The Depression of the 1930’s was a very hard time for the middle and lower classes in America. Due to the depression, both classes had to struggle to survive and give up many of their favorite pastimes due to lack of monetary funds. Blacks had to give up low paying jobs to upper class white males who had lost their higher paying jobs. Mexican workers were sent out of the country. Many people, especially farmers, were evicted from their houses and forced to live on the outskirts of their hometowns in crates and literal holes in the ground with sheets as roofs. The Depression changed many people of it’s time and left a mark on them forever. No longer would the used items be thrown away; instead, they would be reused again and again.
One reason for the depression was the unstable economy. The United State’s wealth was not spread evenly. Instead, most money was in the hands of a few families who saved or invested rather than spent their money on American goods. The stock market boom was another cause. It was very unsteady because it was based on borrowed money and false optimism. Also, supply was greater than demand. Farmers and workers made no money. When investors lost confidence, the stock market collapsed, taking everyone down with it. The final straw was the Stock Market crash of 1929. Then came the Great Depression.
Perceptions of the depression vary between class, sex and race. Minorities felt like they were totally abandoned and their jobs were stolen from them, while wealthy white citizens may not may not have had any changes in lifestyle at all. President Hoover gave a Thanksgiving address during the heart of the depression. In it he told Americans to be thankful for all that they had. In reality, most of the American citizens had nothing in the way of material possessions. They had no food, clothes or homes to live in. What were they to be thankful for? These were extremely hard times for most of the nation’s citizens and the leaders had no idea what their citizens were going through.
The Essay on Great Depression People Money Pay
The Great Depression This report is about the economic hard time of the 1930's. The great depression is a time when the people of the United States and the government's spending was out of control. You " ll learn that the great depression didn't just happen over night but accumulated over a period of time. It's a common misconception that the stock market crash in October 1929 was called by the ...
Through the confusion of the depression, the classes were divided. The lower class disliked the middle class and the upper class. The middle class took the lower classes jobs and pay. The upper class had no idea what anybody was going through and felt no wrath from the depression. This made the middle and lower class very jealous of the rich society. Middle class also resented the rich class because they knew that their hopes of becoming like them some day were quickly fading.
Minority citizens were probably the worst hit with the depression. Not only did they lose their jobs to main stream races, the Mexicans were forced to return to their home country. At first they left at their own will, but as the depression worsened, many states began buying one way tickets for the Mexicans to return to their home country. They were thought to be a partial cause of the depression because they took the jobs of the lower class and forced the lower class to become even more indebt. African-American citizens lost their clerical, janitorial, and shoe shining jobs to Caucasian middle class men who had lost their more prestigious jobs at factories such as the Ford assembly plants.
Before writing this paper, I read many interesting accounts of the Great Depression. Views greatly differed from white lower class to black lower class to General Motors workers to concerned doctors. One negative account I found the same throughout all of the reports, was the mistreatment of the citizens. No matter whom they were, what previous social status they held, or where they lived, people were kicked out of their family homes, kicked off the trains, and treated badly because they were poor.
The Essay on The Depression Great Families People
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 were wiped out, lost everything. The crash led us into the Great Depression. This period was the longest and worst period of high unemployment and low business activity, people went along with only the bear necessities, and the families ...
One common positive theme I found though the accounts all of the harsh treatment was the fact that small groups always helped each other. Farmers helped one another by controlling the auctioning off of each others farm equipment. This practice was coined as penny sales. Other ways people helped each other were families provided shelter for other homeless family members. Even children helped out the family by retrieving soup from the local soup kitchens. Everyone in the family put in a days work in some shape or form.
The Great Depression was a very hard time for middle and lower class citizens. Some people starved trying to find work, while others did all they could to just hang on a little longer. People lost their family homes, life savings, and careers. When the depression finally started to subside due to Roosevelt and his New Deal, the American citizens felt great relief. The relief was welcome, but the people were also left with a scar that they could never forget. The people from this generation would never trust the banks or the stock market again.
