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Agriculture enters the Great Depression
Even though the Great Depression began for most of the United States after the stock market crash, the farmers spent the entirety of the 1920s living the depression that had yet to sweep the nation. Farmers had overproduced during World War One, but as the world adjusted to postwar the demand for American agriculture decreased, and the excess supply caused prices to plummet. Farmers couldn't get as much money for their crops, which sent them into poverty. -
Economic collapse
After the stock market crash people began to conserve their money. This caused businesses to decrease and fire workers, which raised the unemployment rate considerably. This made it even harder for Americans who had invested in "buy now pay later" to pay their bills, and people began to run out of money and be evicted from their homes. -
Black Thursday
Black Thursday and the subsequent Black Tuesday marked the beginning of the depression for most of the United States. Stock values had risen sharply, and on these days together the prices plummeted, leaving many Americans with enourmous losses of money. This inevitably threw the nation into a philosophy of saving their money instead of spending it, and businesses suffered from the lack of demand, which caused them to tighten their belts and fire workers. These things started a downward spiral -
Bank Failures
As people began to run out of money they wanted to get their savings. Everyone had put their savings into banks, but the banks didn't have enough money to give to all the people who wanted it back. This caused banks to go bankrupt, and people all over the country lost their life's savings as a result. -
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The Dust Bowl
For the decade prior to the Great Depression farmers had worked the land tirelessly to get the most crops out of it that they could. This combined with a lack of rain cause the soil to dry up and blow away in the strong plains winds. Top soil blew all over the plains and even as far as the east coast, and it wiped out farmers. These farmers, now broke, packed up their things and moved to California in hopes of a job, but many were sorely disappointed. -
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Hoovervilles
Hoovervilles were 'towns' of people who had come to cities in search of a job or food. They were more slums made of rickety shanties than they were towns, but people lived in them nonetheless. They got their name because they emerged under Hoover's legislation, and people blamed this president for the depression they were living in. -
Pump Priming
Pump priming was one of Herbert Hoover's efforts to stimulate the depressed economy. Hoover 'pumped' money into businesses to get them to increase production and effectively jobs, but this didn't work because there was still the problem of a a lack of consumerism, so the companies simply ended up with excess production and just laid the new workers off again. -
Revenue Act of 1932
This act under Hoover legislation was intended to help stimulate the economy and pull the U. S. out of the depression, but it tried to do this by taxing the American public. Taxing the public was counter productive because it essentially choked the very economy that Hoover was trying to stimulate. As with pump priming this Hoover legislation was a dismal failure. -
Bonus Army
During the summer of 1932 several veterans from World War One were upset that "We were heroes in 1917 but now we're bums". The veterans marched to Washington D. C. to demand their bonuses, but they were put down by the United States army themselves. This act of using the U. S. 's current army against it's own veterans cemented Hoover's fate as a president doomed to infamy and no reelection. -
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The New Deal
After Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the presidency from Herbert Hoover in 1932 he implemented economic reforms to pull the U. S. economy out of the depression. In Hoover's first 100 days in office he passed 15 bills. Those bills created many jobs in new government organizations, and they provided direct relief for the people who were in dire need of it.
