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The Great Depression Dbq

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Yes, concerns about major social and political revolution were justified at the time of the Great Depression. After the stock market crashed, banks failed as well as a result of millions of Americans withdrawing their money. Unemployment ensued because of the rapid decrease of consumer spending. These all mostly affected the working class, since they were the ones who went out of work when the Depression hit. Additionally, the big disparity of wealth between the rich and poor encouraged the Depression; 32% of the country’s wealth went to the richest 5% of people, while only 10% when to the poorest 42%. This near-majority was therefore unable to take part in the consumer economy. The large monetary gap prompted a strong dislike towards the rich …show more content…

His plan, which he called the “Share-Our-Wealth” Plan, claimed that the government could end the Depression easily by using the tax system to take the wealth of the richest men and women in America and redistribute it to the rest of the population. The plan appealed to the poorer people, as they were against the rich anyway since they believed they were hogging the money that was much-needed throughout the rest of the country. The rich despised the plan for obvious reasons- they did not want their money to be taken away from them just to give it to the poor. Long gained a considerable amount of supporters because of the great amount of poor people in the country at the time, especially with the help of the organization he founded, the “Share-Our-Wealth” Society. The ideas that Long was delivering to the near-majority, the poor, added to the tensions between the rich and the poor, which ultimately added to the potential of a revolution as …show more content…

In 1924, Congress approved a payment to World War 1 veterans that they would receive a $1,000 bonus for their victory in the war by the year 1945. But in 1932, those veterans decided that they wanted their bonuses early because of the financial pressures they were under. Congress declined, so they marched to Washington, build camps around the city, and vowed to remain there until Congress approved legislation to pay the bonus. The very fact that the veterans, after fighting in the Great War, were willing to go through all this to get compensation from the government truly shows how much Americans at the time needed the money; if they were willing to march up to the Federal Government to demand money, the possibility of them demanding money through Huey Long’s economic plan was certainly applicable. The need for money that existed amongst the poor people, which was essentially the majority of the country at the time, was so intense that all these factors played a role in the rising tensions between the rich and the poor. If World War II hadn’t begun, a Civil War between the classes could have certainly been a viable result at the time, as there were many major social and political pushes towards it throughout the course of the

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