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Overview

The stock market crash of 1929 caused a horrific scenario, it was the longest
And most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world to date. This paper will be going over the fine points which led to the crash alongside, sharing important statistics, showing in graph form, what the crash literally looked like, and conclusively I will be talking about the impact on Canada, alongside the politics at the time, and how socialism came to be during the depression.

Causes of the crash

There has been much controversy, on what action/actions started the initial decline of 1929. Both economists and historians have both offered different explanations for what exactly caused the situation. There are three main demographics whos ideas vary. The common thought process of the citizens during the crash was that it was just part of the “cycle”. This was a flawed idea, because if it was just a normal part of the systems “cycle” then the system itself was flawed in a major way, and needed to be changed. Economist Kenneth Galbraith argued that, any initial event could have triggered the investors, who during the crash acted irrationally investment wise. When the stock market itself crashed, the stock speculators quickly looked for someone to blame for the devastation, but as Galbraith explains:

No one was responsible for the great Wall Street crash. No one engineered the speculation that preceded it. Both were the product of the free choice and decision of hundreds of thousands of individuals. The latter were not led to the slaughter. They were impelled to it by the seminal lunacy which has always seized people who are seized in turn with the notion that they can become very rich.

However, other scholars ha...

... middle of paper ...

...ent as I stated prior.

Aftermath
Many horrible events occurred during and after the crash itself. I have prepared 6 facts about the aftermath of the crash.
1) 12 million people out of work
2) 12,000 people being made unemployed every day
3) 20,000 companies had gone bankrupt
4) Over 100 banks had gone bankrupt
5) 1 farmer in 20 was evicted
6) 23,000 people committed suicide in one year - the highest ever
These facts are hard to swallow, and especially hard to recover from, but Canada did rise from it all.

Recovery

Canada went to war, hundreds of thousands of men either enlisted or were drafted and suddenly had jobs, the government started ordering huge quantities of tanks, planes, rifles, bullets, and materials that all had to be produced in factories, giving hundreds of thousands to millions more people jobs. War saved Canada from years of desperate poverty.