Great Depression Causes

The Great Depression was an awful point in history. It was a worldwide economic slump of the 1930’s. Banks, factories, and shops all closed. Millions of people were left jobless. Many people had to depend on the government or charity to provide them with their everyday needs. Rising unemployment, declining production, and falling prices spread rapidly to the rest of the world in the early 1930's. The Depression caused world trade to slow down a lot, as countries tried to help their own industries by increasing restrictions on imports. There were many causes of the great depression. The main thing leading everything else to happen was when the stock market crashed. The day known as “Black Tuesday” was the day the stocks completely crashed.
Most people lost their jobs. When they lost their jobs, they weren’t getting any income so they would start losing everything. If you weren’t getting any money to pay for food, you had to try to find a breadline or soup kitchen to get food for you and your family. Breadlines and soup kitchens were either government owned or run by private charities. These sources would often run out of supplies because there were so many people went there because they lost their jobs. Often many families didn’t get anything or barely got anything because it was a mad dash to be one of the first people so you knew you were getting enough food.
The president at the time of the Great Depression was Herbert Hoover. President Hoover felt that the American economy was not as fragile as it appeared to be. He believed that government should interfere as little as possible and that the economy would take a natural turn upward if given the chance. For months after the crash he told the American people over and over again that all the economy needed was confidence and it would return to normal. Hoover did take some steps to help the economy but they were too small and were not supported well by state and local
In 1931 and 1932 he tried to set up two different government agencies to make loans to banks so that they could keep making loans to customers. The National Credit Corporation was supposed to be set up with funds from New York bankers but failed to make enough money to help. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation used federal funds allocated by congress but also failed to distribute enough money to help. Hoover had always been opposed to relief funds given by the federal government. He felt that if welfare was going to be given that they should come from local governments. This eventually became an unpopular idea and the Emergency Relief and Construction Act was passed in congress in July of 1932. This provided $1.5 Billion for construction projects and $300 million in loans to the states for welfare funds.
Eventually the Great Depression ended and people got their jobs back and money was going around again. Everything went back to the way it was even though things weren’t always the same anymore. Even today we still aren’t the same. We still are impacted by the depression, though some things have gotten