The Success Of The Great Depression - 946 Words

The Great Depression built itself out of a time when farm systems failed, people in factories were losing money and jobs, the stock market crashed, and no one had much confidence that anything good was going to happen ever again. Some thought it was going to be over quickly. Shortly after the big crash in October 1929, Andrew W. Mellon, the Secretary of the Treasury said, The government s business is in sound condition. The truth was that no one s business was in good condition and would not get better for quite a long time. People living on farms had no healthy crops because of a long and horrible drought that turned fields of soil into sand and rocks and so much dust that the Midwest was named The Dust Bowl. This left the†¦show more content†¦The biggest event that got the Great Depression going was the crash that started on October 24, 1929. It was called Black Thursday. A few days later on October 29, 1929, things got even worse. Stocks fell to the point of losin g all value and banks started calling in loans that no one could pay back. This date became known as Black Tuesday. The losses were over 30 billion dollars by the next month. People were dying because of how farming methods and a drought destroyed crops, and people all over the United States had no food or shelter. Panicked sellers were trading shares on the New York Stock Exchange that had been overvalued, and finally the banks that kept every one s money lost it all. The next several years were terrifying according historical records. The middle class was disappearing and life was cut into two groups; the haves and the have-nots. The group that made the biggest part of the have-nots were the people who lived in rural areas. Parents who lost their jobs had to let their children be forced to leave from going to school. They had to work in factories and other places for low wages to help save their families. People who lived in the cities did not have it any better. Families we re getting evicted all the time. In places like Philadelphia, nursery school children played a game called the eviction game. They would pile their toy furniture into a corner. Then they would pick it up and move