The Great Depression

The Great Depression

The 1920’s started a very slow and sad time in the United States. People lost jobs, money, and even their houses. Banks could not give money back to people and no one had any trust left in the stock market. The great depression had hit and everyone was in chaos; no one knew how to make it better, and things only got worse.

Stock speculation was very big in the 1920’s. People bought stocks and then sold them for a quick profit. To get rich faster, they did not have patients to keep their stocks for a long period of time. This made the stock market unstable. Since people were not investing for extensive periods of time, they were basically gambling. Since there were no regulations, people could do whatever they wanted to.

Lots of people bought things on loans. If a person could not afford a house, he would borrow money from friends or more likely from the bank, this was called easy credit. But when the depression hit those people lost their homes; since they could not pay the banks back.

Banks were loosely regulated, people borrowed money with not much intent to pay it back, and when the depression hit, they could not return the money. So when people who invested in the banks, wanted their money back, the banks didn’t have it; since they loaned it out to so many people. And all those people could not give back their loans.

There was an unequal distribution of wealth, the farmers and the laborers couldn’t buy many of the things that the higher classes could. Since not many people had buying power, lots of industries had to lay people off since they were not making any money and could not afford to keep so many workers. Those people, who were fired, had no money so they could not support any other markets; this caused almost every industry to shut down.

The Great depression was a very difficult time in the United