Great Depression Reflection

-How does this essay change your understanding of the Great Depression?
When I think about the Great Depression, I think about the traditional American side that post-war, the economy failing because of the lack of trade and flow of money. The stock market crash and the failure of banks sparked the Great Depression, but what did not come to mind, until I analyzed the photo essay, was the effect it had on migrants and people in the farming industry to that extent. There were two large devastations during this time period: the stock market crash and the dust bowl drought. People had less faith in the bank and less faith in the ideology of saving through trusting a intermediary transaction system. After people were left without their savings in the bank, many farmers were kicked off their farms after an extreme drought. Crop failures went ramped and migrants from other countries were dealing with the devastation of not living long enough in the United States to become citizens. Animosity of immigrants grew—shown in an

In the beginning, Hoover did not do enough to aid the Great Depression; he relied on private businesses and state and local governments to stimulate the economy, even though the federal government had such an impact on the spending economy. People were forced to asked for relief and this hindered the bounce out of the Great Depression further, rather than making long term changes necessary. I liked that when Theodore Roosevelt implicated policies in The New Deal to incorporate federal expansion into the economy. It is shown that there is never a set amount of time for a recession, which can spiral into a depression lasting as long as the Great Depression. Only active government change shifted the economy back into its spending patterns and back into global trade. That is what we need to combat the cycle that could become stagnant in the depression/recession