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            America has been through a lot. Although it really isn’t a very old country, it has had some of the worst wars, including a civil war, with some of the worst results. It has had droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes and fires. And with economy, America has had many problems. In the 1920’s, the economy was booming. The stock market was doing great. But in 1928, signs were shown that something could happen to the wealth we had. In 1929, the stock market crashed. The whole world was devastated, and we were the main target. European countries suffered as well. The Great Depression, or Great Slump, lasted about 10 years, stretching from late 1929 to mid 1939. Although there was no real ending to it, the Great Depression obviously did have one. We’re doing fine now. But that wasn’t the only thing happening. There was the dust bowl, the worst drought in American history. It ravaged the plains, which were the main agricultural source of income at the time. It hit mostly the southern plains, but the northern ones didn’t get off completely. Children would wear gas masks to and from school it was so bad. The Great Depression was by far the worst incident in American history because of the money lost, the unemployment rate, the length of the incident, and the war that began during the time it was in.

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The Great Depression wasn’t just a sudden collapse of the stock market. America’s stock market was doing fine. It was a bull market, or one in which the prices continuously rise. No one suspected that it could ever turn into a bear market, or one in which the prices continuously drop. But many investors were buying their stocks on credit. They would get loans from the bank, and then invest the loaned money. The bank’s brokers would then borrow the money from other banks. This sort of economic activity was called speculation, which is a world that means putting a lot of money in a high-risk investment with the hope of making a huge gain. The ones who did this were called speculators. They believed that no matter how much money you spend on a stock, someone else would always spend more.  On September 3rd, 1929, the stock prices hit an all-time high. But soon after the record shattering highs, they all began to slip. October 24th, 1929, investors with a lot of stock sold almost all of what they had to gain money. Then that caused the prices to fall yet again, making our economy look worse.

On October 29th, 1929, something terrible happened. It was a day that would never be forgotten by anyone who lived it. The stock market completely just couldn’t hold up anymore, and crashed. That day was referred to as Black Tuesday. Prices spiraled downward, and the stockholders panicked. The people who had bought on margin realized what had happened, and quickly sold all their stocks and paid off their debts. Others weren’t entirely sure of what was happening; so giant mobs of people swarmed Wall Street, heading for the NYSE. They were so full that the brokers didn’t know what to do. The stockholders lowered their asking prices in hopes for getting rid of them while they still could, which made the prices drop even more. Eventually, Black Tuesday ended. Investors had traded over sixteen million shares. Approximately fifteen billion dollars in stock value had been wiped out. The one day long nightmare turned into a full year of pain as the Panic of 1929 began. General Electric stock dropped from $396 to $168. US Steel stock fell from $261 a share down to $150 a share. At the end of November, the stock market had lost over thirty billion dollars total. The ones who bought on margin were done; they had nothing left. Some Americans hadn’t even invested in the stock market and even they lost money. Many people sold all that they had to pay off their debts, including cars, clothes and jewelry. By the end of they year 1929, GNP had dropped 30 percent. Many were unemployed. And many more were homeless.

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Most people blamed the current president President Herbert Hoover. In fact, there were little colonies of homeless people called Hoovervilles, named just for him. They all lived in little shacks made out of wooden, metal and cardboard scraps.  Hoover didn’t do much. He just hoped the problem would solve itself naturally and he wouldn’t have to get involved with it. But the elections were coming up, and Hoover was running against Franklin Roosevelt. He wasn’t going to watch as America died. He was ready to try anything to save his country. Once all the votes were in, they were tallied, and the results were as follows. Roosevelt with nearly 25,000,000, defeating Hoover, who had a lowly 15,000,000. Roosevelt won in a landslide. But that was just the popularity vote. In the Electoral Voting, Roosevelt had 472 to Hoover’s meager 57. The United States of America was about to experience a completely new era of political and economical progression.

Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933. He quickly brought a rush of optimism to the depressed citizens of America, rallying them better than any president before him. He created a program to help the citizens called the New Deal. Banners advertising his ‘New Deal’ were posted all over major cities of America, trying to make it clear that he was ready and willing to help. In his inaugural address to the nation, president Franklin Roosevelt boldly stated, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” All the New Deal really did was introduce forms of social and economic reform familiar to many Europeans for many generations. But it sounded much better when said differently. The New Deal was a lot of government programs intended to raise the country out of the depression by creating more jobs, providing shelter, food and water, and trying to get the stock market restarted. By 1933, millions of Americans were out of work. There were bread lines giving out (obviously) free bread to those who needed it. Some, in desperation, would steal from them, just to feed their families. Those people were sometimes arrested and locked up, where it was probably better inside of the cell than outside. At least in there you could get a roof over your head. Over 300,000 Americans roamed the country for food, work and shelter. Not many people were lucky enough to stumble upon food, let alone shelter and work.

One of Franklin Roosevelt’s many programs were work camps spread across the nation, accepting young men from the age of 18 through 25. They would make about thirty dollars a month for doing simple tasks such as planting trees to preserve national parks and prevent soil erosion, creating sanctuaries for animals like birds, fish and deer, and conserving petroleum, coal, sodium and helium deposits. The Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, created most of these programs.  In 1933, Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act, or AAA, to help the farmers of America. The Agricultural Adjustment Act planned on raising the prices of crops by paying farmers a subsidy for the voluntary cutbacks in crops that they were doing.  From 1932 to 1935, it looked like farmers were saved. Crop income was increased by 50 percent, and looked like it could only get better. But then, a severe drought hit the states of the Great Plains, mostly on the southern side, causing a severe drop in the crop production from there. And that was the main source, so the crop production of the entire United States. That drought was later referred to as the Dust Bowl.

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In its early years, Roosevelt’s New Deal was very successful. It added money to the economy and it helped people get what they needed. But it couldn’t end the Depression all together. Although the feeling of crisis went down, new demands arose, and some weren’t so easy to fulfill. Most businessmen tried to get Laissez-Fare back, and far left and right politicians and schemers emerged with the need to get more money and complaining about the pace of the recovery from the depression. Having to face these issues coming at him from all directions, President Roosevelt made new economic and social changes, bringing in another New Deal.  The Works Progress Administration, or WPA, was the main relief agency of the second New Deal. They said that they worked better than welfare.  From 1932 to 1938, there were many political debates over the policies toward social and economic reforms of the first and second New Deals. In a radio address in 1938, Roosevelt said this:

“Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership….Finally, in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat. We in America know that our democratic institutions can be preserved and made to work. But in order to preserve them we need…to prove that the practical operation of democratic government is equal to the task of protecting the security of the people..The people of America are in agreement in defending their liberties at any cost, and the first line of the defense lies in the protection of economic security.”

Before his second term was under way, Roosevelt’s domestic program was overshadowed by a growing threat. The countries of Germany, Japan and Italy were all beginning to look like they were countries run by dictators. Although not many American citizens noticed this, it was a serious threat. It was the dawn of another World War.

 To sum up all that I have said, the money we lost to the incident, all the unemployed people, how long the incident lasted, and the eve of the war about to begin all make the Great Depression the worst incident in American History. It began with simple signs that were ignored. Then Black Tuesday followed by the Panic of 1929. After that, the election of Roosevelt and the introduction of the New Deal. The Dust Bowl came up, and afterwards the second New Deal came to be. And the last occurrence, the beginning of World War Two.

 At president Herbert Hoover’s inauguration in March 1929, he assured Americans with these words: “I have no worries for the future of our country. It is bright with hope.”

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