Great Depression: Presidents Hoover And Franklin D. Roosevelt

Imagine, if you will, America with no labor, no businesses, no banks, and no money; this was the Great Depression. It was the worst economic downfall in the history of the United States of America. It all started after the stock market crash of 1929 and went downhill after a couple major events like the bank failures, and the Dust Bowl. There were two Presidents during the Great Depression: President Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Each of these Presidents tried different policies to aid the Americans in the Great Depression.

The first major event that placed America in the Great Depression was the Stock Market Crash of 1929. In the 1920s, after the war, the stock market became one of the greatest investments for the future. As

people began to invest more and more money into stocks, the stock prices began to rise. The market became a means for becoming rich quick, and everyone was trying to purchase more and more stocks using margin. By the next year, 1929, the stock market continued to rise, but the economy was starting to falter. At some point, the market had to change direction, because it simply could not continue growing to meet people’s expectations. On October 24, 1929 the stock market stopped growing, and began decreasing. Investors began selling their stocks, and since no one was buying them prices declined rapidly and by the end of December 1929, the investors lost more than 30 billion dollars. Since many investors purchased stocks on credit, they now they had huge debts to pay, and no money with which to pay them. Therefore, the banks failed, and everyone lost all the money that were in their savings. Since everyone lost all their money, the big businesses also lost their wealth and began to fall, and when businesses fell, everyone that worked for the business lost jobs, and when workers lost their jobs nobody had any cash. Therefore, the bank failure was the second major factor that started the Great Depression.
Now, to make matters even worse than they already were, in the 1930s the Great Plains region of America experienced a major drought, this was called the Dust Bowl. Great, now not only have the people lost all their money, but now people in the middle of the United States have clouds of snow-like dust blowing everywhere. Now people could not grow crops because their over farmed land was getting blown away, the sky was dark and full of dust, and even the stuff inside their homes were covered in heaps of dust. As a result, people in the Great Plains had no chance of survival, so they packed their bags and went west to become farm laborers. These three horrible examples that led to the dreadful Great Depression.
President Herbert Hoover was the first of two Presidents to try and lead the United States through the Great Depression.

President Hoover became president in 1928 right as the economy began to collapse, and he leaned on the promise “to bring continued peace and prosperity to the nation” (history.com). Seven months after he was elected, BOOM, the stock market crash, everyone was losing jobs and money. Thus, President Hoover had to do something about it, he had to come up with a plan to help the people of America. President Hoover believed that the government should not interfere much because he thought if he left the economy alone, it would just magically bring itself back up. In addition, he also believed in a small government and that this huge economy downfall should be dealt with on a local level with the local people. How would the people be able to fix this problem with no jobs and no money? At this point, the only thing that President Hoover tried to do was cut taxes and increase public works spending, which gave people jobs and some money. One problem, it did not do help the economy much, business’ were still falling and civilians had nowhere to live so they would move to the Hoovervilles, which were little towns that were on the outside of the major cities. In the end, President Hoover’s policies were not effective. He planned to help the economy grow again by letting it sit there, which is unsuccessful. Hoover was then defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the

1932 Presidential election.
Roosevelt was the second president to lead the United States through the Great Depression.

Right as he came into office there were at least 13 million people without jobs and the banks were failing left and right. Therefore, during his presidency, Roosevelt created two plans to help the economy: the “First” New Deal and the “Second” New Deal. The First New Deal was formed in the first 100 days of Roosevelt’s presidency, and there were many programs intended to aid Americans in this crisis. Some of the programs are the Civilian Conservation Corps, which helped the environment and gave jobs to young men, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which was created to balance the supply and demand of crops so farmers could make money, and many other programs. The First New Deal did not ultimately cause America to escape out of the depression; it did help people by doing things like creating jobs. Therefore, President Roosevelt made the Second New deal, which is considered to be more effective than the first because he created his new policies for a long term reform. One of his new programs was the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which hired more than 8 million people to build parks, roads, and airports. Another policy was the Social Security act, which is an insurance program that provides money to the unemployed, elderly, and people with disabilities. In the end, both deals combined did not help America out of the Great Depression in the long run, but according to Michael

Burgan “the Great Depression showed that the government could- and should- ease the worst suffering of the poor and unemployed during the hard times.”