Causes and Effects of the Great Depression
The Great Depression started on October 29th 1929, otherwise known as Black Tuesday. It sent the world spiraling down in the world’s largest economic crash ever.
The Great Depression was a time in America when the stock market crashed and banks closed. Lots of people’s life savings were lost and they were left without money or a job. People stood in line for hours just for a little bit of soup to feed their families. what caused all this to happen? That question will be answered in the next few paragraphs.
The first cause of the Great Depression was trickle down economics. The idea of trickle down economics is that the more money you give rich people the more money poor people will get because the rich person would start a company with the money and hire poor people to work it. What happened instead was that rich people either kept all the money given to them or they started a company and instead bought a bunch of machines to work instead of people. Either way, it didn’t work.
The second cause of the Great Depression was stock market speculation. This was when everyone wanted to have a part of the stock market but didn’t have the money to. So they borrowed the money and bought overpriced stocks that were really worth nothing so they lost all their money. The people who lent them the money also lost because nobody could pay them back. This made lots of people lose everything they had to pay back for their borrowed money.
The third cause of the Great Depression was bank closings. When all the investors couldn’t pay the banks back they just had no money left and everyone lost all of their money they had in the bank. Everybody came to get their money though and when the banks didn’t have it the people started breaking up the bank’s windows and furniture. I think that over a thousand banks closed in a single year during the Great Depression.
The fourth cause of the great depression was overproduction. Companies could make things really fast now, so fast that there were too many products and not enough people to buy them. The companies kept on making a product that nobody was buying so they were still spending money on materials but not receiving any money from the product.
The first effect of the Great Depression was unemployment. With all of the factories closing from overproduction lots of people lost their jobs. Thirty-four million Americans had no source of income in 1933.
The second effect of the Great Depression was massive poverty. All of the 34 million people with no source of income were now really poor and living off of soup kitchens. That was more than 60% of people officially considered living in poverty.
The third effect of the Great Depression was homelessness. Two million people with no home basically walked around looking for work. Towns put up signs telling these people to go away. These homeless people weren’t just adults, they were also children.
The fourth effect of the great depression was devastation on American Farms. Farmers weren’t making any money on their crops, instead they were losing more than $1.50 per acre of land they planted. Plus there were giant dust storms that destroyed lots of fields leaving the farmers with no money at all and lots of them ended up losing their farms.
The Great Depression ended during World War II. What ended it was all the new jobs created for building weapons and all the soldiers that needed to go and fight. At the end of World War II the United States was the most powerful country in the world because we had nuclear missiles.
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User Comments
Kelvin
On November 10, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Not well written
Bigger DADDY
On January 12, 2009 at 3:14 pm
This is great information
kelvin sucks
On January 22, 2009 at 10:17 pm
I Love this thank you very much
baby alpaca
On January 27, 2009 at 9:38 am
whoever is the baby midget that wrote this go and die because this might as well have been written by a dead giraffe, iv read better stuff about this on preschool sights…….but i did get a little info off of it so thanx
oh and dont smoke crack
bubbles
On February 3, 2009 at 1:30 pm
this is a great site for kids who need resuces on the the great depression
sexiibobo1
On February 8, 2009 at 8:40 pm
yo this was some great info i loved it like………what what…
BOB
On February 11, 2009 at 9:15 pm
can people like put the causes and effects on a chart. How am I sposd to get QUICK answers/ HUH!?
george plaras
On February 26, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Thank you very much
I love you 
Have a great day 
macho
On March 19, 2009 at 1:50 pm
it was alright, i hate this subject, i like world war II better
but thanks anyways
Anson A.K.A Rat Jr. right next to me, dont drink ha ha ha…
nosaj
On April 13, 2009 at 8:33 am
it helped alot with my essay for school
the blue one
On April 15, 2009 at 11:38 pm
thank you so much it helped me a lot…
thegodofushistory
On April 16, 2009 at 7:11 pm
i copied and pasted this for my us history project, i hope my us history teacher ms Debbins doesn\’t read this,
same dude as the dude who posted before me
On April 16, 2009 at 7:12 pm
sorry about that its ms stebbins
kenia g
On April 24, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Thanx 4 the info helped alot on my English research on the Great Depression
nevermind
On May 7, 2009 at 6:54 am
Thank you very much~
inlovenconfused
On May 11, 2009 at 1:16 pm
idk im doing a project for my teacher about the great depression i need to know how it affect everyone around the world
Love Me!
On May 19, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Well, I’m Doinq Wuestions For School. It’ll Be Easier If Someone Had Chart This. Wait……. The Books Answers Are Different From This! But, I Don’t Have History Book. Thanks For The Help Tho At Least Yuu Helped Lol.
ginnyweasleygirl
On May 30, 2009 at 12:45 am
Thanks! It helped me alot on my history project!
savetheants
On May 30, 2009 at 12:49 am
very helpful
missy cat 15
On June 19, 2009 at 11:46 pm
why are people booing about this you guys are just plan mean this person or people made and put in a lot of effot for people to read this and you guys are just being sad
texas_angel
On July 9, 2009 at 8:54 am
hey i loved the info my teacher had me do causes and effects of the great depression and this layed it out clearly..thanks so much
Kris_21
On August 18, 2009 at 1:07 am
this is so easy to read and understand…the informations are also enough for my project…tnx colin s….
hipshoot
On September 14, 2009 at 4:55 pm
This is indeed a sad commentary on the educational system in our country. Simplistic drivel! Inaccurate “facts”. False conclusions. And people actually say they got a lot out of this? Lord help us!
alexthekid
On October 12, 2009 at 7:20 pm
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URMAMA!!
On November 10, 2009 at 11:06 am
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