Great Depression Reviews & Guide

The Great Depression was a period of economic and social devastation that started in the US with the Wall Street stock exchange collapse on October 29th, 1929, the day that has come to be well-known as Black Tuesday.

The great depression facts, record that these poorest and hardest of times which were to follow, would last for many years, until the beginning of the Second World War, at which time many nations began pouring huge sums of money into the new war driven economy, eventually bringing the unprecedented worldwide slump to a end.

What mustn’t be forgotten of course is that in those days, there was no social support. If you were penniless and hungry, there was nowhere or no-one to turn to. It was under such circumstances as these that one of the most shocking depression statistics emerged that 50% of all kids didn’t have enough food, clothing, shelter or medical care.

For most people, too poor to put food on the table, the only recourse was the soup kitchen, where people queued all day long for a bowl on meager, thin, watery soup. People were reduced to scavenging amongst the rubbish bins for something, anything to eat.

Industry ground to a halt, virtually. Because people didn’t have any money, they couldn’t afford to buy anything. With no income coming in from sales, businesses were forced to lay workers off, and eventually, to put themselves into liquidation.

It’s African-Americans that were always first to lose their livelihoods. For those who have had the chance to stay in work, wages have been dreadfully low. Depression pictures show that the standard wage of a farm worker was $ 216 per year, while a doctor earned $ 3822.29.

The president at the beginning of the great depression was Herbert Hoover and as it can now be imagined, he was not a popular man, being considered by many for doing too little and not managing to avert the crisis.

Hoover’s name was taken and used to nickname several consequences of the time like the settlements or shanty towns that sprang up everywhere being called “Hoovervilles”; or the soup “cocktail” that starving people would make when they went into a restaurant, diverted the waitresses attention, made a soup from whatever was left on the table tops (water, tomato sauce, salt, pepper) and drink it while her attention was still diverted, a concoction that came to be known as “Hoover Soup”. A pitiful but true great depression fact.