Explain the Causes and Effects of the Great Depression.

Explain the Causes and Effects of the Great Depression By: Liran Morav The Great Depression was one of the most significant periods in American history. It came as a blow to the American people who were used to living in the "American Dream" (Paul. A., 1996, p.1), or the "Roaring Twenties". The Depression was described as "The Rise and Fall of a Nation" (Tower Records, 1998). Lasting for about a decade, it is still considered to be "The worst economic slump ever in US history" (Paul. A., p.1, 1996). This essay will examine the causes of the Great Depression, and its effects on USA. Perhaps the events that most clearly associated with the Great Depression were the Wall Street crashes on October 24th and 29th, 1929. Although not acting as direct causes of the Depression, they worsened it to a horrible extent. The Crashes were inevitable. Premature market Speculation was common throughout the 1920's, and it artificially increased shares' value, allowing many Americans to become rich. It was only a matter of time until investors realized they were investing in what Aaron Gibes (cyberessays.com, 2002), an economist during the Depression, called "markets that were only prosperous 'share-wise' ". Along with market speculation, the "Credit System" also made the crash inevitable. Stock Brokers prior to the Depression were so confident in the market that they began loaning people

  • Word count: 2444
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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FDR's New Deal

New Deal Coursework • Why Did Roosevelt Introduce The New Deal? The Wall Street crash of 1929 started the devastating economic downturn in the United States that was to become the Great Depression. It escalated when people began to panic and pull all their money out of the banks. Due to this, by 1933, 11,000 of the US' 25,000 banks had failed. This widespread loss of confidence in the economy made people reluctant to spend their money, which caused businesses to either fail or cut back on their workforce. The decline in demand for labour was the initial cause of high unemployment, which reached unprecedented heights throughout the decade with 13 million people becoming unemployed. In 1933, 25% of all workers were unemployed. Homelessness also increased vastly due to unemployment, which led to the coining of the term 'Hoovervilles' as a name for the towns of cardboard boxes built and inhabited by homeless men, named after president Herbert Hoover. It had been made clear that the downward economical spiral was not going to resolve itself, and would only get worse if something wasn't done to combat it. President Hoover had previously held a 'Laissez Faire' attitude, meaning that he believed too much government coercion would have negative effects on the state of things and they should be therefore left alone. However, in an effort to boost the American economy, the

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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How successful was the New Deal and why has it been the subject of so much controversy?

According to C. Vann Woodard, "Franklin D. Roosevelt and his new deal have been both credited with recovery from the depression and blamed for the failure of recovery'. How successful was the New Deal and why has it been the subject of so much controversy? Franklin D Roosevelt introduced the New Deal with the aim to help improve the conditions within America and to bring the country out of the great depression. To do this Roosevelt needed to consider what would not only stop the depression but also to prevent a re-occurrence. After the event of the Wall Street Crash people were left living in unsuitable conditions and most were unemployed, to overcome this Roosevelt had to introduce acts, which would help the condition of the population and regain trust. Within the first one hundred days of the New Deal Roosevelt had closed the banks for four days and passed the Federal Emergency Relief Act, this gave the treasury power to investigate all banks threatened with collapse, although this did not help any of those already affected by the wall street crash, it prevented any more banks from suffering and helped gain trust back into the banking system. This was followed by the Publics Works Act, this aimed to give people job's such as building roads and library's to get people back into work and reduce the number of employment, it was hoped that this would in turn lead to

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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Between 1920 and the end of 1933 the production, selling and transporting of alcohol was banned and made illegal.

Ben Hewison USA Coursework Question 2 Between 1920 and the end of 1933 the production, selling and transporting of alcohol was banned and made illegal. This was called prohibition, a year before, 1919 the Voistead Act was passed. Congressmen were the people who voted for prohibition, who had also been voted by people who supported the congressmen and prohibition, when they were promised to support it. Alcohol was seen as a cause of many problems such as medical and social issues. Supporters of prohibition, the campaigning of W.C.T.U and the A.S.L against alcohol were very successful. Prohibition was mainly brought in because of the fear of disease and death, crime, violence, drunken behaviour, neglect and poverty. In 1860 there was a big move of people westward in the USA, most as farmers and miners. Many of them were strict protestants they believed alcohol was the work of the devil. The first leaders of the temperance movement were women. They blamed alcohol for disease and death, crime, violence, drunken behaviour, neglect and for poverty. Then the W.C.T.U women Christian temperance union was set up. Their original idea was to make saloons illegal. They then aimed to get the making and selling of alcohol illegal. They took their idea to Kansas and it

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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Did Life Improve for Most Americans under Roosevelt?

Did Life Improve for Most Americans under Roosevelt? I will first see if life did get better for most Americans. If life did get better for most Americans I will see if this was mostly Roosevelt's doing or if it was due to other factors out of his control or completely unassociated with him. For some people such as farmers who lived in very remote places the Wall Street Crash and the depression did not affect them. They just grew crops to support them selves or maybe a small community. This people had no reason to have contact with the outside world so they did not know or care that prices had fallen to almost nothing. They could carry on living just by swapping items with each other in their community with out the need for money. This people would have been unaffected by Roosevelt's New Deal or second New Deal. These peoples lives did not get any better in the 1930's because it had not got any worse I the 1920's. Some people who lived in cities did not have an improvement in their lives in the 1930's at all. They lost every thing in the depression and could not get on work schemes or were to ill to be employed. These people had no improvements in their lives and for them the depression carried on into the 1940's. Once the new deal had been implemented people were starting to get jobs again but the weekly wage was on average $17. Whereas before the depression the weekly

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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How useful are sources D and E in helping you to understand the effects of the depression upon people in Jarrow?

How useful are sources D and E in helping you to understand the effects of the depression upon people in Jarrow? Source D shows a report from the Jarrow Public Health Committee, published in 1933. Source E shows the Death rates and infant mortality rates in Jarrow and nationally, also published by the Jarrow Public Health Committee. They are both useful to some extent as it shows how the depression affected Jarrow. Source D is useful because it is part of a report from the Jarrow Public Health Committee; we can trust the person who wrote this as they are writing to inform the government about Jarrow. It is useful as they describe a house in Jarrow to show the effects of the depression upon a normal family. There may be some amount of bias in this as it is written to inform the government about people who live in Jarrow so the author of the report may be exaggerating. In source D it says ''we enter a tunnel-like passage with bare walls''. The author is clearly biased as he is not only using facts but opinions. He said ''tunnel-like passage''. He is using his own opinion of the passage. He also says ''and then go up a dark bare wooden staircase''. This also backs up my theory that he is using his own opinions because he said ''dark'' and ''bare'', this is suggesting that this house is in poor condition. The author is implying that the living room is not what a living room

  • Word count: 2137
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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History Coursework on Prohibition Source A is aptly named "Slaves of the saloon". It shows a man handing over what we guess is

History Coursework on Prohibition Source A is aptly named "Slaves of the saloon". It shows a man handing over what we guess is his weekly wages to the owner of a saloon - we guess by the men drinking in the background that he is using it to buy alcohol. The source also depicts a woman and her children sitting around a table with no food. We can guess fairly easily that this is the man in the saloon's family; there is a bill on the floor hinting at lack of money for necessities, utter desperation is on all of their faces. The poster was probably printed to persuade the general public that the 18th amendment (banning the transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors) should be passed. It is likely to have been created by one of the rich men of the Anti-Saloon League - Henry Ford or Wayne Willard. Prohibition was popular with lots of people but mostly the (positively) Christian people in the rural areas of the USA. A lot of these areas had already had local prohibition for many years but now wanted to spread it to the rest of the USA. Many people thought that if they got rid of the intoxicant itself then the problem of drunks and anti-social behaviour due to alcohol would be eliminated. The Anti-Saloon League and the WCTU (Women's Christian Temperance Union) were united in their fight for prohibition along with a vast number of Christian-Americans who believed that the

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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Source related work on Prohibition.

U.S.A Coursework Both historians in sources A and B most likely got their information from books as these sources where published roughly 50 years after prohibition came into effect. This means that both sources are 2nd sources not primary sources. It is very unlikely that both historians got their sources from people at the time of prohibition because they probably would be too old and have short memory of what happened at the time. There are a few points that both historians agree on. The main one is that the widespread increase of crime was due to prohibition. The source A says "it created the greatest criminal boom." This contrasts into what source B says ".... turned the avoidance of prohibition into big, violent business." They both agree on this because it was a major outcome of the prohibition but B is worded different from the previous source . Another main agreement of these sources is the main pressure groups at the time. The main one's where 'Anti-Saloon League' and 'Women's Christian Temperance Union.' These where largely made up of women as the men were fighting in the War. These pressure groups campaigned against the making, selling and transporting of alcohol. This is because many of their husbands probably spent most of their money on alcohol making the families poor. Children where also being made deprived and women where mainly being beat.

  • Word count: 698
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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Why Roosevelt won.

The 1932 elections were very important, as they were to decide the future of America. Roosevelt won, with a huge proportion of the votes. He won 42 out of the 48 states that voted. Hoover won a mere 6. So what made this great man win the election? In this essay I will explore the possible answers to this question. Roosevelt himself contributed greatly to his huge scale of victory. FDR's personality was very popular with the American people. He was very caring and empathetic; he truly wanted to help. The affluent society in which Roosevelt was brought up in, taught the spirit of service to others. Roosevelt felt that he should help those worse off than him. This taught him to respect those below him as much as he'd like them to respect him. This attitude was very appealing for the struggling Americans. His status, also made him very popular. The most character building experience in FD Roosevelt's life was when he suffered from polio. He was close to death, and recovery was slow and painfully hard work. He ended up paralysed from the waist down. Roosevelt's struggle with polio helped him a lot to empathise with the American people's struggles during the depression. There are many parallels between his plight during polio and their predicament during the depression. Both had a total lack of control. Roosevelt had lost control of his body, and the Americans had lost control of

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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Source based work on Prohibition.

Prohibition Question F Some of sources A to J do not suggest an inevitable failure of Prohibition where as some of them you cannot use as evidence because they were published after or during Prohibition. I think that sources A, B, E, I and J all suggest that Prohibition was inevitably going to fail where as sources C, D, F, G and H all do not suggest that inevitably Prohibition was going to fail. Source A is a historian talking about Prohibition in 1973. It says firstly about the causes of Prohibition, which make it seem that Prohibition was not going to fail. By saying things like 'The bad influence of saloons' and 'Most important of all was the moral fervour inspired by the War to Make The World Safe for Democracy'' make it sound that this article would have been strongly for the introduction of Prohibition. However in the second paragraph he uses hindsight to try and prove that it would have been inevitable with lines such as 'For no earlier law had gone against the daily customs, habits and desires of so many Americans.' Therefore I believe that this source suggests that the failure or Prohibition was inevitable. Source B is a historian talking about Prohibition in 1979. The first paragraph is about the causes and events of Prohibition so, as with Source A, this paragraph is saying that Prohibition was not going to fail. Quotations such as '...great evils of the times -

  • Word count: 1203
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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