A. Causes of the depression

4. Suffering world economy – Europe has been in a depression since the end of the Great War in 1918.

3. Consumer Debt – too many people bought on credit, creating a huge amount of debt.

2. Growing gap between rich and poor.

1. Overproduction of farms throughout the 1920’s – farmers were growing too much food after the war.

B. Impact on daily life: President Herbert Hoover (1929 – 1933) was unable to do anything to help.

2. The worst years: 1930-1933

a. 16 million of people were unemployed (25% of the workforce)

b. Overall factory production was cut in half

c. African Americans and immigrants faced increased discrimination and were less likely to find jobs.

1. October 24, 1929, Black ThursdayBlack Thursday, the stock market crashed.

a. stock prices plummeted in value

b. banks collapsed because of lack of money, many closed and people lost all of their savings.

3. City Life – urban areas were hit hard

a. Hunger became a problem for many people. Neighbors helped each other with food and money.

1) bread and soup lines were formed by charity organizations like the Salvation Army

b. widespread homelessness – Shantytowns and Hoovervilles were created on streets and in public parks.

1) Families lived together in makeshift shacks.

c. divorce soared

4. Farm Life

a. The Mid-west faced the worst drought in American history

1) The Dust Bowl – large dust storms blew the topsoil from the land throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska

2) crop prices plummeted

3) banks foreclosed on farms

4) families migrated to cities and many went to California, looking for work.

5. Long-term impact of the Great Depressiona. In 1932 twenty thousand Americans commit suicide.b. Many experienced overwhelming guilt and shame about

being unemployed. They blamed themselves not the government.

c. Those who experienced the depression developed a life-long habit of saving. Many people distrusted banks.

d. People were questioning the government and giving up on Democracy.

1) Some were calling for a revolution and a new form of government.

2) Others were moving to countries where jobs were available – the communist Soviet UnionSoviet Union.

How the Depression Affected Children                                What was it like growing up during the Great Depression? For many people, life was a daily struggle. At the peak of the Depression, 25% of the nation's workers -- one out of four -- were unemployed. No job meant no money to pay the mortgage or buy food and clothes for the family. Times were hard whether you lived in a city or on a farm, whether you were an adult or a child. Families unable to pay the mortgage lost their homes and farms. As a result, about 250,000 young people were homeless in the early years of the Depression. Many became nomads, traveling the highways and railways.

20% of America's children were hungry and without proper clothing. In some coal mining regions, the percentage of malnourished children reached as high as 90%. Children went without shoes and warm clothes for the winter.

Thousands of schools had to close down because they lacked the money to stay open. About 3 million children between 7 and 17 had to leave school. 40% of young people from age 16 to 24 were neither in school nor working.

-What were the people living during the depression supposed to do about

the problems they were having?

-Is the government responsible for taking care of the people of the US?

C. A change in leadership… the election of 1932

3. Roosevelt promised a “New Deal”“New Deal” to everyone. It became his economic plan to help the people of the US to recover from the Depression.

1. The campaign of 1932 had one key issue - depression 2. Franklin Delano Roosevelt beat Herbert Hoover by

capturing 472 electoral votes to Hoover’s 59.

a. “alphabet soup” recovery programs were created to help people get through the depression. Roosevelt’s plan had three stages.

1) Relief to the poor and unemployed:

2) Recovery of business and industry

3) Reform the economic system to keep depression from happening again.