What were the causes and impacts of the Depression
What did Americans think was the main cause of the Depression?
International or outside factors form the country
Why did the banks collapse?
Market crash, people were unable to pay their debts, lack of governmental control
Who were known as the Hoovervilles?
Families that were forced out of their homes because they could not pay their rent or mortgage and had to live on wasteland or in public parks.
Was there a welfare state? True or false
False, there was not. If you lost your job there was no system of unemployment benefit.
The founding father anticipated this devastating US economy crisis, true or false?
False they never had this planned and nowhere in the constitution it allows Congress or the states to intervene too much.
Who were the most affected by the agricultural deflation?
The farmers and their debt
What institution was the only one capable of fixing the economy right now? (hint: starts with G)
The government.
Law and order started breaking down because...
Of the mass unemployment and poor living conditions that led to that.
Was racial discrimination for employment illegal?
Sadly it wasn't illegal.
What was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930?
Introduced high Tariffs on many imports and manufactured goods (ultimately backfiring causing less international trade).
In what way did it impact civilian lifestyles?
A lot of the lower and some of the middle class were affected by unemployment or a lot of debt that they were unable to pay
Hoover asked who's cooperation during the financial crisis but they refused?
Roosevelt
Besides the low class, what other social class was affected?
The middle class.
What was the little welfare there was? (hint: it was NOT from the federal government)
Charities or sometimes local government.
Hoover agreed or disagreed with the idea of a free market?
He agreed and thought that if the president intervened it ultimately would of been worse.
How did investing in the stock market backfire during the Depression? (it is not as obvious as saying that the market crashed)
The speculating of banks, insurance companies and businesses investing large amounts of money in the short term then selling all at once cause the market to crash and other people lost money.
In rural areas, what specific sets of payments were being missed because of the Depression?
Mortgages
Why was keeping your money saved in the bank a bad idea at the moment?
If the bank went bankrupt you would lose everything.
Instead of employing local African American workers looking for employment, they would rather employ who?
White immigrants, in some cases with no job experience either.
What was pump priming?
To stimulate the economy by injecting money to boost business activity and reduce unemployment, much like priming a pump to get water flowing.
There's a human factor involved in the collapse on wall street, what was it? (hint: it's a state of mind)
Confidence was lost and that human factor caused the market shares to drop also.
What happened to the states' welfare funds?
They straight up ran out.
There was too little of what coming in that caused many towns and cities to go bankrupt? (hint: us as citizens pay it all the time)
Very little tax money was coming in for towns and cities.
Ultimately how did the vast majority of Americans react to this crisis?
Surprisingly very peacefully, there was only SOME outbreaks of violent protests but not on a large scale.
Why did Hoover oppose the idea of the Senate to bring in unemployment insurance?
Because he feared that this would cause that people would depend too much on the government and ultimately not work for money.