| Crashes and Conquests |
| by Aaron Reese |
| Just one year after my grandmother, Jean, was born, the Great Depression devoured the country.� On Tuesday, October 29, 1929 the stock market crashed causing many of the rich to become poor. It set forth events that the country would not be able to recover from for ten more very difficult years. |
| The Crash |
| By 1929, people had been purchasing stock with small down payments for years.� The rest would be paid off with a payment plan.� With millions of people purchasing stock many in this way the value of stock skyrocketed, but very little money actually changed hands.� Nearly all the stock was purchased on credit.� If the stock rises, the investor gains equity for his or her stock because of its rise in value.� The opposite is also true.� If the stock drops, the investor must put forth the money to cover the loss.� This is called security. |
| The small down payment could logically only cover small drops in value.� If a large drop occurred, additional money would have to be acquired from the investor to cover the margin. |
| Beginning on October 24, the stock market began to fall, spiraling out of control.� Brokers managed to recover most of the loss for the next few days, but on ?Black Tuesday the market could not be saved. |
| People were dumping their securities and causing even more downward pressure on the market.� There were despondent stockbrokers, in tears, hopelessly trying to get in touch with customers for margin. The panic of selling made sure, once and for all, there would be no quick fix. The market had crashed (Savill). |
| The Great Depression |
| My grandmother has told me on several occasions that she never experienced the depression. She lived in a government town where her father was an engineer for the military.� Her neighbors all had similar jobs. |
| She was one of the fortunate few to have escaped the wrath of the crash.� Many families moved from town to town in search of work.� The father figure of the household lost his role as provider. Some fathers suffered anxiety and a feeling of worthlessness for failing to provide for their families. Many distressed fathers committed suicide during this difficult decade (Burley). |
| By 1932, unemployed Americans looking for work had enveloped a quarter of the population..� The entire full-time work force of 225 thousand from U.S. Steel was laid off (Jennings).� People left their homes to find work.� Some would have to take shelter in makeshift towns of shipping boxes nicknamed "Hoovervilles" until they could afford housing once more (Jennings; Burley). |
| In the Midwest farmers faced the worst drought the nation had ever known.� Twenty-five thousand square miles of open farmland became the "Dust Bowl."� Agricultural sales and production plummeted then families left to California for work.� Boxcars filled with people on their way west.� If no room could be found inside, people would pile onto the top (Jennings). |
| Many farmers and city workers found no work in the United States, so they relocated to other countries.� More than 100 thousand migrated to Russia.� This was the only time in U.S. history that emigration outweighed immigration (Jennings). |
| Those who stayed behind sought refuge from the world in movies, literature, radio or music.� For fifteen cents one could spend six or seven hours in the Grand Lake Theater watching live music, movies, the news then more live music.� Iconic literature legends such as John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald also published many works in the 1930's.� Many of their novels are still top sellers. |
| Not just legends found their audiences in the thirties, but Agathe Christie and Dr. Suess got a foothold in the entertainment industry.� My grandmother still reads Christie's books; in addition, nearly nobody is ignorant of the name Dr. Suess (Sutton).� |
| Entertainment helped people in small ways; boosting morale or easing tension?at least until the movie or book or radio show ended but the weight of the nation's problems was too much to bear with just the help of stories.� The public looked to the government for help. They looked to President Herbert Hoover to help them.� Hoover could do little to help them, but he did little to try.� Because of this, resentment for Hoover began to grow in the people's minds.� It would soon take full form. |
| The New Deal |
| Hoover was a firm believer in "Laissez Faire" (let it be).� He felt "uncomfortable" having programs that enabled the government to restore the economic welfare (Murrin et al. 2, 853).� The people began to despise him because of his apparent indifference to the nation?s economy.� People even mocked his name with the before mentioned "Hoovervilles" along with nicknaming newspapers "Hoover blankets" (Jennings).� Later on, the hatred for him solidified due to the attack on the "Bonus Army." |
| In the spring of 1932 a group of army veterans mounted a particularly emotional challenge to Hoover's policies (Murrin et al. 2, 853). These twenty thousand veterans with their families came to be known as the "Bonus Army" due to a thousand dollar bonus that Congress had promised them.� The bonus certificate would mature in 1945, but the former soldiers demanded early compensation.� Hoover refused to meet with them then dispatched federal troops to disperse the group's nearby encampment.� The troops set fire to the camp resulting in over one hundred veterans injured and the death of one infant.� Hoover became the most hated man in the nation. |
| In the election of 1932, Hoover obliviously ran against the little known New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt.� Roosevelt promised a "New Deal" that voters didn?t really understand what it meant, but just as long as Hoover wasn't involved, they didn't really care.� Roosevelt won the election in a landslide victory.� Hoover acquired just fifty-nine of the 531 electoral votes during the election (Murrin et al. 2, 854). |
| Roosevelt proved to be a decisive, fast acting President.� In his first "Hundred Days," from early March through June 1933, Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass 15 major pieces of legislation to help bankers, farmers, industrialists, workers, homeowners, the unemployed, and the hungry? (Murrin et al. 2, 856). |
| For the first time in a very long while, people felt hope.� They felt that someone was doing something for them.� Roosevelt made sure the people felt like he was with them every step of the way, guiding them through the horrible depression.� His "fireside chats" gave the impression of having him speak directly to the individual listeners.� He spoke in a calm, friendly voice to encourage as well as inform the American public.� He also used it as a way to influence public opinion, though they didn?t know that. |
| My grandmother has told me of some of the times she listened to the "chats" when she was a young girl.� She didn't understand most of it, but she remembered that he sounded very friendly. |
| Roosevelt made the people believe in America again. He gave faith in their future and in democracy.� Roosevelt and his New Dealers not only strengthened democracy, they inspired millions of Americans who had never before voted to go to the polls.� Groups that had been marginalized?southern and eastern Europeans, unskilled workers, Native Americans now believed that their political activism could make a difference (Murrin et al. 2, 886). |
| Conclusion |
| The end of the thirties, more or less, marked the end of the depression.� With the help of a charming President, political reformists and a now powerful federal government, the people had been given back hope for their own lives and the futures of their children's.� |
| The kids who lived the early years of their lives during the depression grew up to have a more positive outlook on things, they know their futures would be brighter than those faced by their moms and dads (Sheehy 27). |
| This was my grandparent's generation; the generation of people who faced more hardships in their first ten years than most ever see in life's entirety.� The depression molded a very tough and adventurous group in every nation that went off to fight in defense its country during World War II.� It churned out some of the best leaders in the U.S: Dwight D. Eisenhower, then later Ronald Reagan followed by George Bush (Sheehy 28). These men, along with many others from that generation structured and lead the United States through some of it?s most trying times, but they lived out their young lives in the hardest time of all.� It is the generation revered to have the toughest, most courageous Americans that ever were as it should be. |
| Grandparent paper |