The Great Depression College Essays Samples For Students

Abstract

The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was established to address chronic rural poverty during the Great Depression in the US. A string of known and unknown artists was hired by the organization to capture the images of poverty and lives of rural farmers, with the hope of garnering support for them. The essay describes FSA briefly and then goes on to select a social documentary photograph from an FSA photographer. It evaluates the photograph and how successful it is in expressing the hardships faced by countless rural farmers and migrants during the 1930s. The essay discusses the selected photographer Dorothea ...

1) Which were the primary causes of the Great Depression?
According to Walton and Rockoff, an acceptable explanation for the Great Depression has to distinguish between the initial forces, which brought a downturn in financial activity, and later events, that turned a downturn into a calamity. We can detect two issues on the economy that foreshadowed the real slump in economic activity. First, there was a decline in the construction industry that began 1925, that had a significant impact on the depression. Second, the agricultural sector suffered greatly, with falling world prices and massive indebtedness (422).
Walton and Rockoff ...

The 20th century was a defining time in world history as well as American history. The world war is evolving with the success of the industrial revolution and the mechanized world changing the way things worked every day. There were, however, certain defining moments in American history between the 1920s and 1990s which altered the country’s social, political and security conditions from time to time. However, they have contributed to the progress and later conditions of the country. These include the great 1929’s and the Great Depression, the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the 1964 legislation ...

Explain significant international and domestic challenges that the United States confronted since World War I.

A. Explain the major causes of the Great Depression:
The Great War, now known as World War I, had a profound impact on the international political and economic system. The fallout from this upheaval left many countries economically and politically devastated. A variety of industries and businesses were effected by the destructive violence that was brought by the war. In order to maintain their resources a variety of nations had bankrupted themselves, turning to borrowing or even printing their own money to continue. Furthermore, the war disrupted the generally stable patterns of international trading routes, leading to the dissolution ...

The Great Depression had already led to unyielding economic hardships under the Hoover Administration. When Franklin D. Roosevelt won the office of President in 1932 and it brought hope to the American people. The Depression had brought shrinking economy, high unemployment rates, a total collapse of the financial system and a general sense of despair among the masses. FDR developed the New Deal to address those issues. The different programs under the new deal addressed unemployment, like the CCC to building park facilities and the WPA helped put people to construction work. The FERA program was designed for emergency ...

The United States of America suffered great economic recessions like the bank panic and depression in the 1820s. Again, there were the hard economic times that came in late 1830. The most significant economic illness that was so dark and so long came in 1930. It is what is commonly referred to as the Great Depression (Eichengreen and Barry 200). The adverse economic problem varied across many nations, having started as early as 1929 in most of the nations. It had its roots in the US after a significant fall in the stock prices that began in the last ...

Nowadays, many people will stipulate that the Great Recession of a few years ago was just as bad, if not worse, than the Great Depression. There are similarities and patterns, to be sure. The effect globally was indeed worse this time around, because the world’s banks are far more intertwined and globalized now. People experienced a hard time getting back on their feet, and we had (and still have) a congress that is completely ineffective, throwing money at problems rather than actually fixing the regulations that allowed such a tremendous recession to take place. On the other hand, ...

It is a photo of Florence Owens Thompson and her children taken by one Dorothea Lange of the Farm Security Administration documentary. The migrant mother photograph as has become popularly known has been a perfect representation of the untold suffering of the average working American class that lived in the period of The Great Depression. The photo artist brings viewers of the photograph to the personal space of the subject of the picture Florence Thompson and her children. This enables the photo artist to highlight an issue of great concern in the society and one that needs immediate action. ...

Introduction

Monetary policy is the endeavor by the federal or state government to control the amount of money circulating within an economy. These control measures are undertaken to cub the instances of inflations or to control the interest rates to sustainable levels. Monetary policies can either be expansionary or contractionary. Expansionary monetary policies are meant to expand the supply of money to the economy thereby boosting the economic activities (Afonso, 2012). Expansionary monetary policies also lead to a reduction in average interest rates. Contractionary monetary policies, on the other hand, are macro-economic tools used by the federal or the state ...

Prior to the Great Depression policy makers in the United States generally tended to accept that business cycles happened and in accord with Adam Smith's "invisible hand," tended to be self-correcting. The stock market crash of 1929, and the more general problem of massive unemployment forced a reconsideration. Smiley (2008) and Bernstein (2016) both point out that the human face of the Depression left no choice but for some government intervention. Jahan and Papageorgiou (2014), discussing Keynesian Economics put it plainly: “The central tenet of this school of thought is that government intervention can stabilize the economy.” The centerpiece ...

Abstract

The current paper explores the main differences of the Great Recession in 2007-2009 from other economic collapses in the history if the United States. Section I discusses the general features of a recession and describes the main responsibilities of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Section II is devoted to the comparison of the Great Recession with the recession of 1980s. The section is divided into four subsections. Subsection A presents the basic comparison of recessions in the U.S. history and explains the choice of the 1980s period for the further comparison. Subsection B explores differences in unemployment in ...

The prominence of the US as a world’s superpower has been shaped by a series of historical events. Most of these historical events greatly influenced various policies that informed how the country engages with the international community and how to handle national issues that confronted the American citizens. Some of the events that shape the US foreign and local policies include;

The great Depression (1929-1939)

The Great Depression was the world’s longest economic downturn in the world.Zinn reiterates that the Great Depression started in the United States in October 1929 when the stock market crashed. The condition sent panic among investors ...

The great migration saw mass exodus of a whopping 7 million blacks from southern states in the US to the Midwest, Western and Northern states in America. This occurred between the periods of 1916 to 1970 (Arnesen 1). There was widespread practice of racism in the south with Whites enjoying the benefits of white collar jobs, goods schools for their children, conducive living environment, and political dominance. This pushed away the blacks who moved to the Northern, Midwest and Western states to seek employment into the industrial cities like Philadelphia, St. Louis, Baltimore and Chicago and other small cities. ...

The Great Depression of 1929 is one of the most tragic collapses in the history of America. It was a direct threat to the cultural and social foundation of the great American nation. The complacency that had been allowed to flourish during the so-called Roaring Twenties created the foundation for the eventual collapse of the Stock Market.
The famous American Dream was for the first time thwarted by the market dynamics. The collapse and devastation of the Great Depression coincided with the entry of Franklin Delano Roosevelt into the presidential seat. His entry into power rode on the concept ...

History

The Great Depression of 1930s has played a very important role in changing views of Americans regarding labor and unions. There were many people employed, but after elections of the year 1932, the focus of government and courts shifted towards pleasing the labor. In the year 1935, National labor Act was passed. This act is also known as Wagner Act, which justified the rights of labor or workers for changing their representatives in democratic manner and gives right of bargaining collectively with employees. This act has ensured protection of labors from injury and interruptions by removing unrest from the ...

Federalism in the United States has evolved over the past 200 years from an arrangement where state and national government powers and responsibilities were clearly distinct and separate, to one in which the line of distinction between the two has blurred. When the framers drafted the Constitution, they provided separate powers to the federal government in Article One. A few of these clauses extended the power of the national government in order to prevent the hazards faced by the Articles of Confederation. In order to ensure that limitations still existed on the federal government, the Tenth Amendment was included. ...

1. The Financial Crisis: Avoidable but Inevitable
Theoretically, the financial crisis could have been avoided as investigation findings revealed . Under the circumstances however, the crisis was an inevitable consequence of everything that was going.
The Federal inquiry concluded that the 2008 financial crisis could have been avoided. The crisis was the result of “widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street”. It was the result of “greed, ineptitude or both” on the part of government and the private sector.
Among the persons found responsible for the crisis included Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and, ...

Introduction

Fried Green Tomatoes is a 1991 comedy dram film written by Carol Sobieski and Fannie Flagg. The film tells the story of a friendship between two pairs of women – Ruth and Idgie during the Great Depression of early 1930s as well as that between Evelyn and Ninny in the 1980s. It happens that Ninny knew Idgie and Ruth and she tells of the stories about these two women to Evelyn who is in her middle ages (Avnet, 1991). The central issue in the film concerns the murder of Ruth’s abusive husband Frank after which numerous accusations on the ...

The depression of 1930’s was known as the great depression because its ripples were felt in all countries of the word. It originated from United States and its spread was attributed to the forged relationship between United States and European economies. The further spread to primary producing countries is attributed to the trade interrelation which had developed between these countries and the already developed countries. The primary producing nations included Latin America, Asia and Africa states. This depression strongly pressed countries like Britain and Germany because they had a lot of loans obtained from United States. Employment in these ...

Introduction

The financial crisis of 2007/9 was the worst in the U.S. since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was the cause of the failure of some of the biggest financial institutions including Washington Mutual which was closed in 2008, and its assets transferred to JP Morgan. In 2008, the crisis reached its peak with loans dropping dramatically to the lowest levels to be witnessed in a half a century. For example, new loans to large borrowers fell by 47 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 as compared to the previous quarter and by 79 percent relative to ...

Across his journey of fifty years as an artist, Pinkney has succeeded in viewing the world from a different and better perspective and coming up with outstanding images that reveal his love for life, race, community and culture. His works of art offer a significant proof that good acts, no matter how minute are never a waste when displayed in beautiful images (Llanas 45). Initially created for product advertisements, greeting cards, covers and pages of periodicals, postage stamps and well-travelled historic sites, Jerry’s have also been displayed in more than one hundred illustrated books. One of the most ...

The descriptions of the period of the Great Depression provided by Angie Wight and William Wight help to understand the conditions which were typical for workers at the time of the Depression. First, people did not have too much food to eat at the time of the Depression, and numerous people used to be hungry at times; to receive certain food, people had to stand in lines for hours. Second, there was a serious shortage of appropriate clothing; people had to wear ragged clothing and go with holes in the shoes. Third, there was a severe shortage of money; ...

Jane Doe

Historically, the United States experienced a dramatic shift in class inequality between the 1930’s to the 1970’s. In the 1930’s the American people faced some of the worst economic times that left a large percentage of the population in severe poverty. The Great Depression changed the landscape of the nation that was once thriving, into a struggling country filled with desperation. It is during this period that those who once were in a higher class fell to a lower class status, which began to level out the variation in class inequality. However, as FDR became President ...

Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014 stated in the year 2015 on October 4  that for the first time the federal reserve has taken the decision to raise from 'zero interest rate' and the decision was taken after the great depression. When the markets crashed in the year 2008 then the monetary policy of the federal reserve saved the economy to recover from the recession. However there are other criticisms that the 'zero interest rate' policy of the federal reserve was the reason of the Great Depression of 2008. But Bernanke argued ...

The film shows the plight of ordinary American people in the events of America’s Great Depression. They become migrant workers when they end up in a ranch in California. They are in search of work and opportunities for their family, but the best of opportunities are not given to them by the people they work for and live under. Food prices are ridiculously high on purpose such that they cannot afford good food; bottom line the ranch owners they work for oppress them. The camp in which they live in is crowded; the immigrants are starving and desperate. ...

Public-private ownership economic systems or hybrid capitalist economic system refers to a form of capitalism where private business ventures and public or government service enter into a long term contract with an aim of completing a project that will serve the public. Hybrid capitalist economies can be employed in funding, financing, building, developing and operating projects like infrastructure, health, conventional centers, tourism, transportation networks and sanitation for the benefit of the general public. Public-private partnerships are very crucial in allowing projects to be completed in time through financing.
The private sector often offers a service to the public while ...

Intricacy and complexity of Arthur Miller`s play Death of a Salesman reflect not only existential along with social anxieties and miseries, but, also, American reality of the post-war period, when the US society seemed to get rid of devastating effect of the Great Depression and aftermath of WWII. In his play Miller depicts an average American who, like the rest of the world, has a dream. However, taking into consideration national and social peculiarities of protagonist this dream is tightly connected with more ideological notion entitled – the American Dream. Thus, through play`s protagonist, Willy Loman, one may ...

Major Themes

1)
The increased role of the government has led to significant changes in the Economic system of the USA. Many experts consider the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt the beginning of the social security system of the federal government. In the middle of the Great Depression, many people did not have work, many families were affected by poverty and hunger, respectively. However, a number of New Deal programs such as the Federal Office for Emergency Relief, which provided considerable financial support for state and municipal relief operations, emerged. Administration provided the fund for the population and ...

“A Rose for Emily,” published in 1930, is one of the classic short stories written by renowned author, William Faulkner. It is a story that has left many questions by readers in terms of the meaning or symbolism behind Emily Grierson’s character and the events that take place surrounding her life and death. The story has a macabre feel to it, as it is examines the possibly insanity of the main character and the strange decisions she has made in regard to the dead body of her father, and then Homer, the man she was hoping to marry. ...

A political party is a grouping of individuals who come together to compete in elections and hold authority in the government. Often, political parties agree on specific policies and programs that are intended to enhancing the collective common good of their supporters. Despite the fact that there are many international commonalities in the organization of political parties, there are a lot of differences concerning the ideological cores. In modern democracies, the political parties are elected by the citizens to form a government. Many nations in the world have various party systems. For instance, China has a one-party system while ...

Introduction

In 2008, the entire world was rocked by the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. The crisis first affected the entire financial system of the United States before then quickly spread globally. The casualties of the crisis included the whole investment banking industry of the US. Other casualties were the US largest insurance company, largest mortgage lender, among other firms in the financial services sector. The US auto industry was severely hit leading to loss of jobs. The US unemployment rate increased by 4.9% points from the third quarter of 2007 to the third quarter of 2009. The ...

Langston Hughes poetry and social activist

Langston Hughes was an American social Jazz Poet, novelist and an activist who used American language, religion, music, slang to educate the globe about the lifestyles of American people at the times of Harlem Renaissance. The main theme that trolled in his poems were the social problems of the blacks who lived in low earning settings (Carl, 2004). Much of critique targeted the prejudices and the divisions that were common in the people of color within the community of the blacks. The poems were activist in nature as they dealt with how to be oneself issues and encouraged the ...

What insights do the Lange's and the stories by actual women who lived during the Depression give you about women's lives and roles in the Great Depression?
Answer. The insights given by Lange’s pictures and other stories from women who lived during the era of great depression explain the plight of women when they were not able to comply with the sudden loss of their jobs and source of income (Pehlan,"The Story of the Migrant Mother"). The great depression eroded the business and associated employment with them but the women were not only victimized of the economic ...

Introduction

According to the International Labor Organization, unemployment is a phenomenon, which happens when the people, who currently don’t have a work are seeking for it (1982). The main indicator of unemployment situation in the country is unemployment rate, which shows the percentage of unemployed people in the total number of labor force (the number of all people of working age). It is calculated by dividing the number of the individuals, who don’t have work at the certain moment of time by all individuals able to work at the same moment of time (The Saylor Foundation).
The unemployment ...

Quite often, America's entry into World War Two has been attributed to the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan in 1941. While that is the case, the background to Japan's attack is what drew America into the war with the Pearl Harbor attack being a mere pretext. From the onset of the war, America's policy was to maintain neutrality as envisaged by the new Neutrality Act of 1937 (Chambers, 100). By default, the Neutrality Act served to embolden Germany's quest for domination of Europe. That is because America's non-involvement made it easier for Germany to attack France and Britain. America's ...

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is among the most influential American presidents. He took over as president in 1932, three years after the start of the Great Depression. As president, Roosevelt wasted no time in rolling out a series of federal government programs aimed at giving relief to the poor, recover the ailing economy and review the country’s national approach to economics.
Roosevelt’s new structured formulae were collectively dubbed, ‘The New Deal.”After four years in power, the depression showed no signs of ending hence drastic improvements to the economy were needed. When Roosevelt accepted his party’s nomination ...

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1. World War II. Explain how the U.S. got involved in World War II. What interests were considered especially important? What factors were critical in winning the war? What lessons could we learn from this experience?
The U.S. got involved in World War II due to the aggressive actions of Japan. The U.S. got involved in World War II on December 7, 1941, when Japan unexpectedly attacked American military forces in the Pacific. The Battle of Pearl Harbor was the official reason for entering the war. Japanese military forces damaged nearly 18 warships, destroyed 164 aircraft, ...

Abstract

Use of photography as a medium of propaganda has been a much-debated subject. After all, the term propaganda holds a negative implication to it. A photographic image cannot literally say anything and are expected to communicate authentic information. Still, under the influence of the intention and propaganda, many argue that photographs often give inaccurate representations. The essay discusses the subject of the use of photography for propaganda and their ability to be manipulated. Democratic and authoritarian governments alike have exploited the potential of photography and used the camera as a tool to portray situation the way they want to ...

How World War One changed United States Society

Early 1900s was a time of great changes in the United States. At the time, United States was considered the world leader because the country was changing rapidly. This was the progressive era when United States became highly industrialized. People from all over the world moved to the country because of the better opportunities available there. United States implemented the isolation policy prior to world war one. The country did not want to be involved in any war at the time. However, circumstances forced the country to get to the war in 1917. This brought unprecedented political, economic and social ...