The Great Depression

On Monday, March 4, 1929, in the midst of a drizzling rain, Herbert Clark Hoover took oath of office as president of the United States. In his inaugural address he waxed enthusiasstic about the nation under the Republican administrations of the 1920s.In fact, according to Hoover, it had been liberated from wuidespread poverty.

By the early summer of 1929, however, economic activity in the United States was noticeably slowing. The economic contraction continued to spread through the rest of the summer and into the fall of 1929. In the last week of october the stock market "crashed" and economic activity declined more rapidly.Recovery from the Great Depression was so slow.It is the only decade in the history of the United States in which there was no economic growth.

The automobile companies had produced 1.658.000 cars by 1919, production had nearly tripled to 4.587.000 cars by 1929.In 1919, p[roduction there were 1,12 cars registered for every four households: but ten years later were 3,15 cars registered for every four households.Between 1923 and 1929 real income per person increased 12,6 percent,from US$ 763 to US$ 859 or 2,1 percent per year.

Some areas of economic were having more difficult times during the general expansion of the 1920s.Grain farmers facd uncertain markets.The coal industry also failed to share in the general prosperity.

In December 1930 the Brooklyn,New York, Bank of the United States failed.The collapsing world economy,1931.Continuing decline,increasing unrest,and the final banking panic.1932-1933.The collapsing financial system and more than 28 percent of the labor force was unemployed.

What caused the Great Depression? The rise power of Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany was the result of the depression in Germany.But in USA the problem was bank and creation and destruccion of money, the stock market crash and greater uncertainty about the future.The first New Deal,1933-1935.