Montes Day 2: Impact of the Great Depression/Hoovers Response

Stock Market Crash

● October 29, 1929: “Black Tuesday”

● Stock prices fell to all time lows.
(Shares were sold for less and less)

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● Corporations could no longer raise funds/failed

● People who lost their money in stock market could not

repay loans or rents, leading to bank failures

● Demand for goods decreased

● Prices fell, factories closed (business failures), and

workers lost jobs

● People could not pay rent or mortgage & people lost their

homes

Human Impact of Great Depression

THE HUMAN IMPACT OF THE DEPRESSION

No Safety Net for assistance:

● High unemployment rate/no unemployment insurance
● bank failures/ no bank deposit insurance
● Savings gone
● foreclosures everywhere.
● Private charities were overwhelmed
● Many depended on soup kitchens for their food

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THE HUMAN IMPACT OF THE DEPRESSION

Recording the Misery
Dorothea Lange: Recorded the misery of the people in her
photographs.

John Steinbeck: Wrote about the suffering of migrant
families/farmers during the Depression in a series of articles.

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The Dust Bowl

Dust Bowl (1930s):
- Inthe Great Plains and lasted a decade
- Caused by drought and overfarming
- heavy winds carried topsoil away, buried homes

and destroyed harvests.

- Over a million farmers forced to abandon their

farms and move west to California

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HOOVER FAILS TO HALT DEPRESSION

Hoover Philosophy (rugged individualism; laissez
faire):

•President believed that private organizations should
provide such emergency relief

•He believed it was not the role of the government
to step in, he believed in laissez-faire capitalism.

•He authorized the Mexican Repatriation Act.
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EOC RELASED TEST QUESTIONS

•ANSWER: G

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Mexican Repatriation Act

● Passed by Hoover to send Mexican immigrants

back to Mexico

● More than half a million Mexicans were forcibly

sent back to Mexico; many of whom may have
been lawful American citizens who became
separated from their families

Hoover Fails to Halt Depression

● Reconstruction Finance Corporation: established to give

emergency loans to banks and businesses, believing cheap
loans would spur business

- Thought it would trickle down to the average American
● “Hoovervilles” - shanty towns of the homeless and

unemployed on the outskirts of cities