Great Depression

Most of the historians would agree that the Great Depression spanned the years between the stock market crash of October 1929 and the Japa­nese attack on the U.S. Naval fleet at Pearl Harbor, in the Hawaiian Islands, on December 7, 1941. Yet a chorus of dissenters within the histori­cal clan would argue that hard times really began in the mid-1920s in the Great Plains and on southern farms. Others would insist that hard times, however difficult for some, did not become general or "great" until after "Black Thursday," October 29, 1929, when the New York stock market collapsed. Still other historians would point out that the stock market's collapse did not lead to widespread hard times for a couple of years. Many Americans suffered seri­ous economic privation in the several years before the stock market crash—especially farmers, laborers, women, and members of minority groups. Others had better experiences, and some were never touched by the Depression. But clearly those with fewer options, and those with re­stricted opportunities before the crash, had more difficult times than those who were more insulated from economic difficulties. Those who were more vulnerable experienced privation, tight budgets, and unemployment years before their more fortunate middle- and upper-class fellow citizens on Main Street—and Wall Street.

The stock market crash of the year 1929 triggered the Great Depression. U.S. participation in World War II, not the New Deal, finally lifted the nation out of the Depression. It is the 1930s in which we are interested and, therefore, in the epochal Great Depression—and the political response to that seismic phenomenon, the New Deal.

A serious worldwide economic depression occurred throughout the 1930s, and its effects in the United States were catastrophic and widespread. The extent of the Great Depression in the United States can be expressed in numbers. The nation's gross national product (GNP a measure of the total value of the economy—was $104.4 billion before the crash in 1929. By 1933 it had shrunk to $74.2 billion (expressed in 1929 prices). The GNP per capita in those same years plummeted from $857 to $590, the lat­ter being lower than in the years 1907-1911, so that the economic growth since 1911 suddenly disappeared, as if by magic. Unemployment statistics are even more mind-numbing.

Questionnaire:

• What was the main reason for Great Depression?
• What were the results of Great Depression in United States?