Great Depression Effects

The Great Depression was a period from the late 1920s until the late 1930s. Some the terms that come to mind when one says “depression” are economics, money, work, and recession. The effects of economics were an intense dispute within the American society at the time. Money was the central machine that made America function, which is still a key concept of today’s society. Moreover, the progression here means the transition within the severe effects during the Great Depression. This period served a mass of negative effects on the people, but it also caused people to shift their views on others, which in the end proves advantageous for History. Life for Americans during the Great Depression was difficult, because most people lost their sources

Like in the past, money serves as a daily necessity and always will. According to the text, “Beyond the Breas Lines” for a depression to be called a depression, the period “needs to be more than a few years long, and needs to put a lot of people out of work” (Pg. 48). This shows that a depression can occur during any period in front peoples’ eyes, simply by meeting these two criteria. Moreover, some examples that show the loss of income occur in the recalled events in Terkel’s Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, when he mentions the oral history report with Peggy Terry and mother, Mary Owsley and says, “there were thousands of people out of work in Oklahoma City” and continues to say “many, many, many people, colored and white, I didn’t see a difference” (45). This depiction of income loss is interesting, because one might go as far as to say that during this period, although there were major negative implications that accompanied income like hunger and poverty, the people were forced to interact with one another regardless of race. Also, another piece of evidence that supports the issue of income and what it caused is derived from the text “The Plague of Plenty” when Oscar Ameringer mentions seeing woman search for scraps of food. This was the extent people were willing to go to survive the inevitable

For example, young men were forced to travel out of their hometowns to seek wages, but also engaged in risky situations like traveling in a speeding train or in near death experiences. An oral history in Terkel’s Hard Times, with Ed Paulson a man that was a teen during the Great Depression recounts his experience of risky situations during the economic depression. According to the text, this man engaged in dangerous attempts to travel for income and escape from harm’s way, when Paul mentions being discovered along with his brother as unwanted passengers in a boxcar by a railroad dick, when suddenly, the railroad dick starts to shoot, hitting other parts of the train, cars included, demanding the two boys to get off (Pg. 33). The urgent need to work nearly cost the boys their lives. Following these events, there appeared to be a hopeless solution to the great depression when Paul says, “There’d be this kind of futile struggle, because somehow you never expected to win” (Page. 31). Americans were in another war, cycling through the impending deprivation of money and humanity. The Great Depression intensified the difficulties of many Americans. One can only imagine and read about the desperate urge to escape a life that only gave sorrow and the idea of hopeless