Causes of the Crash
As the economy declined, many of these institutions failed, causing people to lose their savings.
What are banks?
This term refers to temporary communities made up of homeless people during the Great Depression, often built on public land.
What are Hoovervilles?
This U.S. president, who took office in 1933, introduced a series of programs aimed at providing relief, recovery, and reform during the Great Depression.
Who is Franklin D. Roosevelt?
This term refers to the severe worldwide economic downturn that began in 1929 and lasted throughout the 1930s, affecting nearly every nation.
What is the Great Depression?
This massive debt, incurred by many European nations during World War I, contributed to economic instability and played a role in the Great Depression.
What is War Debt?
In October 1929, this dramatic event triggered panic selling and signaled the start of the Great Depression.
What is Black Thursday/Monday/Tuesday/Stock Market Crash of 1929
These severe droughts in the Midwest and Great Plains led to massive dust storms and ruined crops, contributing to the struggles of farmers.
What is the Dust Bowl?
This 1932 act was designed to help people keep their homes by providing low-cost loans to homeowners in danger of foreclosure and to banks that had trouble staying afloat.
What is the Federal Home Loan Bank Act?
This economic condition, where the prices of goods and services fall and the value of money rises, worsened the Great Depression as it led to decreased spending and further job losses.
What is deflation?
This major consequence of World War I, imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, caused economic hardship and contributed to the rise of extremist movements in the 1920s and 1930s.
What are reparations?
Before the crash, this uneven distribution of national wealth meant most Americans couldn’t keep up with production or consumption.
What is income inequality?
This was a common place where hungry people could get a free meal during the Depression, often run by charity organizations.
What is a soup kitchen?
The public’s frustration with Hoover’s policies boiled over during this 1932 event, where thousands of World War I veterans marched to Washington, D.C., demanding early payment of a bonus.
What is the Bonus Army March?
This massive construction project, authorized under Herbert Hoover's presidency, provided jobs, controlled flooding, and supplied hydroelectric power to the southwestern United States.
What is the Boulder Dam (now known as the Hoover Dam)?
Following World War I, this international organization aimed at preventing future conflicts but was ultimately unable to stop the economic collapse of the 1930s.
What is the League of Nations?
American factories produced more goods than people could afford to buy, a problem known as this.
What is overproduction?
This term refers to people who traveled across the country by hopping on freight trains in search of work or food.
What are hobos?
This term, coined by President Herbert Hoover, described his belief that people should take care of themselves and rely on personal initiative rather than government assistance during the Great Depression.
What is rugged individualism?
This stock market index, which tracks the performance of 30 large, publicly traded companies, plummeted dramatically during the stock market crash of 1929.
What is the Dow Jones Industrial Average?
After World War I, this international agreement was intended to help prevent future wars, but it failed to prevent the rise of global economic problems.
What is the Treaty of Versailles?
This was the risky practice of buying stocks with borrowed money, hoping prices would keep rising.
What is buying on margin?
This famous song by Woody Guthrie captured the struggles of working-class Americans during the Great Depression, with lyrics about the challenges of migration and poverty.
What is “This Land is Your Land”?
In 1932, Hoover established this program to provide loans to struggling banks, railroads, and businesses, hoping to stimulate economic recovery.
What is the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)?
This 1930 law raised tariffs on foreign goods to protect American businesses, but it worsened the Depression by reducing international trade.
What is the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act?
This economic policy, used by many countries after World War I, focused on increasing tariffs to protect domestic industries but led to a decrease in global trade.
What is protectionism?