Great Depression: In Depth (2024)

This article provides a detailed discussion of the Great Depression. For a quick overview of the worldwide economic crisis, see Great Depression: In Brief.

The Great Depression was the longest and most serious economic crisis in modern history. It began in the United States in 1929 but spread quickly throughout the world, lasting for about 10 years. The Depression caused sharp declines in economic production and severe unemployment in almost every country. In the United States, it was the worst crisis since the Civil War.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president of the United States in 1932, in the midst of the Depression. By that time, the country’s economy had been devastated. In his first inaugural address, Roosevelt made an attempt to assess the enormous damage:

The withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return.

In This Section:

• The stock market crash of 1929 marked the beginning of the Depression.
• Bank failures took an additional heavy toll on the U.S. economy.
• Demand for goods declined, forcing many companies out of business.
• As businesses closed, millions of people lost their jobs.
• A period of drought turned part of the Great Plains into the Dust Bowl.
• A decline in international trade contributed to the global spread of the crisis.

Stock prices began to fall in September 1929. As the decline continued into October, investors worried that their money was at risk. The wild rush to buy stocks gave way to an equally wild rush to sell them. On October 24 the stock market began to collapse as panicked investors sold a record 13 million shares of stock. The day has been known ever since as Black Thursday. Tuesday, October 29—Black Tuesday—extended the damage. On that day more than 16 million shares were sold. The value of most shares fell dramatically. By late 1932 stocks sold for only about 20 percent of their previous value.

There had been financial panics before, and there have been some since. But never did a collapse in the market have such a devastating and long-term effect. Like a snowball rolling downhill, it gathered momentum and swept away the whole economy before it. The stock market crash led to a sharp decline in spending. People who had lost money, and others who were worried about the future of the economy, put off making purchases and saved their money instead.

The economy was further damaged by a rash of bank failures. Crowds of people tried to take out all their money at once. Banks did not have enough cash on hand to handle the rush. Another strain on banks was that people who had taken out loans were unable to pay them back. By 1933 one-fifth of the country’s banks had failed. When a bank failed, people with accounts there lost their savings. As people lost confidence in the banks, they became even more likely to hold onto whatever savings they had left.

Reductions in spending caused demand for goods to decline. Falling demand, in turn, forced many manufacturing companies to shut down. At the lowest point of the Depression, factories in the United States produced barely more than half their 1929 output. As businesses closed, unemployment soared to 25 percent. Those still fortunate enough to have jobs were paid only about half of what they had earned before.

The agricultural segment of the economy had been in serious trouble for years. Many American farmers had been struggling with heavy debts at a time of low prices for farm products. The arrival of the Depression made their situation even worse. Severe drought (lack of rain) and dust storms combined to devastate parts of the Great Plains. The section extending over southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas, the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and northeastern New Mexico became known as the Dust Bowl. The devastation forced some 2.5 million people to flee the Plains states. Many of these people left for California. The West offered the promise of sunshine and a better life. In reality, however, the displaced families struggled to find poorly paid work as migrant farm laborers.

The economic crisis spread from the United States to the rest of the world. Many European countries had borrowed heavily from the United States to rebuild after World War I. The United States was also linked to Europe and the rest of the world through international trade. The United States had become the world’s leading trading country. Other countries depended on the money the United States paid for their goods. Reductions in U.S. foreign lending and trade contributed to economic failures in many countries. Struggling countries tried to protect their industries by setting high tariffs on imported goods. (Tariffs are taxes on products that go from one country to another.) This only made matters worse by causing trade to decline even more.

Germany and Great Britain were especially hard hit by the Depression. In Germany, stock prices plunged, foreign trade stalled, and business failures multiplied. The decline in German industrial production was roughly equal to that in the United States. In Britain, unemployment climbed to 25 percent by the spring of 1931. Britain’s decline in industrial production was roughly one-third that of the United States.

Did You Know?

• Some former millionaires sold apples on street corners to survive the Great Depression.
• During the Depression, a new home in the United States could be purchased for less than $3,000.

Prices in America during this era were extraordinarily low. A new home could be bought for less than $3,000. A man’s suit cost about $10, a shirt less than 50 cents, and a pair of shoes about $4. Milk was 10 cents a quart, a pound of steak only 29 cents, and a loaf of bread a nickel. For a dime one could go to the movies, buy a nickel bag of popcorn, and even win prizes given away by the theater. However, not many people lucky enough to be working had much money to spend after paying rent and buying food. To turn to the government, at least during the Hoover years, was useless. There was no federally financed “safety net” of welfare programs to keep the working class from falling into poverty.

In This Section:

• The Great Depression worsened under U.S. President Herbert Hoover.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt succeeded Hoover as president in 1933.
• Roosevelt’s New Deal established federal programs for relief and reform.
• The U.S. economy started to recover during the New Deal years.
• Economies of other countries eventually revived, but they did so at different times.

Hoover’s efforts failed to halt the economic decline. In 1932 angry voters ousted Hoover and brought Franklin D. Roosevelt to the White House. The new president acted swiftly. Upon taking office in March 1933, Roosevelt declared a national “bank holiday.” All banks were closed. They were allowed to reopen only when government inspectors said they were financially sound. The bank holiday helped to end the banking crisis. Roosevelt also introduced an ambitious economic relief program called the New Deal. It included emergency measures aimed at creating jobs and stabilizing the economy. It also created new agencies to help regulate, or control, the economy. The goal was to prevent such a disaster from ever happening again.

The U.S. economy began to recover during the New Deal years. Economic production grew in the mid-1930s. Millions of people found work in government programs. Unemployment remained high, however. In 1937–38 the United States suffered another severe downturn. After this period, however, the U.S. economy grew more rapidly than in the mid-1930s. The United States entered World War II in 1941. War-related manufacturing helped bring on a full economic recovery. Factories returned to full production to meet the needs of the country’s military buildup. To do so, factories hired large numbers of workers.

Recovery in the rest of the world varied greatly. The economies of a number of Latin American countries began to strengthen in late 1931 and early 1932. The economies of Great Britain, Germany, and Japan began to recover in late 1932. Canada started to revive in 1933. On the other hand, France did not firmly enter the recovery phase until 1938.

The Great Depression strengthened extremist political forces in Europe. In Germany, widespread frustration over the struggling economy allowed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to rise to power in 1933. Nazi public-works projects and military spending helped end the Depression in Germany.

Did You Know?

• The New Deal provided jobs to many artists, writers, and actors of the era.
• John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath made many people aware of the hardships faced by migrant farmers.

The work that has become most closely linked to the Depression is The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Published in 1939, the novel depicts the Joad family’s struggle to escape the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. It informed many people about the difficult experiences of migrant farmers.

The victims of the Dust Bowl were captured visually by photographers Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. Lange’s photograph of a desperate woman with her children, titled Migrant Mother, is one of the most famous images of the time. Later, Evans and the writer James Agee documented the lives of Alabama sharecroppers in the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941).

The folk songs of Woody Guthrie gave voice to suffering Dust Bowl farmers. His song “Tom Joad” was inspired by Steinbeck’s novel. Clifford Odets’s play Waiting for Lefty (1935) argued in favor of labor unions.

Many artists shifted their focus after the start of World War II. They left behind a body of work, however, that vividly portrays the state of American life during the Great Depression.

For more information about the Great Depression, try one of these articles next.

• Great Depression: In Brief—a quick overview of the worldwide economic crisis
• New Deal
• Herbert Hoover
• Franklin D. Roosevelt
• labor movements
• United States history