THE GREAT DEPRESSION

THE STOCK MARKET MANIA

• The head of General Motors told people to buy stocks.
• Buying stock is a way of investing-using money in hopes
• of making more money.
• Everyone, it seemed, was trying rich quicky.
• Few people worried about the risks of investing.

STOCK MARKET CRASH

• On October 1929, everything changed.
• Value of stocks plunged. Millionaires lost fortunes.
• Thousands of others lost their savings.
• The stock markets had crashed.
• The nation stood on the brick of a crisis.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION BEGINS

• Over the next to years, the nation slid into a severe
• economic crisis-the Great Depression.
• Business activity slowed sharply.
• In 1929 the United States produced goods and services
• worth $104 billion. In 1932 it dropped to $58 billion.

OTHER NATIONS AFFECTED

• In 1930 Congress passes the Hawley-Smoot Tariff.
• This raised the price of goods purchased from other countries.
• As a result, Americans bought fewer of these goods.
• This hurt foreign countries. Foreign countries responded by
• raising their own tariffs on Americans products.

OTHER NATION AFFECTED II

• As a result, foreign countries purchased
• fewer American goods.
• This hurt American business.

THE DUST BOWL

• During the 1930s, the southern Great Plains suffered
• an environmental disaster. The region became named the Dust Bowl.
• Humans and natured both played roles in the catastrophe.
• Farmers ahd been using new technology, such as tractors and
• disc plows, to clear to clear millions of acres of sod.

DUST BOWL II

• They didn't realize that grass held soil in place.
• When the drought struck in 1931, crops died.
• Soil dried up and then blew away in strong prairie windstorms.
• Each storm stripped away more precious soil.
• Huge dust clouds blocked out the sun.

NEW DEAL

• The FDR proposals that Congress passed came to call the "New Deal."
• This sweeping set of laws and regulations affected banking, the
• stock market, industry, agriculture, public works, relief for the poor,
• and conservation of resources.
• In fact, the New Deal changed the face of the United States Dramatically.