Depressionish

During the Great depression many people thought that when the stock market crashed that it would only affect those who are rich. They were wrong. Gordon Parks wrote: I couldn’t imagine such financial disaster touching my small world”, “But by the first of November I too knew differently; along with millions of others across the nation, I was with out a job”. When the stock market crashed many businesses had to fire their employees to keep up with the fall of the stock market.

Quoting Herbert Hoover: “The spread of Government destroys initiative”. Herbert’s attitude towards government intervention is clear. He does not want America to rely solely upon the government when there is trouble; he wants individual independency, he wants America to be strong and be able to pick up the pieces without relying solely upon government interaction. If the government was too help everyone during every time of crisis then America will be unable to help itself during a disaster, and become to dependent.

Roosevelt’s way of dealing with the depression was with many new deal “remedies”. As depicted in the political cartoon in document six. This cartoon represents the low effectiveness of programs from the new deal. It shows Uncle Sam sick and with tons of medicine bottles on a table. The cartoonist clearly believes that these programs are not helping America. I disagree with the cartoon. And though there are many programs, some are still going on today. For example the social security act, which is one of the truly momentous legislative accomplishments in United States history!

Immediately after the depression a lot of people were out of jobs. Families were slowly becoming poorer and poorer. There were also many long-term effects of depression. White color workers and skilled craftsmen experienced economic losses,