The document provides background on the economic conditions leading up to the Great Depression. It describes how speculation in the stock market and a rise in credit led to economic bubbles that ultimately burst. When the stock market crashed in 1929, it marked the beginning of the Great Depression. Unemployment rose dramatically to 25% as the economy contracted sharply. President Hoover believed the Depression was temporary and that private charity could address its impacts. However, the economic crisis continued as drought struck the Midwest in the Dust Bowl, forcing many to migrate west in search of work.

1. THE GREAT DEPRESSION

2. • Prior to the Depression
• Increased prosperity in the 20’s.
• Speculative boom – essential
industries show huge profits
throughout the decade, causing
more people to invest in stocks.
• Creation of economic “bubbles”
• Now, we turn to TULIPS!

3. WHAT’S A BUBBLE? TULIPMANIA!
• Holland, 1637 – a single tulip bulb will sell for
TEN TIMES the income of a skilled craftsman.
• Tulips become a coveted luxury item
• Speculators enter the market.
• Prices rise
• Tulip bubble collapses after a single auction
goes awry – and possibly due to the bubonic
plague.
• Lesson? Speculation and inflation of goods
lead to enormous economic bubbles liable to
burst.

5. CAUSES• No easy answer
• The Stock Market Crash of 1929
• NOT a cause / effect. More complicated.
• Rise in speculation
• Dow Jones increases in value tenfold.
• Market loses 11% on October 24 (Black Thursday); 13% on Black Monday; and on
Black Tuesday, another 12%.

6. CAUSES (CONT.)
• Rapid expansion – bubble building.
• Huge earning gap between richest and poorest.
• Middle-class Americans rely on credit for purchase.
• High tariffs isolate American goods from foreign markets.

7. RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND
HOOVER
• When the war closed, the most vital of issues both in our own country and
around the world was whether government should continue their wartime
ownership and operation of many [instruments] of production and
distribution. We were challenged with a... choice between the American
system of rugged individualism and a European philosophy of diametrically
opposed doctrines doctrines of paternalism and state socialism. The
acceptance of these ideas would have meant the destruction of self-
government through centralization... [and] the undermining of the individual
initiative and enterprise through which our people have grown to
unparalleled greatness.
• The greatness of America has grown out of a political and social system and
a method of [a lack of governmental] control of economic forces distinctly
its own our American system which has carried this great experiment in
human welfare farther than ever before in history.... And I again repeat that
the departure from our American system... will jeopardize the very liberty and
freedom of our people, and will destroy equality of opportunity not only to
ourselves, but to our children.

8. HOOVER’S RESPONSE
• Believed it was part of a passing recession.
• Created government agencies, aided
cooperation between gov’t and business, and
attempted to stabilize prices.
• Most importantly, argued for private charity and
volunteerism.
• Refused to give direct federal aid to citizens,
believing it would weaken morale.
• Objected to “socialist” institutions like welfare.

9. EFFECTS
• Almost half of the nation’s 25,000 banks fail.
• GDP cut in half – goes from $104 billion to
$59 billion.
• Unemployment leaps from 3% in 1929 to
25% in 1934.
• Mass migration out of the cities and back
to farms.
• Creation of “Hoovervilles” – massive
transient communities reliant on soup
kitchens.

10. THE DUST BOWL
• Concurrent with the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, a period of severe dust
storms and drought, destroys the American heartland.
• New process of farming displaces grass essential to keeping the dirt in place.
• Huge numbers of people travel from the Midwest to California in search of
work.
• Find that the Great Depression has decimated the economies of Western states.
• Between 1930 and 1940, 3.5 million people move out of the Plains states.

14. The western land, nervous under the beginning change. The Western States,
nervous as horses before a thunder storm. The great owners, nervous,
sensing a change, knowing nothing of the nature of the change. The great
owners, striking at the immediate thing, the widening government, the
growing labor unity; striking at new taxes, at plans; not knowing these things
are results, not causes. Results, not causes; results, not causes. The causes lie
deep and simply — the causes are a hunger in a stomach, multiplied a
million times; a hunger in a single soul, hunger for joy and some security,
multiplied a million times; muscles and mind aching to grow, to work, to
create, multiplied a million times. The last clear definite function of man —
muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need —
this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and
house and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back
something of the wall, the house, the dam; to take hard muscles from the
lifting, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving. For man, unlike any
other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work,
walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

15. This you may say of man — when theories change and crash, when
schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national,
religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles
forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he
may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you
may say and know it and know it. This you may know when the bombs
plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners
are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You
may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the
stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the
throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling
while the bombers live — for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not
died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live
— for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And
this you can know — fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die
for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this
one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

16. FREE WRITE
• What would it take for you to leave home?
• What would you bring?
• Where would you go?

17. IMAGES OF THE DEPRESSION
• As you go around the room, check out each and every image placed on
desks.
• Then, choose three. Answer the following questions about the image.
• What is the context of the image? Is it in a rural or urban setting?
• What do you believe is happening in the image?
• What does the image tell you about the Great Depression and/or Dust Bowl?
• What questions do you have about the image?
• Finally, why did you choose this image to write about?