How the wall street crash led to the Great Depression?

Answer 1

The date was October 24, 1929,it was called Black Thursday. The Stock Market crashed. The optimistics believed they would recover but soon the numbers proved them wrong. unemployment reached the highest numbers ever where no other country suffered numbers like this except Germany.

No one knew how best to respond to the crisis. President Hoover believed the dole would do more harm than good and that local governments and private charities should provide relief to the unemployed and homeless. By 1931, some states began to offer aid to local communities.

FDR, then governor of New York, worked with Harry Hopkins and Frances Perkins to begin a direct work relief program. This helped only a very few. By 1932, only 1/4 of unemployed families received any relief. In 1932, only 1.5 percent of all government funds were spent on relief and averaged about $1.67 per citizen. Cities, which had to bear the brunt of the relief efforts, teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. By 1932, Cook County (Chicago) was firing firemen, police, and teachers (who had not been paid in 8 months). Breadlines and Hoovervilles (homeless encampments) appeared across the nation.

Those hurt the most were more stunned than angry. Many sank into despair and shame after they could not find jobs. The suicide rates increased from 14 to 17 per 100,000. Protest that did occur was local, not national: "farm holidays," neighbors of foreclosed farmers refusing to bid on farms at auction, neighbors moving evicted tenants' furniture back in, and local hunger marches.Resistance to protest often turned violent.

In 1932, four members of the Dearborn hunger march were shot and killed when 1,000 soldiers accompanied by tanks and machine guns evicted veterans living in the Bonus Army camp in Washington, D.C.FDR, after assuming the presidency, promoted a wide variety of federally funded programs aimed at restoring the American economy, helping relieve the suffering of the unemployed, and reforming the system so that such a severe crisis could never happen again. However, while the New Deal did help restore the GNP to its 1929 level and did introduce basic banking and welfare reforms, FDR refused to run up the deficits that ending the depression required.

Only when the federal government imposed rationing, recruited 6 million defense workers (including women and African Americans), drafted 6 million soldiers, and ran massive deficits to fight World War II did the Great Depression finally end.

This is only a resumen of the story how the Stock market crash lasted for long hard years.

sources:

Leuchtenburg, William E. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963, passim.

McElvaine, Robert S. The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941. New York: Times Books, 1993, passim.

Answer 2

It didn't.