Zaid Mehmood Professor Brucher Paper 2, Draft 2 4 April 2024 A Time of Economic Disparity The Great Depression resulted in sharp economic downfall culminating in families across the country experiencing financial hardships. Farmers faced challenges with the agricultural economy declining, leading to falling crop prices, which ultimately led to many losing their farms, because they were unable to pay their mortgage and debt. Detroit took a severe downturn as the automobile industry collapsed, and thousands of employees lost their jobs. This included immigrants, most notably Mexicans, who faced heightened discrimination and were coerced to return back to Mexico. With growing unrest amongst the working-class, Americans collectively came together …show more content…
Amongst the working-class, the Great Depression had a notable effect on farmers, Ford factory workers, and Mexican immigrants, who experienced food scarcity, unemployment, reduced profits, and housing losses; as the government did not provide relief, the working-class became involved in politics, pressuring the government, which ultimately led to the enactment of the New Deal. The Great Depression caused a sharp decline in the agricultural economy which had profound effects and challenges on farmers. Whole families, including young children, had to work in the fields to survive, pulling three-hundred pounds of hand picked cotton across their shoulders. However, the picked cotton and even corn and wheat had very few buyers due to the decline in demand for agricultural products. In the 1930s, an overproduction crisis caused crop prices to plummet. Wheat prices fell by fifty percent and cotton prices by two-thirds. However, even with this due to decreased demand: “Low prices did not even repay the cost of raising crops, let alone the interest farmers owed on borrowed money” (Rockefeller …show more content…
With the combination of declining crop and land prices, farmers were unable to acquire financial assistance. The entire farm economy approached collapse—farms rapidly were being foreclosed on due to their owners being unable to meet their mortgage and loan payments. Thousands of families abandoned and lost their farms. As the Depression progressed, the demand for cars fell, resulting in wage reductions and mass layoffs of Ford Factory workers, leading to families experiencing financial challenges and an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness clouding Detroit. This economic downturn caused a third of the Ford dealers across the nation to shut down, as people could hardly afford to buy parts for their old cars, let alone buy new ones. As a consequence of decreased profits, Henry Ford was forced to reduce the minimum wage to four dollars and cut employees’ hours. Eventually Ford Motor Company stopped producing cars altogether in August 1931, leading to mass unemployment. This exacerbated the already dire situation in Detroit: “Now a depression within a depression shook Detroit as sixty thousand laid off Ford workers joined a hundred thousand unemployed already on the streets” (Else
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).
Weize Tan History 7B 3/09/14. Chapter 23 1. What is the difference between a. and a. What were some of the causes of the Great Depression? What made it so severe, and why did it last so long? a.
The Great Depression, beginning in the last few months of 1929, impacted the vast majority of people nationwide and worldwide. With millions of Americans unemployed and many in danger of losing their homes, they could no longer support their families. Children, if they were lucky, wore torn up ragged clothing to school and those who were not lucky remained without clothes. The food supply was scarce, and bread was the most that families could afford. Households would receive very limited rations of food, or small amounts of money to buy food.
Along with the job crisis and food shortages that affected all U.S. workers, Mexicans and Mexican Americans had to face an additional threat: deportation. As unemployment swept the U.S., hostility to immigrant workers grew, and the government began a program of repatriating immigrants to Mexico. Immigrants were offered free train rides to Mexico, and some went voluntarily, but many were either tricked or coerced into repatriation, and some U.S. citizens were deported simply on suspicion of being Mexican. The Great Depression was the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world. In the United States, the Great Depression began soon after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and rising levels of unemployment as failing companies laid off workers. The Great Depression had devastating effects in countries both rich and poor. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 25% and in some countries rose as high as 33%. By 1933, when the Great Depression reached its nadir, some 13 to 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half of the country’s banks
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.
Sharecroppers and farm workers always lived in the midst of strife; they were never able to make a decent living. The boll weevil, soil erosion, and foreign competition had destroyed the cotton crop in the early Twenties. Life was difficult. No profits were being made, and although many southern blacks believed that life in the north was better, it was not much different. Black Americans working in the northern industries were living in poverty even before the stock market crash because they had been laid off; they were often replaced with white workers. When the Depression occurred, "more black workers than white lost their jobs. In 1931, about one out of every three Blacks was jobless, and one out of four whites" (Meltzer 210).
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 Great Depression and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath Though most Americans are aware of the Great Depression of 1929, which may well be "the most serious problem facing our free enterprise economic system", few know of the many Americans who lost their homes, life savings and jobs. This paper briefly states the causes of the depression and summarizes the vast problems Americans faced during the eleven years of its span. This paper primarily focuses on what life was like for farmers during the time of the Depression, as portrayed in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, and tells what the government did to end the Depression. In the 1920's, after World War 1, danger signals were apparent that a great Depression was coming.
Farmers were greatly affected by The Great Depression. In the early 1930’s prices dropped so low that many farmers went bankrupt and lost their farms (“The Great Depression hits farms and cities in the 1930’s”). The stock market crash prevented the farmers from being able to sell their produce (McCabe). Through the depression farmers were still producing more food than consumers were buy, and now the consumers could buy even less. Farm produce prices fell even lower (“The Depression for Farmers”). Some farm families started burning corn rather than coal in their stoves because the corn was cheaper (“The Great Depression hits farms and cities in the 1930s”). Non-farmers had also been hit hard by the depression. With the banks failing and businesses closing, over fifteen million people became unemployed (“The Great Depression”). The unemployment rate skyrocketed from three percent to nearly twenty five percent (McCabe). The Great Depression brought a rapid rise in the crime rate as many unemployed workers restored to petty theft to put food on the table. Suicide rates rose greatly as did recorded cases of malnutrition (“Social and Cultural Effects of the Depression”). More and more people were found standing in bread lines, hungry and homeless (McCabe). The depression affected people and businesses but many programs later America pulled out of their
The Great Depression was felt worldwide, some countries more than others. During this time many Americans had to live in poor conditions. In the United states, 25 percent of the workers and 37 percent of all nonfarm workers lost their job(Smiley 1). Unemployment rates had increased to a 24.9 percent during 1933(Shmoop 1). Unable to pay mortgages, many families lost their homes. The cause of this was the Stock Market crash in 1929. Many investors of the stock market panicked and sold all their stocks. The results of this include frightened Americans withdrawing all their saving causing and hoarding it in their homes many banks to shut down and less money to circulate in the economy. Although the economy had taken a dramatic blow, there was hope. A new program was administered by the government to help people suffering from the depression. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) program helped improve lives of Americans affected by the Great Depression.
On October 28, 1929, the stock market crashed. This was the beginning of the worst economic disaster in the United States, the Great Depression. During the start of the Great Depression, the President was Herbert Hoover. Due to his negligence in office many problems occurred such as unemployment, small bank failures and failure to regulate the economy. In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president.
The Great Depression struck the United States in 1929, and devastated the country for 12 years (Potter). Filled with hardships and poverties, these 12 years seemed like a lifetime to most people, especially to the lower and middle class. American society during the 1930s was split into three main classes: Lower class, Middle class, and the Upper class. While the majority of the upper class continued to live lavishly, the lower class, consisting of mainly struggling laborers and almost all African Americans, definitely suffered the most. The Middle class was also heading down a dangerous path. Not being able to maintain their small fortunes, most were forced to lower levels of society. The effects of the Great Depression in the 1930s on the social classes in the south caused many people to move to the lower class.
Following a period of relative prosperity in the 1920s with the trends of conspicuous consumerism or the act of making big purchases in an effort to flaunt wealth and buying on credit and margin, the so-called “Roaring Twenties”’s economy took a hard hit with the Great Depression. The Great Depression, which was in part caused by the Stock Market Crash of 1929, was the first actual economic depression, past just an economic panic, that the United States faced. During the depression, unemployment rates rose to twenty-five percent, the cost of field and crop supplies rose so exorbitantly that farmers could no longer afford the upkeep of a farm, the cost of agricultural products greatly fell, and thousands of banks failed. Due to the stock market crash, many banks lost big portions of their
The Great Depression, starting with the infamous stock market crash of 1929, represents the most severe economic downturn in the history of the United States, lasting through the 1930s. It was marked by massive financial collapses, mass unemployment, and widespread poverty. In response to this unprecedented crisis, President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced the New Deal, a series of programs and policies aimed at providing relief, promoting economic recovery, and implementing reforms in order to prevent future depressions. Understanding the Great Depression and the New Deal is crucial for understanding the dynamics of economic policy and government intervention, and their profound long-term impacts on American society. The Great Depression
The Great Depression of the 1930s is a period of time that was highly influenced by social memory, in that the social status you had, your gender, occupation, etc meant that you experienced the Depression differently from the next person, your account was influenced by your social groups/status. It is generally acknowledged that the Great Depression was a period of immense suffering for most. Hence the name given to the period. However, for some, the Great Depression is seen as a time in history where many prospered, and some even see a boom in the economy. The three accounts "Age of Extremes ch3", "The Dawn of Affluence, Reading 13" and "Coping: Middle- and Upper-Class Women. Reading 14" all illustrate different points of view on the Great Depression.