Ch. 10 L2: Hard Times Hit Home

Ten years after World War I, the Great Depression began. An economic depression happens when people lose their jobs and have less money to buy.

One of the causes of the Great Depression was that companies made more products than they could sell.

When the company cannot sell the products, it loses money.

When companies continue to lose money, they close down.

When they close down, workers lose their jobs.​

Another cause for the Great Depression was that many people were buying shares of stock. When people buy a share of stock, they become part owner of business. Some businesses did bad and their shares were soon worth less than what they had cost.

On October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed. The stock market is where shares of stock are bought and sold. A stock market crash happens when the prices of many different shares suddenly become very low.

Many banks lost the money they had invested in the stock market.

Many businesses could not pay back the bank. So the banks closed.

People lost their jobs and their life saving. Many people lost their homes and farms.

During the 1930s, many states were affected by a drought, This drought lasted for so many years that the soil turned to dust.

The areas where the drought occurred became known as the Dust Bowl.

​Many people from the Dust Bowl moved to California. Many Californians were looking for work and believed that the migrants would take their jobs.

Some Californians tried to pass a law to keep the migrants out. The law did not pass.

Migrant workers moved place to place to harvest crop. They were not paid much and lived in bad conditions.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the President of the United States in 1933.

In order to bring the country out of the Great Depression, he started a program known as the New Deal. The New Deal was started to put people back to work.

The construction of the Hoover Dam, Shasta Dam, and the Golden Gate Bridge were done under the New Deal.

During the Great Depression, a large number of Californians feared that Mexican Immigrants were taking the jobs of Americans.

The Government began to deport, or send back to their country, Mexicans and Mexican Americans.

The Mexican American community fought back against this discrimination.