The Great Depression Essay Example

The Great Depression as we know, has to be the worst economic downfall in the history of the United States. There are many reasons on why The Great Depression happened but on October 24, 1929 it led a record of 12.9 million shares that had been traded, it is also a day that many of us will forever remember as “Black Thursday”. Millions of shares ended up worthless and leaving the investors who had invested in stocks with borrowed money to be wiped out completely.

During this time the country’s industrial production had dropped by half, this is when the stock market completely crashed and the banks were getting bankrupted and finally shutting down , thus leading to businesses being bankrupted and farmers not being to afford their harvest on crops and were actually forced to leave them rotting in their own fields while people elsewhere starved. 

After that was happening many people were even losing their jobs and education, it was leading many to be left homeless for a great period of time and for those who were left lucky enough to remain employed, wages fell and the buying for power decreased . However did any other countries get affected through this horrible time? The answer is yes, it also hit the following countries such as Great Britain, Austria, Poland and Germany just as in the book of the Mice and Men, which takes place during the Great Depression, it correlates on how the obstacles that stand in the way of that ambition, loneliness and sacrifice. 

The main reason why The Great Depression started was because banks were starting to get in debt which meant they could pay back the investors from the stock markets. This caused many banks to be  forced to close down the business at an extremely high rate all across the United States to the point where not many banks were left in business throughout the nation.                                                                                                         

The stock crash did not completely end until World War II had been fought in 1949, but nonetheless the stock prices continued to rise, and by the fall of that year it had reached a high level that couldn’t be justified by the expected earnings in the future. Many Americans believe it or not had been put through a situation where they were being forced to buy on credit which caused them to fall into debt and the number of repossessions and foreclosures had climbed peakingly high. 

Now the gold standard in global adherence has joined countries all around the world to be involved in a fixed currency exchange, thus helping the spread of economic woes from the United States throughout the world mainly in Europe. Even though assurances from president Herbert Hoover and other leaders that the current crisis would eventually run its course many matters progressively got worse over the next couple of years. In the year 1930 about four million Americans that were looking for jobs could not be found rose up two million more in just one year, in this situation Hoover’s administration tried to support the falling banks and also other institutions with government loans. This would have led the banks in turn lending to the businesses which possibly be able to hire back their employees. 

However, with the country in depths of the Great Depression and millions of the United States population that were unemployed, had won an overjoyed victory in the presidential election from democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Roosevelt took immediate action to address the nation's economic woes, he first announced a four-day “bank holiday’ in which all banks would close in which it would give congress to pass reform legislations and be able to reopen those banks.                                                                                                                           

In the first one-hundred days in office his administration passed it’s legislation that had aimed to stabilize the industrial and agricultural productions, thus creating jobs and stimulating recovery. He also sought to reform the financial system, creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in order to protect depositors accounts and the Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC) to help regulate the stock market and prevent abuses of the kind that led to the 1929 crash. 

When the Great Depression began, the United states was the only one industrialized country in the entire world that was left without some form of employment insurance or social security in 1935. Until the Social Security Act was passed that same year which helped provide Americans with unemployment, disability and pensions for old age. Early signs of recovery from the Great Depression had been seen in the early spring of 1933, the economy continued to improve throughout the following years during which GDP grew at a rate of nine percent per year. A very sharp recession hit in the year 1937, which was caused by the Federal Reserve’s decision to increase the requirements for money. The economy began improving in 1938, the second severe contraction reserved many of the gains in production and employment.

Now how long did  the Great Depression last? all the way through the end of the decade, meaning 10 years. Just as explained in the beginning of the book Of Mice and Men that took place during this horrible time where poverty and the pain of economic hardship reduced individuals to both needing dreams, the characters Lennie and George have dreams, but are never going to achieve them because of the money that had been involved. The Great Depression represents a scarcity of how money and the will to search for something that may not be there, something true for both men and time.