The Roaring Twenties Stock Market Crash of 1929 Bank Runs Franklin Delano Roosevelt Social Studies World History

1. Interwar Period & Great
Depression
1929-1939

2. The Roaring Twenties
• After the end of WW1 in 1918 the U.S entered an era of great political
and social change. This period is often called the
roaring twenties.
• Life was good. The world was at peace and people
were making money because the U.S economy was
growing and strong. It was an exciting time to be alive.
• Technology like electricity, radios and telephone
lines were linking people together, making them feel
more connected than ever before.

3. • Another big change was where Americans were choosing to live.
Large numbers of people were moving to the cities.
• By the end of the 1920’s for the first time is U.S history, more
people were living in cities than rural areas.
• American cities became bustling centers for business and the
arts. The growth of cities and a new connection between people
all across the country allowed for the growth of mass culture.

4. • New technologies lead to a surge in consumer goods like
household appliances. Companies began building factories and
hiring workers to make these new products. Americans workers
now had more money to spend on these newly available
products.
• Products like ready to wear clothing, washing machines, and
automobiles were sweeping the nation.
• Most people in the U.S believed that life was great and could
only get better.

5. The Beginning of the Great Depression
• During the 1920’s banks made it easy for people to borrow money to buy all the
new and exciting consumer goods that were being produced.
• Banks were also lending consumers money to invest in the stock market. Stocks
allowed investors to buy shares of a business. Owning a share of a company is like
owning a small part of that company. If the company continues to do well
financially, the price of its shares will rise. If the company doesn’t do well, prices
will fall.
• Investors can shares their shares at any time. They receive whatever price the
shares of worth at the moment of sale. During the economic boom of the 20s
many people invested their savings in
the stock market. Stock prices from many
companies continued to rise during the 20s
so investors made money and continued to
buy stocks.
• The stock market underwent a period of
tremendous growth. Reaching its peach in
August 1929.

6. • While times were good for some people in urban areas during the 1920s,
farmers were struggling. During WW1, farmers purchased expensive
equipment like tractors and harvesters to make farmers less labor intensive.
• This allowed them to grow more crops. The U.S government paid farmers for
these crops and used the food to feed U.S Soldiers.
• After the war the government no longer needed all this food, so farmers were
faced with a crop surplus which caused the prices to drop dramatically. Farmers
struggled to keep their farms running.
• By 1929 economic trouble was beginning to brew back in the cities as well.
Stock prices had continued to rise. But on October 24th 1929 the stock market
began to crash.
• Stock prices began to fall on that day and kept falling all day. Suddenly many
investors wanted to sell their stocks which made even more people want to sell
their stocks. Stock prices dropped dramatically.
• By Tuesday October 29th aka Black Tuesday, panic had overtaken the stock
market. Almost 16 million stocks were traded that day. More than had ever
been traded before.
• Millions of stocks ended up being worthless. People who had borrowed money
from the bank to buy stocks were financially ruined or found themselves
heavily in debt.
• After the crash of the stock market, many had realized that for some time their
belief in the strength of the market had not been based in reality. Panic began
to set in.

7. Bank Runs
• The stock market wasn’t the only part of the economy in trouble.
Banks were in crisis too.
• Many banks had loaned customers money to buy stocks that were
now worthless. Now these customers couldn’t pay the banks back.
Customers also borrowed money to buy cars and wash machines.
These loans couldn’t be paid back either.
• Fear was sweeping the nation. People began to worry the banks were
losing all of their money because of these bad loans.
• Account holders rushed to banks to withdrawals their money in what
became known as bank runs.
• Banks ran out of cash and many were
forced to go out of business.
• At the time, there were no government
regulations that protected a consumer’s
money once it was deposited in a bank.

8. • People’s fortune’s evaporated and their debt increased. Now
people no longer had money to buy consumer goods. These
factories that made radios and automobiles went out of business.
Companies that could stay in business had to cut their production
dramatically. As a result, people lost their jobs and the
unemployment rate skyrocketed.
• By 1932, 1 out of 4 Americans were out of work.
• For many people, life during this time was bleak. People were
forced to work in makeshift shanty villages after losing their
homes.
• Charity run soup kitchens and bread lines provided the only food
many would eat each day. Many people were
starving.
• Meanwhile on the farms, farmers
were growing food that they couldn’t
afford to harvest or get to market.
Fields of wheat were allowed to rot
and cows milk was thrown away.

9. • What did the U.S government do help its citizens during this crisis. President
Herbert Hoover had been in office only 8 months when the stock market crash in
the fall of 1929. Once the great depression took hold of the country, Hoover made
it clear that he believes the government should not give money directly to its
citizens.
• Instead, he believed government should provide guidance to charitable
organizations like the red cross to help people in need. But charitable organizations
alone could not feed and house the many Americans in distress during the great
depression and the suffering continued.
• When Americans headed to the poles in 1932 they were ready for a change.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) won a landslide victory and became the next
president of the U.S.
• FDR had a different vision of the rule of government. He believed the government
should help everyone who needed it. FDR had a calm confidence in the ability of
the American people to work together to
solve the nation’s deep problems. He declared
“I pledge to you, I pledge to myself, a new deal
for the American people. The American people
were certainly ready for a new deal.

10. End of the Great Depression
• During the very first days of his administration, FDR took immediate steps to correct
the nation’s economic crisis.
• One of his first actions was to declare a 4 day national bank holiday to allow federal
inspectors to look at each bank to see if it had enough money to stay in business.
• He also asked congress to create laws that would help consumers as well as banks and
other financial institutions. This was the beginning of the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC insured depositors against the loss of up to $5000 of
their deposits if their bank should collapse. This agency is still in existence today.
• FDR’s administration passed many pieces of legislation and created programs and
agencies as part of his new deal.
• They focused on 3 areas, relief, recovery and reform. The first goal was to provide aid
to the suffering.
• FDR called for the creation of programs like the Civilian Conservation Core (CCC). The
CCC put people back to work by creating jobs for men building roads and developing
national parks.
• FDR also created the Federal Emergency Relief Agency which offered job training
programs and devised ways for farmers to get their unused crops to people in need
of food.

11. • By the spring of 1933, the U.S economy was showing some signs of
recovery however many people were still without jobs and were still
suffering terrible.
• FDR and his administration launched a second wave of programs
sometimes called the 2nd new deal. The national recovery administration
was created and promoted policies like limiting the number of working
hours in a day and establishing a minimum wage.
• Other programs aimed at recovery included the Tennessee Valley Authority
(TVA) which built dams to control flooding and brought electricity to
poverty stricken areas along the Tennessee river and the works
progress administration WPA which helped to provide jobs for 8.5 million
people from 1935-1943.
• The 3rd piece of the new deal was reform.
The goal was to insure that this prolonged
and drastic economic crisis could never happen
again.
• New legislation like that national relations
labor act was passed to ensure business treated
workers fairly.

12. • The Social Security Act of 1935 was one of FDR’s most
important and expensive new deal programs. It provided
social safety nets in the form of a national pension fund
and unemployment insurance system and federal aid
program for dependent children and people who are
disabled.
• In November 1940, FDR was elected to a 3rd term as U.S
president. A constitutional amendment limiting a U.S
President to 2 terms would not be ratified for another 11
years.
• Although conditions in
the U.S were improving,
the great depression was
far from over.

13. • Meanwhile in 1939, WW2 had begun in Europe. Roosevelt promised that he would
do everything he could to keep the U.S out of the war. However on Dec. 7, 1941
Japanese forces bombed pearl harbor in Hawaii. The U.S was forced to declare war.
• With the U.S at war, more workers were needed for a variety of jobs. Many men
enlisted in the arms services. Other people went to work manufacturing the
airplanes, ships and weapons the U.S needed to fight against Germany and the
other powers.
• The Brooklyn Navy Yard hired more than 70,000 workers to build ships. As men
went off to war, women had new opportunities for work. Just as there was no
single cause of the great depression, it was likely the combination of FDR’s new
deal and the need for workers at the start of WW2 that brought this period of
economic crisis to an end.

14. • FDR’s new deal policies have had a profound and lasting impact
on life in the U.S. Most of our infrastructure including roads,
bridges, schools libraries were built as part of the new deal. This
allowed the economy of the U.S to grow and strengthen.
• Programs like the FDIC continue to allow people to be confident
that money is safe in U.S banks and stock market regulations
protect consumers by requiring companies to be truthful about
profits. The great depression left a lasting legacy on the
government and the people of the U.S.