The Great Depression and the Dirty Thirties

There were many causes of the Great Depression (need help on the first sentence). Yes, the stock market crash was a main reason of the Depression, but it actually began long before that, with the Roaring 20’s. With such a large disparity between the rich and the poor, the overproduction of goods (too much too quickly), and people racing to buy stocks, it was only fitting that it would soon come to an end. Before it actually crashed, the stock market played an important factor leading up to the Great Depression as well. As people were borrowing money to pay for stocks (on margin), they became more and more in debt, and caused the stock market crash to be a huge surprise to them. During the summer of 1929, an “ordinary recession” occurred, where people stopped buying things and goods piled up, due to their debt. Also, bank firms, which had received record profits during the ’20s, had invested their money into expanding, but as workers were no longer able to continue expanding it, soon had to close. (need help on a thesis statement)

Finally, investors went into “panic mode” on October 24th, 1929, and began trading and dumping their shares, totaling a record of 12.9 million. Of course, following “Black Thursday,” the more well-known “Black Tuesday” ensued as a result of this. Between Black Monday and Black Tuesday, the market lost 24% of its value, and investors bought and traded over 28.9 million stocks. These stocks, now worthless, were used as firewood for some investor’s homes. The Dow Jones Company is perhaps the greatest example for this crash. Dow Jones started at 191 points at the beginning of 1928, then more than doubling to 381 points by September 1929. The crash caused their record 381 points to plummet to less than 41 p...

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...nesspersons, which became known as the “soak-the-rich” tax.

Shortly thereafter, Roosevelt won reelection in 1936 due to his popularity with voters. He proposed an expansion of the court, which would allow him to appoint one new justice for every sitting justice 70 or older, known as “court-packing.” Congress was quick to reject this scheme, abruptly changing direction by upholding the Wagner Act, which prevented employers from interfering with laborers’ strikes. By the end of 1938, people’s support for the New Deal began to wane, and Roosevelt faced another looming challenge: World War II.

Works Cited history.com/topics/great-depression thegreatdepressioncauses.com shmoop.com/great-depression digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraid=14&smtid=1 ushistory.org/us/48.asp history.com/topics/us-presidents/franklin-d-roosevelt

history.com/topics/us-presidents/herbert-hoover