Title: The Great Depression
1The Great Depression
2I. The Coming of the Great Depression
- The Great Crash
- Between May 1928 and September of 1929 the
average price of stocks increased over 40 percent -
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- October 21 and October 23 alarming declines in
stock prices -
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3The Great Crash Continued
- October 29, 1929 Black Tuesday
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- In the months that followed, the market would
continue to decline
4Causes of the Depression
- Most historically attributes of the Great
Depression is that it was so severe and lasted so
long question then remains, why was it such a
bad one? - Lack of diversification in the American economy
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5Causes of the Depression Continued
- Maldistribution of purchasing power and the
weakness in consumer demand - as industrial and agricultural production
increased, the proportion of profits going to
farmers, workers and other potential consumers
was too small to create and adequate market for
the goods the economy was producing this lead to
demand not being able to keep up with supply aka
a surplus! -
- During the 1920s, as long as corporations had
continued to expand their capital facilities, the
economy had flourished
6Causes of the Depression Continued
- Poor Credit Structure of the Economy
- farmers deeply in debt
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- small banks in trouble
- big banks in trouble, too
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7Causes of the Depression Continued
- Decrease in International Trade
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- International debt structure
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8Thus Black Tuesday was not the cause of the
Great Depression, but
9The Progress of the Great Depression
- Crisis would steadily worsen over the next three
years - Collapse of much of banking system would follow
the stock market crash -
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- Role of the Federal Reserve if they acted more
responsibly, a severe depression might have been
avoided -
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10II. The American People in Hard Times
- Unemployment and Relief
- Midwest and Northeast rocked with unemployment
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- Most Americans had been trained to believe that
every individual was responsible for his or her
own fate -
- men wandered the streets
11Unemployment and Relief Continued
- Limited govt and private assistance most govt
officials felt that any welfare system would
undermine the moral fiber of the country - Strange city scenery
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- Farm income down 60 between 1929 1932
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12African Americans and the Depression
- 1930 Atlanta Black Shirts organization adopts the
slogan No Jobs for Ns Until Every White
Man Has a Job! -
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- Traditional patters of Segregation and
disfranchisement survived the Depression largely
unchallenged - NAACP began to work diligently to win a position
for blacks within the emerging labor movement -
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13Mexican Americans in Depression America
- 1930s there were approximately 2 million Latinos
in the United States - similar to blacks in that whites soon demanded
menial jobs previously held by Latinos -
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14Asian Americans in Hard Times
- even in California, where the largest Japanese /
Chinese American populations resided even well
educated Asians had trouble moving into
mainstream professions -
- like Blacks and Hispanics
- Influx of whites from the Great Plains meant
general bad news for all minorities in California -
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15Women and the Workplace in the Great Depression
- Depression served to strengthen the widespread
belief that a womans place was in the home -
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16Women and the Workplace in the Great Depression
Cont
- ½ of all black working women lost their jobs in
the 1930s - But, at the end of the 1930s 38 of all black
women were employed compared with 24 of all
white women -
17Depression Families
- middle class families accustomed to steady growth
during the 1920s saw that replaced with
unemployment and uncertainty - consumer patterns developed during the 1920s
retreated -
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- Average household population grows
- although divorce rate decreased (because of
cost)- -
18III. The Depression and American Culture
- Depression Values
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- BUT in the end, the Depression did very little to
erode the success ethic -
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19Artists and Intellectuals in the Great Depression
- focus of a collective social response to social
circumstances - Photographers hired by Federal Farm Security
Administration to take documentary photos -
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- Writers and playwrights attempted to capture
social injustice taking place -
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20Radio
- Most popular forms of mass entertainment were
those that served as a distraction to the harsh
reality taking place -
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- Soap Operas (sponsored by soap)
21Radio Continued
- Radio programs broadcast live before audiences
in theatres and studios - Some of the most dramatic moments of the 1930s
were a result of radio coverage of celebrated
events -
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- Encouraged families and individuals to center
their lives around the more around the home than
they had in the past
22The Movies
- one would think individuals would forgo spending
money on movie tickets in the middle of a
Depression, but by the mid 1930s Americans were
still watching movies in large numbers - Movies getting better
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23The Popular Front and Left
- Popular Front coalition of antifascist groups
the most important of which was The American
Communist Party - claimed that the government was controlled by
business interests - Communism is twentieth-century Americanism
- helped mobilize writers, artists and
intellectuals behind a pattern of social
criticism (great majority of writers had no
connection to Communist party) - The Lincoln Brigade, consisting of 3,000
volunteer soldiers goes to Spain to fight against
Franco (Ernest Hemmingway, For Whom the Bell
Tolls) - Social Issues
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24The Popular Front and Left
- ACP was not the open, patriotic organization it
tried to appear as took its orders from
Comintern in Russia - New Deal would embrace policies that would
challenge capitalist norms -
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25IV. The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover
- The Hoover Program
- When crisis first hit, Hoovers response was to
attempt to restore confidence in the economy - But mid 1931 economic conditions had deteriorated
so much that the structure of voluntary
cooperation had collapsed and Hoover could not
stop them -
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26The Hoover Program Continued
- Hoover made weak attempts to use government
spending as a tool for fighting the Depression -
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- Before the crash, Hoover had begun to construct a
program to assist the troubled agricultural
economy. - 1929 Agricultural Marketing Act first time a
govt bureaucracy would be established to help
farmers maintain prices - Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930
- Neither helped farmers sufficiently
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27A Deepening Crisis
- 1930 Democrats win control of the House
- Many Americans feel the President is personally
responsible for crisis - Shantytowns
- May 1931 largest bank in Austria collapses and
panic spreads throughout Europe and into the US
when -
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- Hoover comes up with a sound proposal to allow
countries having to pay reparations one year
moratorium on payments
28A Deepening Crisis Continued
- January 1932 Reconstruction Finance Corporation
(RFC) - government agency whose purpose was to provide
federal loans to troubled banks, railroads, and
other businesses - made funds available to local governments to
support public works projects and assist in
relief efforts -
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29Popular Protest
- During the early years of the Depression, most
Americans were too stunned or too confused to
raise many effective protests but by mid 1932,
radical and dissident voices were becoming loud
and pervasive - Farmers unrest
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30Popular Protest Continued
- Most celebrated protest came from American
Veterans -
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- Clearing the Bonus Marchers
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- Hoover now confirmed as aloof and out of touch
with American public
31The Election of 1932
- Republicans dutifully renominate Hoover to head
of Republican Party -
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- Democrats nominate the governor of New York,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt - Winning the election
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- Differences in candidates
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- Roosevelt wins in a Landslide receives 57 of
the popular vote and won every state but five - Democrats also take control
32The Interregnum
- In February, just a month before the
inauguration a new crisis developed when the
American banking system began to collapse -
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- Harding continued to try to extract a promise
from Hoover to maintain current budget system - March 4, 1933 the Day Roosevelt took office
Hoover was convinced the country was heading to
ruin, Roosevelt was beaming and buoyant