Cause Of The Great Depression

There is no black and white answer written on a piece of paper explaining what exactly caused The Great Depression. Many different things led to the depression. The Dust Bowl, the market crashing, people’s confidence in the economy, and unfamiliarity to banks are some of the reasons why The Great Depression occurred. In this article we go into depth on the topics above, further explaining why The Great Depression occurred.

The Dust Bowl In the Mississippi Valley, in the 1930s, farmers experienced terrible environmental condition, the Dust Bowl or drought. Meaning the land was dry and there was barely any water. The topsoil was loose and unable to plant anything in the ground making it harder on the farmers to make a profit. To add on to
As it grew, so did the amount of Americans that decided to participate into the business of the Stock Market. Businesses were booming with their rapid selling of small or large portions of their businesses. Little had they realized that a majority of people would try to cash out at once, attempting to gain a profit from their investment. Sort of like banks doing “loans” and charging interest overtime, only to gain a large sum of money after a period of time without it being paid off. While in this case, it would only be considered a risk or a reward. Only time may tell in a stock’s case, depending on what the business is doing, and if they’re constantly selling/creating items for production. It had been thought that Stocks were a “sure thing” to gain money easily. Sitting around and doing seemingly nothing for a couple of days before coming back to check on your investment, only to see that it may be losing value, or steadily but still slowly gaining value. Some even investing their whole life savings into this volatile money-gaining method. Leaving many to be worse off, and poorer than they were in the first place. Greed is the main part to blame for the fall of it, as many people had put their trust and worth into a scheme of sorts. To be money grubbing in other words, over eager to gain more and more. To top it all off, billions of dollars had been lost due to the Stock Market
Throughout 1930’s over 9,000 banks failed due to lack of money or running out of money. There were too many small banks that tried to keep up with all the money with the little banking experience they had. Most of the small banks didn’t have the right resources so they had to sell assets, borrow money from other banks, or completely shut down. When banks had to shut down, people lost their life savings that they had been saving up. Also the rush of consumer purchasing shut down when the banks closed down. Consumer purchasing was basically people buying consumer goods, so if the rush of consumer purchasing stopped, factories closed because no one could buy products due to no money. After the factories shut down most people lost their jobs and became unemployed. With banks closing and people losing money, by 1932 many businesses were out of work, because banks failed and 20 percent of the American workforce was