Great Depression Dbq

The great depression lasted from 1929-1939. In 1929 the stock market had crashed and the continuous drop of economics had further ensured the beginning of the depression.Over the next several years 4 million americans couldn’t find jobs in 1930 and by 1931 it had rose to 6 million while the country’s industrial production had dropped by half.If you were the lucky few who kept their jobs wages would be decreased immensely.With the lack of jobs, Soup kitchens, breadlines, and homeless people became more common.Farmers couldn’t even afford to harvest their crops so they left them rotting out in the field, and someone else starving. Many banks were failing, and despite the Hoover administration’s attempts many banks had to close or fire even more workers. (History.com staff, 2009, Great Depression).

Everything was expensive, and with low wages it wasn’t going to get easier. By 1933 the unemployment rate had increased to an

outstanding 15 million, roughly ⅓ of the non-farmer workforce. The gross national product had also decreased from $103.8 billion to $55.7 billion. Most people sunk into despair after not being able to find a job, and suicide rates had increased from 14 to 17 per 100,000. There was also protesting, a good majority of protest were violent. In 1932, four members of the Dearborn hunger march were shot and killed when 1,000 soldiers accompanied by tanks and machine guns evicted veterans living in the Bonus Army camp in Washington D.C. (Charles Scribners & Sons, 2007, The Great Depression).
The recovery began in 1933,GDP grew 9% per year between 1933-1937 but output had fallen in the early years of the 1930s that it remained substantially below its long-run trend path throughout this period.

In 1937-1938 the United States suffered another severe downturn, taking a step back from production, but after the mid 1938 American economy grew even more rapidly than in the 1930s. The output of America finally returned to its normal trend path in 1942. (Richard H. Pells and Christina D. Romer, 2018, Great Depression) Though the economy began improving again in 1938, this second severe contraction reversed many of the gains in production and employment and prolonged the effects of the Great Depression through the end of the depression. The Depression hardships had fueled the rise of extreme political movements in various European countries. German aggression led war to break out in Europe in 1939, and the WPA turned its attention to strengthening the military infrastructure of the United States, even as the country maintained its

neutrality.
In this essay we spoke about how ‘The Great Depression’ was one of the worst times in american history.The Great Depression lasted for around a decade.It was the biggest recorded financial crisis in American history, and some things today are still even effected. It caused people to go homeless,lose jobs,get lower wages,and a good amount of the American population did die. But with the help of other countries we were able to get out of it but our recovery was the beginning of World War II.