Great Depression

Sarah J. Smith
HIST
Essay 3

The Great Depression was a hard time for most people in America. It was a time when most people had very little money, if any. One of the main reasons for the depression was because of the stock market crashed on Thursday, October 24, 1929 or also called Black Thursday. The sense of confidence was reflected in the stock market. Stock sales had risen steadily for several years and as demand rose, so did stock prices. Many business leaders saw that there was going to be no end to the bull market (upward trend in stock prices). People in the market were buying and selling stock to make a quick profit. The people were margin buying (purchasing stock with borrowed money) and many thought that this would work if the bull market continued. The New Deal was the way that Franklin D. Roosevelt would get the U.S. out of the Great Depression. The New Deal is made of 15 new programs. Roosevelt's program had three general ideas, which were relief, to ease the plight of citizens in economic distress, recovery, to restore the economy to health, and reform, to correct ills and injustices in American society. They restore hope, aided the unemployed, and gave the government a central role in regulating business and the economy and promoting public welfare.

In this photo it show a little boy sitting in front of his house which was made up of cardboard and what every else him family could find in the streets. His family lived in a small committee called a shantytowns or better known as Hoovervilles. Their life before the Great Depression was a lot better because they had running water and power. This father worked in the fields of a farm and they always had some thing to eat each day and now there are lucky if they get one hot meal a day. After the stock market crash people had one money to buy any of the produces that the farms were selling so then the farmer had to lay of all of his workers and one of them was this boys father. During the...