed from, etc-because they could buy stock "on margin" (which is now illegal); buying stock on margin means that they can buy it with money they don't have. It's a lot like the fractional-reserve banking I talked about. By 1929, "production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value."4 The "Dust Bowl," the name of the disaster in the Great Plains when there was a huge drought that turned all its fine top soil to dust (another irresponsible happening, where the farmers didn't practice crop rotation and planted the same, money-making crops over and over again, not letting the ground rest or get nutrients from other providing crops) helped bring about the Great Depression as well.
All of these factors led to this horrible decade. Imagine: People couldn't afford to pay their debts. Everyone was selling their shares, but no one was buying. The banks are closing because of their excessive loans and gambling. People sell their cars, homes, anything and everything to get out of debt. There's no source of income because everyone lost their jobs when the owners could no longer afford to keep their businesses opened and pay their employees. The country of plenty falls into a deprived state, only to come out when Franklin D. Roosevelt brings about the wonderful New Deal and all his programs to help people. But even then, the country isn't out of the depression; only when World War ll comes and we begin producing crazy amounts of war materials/machinery in factories, do we raise from the horrible, terrifying Great Depression.