Economic+Concerns+of+the+1930s

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“The Great Depression” explains that the Great Depression started in 1929. This was caused by a rapid decline in the Stock Market. Many people lost large sums of money and some were completely wiped out. High unemployment and poverty followed this event. This was the longest and worsted depression in the US’s history. People depended on the government and charity for food and shelter. Hoover was president at the start of the great depression, but Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1932. He pushed though the New Deal Act, which provided government jobs and stimulated the economy. (No. Pag.) The Great depression mostly ===== lowered National moral by eliminating jobs. In 1929, the unemployment rate was about 3 percent, but in 1933, it had soared to over 25 percent. This was followed by high divorce rates and following birth rates. President Roosevelt set up work camps to help the economy and provide jobs for the unemployed. The New Deal Act eventually lead the US out of the depression, but the unemployment was still around 15 percent by 1940. The New Deal Act also was like a stimulus to put money back into the economy and get people to start spending again.



CONCERNS OF THE 1930’S
 * Third Hour Lexus and Evan**

In the United States, President Herbert Hoover held office when the Great Depression began. The economy continued to slump almost every month. Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President in 1932. Roosevelt's 'new deal' reforms gave the government more power and helped ease the depression. The Great Depression ended as nations increased their production of war materials at the start of World War II. This increased production provided jobs and put large amounts of money back into circulation.
 * 1) **The movies were 10 cents.**
 * 2) **Lunch in 1938 cost 25 cents and consisted of 2 fried eggs, French fries, 2 slices of toast with jam coffee and apple pie.**
 * 3) **Rent for a 2 bedroom apartment with a living room, dining area, bathroom and a full kitchen was $12.00 a month.**
 * 4) **Telephone service was $3.00 a month.**
 * 5) **Electricity ran about $1.00 a month.**
 * 6) **The subway in NY cost 5 cents.**
 * 7) **The NY Times newspaper cost 3 cents.**
 * 8) **A candy bar was 5 Cents.**
 * 9) **An ice cream cone was 5 cents.**
 * 10) **A cab cost 10 cents for the meter flag down and 5 cents a quarter mile.**
 * 11) **A maid was $10.00 a week, not that we ever had one.**
 * 12) **A doctor’s visit was $3.00, at home!**
 * 13) **"Time" magazine was 10 Cents as was "Look", "Life" and other weekly periodicals.**
 * 14) **A hamburger at the "White Castle" was 10 cents.**
 * 15) **A cup of coffee with cream and sugar was.**


 * They walked everywhere and I do mean everywhere. If a trip was less than 5 miles they would walk it. **

The Depression's impact on the economy


 * ||  || 1929 ||   || 1933 ||
 * Banks in operation ||  || 25,568 ||   || 14,771 ||


 * Prime interest rate ||  || 5.03% ||   || 0.63% ||


 * Volume of stocks sold (NYSE) ||  || 1.1 B ||   || 0.65 B ||


 * Privately earned income ||  || $45.5B ||   || $23.9B ||


 * Personal and corporate savings ||  || $15.3B ||   || $2.3B ||

// Historical Statistics of the United States //, pp. 235, 263, 1001, and 1007. During the worst years of the Depression, 1933-34, the overall jobless rate was twenty-five percent with another twenty-five percent of breadwinners having their wages and hours cut. Effectively, then, almost one out of every two U.S. households directly experienced unemployment or underemployment. For workers' families already facing hard times, the Depression's unemployment woes wreaked unprecedented, catastrophic havoc.


 * Total Population || 122,775,046 || 100% ||
 * White || 108,864,207 || 88.7% ||
 * Negro || 11,891,143 || 9.7% ||
 * Mexican || 1,422,533 || 1.2% ||
 * Indian || 332,397 || 0.3% ||
 * Chinese || 74,954 || 0.1% ||
 * Japanese || 138,834 || 0.1% ||
 * Filipino || 45,208 || ||
 * Hindu || 3,130 || ||
 * Korean || 1,860 || ||
 * Hawaiian || 660 || ||
 * Malay || 96 || ||
 * Siamese || 18 || ||
 * Samoan || 6 || ||
 * Total Population || 122,775,046 || 100% ||



**​ Fourth Hour Kendall and Will** In the late 1920s, almost everyone was in the stock market. The totals estimated from 1,000,000 to 25,000,000. After all, stock prices kept going up, making origional investmensts more and more valuable. Compiled with the cheap cost to enter the stock market, and the ability to borrow money to buy the stock, people grabbed at this easy money. In 1929, so many people were buying stock this way that they had run up a debt of six billion dollars. The prosperity couldn't last though, and on September 3rd, the market dropped hard, rising only in small incriments before dropping again. Nobody heeded this unwelcome warning, risking their livelyhoods. After all, the stock market had sagged temporarily before, but it always came back strongly. The market dipped again on October 4th, and some began to worry. Then they panicked. October 21st and a tidal wave of selling occured as many tried to salvage something from their loss. On October 24th the panic took on life as selling overwhelmed the Exchange's ability to keep up with transactions. Some Wall Street tried inspiring confidence by buying shares, but it was only a temporary fix. On Monday, the panic began again and everything fell to pieces. This was the Crash, losing twice the national debt in one huge drop, as the United States spiraled into the Great Depression.
 * The Wall Street Crash in the 1930s.**

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Federal Government attempted to become the employer in desperate cases. The Works Progress Administration (WPA), trying an ambitious program known as the New Deal, put 8,500,000 unemployed citizens to work, mostly in jobs that required manual labor. With the government paying the workers, innumerable highways, bridges, parks, and other public domains were constructed or upkept. The WPA included a place for the unemployed artists and writers, the culture of this country, known as the Federal Arts Projects. If they were destitute enough to qualify, the actors, directors, musicians, writers, and painters could work for the government directly. At it's peak, the subdivision of the Federal Arts Projects, the Federal Writer's Project had on it's payroll about 6,500 writers, paying them about $20 a week. The Federal Writer's Project not only supplied for many Americana Classics that have been mostly reissued in recent times, it also left behind a sterling look into the lives of those in the Great Depression, from a large diversity of regions, occupations, ethnic groups, and social classes. Examples of such writers include a woman who worked in a North Carolina textile mill, an Irish maid from Massachusetts, an African-American worker in a Chicago meat factory, and a Vermont farm wife. These accounts were designed to be published in a large series, a set that could create a window to everyday life in america during those rough times. But by the end of the Depression, the Federal Arts Projects were under attack by congress, who did not deem it necessary now to continue funding this part of America's culture. When America entered the World War II, the Federal Arts Project was ended to conserve money for the war, leaving many writer's works unpublished and forgotten until recently. Most Llife histories were directed by Benjamin A. Botkin, the editor of the project. He was horrified and disgusted by the rise of facism in Europe, like many intellectual figures of his time, and worried about possible mimicry at home. By assembling various life histories from many ethnicities, he hoped to plant the seeds of tolerance necessary for a free, democratic community. The accuracy of these stories of the past can't be totally assured, but it's more proper to ask instead what they express? A time of hardship and trouble, coming straight from one war and into another over a period of less than two decades. Racism, Facism, all made meaningless by the difficulties the country faced during this harsh time. These recollections have significance, and offers a look into the ways people shape identity, and saw the world about them in the 1930s. (//The Great Depression and the New Deal// pg. 1-16, //Voices from the Thirties// - Life Histories from the Federal Writer's Project, 1980, by Ann Banks)
 * The New Deal, Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.**



Everyone had their own story about the great depression. In Michigan, people bartered and traded for necessary things, Sharing and barely surviving became a way of life. People who lived during that time had interesting stories to tell to the more recent generations. The following are quotes ane excerpts from the Michigan History Magazine, January-February, 1982. (Vol. 66, No. 1).
 * The Great Depression in the 1930s.**

//"My first memory of hearing his [Theodore J. Beyne] music played was at the beginning of the Depression at the band shell at the city's John Ball Park. His orchestral arrangement of Hoagy Charmichael's "Star Dust" was preformed by the WPA orchestra, which had been formed to provide employment for out-of-work musicians. How clearly I remember, out of the depths of dark feelings springing from closed banks and no work, the wonderful sensation that comes from something more than 'bread alone'..."//

//"In 1929 Orlo and I had been married for two years and had a year old son, Douglas. We were just nicely getting started in the turkey raising buisness on his parents' farm near Bridgeton. We had about a thousand young turkeys that spring and we bought feed on credit during the growing season and paid for it when we sold the turkeys at Thanksgiving time. But that year was different ... when we heard about the bread lines and soup kitchens in cities, we felt we were lucky because we raised our own food. Our house was rent free, just keep it in repair. Our fuel, which was wood, was free for the cutting. Then our second child, Iris, was born and our biggest expense was doctor bills. However, this too was solved when our doctor agreed to take turkeys and garden produce for pay..."

"Mostly I remember if it hadn't been for my mother who was an excellent seamstress, and she seemed to find jobs here and there with the department stores, I dont know how we would have made it, because my father was a common laborer, a factory worker, and there just wasn't any jobs at that time ... Well, there's one thing that happened with me and perhaps I was fortunate that Detroit had, possibly, a welfare system. Well I know they did, 'cause we had it. One of the things that was that I came down with a mastoid which was a very serious thing at the time. It's very rare now because of antibiotics. But the whole side of my head was swollen and they called what they called 'a city physician'. And at that time doctors made house calls. So he came out and took one look at my head and called the ambulance immediately and they took me to Children's Hospital because I was only 11 years old. And they operated on me that night and I must assume that that saved my life at that time. So that was one of the things I had to go through."//



=**5th Hour: Lensi Luther, Chelsea Smith, and Zach Smith**=

The 1930s were also a time filled with economic concerns. One of the biggest and well-known economic concerns was the Wall Street crash. “America in the ‘20s” states that in the late 1920s, it seemed as if everybody was in the stock market. Estimates vary from 1,000,000 to 25,000,000. In 1929, so many people were buying on margin that they had run up debt of six billon dollars. On October 24- Black Thursday- the panic took on its own as selling orders overwhelmed the Exchange’s ability to keep up with the transactions. On Monday the panic started again, and then came Black Tuesday, October 29. The panic of the Exchange floor changed to bedlam. Thirty billion dollars had been lost, more than twice the national debt. The nation reeled, and slipped into the debts of the great depression.(n.pag.) Also, According to “Digital History,” the unemployment rate was 4.4 percent. After Hoover was elected president, it increased to 23.6 percent.(n.pag.)





​ ​ **6th hour: Haley Davis and Jay Woodberry** According to the article of "Economic developments in the 1930's", in 1929 the mayor of Columbia, Mississippi, Hugh Lawson White, looked out his office window and thought of the town’s future. Located in the Piney Woods region, Columbia had depended on the cutting and milling of longleaf yellow pine as the principal source of employment for its 4,000 residents. By the middle of the 1920s with the vast stands of pine “timbered out,” the largest companies packed up their machines, sold their buildings for scrap, and moved on to new, more promising locations.

Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves. according to the article "The White House", He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in his Address, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." In the summer of 1921, when he was 39, disaster hit-he was stricken with poliomyelitis. Demonstrating courage, he fought to regain the use of his legs, particularly through swimming. At the 1924 Democratic Convention he dramatically appeared on crutches to nominate Alfred E. Smith as "the Happy Warrior." In 1928 Roosevelt became Governor of New York. He was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost every bank was closed. In his first "hundred days," he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority. By 1935 the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery, but businessmen and bankers were turning more and more against Roosevelt's New Deal program. They feared his experiments, were appalled because he had taken the Nation off the gold standard and allowed deficits in the budget, and disliked the concessions to labor. Roosevelt responded with a new program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the unemployed. In 1936 he was re-elected by a top-heavy margin. Feeling he was armed with a popular mandate, he sought legislation to enlarge the Supreme Court, which had been invalidating key New Deal measures. Roosevelt lost the Supreme Court battle, but a revolution in constitutional law took place. Thereafter the Government could legally regulate the economy. Roosevelt had pledged the United States to the "good neighbor" policy, transforming the Monroe Doctrine from a unilateral American manifesto into arrangements for mutual action against aggressors. He also sought through neutrality legislation to keep the United States out of the war in Europe, yet at the same time to strengthen nations threatened or attacked. When France fell and England came under siege in 1940, he began to send Great Britain all possible aid short of actual military involvement. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt directed organization of the Nation's manpower and resources for global war. Feeling that the future peace of the world would depend upon relations between the United States and Russia, he devoted much thought to the planning of a United Nations, in which, he hoped, international difficulties could be settled. As the war drew to a close, Roosevelt's health deteriorated, and on April 12, 1945, while at Warm Springs, Georgia, he died Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Son of a Quaker blacksmith, Herbert Clark Hoover brought to the Presidency an unparalleled reputation for public service as an engineer, administrator, and humanitarian. Born in an Iowa village in 1874, he grew up in Oregon. He enrolled at Stanford University when it opened in 1891, graduating as a mining engineer. He married his Stanford sweetheart, Lou Henry, and they went to China, where he worked for a private corporation as China's leading engineer. In June 1900 the Boxer Rebellion caught the Hoovers in Tientsin. For almost a month the settlement was under heavy fire. While his wife worked in the hospitals, Hoover directed the building of barricades, and once risked his life rescuing Chinese children.
 * [[image:http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/images/416t.jpg width="188" height="278" caption="Hugh White" link="http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/images/416.jpg"]][[image:http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/first-family/masthead_image/32fr_header_sm.jpg?1250884571 width="291" height="189" caption="Photo of Franklin D. Roosevelt"]] ||
 * [[image:http://www.npg.si.edu/img2/hall2/hoover.jpg width="169" height="187"]] ||


 * Population ||  || [|World] || 5,995,544,836 ||