The Great Depression

http /us .history .wisc .edu /hist102 /lectures /lecture18 .html

American History 102 : Civil War to the Present

Lecture 18 - Crashing Hopes : The Great Depression

American History 102 : Civil War to the Present ' is a website geared toward the students of the State University of Wisconsin , as well as all college students in general . Set up by Stanley K . Schultz , Professor of History , and William

. Tishler , the page concerning the Great Depression is the eighteenth of thirty lectures covering the second half of the history of America

As stated , Lecture 18

focuses solely on the Great Depression . Presented on a web page designed to look like a page from a notebook , Professor Schultz provides a somewhat detailed outline of various aspects concerning what led to the Great Depression . The information is broken down into five sections , with each covering a specific aspect of the br

Professor Schultz begins the introduction with a quote given in 1929 by Yale University economist Irving Fisher , in which Fisher says that America was doing just fine and was .marching along a permanently high plateau of prosperity ' Yet , just five days after he made this statement , the stock market crash occurred , plunging the entire country into severe economic despair . Schultz makes it clear that although the 1929 stock market crash was the starting point of the Great Depression it was not the sole cause of it . Thus , the purpose of the lecture is to examine the roots of the crash and how the Great Depression affected America as a whole

In the first section , Professor Schultz lists five questions that the student should keep in mind while going through the remainder of the lecture . The second section focuses on the issue of American prosperity and optimism in the years before the crash . It was believed by all , from the president to the lowliest person , that the economic boom America was experiencing would last indefinitely . Various quotes from President Herbert Hoover , the 1929 New Year 's edition of the New York Times , and an article written by John Jacob Raskob in the Ladies ' Home Journal all validated the mood of the nation

The third section provides an explanation concerning how the stock market was functioning in the five years prior to 1929 , and also provides six reasons for why Americans invested within the market . The fourth section focuses on the actual crash , and the various events that occurred from October 24-29 , 1929 . It also states the vast amount of money lost in the stock market between October 29 , 1929 and November 13 1929 , which was a continually falling national income are given , as well as the change seen in the music of the period , which went from upbeat to depressing

Finally , the last section of the lecture focuses on the Depression discussing various aspects such as how President Hoover described the economic situation as being a depression rather than calling it a panic how the economic depression affected all industrialized countries how social problems of...