What caused the Great Depression?

1. What caused the Great Depression? Unbalanced foreign trade overextended personal debt-easy credit uneven distribution of income Who was affected? Nearly Everyone

2. Hoover’s Plan For The Great Depression Or “How to alienate almost everyone, while accomplishing nothing and watching the country crumble.”

4. The Great Depression

5. 1. American policies and tariffs cut down the foreign market for U.S. goods. 2. Overproduction by farms. Annual Farm Income 1919= $10 Billion 1921= $4 Billion 3. Overuse of Credit- people were in debt. They buy less goods 4. Unequal Distribution of Wealth. 70% of the nation made less than $2500 a year. ½ of homes had electricity. Couldn’t afford consumer goods. While the income of wealthiest 1% increased by 25%. Causes of the Great Depression WHY, Why, Why?

6. What was Black Tuesday? • On October 29th 1929, the stock market crashed. • Investors hurried to sell stocks before they were worthless. • $30 billion dollars in stock became worthless overnight. • 16.4 million shares of stocks were sold that day. Others could not be sold and became worthless.

8. Americans panicked took money out of banks. Banks lost money and couldn’t pay customers By 1933 11,000 of 25,000 banks n the U.S. had failed. 9 million savings accounts disappeared. 90,000 businesses closed. 25% of workers were out of work by 1933. Those with jobs had pay cuts. The Effects of the Stock Market Crash

13. What Hoover Did: • Reassured people that the American economy was o.k. • Called people who doubted him foolish and told them to be “optimistic”. • Believed he needed to limit the government from taking too much power. • Thought people needed to succeed through their own efforts

14. What Hoover Did: • Opposed any direct aid or welfare because it would “weaken people’s self respect and undermine the nation’s moral fiber.” People should take care of themselves. • Urged businesses not to cut wages or lay off workers. • Asked workers not to ask for higher wages or go on strike. • Asked private charities to raise money for the poor.

18. More Results • Shanty towns • Soup kitchens/Breadlines • Run by ? • Increase in Racism • 400,000 farms lost to foreclosure

25. The People Get MAD! • Farmers burned their crops and dumped milk (while others were starving). Why? • Other farmers refused to work in the fields. Why? • Raised prices (but not enough to help)

27. And.. madder! • Shantytowns = Hoovervilles • Empty pockets = Hoover Flags • Newspapers = Hoover Blankets • People see Hoover as cold and heartless.

28. The Final Straw • The Bonus Army • The whole story, make sure you read this in the book.

36. What is happening here? • What do you see? • How would you title this photo?

37. What is happening here? • What do you see? • How would you title this photo?

38. What is happening here? What do you see? How would you title this photo?

40. What is happening here? What do you see? How would you title this photo?

42. Arkansas Squatter's Shack in California during the Great Depression

43. Fear, Anxiety, unknowing…what is he thinking? How does he feel?

44. And him?

46. What is happening here? • What do you see? • How would you title this photo?

47. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960). • Dorothea Lange (American) 1895- 1965) Migrant Mother, 1936, Photograph Dorothea Lange (American) 1895- 1965) Migrant Mother, 1936, Photograph

48. Hawley-Smoot Act (Smoot-Hawley) • an act signed into law on June 17, 1930, that raised U.S.tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels. Many countries retaliated with their own increased tariffs on U.S. goods, and American exports and imports plunged by more than half

50. What caused the Great Depression? Unbalanced foreign trade overextended personal debt-easy credit uneven distribution of income Who was affected? Nearly Everyone