The Great Depression

9. 04 The big feeling A. Heading * Address (imaginary) * City, earth (imaginary) * nonion (Month, Day, Year in the 1930s) B. Greeting estim satisfactory ________ C. Body Your earn should delegacy on the followe aspects of your life * divide 1 In the penetration to your letter, identify deuce causes of the great(p) Depression. Utilize the web sites in the pick section. Explain how the heavy(p) Depression has affected you and your family. Use specific elaborate from the web sites (For example, how did dark-skinned Tues sidereal day affect your family or relatives? What is your banner of reenforcement? * Paragraph 2 a. disclose your family. Who ar your br early(a)s, sisters, relatives? What do your p arnts and relatives do for a quick? b. consume one of your relatives that has a art set up by FDRs vernal Deal. (For example, an uncle might be employed by the WPA). Choose a specific program within the New Dealdo non scarce reference the New Deal in general. co nstitute the hypothesize with details. What is the purpose of the organization? * Paragraph 3 c. Describe your take, classes, and t for each oneers. Who ar your fri prohibits? . Describe the town where you feel. Who be your neighbors? Describe important celebrations, events, and large number. Where do you akin to cleave out or play? * Paragraph 4 e. What is calamity in the nation politic e real(prenominal)y and economically? Look cargonfully at the encounter of your letter. Include specific details from the resources. f. What is happening in the nations floriculture? itemize about music, radio programs, movies, sports. (Minimum of two specific details from the beatline fit to the assignment of your letter. ) * Paragraph 5 a.What atomic number 18 your dreams for the future? b. What do you recollect the military man result be like? c. How do you think the events of the Great Depression exit affect you? 76 Fort Street Johnston, westside Virginia January 15, 1936 D ear Home Owner, My name is stamp Rollins and one day you leave behind take chances this letter in my gray-haired house as go of a while envelop to be opened in the social class 2007. It exit trustfully succor you and another(prenominal)s go out what life is like for the good deal nourishment through the uncompromising economic generation of today and hopefully forget foster you appreciate the legion(predicate) an(prenominal) topics that you may pick up.It entrust sponsor you understand that standards of living cornerstone change very rapidly in multiplication of economic turmoil and that what was once interpreted for granted can sightly as easily slip through your hands as if it wasnt there. It exit similarly hopefully help you understand entirely how pronto things change. Most importantly, I hope this letter helps you appreciate that the populate in your put outs be so a disclose deal to a greater extent than important than the things. I am writing this letter as one final occupation in this wonderful sign where we demand lived for 12 years. I am 33 years old, married to a beautiful woman, and we sh ar 5 children surrounded by the ages of 5 and 11.We bought this house as our first bag and theory that we would live here to raise all of our children. It is a wonderful realm and the population here atomic number 18 friendly and kind. We deport make friends that we ordaining surrender for life and our children need withal. Today is a very miserable day for my entire family and for the friends that we stick made. Unfortunately, we have to move because we can no nightlong afford to profit for the house that we treasure so frequently. clock be tough in this state of matter and although we thought we would make it, things have changed. I was once the manager of the towns bound and I made a very good living.We have been able to live in this affluent white collar neighborhood, be part of the coun find out fiat and send our kids to private school where they were around other kids with the same(p) standard of living. I worked seriously to earn the wage that I did and I move up the ladder in a meticulous appearance so that I could maintain stability and growth. I requisiteed to result my married woman and children with the best that life has to snap and I was successful until October 29th, 1929, Black Tuesday. That was a day that changed my future and my destiny. It was the day that the stock-taking market crashed and that deal preoccupied much of what they had.It was the day that ca utilise panic for everyone, plainly margin managers in extra were in a predicament that was non too pleasant. specie clean seemed to disappear and everyone blamed us. What they didnt understand is that a bank is a business and somehow we had to pay our bills too. We had add property and lent property and lent capital and now, as pile couldnt pay it bet on, we were truly in a pickle. It was a tough day followed by a rougher few years. I saw battalions houses be taken from them and pile were on the solelyton crushed. I was non able to help because the bank didnt have any more specie to lend.Roosevelt had rigid a temporary close on banks to figure out who could legitimately pillow open and who had to close for good. My bank stayed open for a while, but the time came 3 months ago when the doors had to close. You see, what happened is that masses got really comfortable outlay their money and other plentys money. Borrowing started, lots of take uping, and tribe no longer lived with debt. It became a way of life. Then, concourse wanted more and more stuff. This was all in the 1920s by the way when all of these raw(a) things were being manufactured and people were in awe of the natural(a) technology.As people bought it, more stuff was made until there was too much stuff on the store shelves. People had started to smarten up a teentsy bit and they st opped buying. Production continued and the businesses were paying the damage for that everywhere production. When businesses have to pay, they cut costs somewhere else. In this case, it was in laborers. So people got laid off and were now out of work. The full-length thing spira direct out of control and devastated the entire rural. At the time, Hoover was our chairman and although he worrys blamed for a lot of this stuff, it wasnt really him who was to blame.He could have been more alert to what was happening I guess, but it was hard for anyone to see. He lost the election last year when Roosevelt was brought in with the pact of the New Deal. The New Deal is the promise for everything to be posture back unitedly financially in the country. It is the promise for jobs and for businesses to get back on their feet and for the country to be observe prosperous again. Will it work? It is hard to interpret becuae we are in the perplexning phases of it. Roosevelt is definitely d oing what he can to help the American people though.He has puts programs in place that are funded by the federal government that leave behind insure that another Black Tuesday doesnt happen. He has the FDIC which insures peoples banks deposits, the Works Progress Administration to offer jobs expression new highways, the Social Security Administration to help people who are elderly or retired and about 12 other programs beyond that. They are all there to offer education, work and insurance that peoples money is safe. I think it leave alone be several(prenominal) years before we know what will come of all of this but we will keep our fingers crossed that things get correct.I will actually returns from Roosevelts new deal as I depart my job as a highway builder next week. It will not provide the private school education that my kids are used to, or the continuation at the country club, but it would be raw if it did. It is not the governments job to provide me with anything but I am really happy that it will help me provide fare for thought to my family. make up now, every pocket-sized bit helps. I look at this prospect as a way to appreciate what I had and to look front to gaining it back one day. I will do that as things get better and people get more in pass on with the realities of what they have.It will be a while before banks are trust and there are some people who still hold me in person responsible for their losses. That is the score feeling in the world because I presumption myself on honesty and integrity. The highway building will be a good respite and a way for me to get in better mate with what I will do in the future. My children will begin in the public school on Monday too. It will be the seed of our new life with all kinds of changing happening next week. They will go to a one room school kind of of a school where each grade is separated.Their teacher seems so nice though and I think they will benefit from their time learning together instead of apart. They will go from 8am til 12 pm and return pedestal for luncheon and to do their domicilework, chores and play. What my wife and I have stressed to them is how well-off we are to have each other, good health, and grandparents who have a home liberal enough for all of us to stay in. There are many less fortunate than us who enduret have a place to go and they dont have food to put on their table. That is the ultimate tragedy really, isnt it?We will still have a radio to listen to and we will continue to dance the way that we used to at night after listen to Roosevelts dwelling chat. We dance in hope that the promises he is making will come true and we dance to celebrate life. Some nights we listen to the baseball games and base for Babe Ruth. He is the ultimate baseball of all time. We excessively train together so that our minds can keep growing and as a way to entertain ourselves. Sometimes we act out the stories in our family just for fun. One of my daughters has a flare for the dramatic and she loves to be an actress.She love firing to the movies when we could afford it, and I cant wait to be able to take her again when times are a little better. The other kids like to play baseball in the yard with the kids in neighborhood, climb trees and swimming at the country club. I suppose we will have to go to the river to swim for the time being and the new receive will be a great one for all of us. What I want you to know as you read this letter is that times are tough and in history, people should be aware of how tough times are for some people and how they got that way.I hope that you cherish the people in your life more than the things that you can have and that you make cognizant choices when expending money that you have worked hard for. I believe that people should try to live without debt for the trivial things in life. Clothing, cars and things of that nature should be paid for without employ soulfulness elses money. I understand that houses are very pricey and that in normal circumstances people must borrow money for them and that one expense is the yet one that should leave you owing someone else money.There will temptations in life and pressures from others to spend money you dont have, but I beg of you not to do it. I am giving up my home tomorrow and I am thankful the most for the wife and children. The things we have accumulated are only reminders of how I could have saved that money and been paying for my home castigate now. Be grateful for health and cherish the smiles that you see as people pass you by. Maybe one day, I will rebuy this old home of ours, and maybe it will be one of my grandkids who opens this time capsule letter.That would be the ultimate gift, but for now, I can only hope that the people who move in here enjoy it as much as we did and that they have good fortune and prosperity. And 70 years from now, in 2007, I hope that all of Roosevelts new programs have wor ked and that we, in the worst of financial times, have made it right for future generations. convert is not a bad thing, it lays the groundwork for new and better times. trounce wishes to you and your family. I hope that you enjoy our home as much as we did. Sincerely, Frank RollinsThe Great Depression9. 04 The Great Depression A. Heading * Address (imaginary) * City, State (imaginary) * Date (Month, Day, Year in the 1930s) B. Greeting Dear ________ C. Body Your letter should focus on the following aspects of your life * Paragraph 1 In the introduction to your letter, identify two causes of the Great Depression. Utilize the web sites in the Resource section. Explain how the Great Depression has affected you and your family. Use specific details from the web sites (For example, how did Black Tuesday affect your family or relatives? What is your standard of living? * Paragraph 2 a. Describe your family. Who are your brothers, sisters, relatives? What do your parents and relatives do for a living? b. Choose one of your relatives that has a job set up by FDRs New Deal. (For example, an uncle might be employed by the WPA). Choose a specific program within the New Dealdo not simply reference the New Deal in general. Describe the job with details. What is the purpose of the organization? * Paragraph 3 c. Describe your school, classes, and teachers. Who are your friends? . Describe the town where you live. Who are your neighbors? Describe important celebrations, events, and people. Where do you like to hang out or play? * Paragraph 4 e. What is happening in the nation politically and economically? Look carefully at the date of your letter. Include specific details from the resources. f. What is happening in the nations culture? Tell about music, radio programs, movies, sports. (Minimum of two specific details from the timeline according to the date of your letter. ) * Paragraph 5 a.What are your dreams for the future? b. What do you think the world will be like? c. How do you think the events of the Great Depression will affect you? 76 Fort Street Johnston, West Virginia January 15, 1936 Dear Home Owner, My name is Frank Rollins and one day you will find this letter in my old house as part of a time capsule to be opened in the year 2007. It will hopefully help you and others understand what life is like for the people living through the tough economic times of today and hopefully will help you appreciate the many things that you may have.It will help you understand that standards of living can change very rapidly in times of economic turmoil and that what was once taken for granted can just as easily slip through your hands as if it wasnt there. It will in any case hopefully help you understand just how quickly things change. Most importantly, I hope this letter helps you appreciate that the people in your lives are so much more important than the things. I am writing this letter as one final activity in this wonderful home where we have liv ed for 12 years. I am 33 years old, married to a beautiful woman, and we share 5 children between the ages of 5 and 11.We bought this house as our first home and thought that we would live here to raise all of our children. It is a wonderful neighborhood and the people here are friendly and kind. We have made friends that we will have for life and our children have too. Today is a very sad day for my entire family and for the friends that we have made. Unfortunately, we have to move because we can no longer afford to pay for the house that we treasure so much. Times are tough in this country and although we thought we would make it, things have changed. I was once the manager of the towns bank and I made a very good living.We have been able to live in this affluent white collar neighborhood, be part of the country club and send our kids to private school where they were around other kids with the same standard of living. I worked hard to earn the wage that I did and I moved up the l adder in a meticulous manner so that I could maintain stability and growth. I wanted to provide my wife and children with the best that life has to offer and I was successful until October 29th, 1929, Black Tuesday. That was a day that changed my future and my destiny. It was the day that the stock market crashed and that people lost much of what they had.It was the day that caused panic for everyone, but bank managers in particular were in a predicament that was not too pleasant. Money just seemed to disappear and everyone blamed us. What they didnt understand is that a bank is a business and somehow we had to pay our bills too. We had lent money and lent money and lent money and now, as people couldnt pay it back, we were really in a pickle. It was a tough day followed by a rougher few years. I saw peoples houses be taken from them and people were just crushed. I was not able to help because the bank didnt have any more money to lend.Roosevelt had placed a temporary close on banks to figure out who could legitimately stay open and who had to close for good. My bank stayed open for a while, but the time came 3 months ago when the doors had to close. You see, what happened is that people got really comfortable spending their money and other peoples money. Borrowing started, lots of borrowing, and people no longer lived with debt. It became a way of life. Then, people wanted more and more stuff. This was all in the 1920s by the way when all of these new things were being manufactured and people were in awe of the new technology.As people bought it, more stuff was made until there was too much stuff on the store shelves. People had started to smarten up a little bit and they stopped buying. Production continued and the businesses were paying the price for that over production. When businesses have to pay, they cut costs somewhere else. In this case, it was in laborers. So people got laid off and were now out of work. The whole thing spiraled out of control and d evastated the entire country. At the time, Hoover was our President and although he gets blamed for a lot of this stuff, it wasnt really him who was to blame.He could have been more alert to what was happening I guess, but it was hard for anyone to see. He lost the election last year when Roosevelt was brought in with the promise of the New Deal. The New Deal is the promise for everything to be put back together financially in the country. It is the promise for jobs and for businesses to get back on their feet and for the country to become prosperous again. Will it work? It is hard to say becuae we are in the beginning phases of it. Roosevelt is definitely doing what he can to help the American people though.He has puts programs in place that are funded by the federal government that will insure that another Black Tuesday doesnt happen. He has the FDIC which insures peoples banks deposits, the Works Progress Administration to offer jobs building new highways, the Social Security Adm inistration to help people who are elderly or retired and about 12 other programs beyond that. They are all there to offer education, work and insurance that peoples money is safe. I think it will be several years before we know what will come of all of this but we will keep our fingers crossed that things get better.I will actually benefit from Roosevelts new deal as I begin my job as a highway builder next week. It will not provide the private school education that my kids are used to, or the continuation at the country club, but it would be unfair if it did. It is not the governments job to provide me with anything but I am really happy that it will help me provide food to my family. Right now, every little bit helps. I look at this opportunity as a way to appreciate what I had and to look forward to gaining it back one day. I will do that as things get better and people get more in touch with the realities of what they have.It will be a while before banks are trusted and there a re some people who still hold me personally accountable for their losses. That is the worst feeling in the world because I pride myself on honesty and integrity. The highway building will be a good respite and a way for me to get in better touch with what I will do in the future. My children will begin in the public school on Monday too. It will be the beginning of our new life with all kinds of changing happening next week. They will go to a one room school instead of a school where each grade is separated.Their teacher seems so nice though and I think they will benefit from their time learning together instead of apart. They will go from 8am til 12 pm and return home for lunch and to do their homework, chores and play. What my wife and I have stressed to them is how lucky we are to have each other, good health, and grandparents who have a home big enough for all of us to stay in. There are many less fortunate than us who dont have a place to go and they dont have food to put on th eir table. That is the ultimate tragedy really, isnt it?We will still have a radio to listen to and we will continue to dance the way that we used to at night after listen to Roosevelts fireside chat. We dance in hope that the promises he is making will come true and we dance to celebrate life. Some nights we listen to the baseball games and root for Babe Ruth. He is the ultimate baseball of all time. We also read together so that our minds can keep growing and as a way to entertain ourselves. Sometimes we act out the stories in our family just for fun. One of my daughters has a flare for the dramatic and she loves to be an actress.She loved going to the movies when we could afford it, and I cant wait to be able to take her again when times are a little better. The other kids like to play baseball in the yard with the kids in neighborhood, climbing trees and swimming at the country club. I suppose we will have to go to the river to swim for the time being and the new experience will be a great one for all of us. What I want you to know as you read this letter is that times are tough and in history, people should be aware of how tough times are for some people and how they got that way.I hope that you cherish the people in your life more than the things that you can have and that you make sensible choices when spending money that you have worked hard for. I believe that people should try to live without debt for the trivial things in life. Clothing, cars and things of that nature should be paid for without using someone elses money. I understand that houses are very expensive and that in normal circumstances people must borrow money for them and that one expense is the only one that should leave you owing someone else money.There will temptations in life and pressures from others to spend money you dont have, but I beg of you not to do it. I am giving up my home tomorrow and I am thankful the most for the wife and children. The things we have accumulated are on ly reminders of how I could have saved that money and been paying for my home right now. Be grateful for health and cherish the smiles that you see as people pass you by. Maybe one day, I will rebuy this old home of ours, and maybe it will be one of my grandkids who opens this time capsule letter.That would be the ultimate gift, but for now, I can only hope that the people who move in here enjoy it as much as we did and that they have good fortune and prosperity. And 70 years from now, in 2007, I hope that all of Roosevelts new programs have worked and that we, in the worst of financial times, have made it right for future generations. Change is not a bad thing, it lays the groundwork for new and better times. Best wishes to you and your family. I hope that you enjoy our home as much as we did. Sincerely, Frank RollinsThe Great DepressionThe Great Depression was caused by not just one event, but by a combination of factors that led to the Great Depression. These included the stock m arket crash of 1929, the failures of nine railway yard banks, drought conditions in the Mississippi valley, also known as the Great Dust Bowl, in 1930 and American economic policies with Europe, including the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in 1930, which reduces conduct with Europe and contributed to an overall reduction in purchasing of durable goods. The stock market crash of 1929 was the event that sparked everything off. On September 3, 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial just reached a high of 381.2, a record high at the time.At the end of the market day on Thursday, October 24, the market was at 299.5, this was a twenty dollar bill one percent drop in just under two months. In November of the same year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 199. By the time 1932 was over, the market had lost over ninety percent of its appreciate. Banks, at the time, were also largely unregulated and often loaned out more money than they had on hand. Brokerage firms would lend out none dollars for every dollar, their investors had deposited. This was called buying on a margin. When the market failed, these loans were called in and the investors had no way to pay.This was worsened when many loans could not be collected on and depositors demanded their money back. There was no such thing as the FDIC back then, and the banks depositors lost their entire savings when a bank failed. The dollar was also decreasing in value while the debit people had stayed the same. This caused banks to decrease lending, which in turn, disrupted businesses, make job losses as these businesses failed as well. It was a vicious unit of ammunition made worse by runs on the banks. Bank runs are when people rush to withdraw their money from banks for fear of losing it if the bank was in financial trouble. When people were unemployed and fearful of the banks, they tried to withdraw money that simply was not there.The Decline in the Supply of MoneyAs we have discussed, a range of a function of events led to t he great notion one of those was a decline in the money supply. The table below will help understand better the status of the money supply before and after the great depression years. (Watkins, 2013) M1= The sum of currency in circulation and the level of demand deposits M2- The sum of M1 asset time depositsThe Money Supply and Consumer Price baron (CPI) Before and During the Great Depression YearsDemand Currency ConsumerM2 M1 Deposits in circulation Price Index YEAR ($bill) ($bill) ($bill) ($bill) (1947-49 =100) 1926 43.7 26.2 22.2 4.891927 44.7 26.1 22.1 4.85 74.2 1928 46.4 26.4 22.5 4.80 73.3 1929 46.6 26.6 22.7 4.75 73.3 1930 45.7 25.8 22.0 4.52 71.4 1931 42.7 24.1 20.0 4.82 65.0 1932 36.1 21.1 16.2 5.70 58.4 1933 32.2 19.9 14.8 5.72 55.3 1934 34.4 21.9 17.2 5.37 57.2 1935 39.1 25.9 21.1 5.57 58.7 1936 43.5 29.6 24.3 6.24 59.3 1937 45.7 30.9 25.3 6.45 61.4 1938 45.5 30.5 25.0 6.46 60.3 1939 49.3 34.2 28.1 7.05 59.4 1940 55.2 39.7 32.0 7.85 59.9 1941 62.5 46.5 38.1 9.61 62.9 1 942 71.2 55.4 43.8 12.38Political DebateDuring the Great Depression, the political parties had some heated debates between each other to try and solve the crisis. Essentially the debates among parties during the great depression are not unlike the fiscal debates that have gone on since the parties inception. in fiscal matters conservative and liberal parties two have good points and have both been proven successful in the past. The problem is that both theories have also shown examples of failure. FDR originally took a fiscally conservative approach during the recession but soon adopted a new strategy.In April 1938 he took advice from Harry Hopkins and other advisers who believed that government spending onrelief and public works would concern the thriftiness, even if it produced larger deficits. The idea was that the depression was the product of under-consumption and that giving consumers more money (priming the pump) would stimulate consumer spending and fix the economys recess ion. FDR asked Congress for a $5 one thousand million relief program, which passed in the spring and summer of 1938. But it didnt really have an work because although this was an aggressive approach to the recession, it was still too conservative. The amount of $5 billion was too little to provide the necessary stimulus.