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great depessen good and bad

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Some concerts,shows and plays were usually through radio.

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The most popular type of music was jazz, this was made up of Guitars,pianos,saxophones,trumpet-s-clarinets,trombones and upright basses.

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What Caused the Great Depression?

Throughout the 1920s, the U.S. economy expanded rapidly, and the nation's total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, a period dubbed " the Roaring Twenties."

The stock market, centered at the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street in New York City, was the scene of reckless speculation, where everyone from millionaire tycoons to cooks and janitors poured their savings into stocks. As a result, the stock market underwent rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929.

By then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stock prices much higher than their actual value. Additionally, wages at that time were low, consumer debt was proliferating, the agricultural sector of the economy was struggling due to drought and falling food prices and banks had an excess of large loans that could not be liquidated.

The American economy entered a mild recession during the summer of 1929, as consumer spending slowed and unsold goods began to pile up, which in turn slowed factory production. Nonetheless, stock prices continued to rise, and by the fall of that year had reached stratospheric levels that could not be justified by expected future earnings.

Stock Market Crash of 1929

On October 24, 1929, as nervous investors began selling overpriced shares en masse, the stock market crash that some had feared happened at last. A record 12.9 million shares were traded that day, known as "Black Thursday."

Five days later, on October 29, or "Black Tuesday," some 16 million shares were traded after another wave of panic swept Wall Street. Millions of shares ended up worthless, and those investors who had bought stocks "on margin" (with borrowed money) were wiped out completely.

As consumer confidence vanished in the wake of the stock market crash, the downturn in spending and investment led factories and other businesses to slow down production and begin firing their workers. For those who were lucky enough to remain employed, wages fell and buying power decreased.

Many Americans forced to buy on credit fell into debt, and the number of foreclosures and repossessions climbed steadily. The global adherence to the gold standard, which joined countries around the world in fixed currency exchange, helped spread economic woes from the United States throughout the world, especially in Europe.

Bank Runs and the Hoover Administration

Despite assurances from President Herbert Hoover and other leaders that the crisis would run its course, matters continued to get worse over the next three years. By 1930, 4 million Americans looking for work could not find it; that number had risen to 6 million in 1931.

Meanwhile, the country's industrial production had dropped by half. Bread lines, soup kitchens and rising numbers of homeless people became more and more common in America's towns and cities. Farmers couldn't afford to harvest their crops and were forced to leave them rotting in the fields while people elsewhere starved. In 1930, severe droughts in the Southern Plains brought high winds and dust from Texas to Nebraska, killing people, livestock and crops. The " Dust Bowl " inspired a mass migration of people from farmland to cities in search of work.

In the fall of 1930, the first of four waves of banking panics began, as large numbers of investors lost confidence in the solvency of their banks and demanded deposits in cash, forcing banks to liquidate loans in order to supplement their insufficient cash reserves on hand.

Bank runs swept the United States again in the spring and fall of 1931 and the fall of 1932, and by early 1933 thousands of banks had closed their doors.

In the face of this dire situation, Hoover's administration tried supporting failing banks and other institutions with government loans; the idea was that the banks in turn would loan to businesses, which would be able to hire back their employees.

FDR and the Great Depression

Hoover, a Republican who had formerly served as U.S. secretary of commerce, believed that government should not directly intervene in the economy and that it did not have the responsibility to create jobs or provide economic relief for its citizens.

In 1932, however, with the country mired in the depths of the Great Depression and some 15 million people unemployed, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt won an overwhelming victory in the presidential election.

By Inauguration Day (March 4, 1933), every U.S. state had ordered all remaining banks to close at the end of the fourth wave of banking panics, and the U.S. Treasury didn't have enough cash to pay all government workers. Nonetheless, FDR (as he was known) projected a calm energy and optimism, famously declaring "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Roosevelt took immediate action to address the country's economic woes, first announcing a four-day "bank holiday" during which all banks would close so that Congress could pass reform legislation and reopen those banks determined to be sound. He also began addressing the public directly over the radio in a series of talks, and these so-called " fireside chats " went a long way toward restoring public confidence.

During Roosevelt's first 100 days in office, his administration passed legislation that aimed to stabilize industrial and agricultural production, create jobs and stimulate recovery.

In addition, Roosevelt sought to reform the financial system, creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ( FDIC) to protect depositors' accounts and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate the stock market and prevent abuses of the kind that led to the 1929 crash.

The New Deal: A Road to Recovery

Among the programs and institutions of the New Deal that aided in recovery from the Great Depression was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which built dams and hydroelectric projects to control flooding and provide electric power to the impoverished Tennessee Valley region, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a permanent jobs program that employed 8.5 million people from 1935 to 1943.

When the Great Depression began, the United States was the only industrialized country in the world without some form of unemployment insurance or social security. In 1935, Congress passed the Social Security Act, which for the first time provided Americans with unemployment, disability and pensions for old age.

After showing early signs of recovery beginning in the spring of 1933, the economy continued to improve throughout the next three years, during which real GDP (adjusted for inflation) grew at an average rate of 9 percent per year.

A sharp recession hit in 1937, caused in part by the Federal Reserve's decision to increase its requirements for money in reserve. Though the economy began improving again in 1938, this second severe contraction reversed many of the gains in production and employment and prolonged the effects of the Great Depression through the end of the decade.

Depression-era hardships fueled the rise of extremist political movements in various European countries, most notably that of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany. German aggression led war to break out in Europe in 1939, and the WPA turned its attention to strengthening the military infrastructure of the United States, even as the country maintained its neutrality.

African Americans in the Great Depression

One-fifth of all Americans receiving federal relief during the Great Depression were Black, most in the rural South. But farm and domestic work, two major sectors in which Black workers were employed, were not included in the 1935 Social Security Act, meaning there was no safety net in times of uncertainty. Rather than fire domestic help, private employers could simply pay them less without legal repercussions. And those relief programs for which African Americans were eligible on paper were rife with discrimination in practice since all relief programs were administered locally.

Despite these obstacles, Roosevelt's "Black Cabinet," led by Mary McLeod Bethune, ensured nearly every New Deal agency had a Black advisor. The number of African Americans working in government tripled.

Women in the Great Depression

There was one group of Americans who actually gained jobs during the Great Depression: Women. From 1930 to 1940, the number of employed women in the United States rose 24 percent from 10.5 million to 13 million Though they'd been steadily entering the workforce for decades, the financial pressures of the Great Depression drove women to seek employment in ever greater numbers as male breadwinners lost their jobs. The 22 percent decline in marriage rates between 1929 and 1939 also created an increase in single women in search of employment.

Women during the Great Depression had a strong advocate in First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who lobbied her husband for more women in office-like Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first woman to ever hold a cabinet position.

Jobs available to women paid less but were more stable during the banking crisis: nursing, teaching and domestic work. They were supplanted by an increase in secretarial roles in FDR's rapidly-expanding government. But there was a catch: over 25 percent of the National Recovery Administration's wage codes set lower wages for women, and jobs created under the WPA confined women to fields like sewing and nursing that paid less than roles reserved for men.

Married women faced an additional hurdle: By 1940, 26 states had placed restrictions known as marriage bars on their employment, as working wives were perceived as taking away jobs from able-bodied men-even if, in practice, they were occupying jobs men would not want and doing them for far less pay.

Great Depression Ends and World War II Begins

With Roosevelt's decision to support Britain and France in the struggle against Germany and the other Axis Powers, defense manufacturing geared up, producing more and more private-sector jobs.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 led to America's entry into World War II, and the nation's factories went back into full production mode.

This expanding industrial production, as well as widespread conscription beginning in 1942, reduced the unemployment rate to below its pre-Depression level. The Great Depression had ended at last, and the United States turned its attention to the global conflict of World War II.

Photo Galleries

HISTORY Vault

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Great Depression: Black Thursday, Facts & Effects

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The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world, lasting from 1929 to 1939. At its peak, the U.S. unemployment rate topped 20 percent.

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Dancing Marathons during the Great Depression

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Dancing Marathons during the Great Depression

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Dance marathon contestants compete in the 1920s - Daily Mail

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Since most people were depressed during the Great Depression they turned to sports to keep them going.

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Dance marathons were orginated by Alma Cummings who once did a 27 hour non-stop dance.

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Shirley Temple

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This is a movie theater.

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Gambling on sports was popular because it was a way to earn money. This caused more interest in sports and raised fan attendance.

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The dancers had to keep on moving while they ate, bathed, and did any other events while they were dancing.

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Joan Crawford was an older actress who starred in "The Women" (1939), who later in her life starred in "Whatever happened to Baby Jane?"

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The stereo record was invented in 1933, this meant that music could be recorded and replayed.

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They played with a yo-yo that is a circle shape and a string comes out and you can swing the circle around with the string.

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During the dance marathons you performed in couples. The couples would have to stay upright and keep their feet moving to stay in the competition.

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High School games were sometimes more popular than professional games because they were free. The type pf sport that was entertaining depended on how much it cost.

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The most popular dances in the 1930s were  Rumba, Samba, Foxtrot, Waltz, Lindy Hop, Balboa, Shag, Jive, Big Apple, and Conga.

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Some marathon hosts wanted to ensure that their competition would draw crowds and bring return business and so would hire individuals to take a dive during the competition.

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Shirley Temple was a famous young actor who starred in The Little Princess, Heildi, Curly Top and Bright Eyes.

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Some songs in the great depression were Brother Can You Spare a Dime and Fifteen miles from Birmingham. These were popular songs

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Food was served several times a day to the dancers, but the contestants were usually required to eat while moving.

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King Kong released in 1933, and was made by Ernest B. Schoedsack, Merian C. Cooper.

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Many popular sports today weren't popular then like Basketball unless it was a free game.

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The competitions were seen as ways to not only make money if they won, but to also be fed for the duration that they danced.

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Spectators would go and watch these competitions for as long as they wanted.

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The dancers often did simple shuffling and moving of the arms and hips.

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Dance marathons, also known as walkathons, were contests of endurance in which Men and Women would dance for as long as they could in order to win prizes. Dancers stayed  in motion for several days (and in some cases, several weeks) just so that they could win a prize. The dances pushed them self to their very limit during this dances.

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Great Depression caused fan attendance to plummet in every sport.

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Merchants in small towns decided to show free movies to draw country folks in to town on Thursday evenings.

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Some of the movies told storys like "My Man Godfrey" told the story of a man who lost his entire fortune in the 1929 stock market crash.

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Some songs were written by Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers. People listened to Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey.

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Boxing and Track and Field were other popular sports in the Great Depression.

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They played Buccaneer in 1938 Buccaneer is a game that there are four players and you get a ship and you go to a chance card and if you get treasure you get to keep your treasure and if you don't you will get blown away and you can attack other players.

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They played Easy Money in 1935 Easy Money is a game that is almost the same thing as Finance and monopoly but you can evict someone from there house they bought.

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Football- not watched or played a lot as players were getting little to no money per game. This caused no one to chose the career path of playing football.

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They played Finance in 1932 Finance is a game that you have to go around the board and you can get property and money.

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Baseball was the most popular and most watched sport during the Great Depression.

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They played Wahoo in the 1930s Wahoo is a marble game that you have to get your marbles across the board into the safety zone.

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They made a homemade merry-go-round they can spin around in circles forever.

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The Wizard of Oz came out in 1939, and grossed only around 1 million dollars.

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Some of the musicians were Louis Armstrong  and Duke Ellison.

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Others games included, The Game of Life, Sorry! and Scrabble the picture is the game of life.

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Music and dancing made people forget the hardships of their daily life.

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The game that was very famous back then was Monopoly that is a game that you go around the board and you can get money and buy things with your money you got in the game.

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The first Disney movie, Snow White and in seven dwarfs (1937), came out as one of the longest animated and audio movies.