Herbert Hoover During The Great Depression

Many people believe that The Great Depression began when the stock market crashed on October 29, 1929. In the mid to late 1920’s the stock market grew majorly, the stock prices skyrocketed gaining interest from all kinds of people. As stock prices continued to rise, the market became very poplar. Eventually the stock prices started to fall during September through early October, and by October 24 the market was starting to crash. On “Black Thursday” (October 24,1929) 12.9 million shares were traded in order for investors to save what little money they could. When the market actually crashed, millions of shares became worthless and investments were lost. Within a week from “Black Tuesday” the market lost $30 billion leaving millions of people

Herbert Hoover was the president when the Great Depression began. President Hoover believed in a limited role of government and that the people should be independent. He also believed that any help should be voluntarily; most of his so-called “solutions” involved him asking others to do things to help the people suffering. For example, he asked big companies to keep wages steady, and state governments to undertake public work programs. Many people blame him for not stepping in more and trying to lessen the effects of the depression. The government started changing for the better when Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932. Within Roosevelt’s first one hundred days in office he announced a four-day bank holiday, in which Congress passed the Emergency Banking Relief Act to stabilize the banking system. He put into place “The New Deal”, which was a series of programs that were created to lessen the suffering of the people affected by the great depression. Programs like the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration) were created in order to help farmers that were affected by not the only the depression but also by the dustbowl. The New Deal also consisted of programs like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to protect deposits that were made and the Securities and Exchange Commission to make sure we never had a repeat of what happened to the stock market in 1929. President Roosevelt’s New Deal did help, but it did not end the Great Depression; people were still unemployed and the economy was still suffering. This lead Roosevelt to launch the Second New Deal, a new set of federal programs that were focused on helping the people. He created the Works Progress Administrated that created jobs for unemployed citizens and worked on building things like bridges, highways, and schools. In 1935, the Social Security Act was passed, this paid money to elder Americans, disabled and the