The Great Depression What it was, what caused it and who was involved.

The Great Depression What it was, what caused it and who was involved

Major Causes:

Unequal distribution of wealth and credit based society

Supply and demand of goods became unstable

War debt

Wall Street Crash of 1929

The Dust Bowl

The 1920s

New or newly accessible products

Refrigerators, radios, phonographs, affordable cars, ready-to-wear clothes, packaged foods, washing machines

Big arts movement (The Harlem Renaissance)

Cultural changes (women could vote, the Great Migration)

Prohibition (1919-1934)

Unequal Distribution of Wealth

World War I ended in 1918

Americans entered a new era of social change and rampant consumerism

America became able to mass-produce products

While the rich got much richer, the poor remained poor

Credit and Poverty

Buying things on credit became common place in the United States.

For the first time families who could not afford the new luxuries could still buy them.

Poor Americans were forced to use credit or go without because their wages remained stagnant

Supply and Demand

America uses new technologies to mass-produce goods.

Farmers take advantage of fertile years to bring in abundant crops, but they ruined the land in the process.

Meanwhile, poorer Americans are finding it hard to buy these goods and food.

The U.S. had previously been able to export some of these goods to Europe but…

War Debt

Due to the aftermath of World War I, Europe can not afford to buy American goods

This is compounded by new higher taxes that the U.S. places on imports and exports.

Farming

America, unable to sell their crops to Europe decide to stockpile them instead.

This causes too much supply and not enough demand.

The price of crops lower significantly

Farmers who were poor to begin with are now even poorer

Black Tuesday

October 29th 1929 www.time.com

The Stock Market Crash

Remember how everyone was buying things on credit?

The Stock Market crashes in 1929 which eventually causes banks to fail

People can no longer afford to pay their rent or keep any of the luxuries they bought on credit

The Crash http://youtu.be/nyAZGqFtVjw?t=1m15s

The Dust Bowl

Farming isn’t as simple as planting a seed and waiting for it to grow.

For land to continue to be productive it needs periods of rest to lie fallow and recover from the loss of minerals

The Great Plains were so fertile partially because they had gone untouched for years and the strong roots of the prairie grasses held it in place

Over farming makes the topsoil weak and dry.

A drought and ensuing windstorms causes the dusty topsoil to blow away, leaving the lands unusable for farming

The Dust Bowl

the Dust Bowl

http://youtu.be/MYOmjQO_UMw

Hoovervilles

Hoovervilles

http://youtu.be/hbEVeKIghCk

Sources

http://www.loc.gov/index.html

http://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/Dawes

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3396

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/depwwii/depress/

http://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties