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THE GREAT DEPRESSION

THE GREAT DEPRESSION. A24 7.3.12. THE GREAT CRASH. GUIDING QUESTION. What caused the Great Depression? the federal government during the 1920s?. STOCK MARKET CRASH. Stock Market Prices, 1921–1932. May 1928-September 1929, prices doubled in value beginning in Sept 1929, gradual slide

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THE GREAT DEPRESSION

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  1. THEGREAT DEPRESSION A24 7.3.12

  2. THE GREAT CRASH

  3. GUIDING QUESTION What caused the Great Depression? the federal government during the 1920s?

  4. STOCK MARKET CRASH Stock Market Prices, 1921–1932 • May 1928-September 1929, prices doubled in value • beginning in Sept 1929, gradual slide • Black Thursday(Oct.24) • largest sell-off in NYSE history • Black Tuesday(Oct.29) • $40 billion in stock value lost by Dec. • The Great Depression • Response of bankers, Hoover and business leaders Black Tuesday Wall Street, Oct. 29, 1929

  5. Overproduction - Massive business inventories (up 300% from 1928 to 1929) Lack of diversification in American economy prosperity of 1920s largely a result of construction & auto industries Uneven distribution of income and wealth - Poor distribution of purchasing power among consumers Farm income down 66% in 20s By 1929 the top 10% of the nation's population received 40% of the nation's disposable income UNDERLYINGCAUSESOF THEDEPRESSION

  6. Weakness of Banking Industry bank failures in late 1920s (farmers) many had small reserves low margins encouraged speculative investment by banks, corporations, and individual investors total money supply closing of over 9,000 American banks between 1930 and 1933 Federal Reserve system Consumer Debt– middle class installment loans; buying on margin Overspeculation in Stock Market– by wealthy and upper middle class UNDERLYINGCAUSESOF THEDEPRESSION Consumer Debt, 1920–1931

  7. UNDERLYINGCAUSESOF THEDEPRESSION • Decline in demand for American goods in international trade • European industry and agriculture gradually recovered from World War I • Germany so beset by financial crises/ inflation that could not afford to purchase US goods • High American protective tariffs • international debt structure

  8. IMPACT ON SOCIETY

  9. GUIDING QUESTION How did the Great Depression alter the American social fabric in the 1930s?

  10. Corporate profits - from $10 billion to $1 billon Business failures: 100,000 between 1929 and 1933 GNP – $104 billion in 1929 to $56 billion in 1933 Total national income – fell by over 50% Effects on Business & Industry

  11. Effects on Business & Industry • Bank failures • about 20% all banks (over 6000) between 1929 and 1933) • over 9 million savings accounts lost($2.5 billion) Depositors gathering outside a bank,April 1933 Bank Failures, 1929-1933 1932

  12. Great Crash World Payments Investors Businesses and Workers Overall U.S. production plummets. Investors lose millions. Banks Businesses and workers cannot repay bank loans. Consumer spending drops. U.S. investors have little or no money to invest. Allies cannot pay debts to United States. Businesses lose profits. Businesses cut investment and production Some fail. Savings accounts are wiped out. Banks run out of money and fail. Workers are laid off. Europeans cannot afford American goods. U.S. investments in Germany decline. Bank runs occur. German war payments to Allies fall off. Effects of the Crash

  13. Effect on workers and families • Unemployment ~25% in 1932? • underemployment • patterns of reemployment and layoffs • hobos • “Depression mentality” Men Lined Up at the New York City Employment Bureau, 1932

  14. Effect on workers and families • Malnutrition • Disease: tuberculosis, typhoid and dysentery. • City & state relief systems in industrial Northeast and Midwest collapse • soup kitchens and bread lines Soup kitchen, Chicago, 1930 Soup kitchen, 1931 (Cleveland)

  15. Dorothea Lange“White Angel Breadline“San Francisco1933

  16. Women Working - 25% more New Deal – lower pay Women’s Rights Movement - lowest point in a century Families Housing Stress - divorce Health– disease, suicide Migrants - from South and Midwest to West Effect on workers and families Mother and two children living in an abandoned car in Tennessee, 1936 Women in Workplace 1900-1940

  17. Effects on Farmers • “Dust Bowl” • “Okies” • Grapes of Wrath Resettlement Adminstration Dust Bowl Dust storm, Springfield, CO, 1935

  18. Dust storm, Elkhart, KS, 1937

  19. The Dust Bowl Aftermath of dust storms, South Dakota, 1936 Abandoned house, Kansas, April 1941 Dust Bowl Farm, Texas, 1938

  20. Migrants A Destitute Family in the Ozark Mountains. 1935 “Okies” migrate west in 1939 Dorthea Lange, “Covered Wagon Again” 1935

  21. Migrants in California "Cheap Auto Camp Housing for Citrus Workers“; Dorothea Lange, Tulare County, California, Feb. 1940 Migrant Auto Camp, California, 1936

  22. “Migrant Mother”Dorothea Lange 1936

  23. Effects on African Americans • High Unemployment – up to 50%: Last hired, first fired • Competition for jobs • Exclusion from relief programs • Help from the New Deal? • labor unions • Scottsboro Case African American family during Great Depression in Scott’s Run, Virginia Evicted Sharecroppers along U.S. 60 in Missouri, 1939

  24. Effects on American Culture • Reactions of most Americans • Effects on basic values (capitalism, democracy, individualism) • Alternatives: socialism, communism? • Whom to blame? • Popular Culture and Escapism • Frank Capra • Walt Disney • Gone With the Wind

  25. HOOVER’S RESPONSE

  26. Federal Response Under Hoover • Herbert Hoover(1929-1933) • Philosophy: limited government, individualism • Initial response? • public works programs • Hawley-Smoot Tariff (1930) • Debt moratorium • InternationalBanking Crisis (1931)- gold standard • Reconstruction Finance Corporation (1932) "Boulder Dam, 1942“, Ansel Adams

  27. Evaluation of Hoover’s Response • Contemporary popular opinion • “Hoovervilles”

  28. “Hoover's Farm Relief”

  29. Contemporary Political Cartoon

  30. Response to Hoover’s Response • Farmers • “Farmers Holiday Association” • “Bonus Expeditionary Force” Bonus Army camp, 1932 "Bonus Marchers" and police battle in Washington, DC, July 1932

  31. Evaluation of Hoover’s Response • Modern Evaluations: • reluctance to spend large amounts of federal funds, expand the role of the federal government. • willing to intervene in the economy to an unprecedented degree.

  32. Bonus Army Bonus Army camp in the Anacostia flats U.S. Army soldiers guarding Bonus Army camp Douglas McArthur directing removal of Bonus Army marchers

  33. 1932 ELECTION Misery Sweeps Roosevelt into Office

  34. 1932 ELECTION • Franklin D. Roosevelt • philosophy • “New Deal” Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1920 Vice Presidential nominee for Democratic Party Roosevelt Campaigning for Office in Kansas 1932

  35. 1932 ELECTION • Hoover • “The Worst is Past" • "Prosperity is Just Around the Corner" • Results Electoral Shift, 1928 and 1932

  36. 1932 ELECTION • Lame-Duck Period (Nov. 1932-March 3, 1933) • banking industry collapse. • Twentieth Amendment Bank Failures, 1929-1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover on the way to FDR's inauguration, March 4, 1933 (Library of Congress)

  37. SOURCES • Brinkley, American History: A Survey (10th ed) • Wadsworth-Thompson http://www.wadsworth.com/history_d/special_features/image_bank_US/1929_1939.html • Library of Congress American Memory Project • Rutgers Univ. Teaching Politics Image Bank http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/.html • Divine America Past and Present Revised 7th Ed. • Faragher, Out of Many, 3rd Ed.; http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_faragher_outofmany_ap/ • Kennedy, American Pageant 13e

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