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What Caused The Great Depression Essay

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The United States has faced quite a few depressions every 20 or so years. At the end of the 1920’s the United States had a thriving economy until the Great Depression hit in 1929. The Great Depression was the most severe and longest ever experienced by the industrialized western world. This depression occurred between 1929 and 1939 resulting from a time of major economic decline, bank failures, reduction in purchasing, and the drought conditions. Before the depression, profits for businesses skyrocketed, wages increased, and the distribution of wealth widened. Owning over a third of all American assets, The richest 1% of Americans saved money that could have been redistributed towards the economy and into the middle and lower classes. The middle …show more content…

One which being that the land had been over farmed. The land was naturally a grass land when settlers moved there and either farmed or land or had livestock on it. The farmers plowed all of the natural grasses and replaced them with mostly wheat, which then changed the environment, allowing the land to dry up along with the shortage of rain. Another issue was that those who were ranching, many of them allowed their livestock to over graze the lands which caused most of their grass to be gone and allowed the winds of the great plains to dry out the grounds and cause the dust bowl. The dust bowl made it hard for the farmers and ranchers to have crops grow or to have food for their livestock. This cause a massive shortage on food and supplies for the already struggling US economy because this was an era where many of the countries crops and livestock came from. It forced the country into a food shortage which raised the price of the foods they already had in stock. The drought in the Mississippi Valley at this time was so destructive that farmers and land owners could not pay taxes or other debts, that when selling their lands and farms, they received no profit from the sales for themselves. Many families ended up homeless and some moved to towns called, “Hoovervilles,” named after the president at the time, Herbert

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