Essay/Term paper: The depression

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Cliff Notes

Imagine for a moment, waking up one day to find

yourself on a

dirty floor, a pile of rags, or maybe even the street.

You look down at

yourself to find you're wearing the same clothes you

wore yesterday,

except they are completely filthy and have lots of

holes in places like the knees and elbows. You have

no access to a

mirror to show you what you look like so you go to

touch you hair with

your hand and find it to be a pile of grease and dirt

that obviously

hasn't been washed in days, maybe even weeks.

You get up and start to head for work, or school,

only to realize you

have no place to go. The pain of hunger eats away at

you, but you just

ignore it knowing that there is nothing for you to eat

and you have no

money to buy any food. You have no job, no money, no

family, no hope.

Welcome to the Depression.

The 1920's was a time of great prosperity in the

lives of most

Americans and our natural human ignorance made us

think it would stay that

way forever. We had just come out of the Great War

and business was

booming, along with agriculture and the stock m arket.

The outlook for

the future was great, but people failed to understand

that economies can't

be on the upswing forever, it has to come down

sometime. All of the signs

of a depression were there; the farmers were producing

too much, the

uneven distr ibution of income, easy credit/huge

debts, imbalance of

foreign trade; people just didn't notice them. Not

until October 29,

1929--BLACK TUESDAY--anyway, when the bottom of the

stock market fell out,

taking millions of American lives with it. Even thoug

h any didn't admit

it, they knew what was on the way. People who had

been buying stocks on

margin (10% down) suddenly found themselves penniless

and in bigger debt

than they could imagine. America went into a panic,

pulling money out of

banks in a frenz y causing many to close their doors.

President Hoover tried hard to make the times better

for the

unemployed first by setting aside almost $800 million

for public works

like the now Hoover Dam. Conditions, however, failed

to improve. His

other policies, the Reconstruction Finance Corporat

ion (RFC) and the Home

Loan Bank Act, also didn't make much difference. The

election of 1932

made it clear that the American people were unhappy

with Hoover. Franklin

Delano Roosevelt won the election on the Democratic

ticket by a landslide.

His promis e of "a new deal" gave Americans hope for

what he could do for

them. Two days after his inauguration he ordered a

'bank holiday' for all

the banks in the country to close. When they reopened,

people felt more

safe putting their money in banks with the go vernment

backing them up.

FDR's "New Deal" became what started the nation's turn

around. With such

programs as the CCC (employing single males from the

ages of 17-28 to do

community labor like road building), the FERA (used

$250 million to aid

the unemp loyed, elderly, and sick), the AAA (paid

farmers to grow less),

the NIRA (set up price controls), the WPA (creating as

many job as

possible), and others, Franklin Roosevelt became one

of the most

successful leader this country has ever had.

Throughout h is Presidency,

he almost single-handedly changed the fate of America.

He turned this

country around so we could be a great nation again.

If you were to ask someone who lived through the

Great Depression,

as it came to be called, what it was like, their

answer would probably not

be a positive one. But even through immense tragedy,

good still found a

way to shine through. The Depression g ave us the

chance to redefine what

America stood for. The government now had the power

to help people in

need, and in return people had more trust in the

government because they

knew it would support them. The position of

minorities improved somewhat

be cause the New Deal relief measures were essentially

color blind, and

gave non-whites a small but significant chance. Women

also made their way

into the workforce during and after the Depression.

America, as I see it, is a country of greatness. Out

of a Great

War, into a Great Depression, and onto a great

recovery. My only hope is

that we continue this tradition in the future and not

let the mistakes our

ancestors made hurt us again.