The Great Depression

by Deandre Powell

Joined Mar 2016
Published Books 1

The Stock Market Crash of 1929

When the stock market crashed on October 24th, 1929 it made a huge impact on everyone’s lives around here in New York City. We also called this “Black Tuesday”. Everyone is trying to buy brand new stocks and make there on stocks so they can build up more money. The bad thing about all of this is that when people aren’t getting the money they need, they start wanting to sell all of there shares for very cheap, and low prices before they aren’t worth anything at all.

Whenever the bank started wanting there money back nobody could pay them because all their money went into the shares and the people didn’t get anything back which made it hard for them to pay the bank back. I had a house, a car, a dog, a wife, and 2 children. After the stock crash I lost everything. My car, my house, and even after a while my kids are going to be taken away from me because i wouldnt be able to provide for them. Life is just plain out miserable at this point and there is nothing we can do about it.

Bank Failures

After Black Tuesday, alot of people wanted to remove their money from the banks because the banks were using there money for stock investments. When we would go to the banks to withdraw our money they would tell us “I’m sorry but right now we cant give you that kind of money” because it was too much because the bank actually doesn’t have any money to give back.

Back in 1929 600 banks closed because of “bank and business failures”. But right around now just about half of the nations banks are closed because they failed as a bank. Also 90,000 businesses had failed as well during this time and its hard to find jobs now because there aren’t any to get. Unemployment rose from 3% all the way up to 25%. Nobody in my family can find decent jobs, and the only person in my family who has one is my wife and she works at a bakery.

The Dust Bowl

The picture you see to the left is what we call now “The Dust Bowl”. These were started because of overgrazing, droughts, and very high winds. The Dust Bowl covered parts of Kansas,Texas, and Oklahoma. Millions of acres are affected by these storms everytime it comes along. I had family that stayed in the great plains where the dust storms were happening and they lost their homes because the winds were to strong and blew there houses all around the area. They were forced to leave along with almost 2.5 million other people.

The people that stayed over there came back and explained how it looked and described it as the worst thing they had ever saw and it was scary when it went over there house. These winds were clocked up to around 60 mph. They called this “Black Sunday” on April 14th, 1935 because it was 20 of the worst dust storms that hit there region.

Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover was our 31st president from 1929 to 1933. I and alot more people disagree with President Hoover because of all the unemployment and failed jobs. He also did nothing about the homeless people that was out on the streets. He just wasnt fit for president or to be in the office and did nothing about the “Great Depression”. This is where we needed a great president to help us get out of situations like these.

After taking a huge loss to Franklin Roosevelt President Hoover was not elected as the new president because Roosevelt promised a “New Deal” for american. Roosevelt felt like the government should help the homeless people and get them off the streets and fix the unemployment percentage.

Hoovervilles

Hoovervilles was the term that we homeless people used to called there homes named after President Herbert Hoover. These shacks were spreaded all across the nation on the outskirts of big cities mainly. The shacks were made out of scrap wood, metal, stone, or whatever material they could find to put together for there new home.

The people that lived in these shacks didnt have jobs or homes so this was all they had. These homes would normally be built near water supplies because they had no money for food so mainly they would eat was fish and would drink water. They would sometimes build these homes near soup kitchens that was provided by churches or charities.

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