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Effects of the Great Depression on the United States
The effect of the great depression
Effects of the Great Depression on the United States
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A. The quotes from Henry Ford and Herbert Hoover suggest that the great depression took government and businesses by surprise. Hoover talks about how America was “nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in this land”, and that they were in a good position. In reality the country was continuing to fall into a deeper hole of financial problems. Hoover also suggests that he felt he didn’t need to interfere with the situation, as the country was doing just fine. The same goes for Ford who says that there are enough jobs in the country for people who are actually willing to put in work, when in reality he is forced to fire more and more people. B. The excerpt from the song “Brother can you spare a dime” showcases the anger of the veteran during the great depression. The song describes how he “went sloggin’ through hell” during the first world war. But is not being …show more content…
given the government bonus he was promised. The government refused to give veterans the bonus they were promised when they needed it. This anger led to the bonus army’s march to Washington. The Roosevelt reforms were made to meet “two pressing needs”. These were, “to reorganize capitalism in such a way to overcome the crisis and stabilize the system” and to “head off the alarming growth of spontaneous rebellion”. The point of these goals, was to change from the hands-off conservative government, to a more hands-on liberal form of government. The other goal was to stop the citizens from creating their own ways of getting what they needed in the form of random rebellion. B. To respond to these issues, Roosevelt implemented a form of government that provided more to the citizens. In order to provide to the people, Roosevelt implemented several government programs such as the NRA, and bills such as the Wagner-Connery bill. The NRA, or national recovery act focused on setting standards in the workplace. Minimums and standards were set for things like wages, prices, labor, and management The Wagner-Connery bill focused on regulating labor disputes. This bill created elections for union representation and established a board to handle disputes. A.
When the government failed to provide United States citizens with the money and food that they needed, they began to provide for themselves. Barter systems began to appear where people traded items for goods that they needed. People began demanding to be fed without being charged. Groups were often formed, and they protested in public, or demanded to be given the basic items that they could not afford. After World War One, veterans had been promised a government bonus for their service. When the depression hit, they needed this money more than ever, but the government was unwilling to pay them. They marched from wherever they lived to the nation's capital and demanded their bonuses. B. I think these actions are very fair, and can be completely justified. The nation under Hoover felt as if the government would never work to make circumstances better for it’s citizens. If you were completely hopeless and felt the need to act as an individual to survive, then I believe that is justifiable. If I were alive in the great depression, I would have revolted and made opportunities for myself as
well. I think that Zinn believes that Franklin Roosevelt’s way of dealing with the great depression and the “new deal” did not work as they were intended to. Howard Zinn spends a lot of time in this reading describing the ways that American citizens needed to provide for themselves, as the government was unable to provide them with the basic materials that they needed to survive. I think that he agreed in the idea’s of Franklin Roosevelt, but does not believe that he carried them out in a successful way. In Langston Hughes’ poem, he talks about how we need to bring America back up to it’s former glory and happiness. Hughes describes how there was not only one social or racial group that felt the pain of the depression, but that everyone did. B. I partially agree with Howard Zinn’s analysis of Roosevelt and the new deal. I think that Franklin Roosevelt took the needed action to jumpstart the United States out of the great depression. His use of government programs and funding was exactly what the nation needed to get through the depression. Allen and Schweikhart feel that as much as Franklin Roosevelt wanted to get the nation out of poverty and the great depression, he was focused on using his power to continue the dominance of the democrats in the following presidencies. They spend a long time describing how Roosevelt abused his presidential power numerous times in order to make the senate more dominantly democrats. One of the examples that they give, is when they describe Roosevelt's use of his power to nominate more democratic justices to the supreme court. They say he did this in order to “water down” the republican justices who argued against his case in trials. B. I do not necessarily think that Roosevelt was focused entirely on the continuation of democratic dominance in the government. I think that he believed in his own ideas about getting the nation to recover from the depression, and wanted those ideas to continue when it was time to elect a new president.
The Great Depression was definitely a gruesome to live through, but it built the character of America. The Depression was a revenge on how carefree Americans were during the roaring twenties. This was a pivotal point where many laws and regulations were set in place to ensure America would never face these tough times ever again. James J Braddock was a fairly wealthy man in the Roaring twenties, but it didn’t take him long to become just the average American living in the Great Depression working to keep his family from starvation. James J. Braddock was truly an inspiration to many Americans during the Great depression because he was a family man, he cared for others’ wellbeing, not just his own, and he showed little to no fear.
The Great Depression was the biggest and longest lasting economic crisis in U.S history. The Great depression hit the united states on October 29, 1929 When the stock market crashed. During 1929, everyone was putting in mass amounts of their income into the stock market. For every ten dollars made, Four dollars was invested into the stock market, thats forty percent of the individual's income (American Experience).
What was the result of those efforts? a. President Hoover tried to jump-start the economy and add jobs.... ... middle of paper ... ... a.
They left people without jobs, homes, and money. In the story “Digging In” by Robert J. Hastings it explains how people did anything to make money for their families even if it was only for 5 dollars. Even with these hard times some people still had hope like it showed in “Depts” by Karen Hesse. In this poem a farmer had hope that rain would come to grow his dying wheat while his wife didn’t think so. This was a very stressful time right until president Roosevelt made some changes. In the article “The New Deal” it explains how Roosevelt helped end the great depression with programs that gave millions of people jobs. The great depression was a very hard, stressful, and sad time for the american people that had many
“…when the nation was balanced precariously between the darkness of the Great Depression on one side and the storms of war in Europe and the Pacific on the other…..Once again the American people understood the magnitude of the challenge, the importance of an unparallel national commitment, and, most of all, the certainty that only one resolution was acceptable.”(p3) This quote is from the opening paragraph of the chapter in Brokaw’s book, “The Time of their Lives.” These ordinary people surmounted times of great destitution while courageously facing the epoch of the Great depression. They comprehended the necessity for commitment in order to preserve their independence. Brokaw uses imagery including “the Darkness of the Great depression” to reveal to the reader the severity of their situation. He depicts the Great Depression not just as a time of hardships, but as an era when thousands of men and women starved to death, parents could not provide for themselves or their families and unemployment was so high that a days work would yield, at most, a loaf of stale bread to feed an entire family. Although he does not say these things directly, his use of imagery causes the reader to have these thoughts and to see these images.
Furthermore, a narrative of the Depression: "It was always cold in the house; the only warmth was a wood burning stove in the corner. We used to sit and listen to Gracie and Burn's on the 7 o'clock show. Dinner was watered down onion stew with a slice of bread. "We worked in the fields, maybe 9, 10, hours per day, maybe more. Pay was two dollars a week. We were lucky. We had a roof over our head and food in our bellies, even if it were onion stew, most days." Now, it's 1974 and I ask my granddaughter for a pop at the lumber yard. "50 cents for a 16 ounce bottle of pop. What's wrong with prices these days? I can remember 10 cents a pop."
However, for the worst affected, the most difficult effect on morale must have been the lifelong memory of seeing their children and family suffer, and having no power to change this. For the lack of power to change the future is the exact opposite of the ‘American Dream’. References: Prosperity, Depression and The New Deal, Peter Clements, 2001, Hodder and Stoughton, London Letters To The Roosevelts, various authors, date and publisher unknown An Editor Loses His Job In The Great Depression, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, Studs Terkel, 1978, Pantheon Books. Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? , Jay Gorney, 1932, Warner Bros. Music The Great Depression, Mc Elvaine R., 1984, Times Books, New York
During the 1920’s, America was a prosperous nation going through the “Big Boom” and loving every second of it. However, this fortune didn’t last long, because with the 1930’s came a period of serious economic recession, a period called the Great Depression. By 1933, a quarter of the nation’s workers (about 40 million) were without jobs. The weekly income rate dropped from $24.76 per week in 1929 to $16.65 per week in 1933 (McElvaine, 8). After President Hoover failed to rectify the recession situation, Franklin D. Roosevelt began his term with the hopeful New Deal. In two installments, Roosevelt hoped to relieve short term suffering with the first, and redistribution of money amongst the poor with the second. Throughout these years of the depression, many Americans spoke their minds through pen and paper. Many criticized Hoover’s policies of the early Depression and praised the Roosevelts’ efforts. Each opinion about the causes and solutions of the Great Depression are based upon economic, racial and social standing in America.
As a society, we often judge people solely by what is said of them or by them; but not by what they did. We forget to take into account the legacy that one leaves behind when they sometimes fail at completing the current task. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the charismatic man who stood at the helm of American government during the most trying decade in our brief history, the 1930s, set out to help the “common man” through various programs. Many historians, forgetting the legacy of the “alphabet soup” of agencies that FDR left behind, claim that he did not fix the Great Depression and therefore failed in his goal. What this essay desires to argue is that those historians are completely right. Through his many programs designed to help the economy, laborers, and all people lacking civil rights, President Roosevelt did not put an end to the Great Depression; however he did adapt the federal government to a newly realized role of protector for the people.
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".
The Great Depression was a period, which seemed to go out of control. The crashing of the stock markets left most Canadians unemployed and in debt, prairie farmers suffered immensely with the inability to produce valuable crops, and the Canadian Government and World War II became influential factors in the ending of the Great Depression.
President Herbert Hoover took office shortly before the Great Depression began, in a time in which the country was doing well. Once the Depression struck, however, the country needed help desperately. In attempt to pull the country out of the Depression, Hoover followed his beliefs in trickle-down economics and passed laws that followed this philosophy, laws the gave money to large corporations, in hopes that they would be able to hire more workers, who would get paid and who would go out and buy products, which would increase the demand for products, which would increase revenues of businesses, which could start the entire circle all over again. In theory, Hoover’s plan would have worked, however, the country was in such trouble that nothing much at that time would help it. The Depression first had to run its course for a while, before anything could be done. During the Depression, it took time for people, especially presidents of large corporations, to humble themselves to a point where they would accept aid from the government. Often, they remained the greedy people they were and didn’t use the government’s funds for ...
The years berween 1929 and 1933 were trying years for people throughout the world. Inflation was often so high money became nearly worthless. America had lost the prosperity it had known during the 1920's. America was caught in a trap of a complete meltdown of economy, workers had no jobs simply because it cost too much to ship the abundance of goods being produced. This cycle was unbreakable, and produced what is nearly universally recognized as the greatest economic collapse of all times. These would be trying years for all, but not every American faced the same challenges and hardships. (Sliding 3)
The United States experienced a severe economic depression during the 1930’s called the Great Depression. 13 million Americans lost their jobs, over 300,000 companies were out of business, and millions of families were living on the streets and going hungry. Sounds horrendous right? Well, this was the harsh reality for millions of Americans affected by the Great Depression. It was the most extensive, devastating economic downturn America has ever encountered.
The Era of the Great Depression was one of both desperation and hope. Americans were desperate for a change, desperate for anything to come along that may improve their situation, yet hopeful that the light at the end of the tunnel was near. For many of those living in poverty during the 1930s, the “radical” leftist movements seen throughout the country appeared to be alternatives to the sometimes ineffective programs of FDR’s New Deal. Two such programs, Huey Long’s “Share Our Wealth” plan and Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty in California (EPIC) were fairly popular, mainly for their appealing alternatives to the current New Deal programs and ideals. Though the two movements were similar in some sense, both had different visions for the recovery of the American people.