Though the United States of America is a world power and a leading nation which is an example of development and progress, it went through a period which no one can forget and still managed to come out of it shining and stronger than ever. That period was the period of Great Depression which started in 1929 and was over with the World War II. There are the great depression facts which are not known to everyone. It is very important that we should be aware of the facts and reasons of the great depression so that we do not repeat the same mistakes again. History is important because it helps us to learn from the mistakes of others and teaches us to find ways to avoid them in the present era. Officially the great depression started on a Tuesday which is called as ‘Black Tuesday’ for the obvious reasons.
On 29th October 1929 the market at the Wall Street crashed. The United States lost a total $20 million in that week which was a huge amount of money in those days. It was ten times the amount which was considered as the annual budget of the United States of America. This period of depression was quite long as it lasted for many years and ended with the World War II. Mean time President Hoover lost the presidential election to F. D. Roosevelt as he was considered as incapable of handling the economic crisis which was crippling the country.
Some of the great depression facts are a bit funny because they are the instances where the average American person was trying to survive this huge problem but still his sense of humor was intact. The shanty towns, which were built by the common people after they lost everything they owned, were called as Hoover towns because they wanted to protest against president Hoover. Though this fact is quite an interesting fact, the others are not so funny.
This depression hit hard every industry in the country leaving a lot of people jobless and homeless. Construction, production industries were hit first but even the agriculture industry was not spared. More than 750,000 farms were lost due to drop in the crop prices which resulted in the bankruptcy of the farmers. Unemployment rate was all time high at 25% and more than 50 % of children suffered from lack of food and medicines. Many of these children left school in search for jobs so that they could survive and many schools were closed because of the result of this economic crisis. President Roosevelt played an important part in taking the country out of the crutches of this crisis. His social security program was the basis for the modern social security program.
Watch this video to get all the Great Depression Facts you need!
For more facts about the Great Depression, check out this page about the interesting and ironic facts of the time.