The Great Depression And Its Effects - 1011 Words

The Great Depression was a ten year, economic downward spiral in the U.S that spanned from 1929- 1939. The cause of the Great Depression was the fault of several contributing factors. First was the stock market crash that occurred on black Tuesday of October 1929. This was the major cause because stock holders lost more than 40 billion dollars, and although it regained some of its losses, by end of 1930 truly entered the Great depression. Stock prices reached a permanent plateau. 2 out of every 5 dollars a bank loaned were used to purchase stocks. The market peaked September 3 with production still down banks began to fail and fewer homes were built. Next were bank failures. Throughout the 1930’s over 9,000 banks failed. Bank deposits†¦show more content†¦Since the crash hoover worked tirelessly trying to fix the economy. He founded government agencies like, encouraged harmony among the labor force and local aid for public work, fostered corporation between government and business to stabilize prices, and found it difficult to balance the national budget. As the depr ession worsened the call grew for increased federal intervention and spending. He refused to involve federal government and enforced fixed prices, controlled businesses, of manipulated the value of the currency. All of these he felt were steps toward socialism. He also gave indirect aid to banks and local public work projects but refused to use federal money for direct aid to citizens, instead in used voluntarism to raise money. His opponents thought of him as being uncaring toward the everyday man. Although he was a philanthropist before his presidency during his reelection campaign he tried to convince Americans that the measures they were calling for might seem to help them short term but would be detrimental in the long run. He backed his ideals by announcing that he cared for America too much to destroy the countries foundation with deficit and socialist institutions. In the end he was indisputably defeated by Roosevelt in 1932. President Franklin D. Roosevelt took over as head of the oval office in 1933 and quickly began trying to both stabilize the economy and providing jobs and other forms of