Great Depression Dbq

Prior to the Great Depression, America experienced an ordinary recession. consumer spending dropped and unsold goods began to pile up, slowing production. At the same time, stock prices continued to rise, and by the fall of that year had reached levels that could not be justified by anticipated future gains in profits. On October 24, 1929, the stock market bubble burst as investors began dumping shares in mass quantities. Finally, on October 29, 1929, the stock market collapsed. Millions of shares became worthless and individuals who invested everything in them lost all of their money. Banks failed as mass quantities of people scrambled to withdrawl whatever was left in their accounts. The banks could not meet the demands and ultimately, millions of Americans lost everything. The Great Depression lasted ten years. It began in 1929, and ended in 1939.

Meanwhile, the country’s industrial production had dropped by half. Bread lines, soup kitchens and rising numbers of homeless people became more and more common in America’s towns and cities. Farmers could not afford to harvest their crops, so they let them rot in the fields, causing many Americans to starve.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected as the new president of the United States during this period. In his first one hundred days in office, his administration passed legislation that aimed to stabilize industrial and agricultural production, create jobs and stimulate recovery. In addition, Roosevelt sought to reform the financial system, creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to protect depositors’ accounts and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate the stock market and prevent abuses of the kind that led to the 1929