The Great Depression Widens

From Great Depression 22-2 Reading

1. How did the Great Depression affect minorities?     

It was harder for the minorities than for the rest of population. They had the highest unemployment and they were lowest paid. They also had to deal with discrimination, and the violence that came with it, because white people were competing for the same jobs as the American Americans and Latinos. A total of twenty four African Americans were killed from lynching in 1933. Latinos, some of which were born in America, that lived in the Southwest were targets to be deported. Some of them went back to Mexico willingly, while others were forced by the federal government. 

2. Why did so many men leave their homes during the Depression?    
Many men left their homes during the Depression. The men were so used to being out all day and working that they couldn't stay in the house. Instead they would wander the streets all day in search for a job. Some, after years of not being able to find work, gave up, and some men even left their families. Many men wondered the country on railroad boxcars and slept under bridges, these men were homeless. Most of the men would eventually find their way to a homeless shelter. 


3. How did the Great Depression affect women and children?    
The woman spent their time trying to do everything to save every penny they had. Some of the women even went out and tried to get jobs, even though they would get paid less than men, they did everything to help support their family. Eventually the married women stopped getting jobs because it was looked down upon because married women shouldn't have jobs when men were unemployed. Some cities even refused to hire women as school teachers. People thought that women had it easier than the men did because there were few women beggars that were seen. The truth was that the woman were starving to death in rooming houses and attics and they were too ashamed to show their hardships. The children also had hardships during the Great Depression. There wasn't any money for healthcare for the children, and there wasn't enough food for them either. There were many causes of malnutrition related diseases that showed up among kids. Also there wasn't enough tax money for school; schools had to shorten their year or shut down the school completely. Many kids had to work instead of school, and they had to work in horrible conditions.  Many teenagers would cross the country in freight trains in search for jobs and to escape poverty. The freight trains were very dangerous for the teenagers and many were killed or injured for trespassing railroad property and some were even accidentally locked in ice cars for days. 

From Great Depression 22-3 Reading

4. What were some of Hoover’s key convictions about government?     

Hoover believed that the economy would fix itself, and the government should help as little as possible. He believed that the government should help companies should be competing because that's what helped companies grow. He thought that if there was a problem between businesses and labor that the government should help them find a solution but not force them to do anything. Hoover also thought that the federal government should not give the poor federal welfare because it would weaken people's "morale fiber" and instead charities and local organizations should help the poor. 

5. Why do you think people blamed Hoover for the nation’s difficulties?    

People blamed Hoover for the nation's difficulties because he would not give direct relief or some form of welfare to the poor, which the people wanted and when they did not get it, it angered them. They were blaming Hoover because he did nothing about the economy and provided no help because he believed that the economy would fix itself. When the people didn't get the welfare that they needed they turned against Hoover and blamed the nation's difficulties on him because he did nothing about it. The people were even naming things after Hoover, like when the homeless used newspapers as blankets they called them 'Hoover blankets.'

6. What were some of the projects proposed by Hoover, and how effective were they?    

Hoover proposed many projects to help the economy. One of the projects that he proposed was Federal Farm Board, which was an organization of farm cooperatives which was created to help raise the praises of crops by helping members to buy crops to keep them off the market temporarily so that the prices would rise. Another thing that Hoover proposed was the National Credit Corporation. Hoover convinced the largest banks to start it; it was made for the bigger banks to lend money to the smaller banks in order to help them stave off bankruptcy.  When it became obvious that these programs were not working, Hoover got the Congress to pass the Federal Home Loan Bank Act, which lowered mortgage rates for homeowners and let farmers refinance so they wouldn't lose their land to foreclosure. Hoover's biggest act that he proposed was the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. This approved to give two billion dollars to big businesses such as railroad companies, banks, and life insurance. Hoovers hope was the money would trickle its way down to the average citizen and produce job growth. In the end the companies were still failing, along with all the other things which Hoover proposed. 

7. What did the Bonus Army want?    
The Bonus Army wanted the Patman Bill to pass in Congress. The Patman Bill authorized the government to give World War I veterans bonuses to those who were not paid adequately for their wartime services. The Patman Bill gave the veterans a total of five hundred dollars and a life insurance policy. The Bill was not passed in Congress and President Hoover forced the Bonus Army to leave, out of fear that they would become violent. He ordered 1,000 troops to lead them out and gassed them, which killed an 11 month old baby and blinded an eight year old boy. People were horrified when they found out about the attack on the veterans.

The Crash Occurs and the Great Depression Begins

1.       What industrial weakness signaled a declining economy in the 1920s?

Railroad, textile, and steel companies barely made a profit in the 1920s, especially the railroad companies because of the new forms of transportations, such as trucks, buses, and automobiles. Other companies that went down in the 1920s was lumbering, and mining, especially for coal. Coal used to be the biggest source of energy in America, especially during the war, but by the early 1930s coal was being replaced with hydroelectric power, fuel oil, and natural gases. Eventually the jobs for construction, consumer goods, and automobiles weakened. When the construction of houses went down so did other industries such as furniture manufacturing and lumbering. All of these were signals of a declining economy in the 1920s.

2.       What did the experience of farmers and consumers at this time suggest about the health if the economy?

The farmers also got hit pretty hard after the war ended. During the war, there was a high demand for crops such as wheat and corn internationally and in order to keep up with the demands farmers invested in new equipment and made more crops, but after the war the prices of the crops went down and the demand for them also went down by forty percent. Since the prices and demand went down, the farmers had debt that they could not pay off and they would lose their farms to the bank to pay off the loan, and then the banks would have to auction off the farms to try and get their money back from the loans.  The consumers also showed signs of an unhealthy economy. The consumers started buying less because the prices were rising, stagnant wages, and unbalanced distribution. Another reason was people were overbuying on credit in the previous years.

3.       How did speculation and margin buying cause stock prices to rise?

People were buying stocks of speculation, which is out of hope that it will rise and there would be a quirk profit. Also when people were buying stocks on margins, which is paying for only part of the share upfront and loan the rest of the money for it, and since people were buying on margin the prices of the stocks were rising, which reflected that a company was worth more money than it actually was. Then if the stocks declined the people who bought the stocks on margin did not get the money that they needed in order to pay back the loans.

4.       What happened to ordinary workers during the Great Depression?

A lot of the people lost both their jobs and all of their savings during the Great Depression. For one a lot of the banks closed because the banks had invested all of their money in the stock market therefore they did not have the money to give to the people when they tried to pull their money from their savings account. Another thing that went down was the output of goods and services, which was a lot of people’s jobs. It was cut nearly in half; it went from $104 billion to $59 billion. Even the companies that were one extremely successful, such as the automobile companies and railroad companies were failing. Unemployment skyrocketed, it went from three percent unemployment to twenty five percent unemployment, and even those who had their job faced pay cuts and reduced hours.

5.       How did the Great Depression affect the world economy?

The Great Depression also affected the world economy. European countries were struggling in the 1920s due World War I and the war debts that it created for the countries. Germany also had a huge war debt that they had to pay to the Allied countries. The Great Depression compounded these problems by making it harder and limiting America’s ability to import European goods, which also made it difficult to sell American farm products and manufactured products in Europe. Congress also put a tariff in place on foreign goods to try and increase the purchase of American goods, which in the end had hurt world trade and it went down by 40 percent.