The Great Depression began in October 1929, when the stock market in the United States dropped rapidly. Thousands of investors lost large sums of money and many lost everything. The crash led us into the Great Depression. The period of the great depression ranked as the longest and worst period of high unemployment and low business activity in modern times. Banks, stores, and factories were closed and left millions of Americans jobless, homeless, and broke. Many people came to depend on the government or charity to provide them with food. There were several causes of the great depression including bank failures, the stock market crash, and unequal distribution of wealth, economic policies, overproduction, and drought conditions. The 3 major cause of the depression was the stock market crash, bank failures, and distribution of wealth

    The stock market crash of 1929 helped trigger weaknesses of the American economy. On Black Tuesday, investors panicked and dumped an unprecedented 16 million shares.  The increased buying of stocks damaged Americans' credit, made the effects of the stock market crash worse. As a result, within one month, American investors had lost tens of billions of dollars. If stockholders couldn't pay up, their stocks were sold, wiping out many an investor's ife savings in an instant. In total, $25 billion was lost in the 1929 crash. Stocks continued to fall over many weeks until bottoming out on November 13, 1929. The stock market wouldn't recover to its pre-crash numbers until 1954.

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   Many U.S. banks in the early 1900s were little better than most of the banks of the 1800s, especially in rural areas of the West and South. Because there were no federal regulations existed that could control banks, Americans had few means of protesting bad banking practices. Corruption was rampant and most Americans had no idea what happened to their money after they handed it over to a bank. Many bankers capitalized irresponsibly on the stock market, and bought stocks with customers' savings. When the stock market crashed, this money simply vanished, and thousands of families lost their entire life ...

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