The Main Causes Of The Great Depression

The Great Depression is one of America’s most influential event in history up to now. It began the back end of the so called “Roaring 20’s” in 1929 and lasted until 1939. This event left many people homeless, out of work and seemingly out of hope without having Christ as their Savior. The Great Depression was a huge turning point in American history that had many causes such as the stock market crash, banks failing, and more and many effect such as the crime rate going up and large migration occurring, just to name a few.
The Great Depression had many causes. The most noticeable causes were the stock market crash of 1929, many bank failures, not as many people purchasing goods, an economic policy that America made with Europe and a drought.
It occurred at the end of October and peaked on October 29, 1929 when over sixteen million stocks were traded leading to billions of dollars lost. Stocks were at an all time low and many people panicked. Because of the great success and wealth of the 20’s, many people did not anticipate such a great fall, so when it happened almost everyone was shocked and very worried. These same people were spending money like crazy never thinking about an economic crisis as great as this one. After October, the stock market had nothing to do but rise. Even with this rise, stocks were down 80% since the beginning of 1929. (History.com, "Stock Market Crash of 1929") The stock market crash is essentially the core of all of the Great Depression, but not the only
This drought was very severe and caused an era that is often referred to as “The Dust Bowl”. The plains such as the state of Oklahoma and others suffered a widespread drought that is one of the worst to date. The reason it is often call the Dust Bowl is because of all the dust that was blown around. As many know, the plains of the United States are very open and windy, so this caused the land of farmers to literally blow away. This caused a cloud of dust to blow around. This also caused, as you can imagine, a great loss of land for farmers because lots of their land was now dirt. Not only was it dirt, but it was infertile dirt that needed rain badly. According to PBS.com, the Plains, by 1934, had turned into a desert due to all the wind and lack of rain. The Soil Conservation Service literally referred to parts of Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma as desert during this time. This drought covered up to one hundred acres of farmland. ("American Experience: TV's most-watched history series.") This Dust Bowl was the result of a drought, yes, but it was also a bad use of the land that the farmers had. Many of these farms had cows and the cows would eat all the fields down. Also, during this time, there was lots of wheat that controlled the land which blows away quite easily. The Dust Bowl as a result of the drought was a very tough time for the states of Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas which occurred and was a large part of