The Great Depression Begins

1
Chapter 14

• The Great Depression Begins

2
Preceding Problems

• Decline in new building
• Large amounts of consumer debt
• Widening gap between rich and poor

3
The Nations Sick Economy

• Farmers increased debt in the 1920s and demand
  for goods fell
• Factory and mine owners pay cuts for workers
  strikes and picketed
• Debts for Americans mounted especially as incomes
  fell

4
Stock Market

• Stock buying on margin borrow part of the
  purchase price hope stock increases in value
• Black Tuesday October 29, 1929 market crashes
  as stock prices fall and people try to sell
• Hoover president
• Wall Street nations financial center

5
Financial Collapse

• Banks and businesses fail
• Millions of Americans lose their jobs
• Consumers lacked sufficient buying power to
  purchase goods

6
Hardship and Suffering During the Depression

• People living in shacks shanty towns
• People standing in bread lines charitable
  institutions began to support soup kitchens and
  bread lines
• Dust Bowl Great Plains most directly affected
  farmers
• Starvation, poor health, psychological depression

7
Hoover and the Depression

• Early in his presidency Hoover had been concerned
  with prohibition and prosperity
• Took a cautious approach no existing example to
  follow
• Government 1st to propose price supports for
  farmers
• Federal Home Loan Bank Act prevent farmers and
  homeowners from losing their property

8
Bonus Army

• World War I veterans and their families
• Came to D.C. to ask for war benefits
• Hoover denied and called out Army to remove them

9
On the Bright Side

• Empire State Building built
• Became a symbol of the countrys hope

10
1932 Presidential Election

• Republican Herbert Hoover
• Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt