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Great Depression Causes

Decent Essays

In 1929, the United States Stock Market crashed. However, this “most disastrous day” that sparked the Great Depression did not occur out of the blue. There were many contributing factors to the Great Depression of the 1930s, the most influential being stock speculation and installment buying of goods, maldistribution of income, and the overproduction of goods. These three topics led up to the Bull Market Boom and the Great Depression. The main cause of the Great Depression was stock market speculation and installment buying. According to A History of the American People from 1952, “investors put their money into securities (stocks) in the hope of making a quick profit on a speculative rise in stocks.” This shows that because the stocks were …show more content…

A section from Frederick Lewis Allen’s, The Big Change, 60 percent of American families were living below the poverty line. This means that 60 of every 100 families were on $2,000 a year, “the minimum necessary for meeting the basic needs of the average US family.” The other 40 families were living with more than what they needed. In fact, while 21% of families were living with under $1,000 a year, 8% were living with $5,000 or more. This maldistribution of income only made the rich stay rich and the poor get poorer. One family was living on 46 cents a day and were still not the poorest of people. Gladys Caldwell, a mill-worker interviewed by Paul Blanchard, supported her three children, only spending 46 cents a day. Her husband worked as a stripper and when workers got laid off and he was doing more work than he should have been, he was getting the same amount of money than when he was doing just his job. This illustrates how the income of US families was maldistributed. While people like Gladys were just getting by, others were still spending a lot of money on “Garwood Boats.” These rich people were still getting offered to buy boats for as much as $12,950! This extreme maldistribution of income was a leading cause of the Great

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