great depression lecture USH

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+Election of 1928: Herbet Hoover (R) vs. Al Smith (D)
+- Hoover is debt and tax reducer, successful businessman
+- Al Smith was popular with Northern city democrats
+    - Poor grandson of Irish-Catholics, NY governor
+    - First Roman Catholic, opposed prohibition
+        - Made him less popular with South
+    - Forced to deal with constant criticism unlike Hoover
+- No Democrat could have won because US was doing well
+    - Won 444-87
+Herbet Hoover boosted trust in the Great Bull Market
+- Prices swung high on reckless speculation
+- Andrew Mellon reduced taxes, giving people money to invest
+- Hoover sold off stocks while telling people to be careful
+    - "saw [the bubble] coming"
+- "Buy on margin": borrow money from a small deposit and purchase stocks
+    - Lenders gave 2/3 of stock value by 1929
+    - Signs that economy was weakening in early 1929 w/ declining 
+- Mid-October 1929: stocks go into steep decline
+    - Investors still remained cheery in early month
+    - Investors want to sell stocks as stocks go down late in month
+        - run on banks
+    - Lose $50B by the end of the month, $15B on the day
+    - "Black Tuesday": worst day in stock mkt history
+    - Fear and uncertainty
+    - 26K businesses shut down and more failed
+    - IMPORTANT: Collapse of Stock Market did NOT cause Great Depression
+- Depression was a vicious cycle
+    - Low demand -> low production -> layoffs -> less spending -> lower
+      stocks, lower demand -> lower production
+
+What were the underlying causes of the Great Depression?
+- Actually in Recession months before stock mkt crash because of
+  overproduction
+    - Business owners denied wage increases to employees -> imbalance
+    - Unproductive borrowing by workers
+- Farm incomes stalled after Great War, and farmers started borrowing
+  w/o basis of European demand (lower prices)
+    - Record Harvests pinched farm income
+- Government policies also contributed
+    - Tarriffs on outside production: 1933 Smoot-Polly tarriff
+      (agriculture) actually raised prices on raw materials and consumer
+      products after revisioning
+    - Economists lobbied Hoover to veto, but he didn't
+    - Other countries tarriffed US
+- European economy still damaged by WWI and Treaty of Versailles
+- Victorious nations couldn't pay war debt to eachother and $11B to US,
+  forced to borrow further billions from US banks.
+    - German economy also dependent on US borrowing
+    - Failure to repay deepened American depression
+    - Tarriffs hurt their economies
+
+# The Human Cost
+Depression was worst in history.
+Huge unemployment numbers, esp. for farm workers
+Bankruptcies and foreclosures were fought desperately.
+"Hold-ups and killings are becoming more frequent."
+City-dwellers became street merchants (ex. selling apples on the street)
+Accountants, doctors, professionals were ashamed
+    - avoided medical care, checkups so as not to "go on relief"
+- 1/4 of children suffered from malnutrition
+Families of unemployed workers had 66% more illnesses.
+NYC hospitals reported 130 cases of starvation deaths.
+Millions in charities, bread lines
+1K Homeowners lost their homes each day to foreclosures
+- many had to move in with 
+Poorhouses were overwhelmed by the number of homeless
+- forced to live in culverts, bridges
+- build Hoovervilles
+Hobos sneak onto trains to sleep. NYC live on subway trains.
+- 54 homeless arrested on a train celebrated because jail feeds them
+- Begging, crime, prostitution soared
+Married couples decided not to have children, others sending children to
+live with relatives and friends.
+Women forced to keep their households emotionally together
+- Married women teachers were laid off to stop "stealing jobs" from men
+African-Americans had it worse, with the lowest-paying menial jobs
+- still faced much discrimination: jobs, segregation
+- many lived in cramped cabins w/o running water, heat, indoor plumbing
+- highest rate of unemployment
+Chinese, Japanese migrant workers competed for work and moved towards
+cities
+- officials want to deport Mexican-born Americans (and their Am. chdren)
+
+Dust Bowl - "Black Blizzards" of topsoil
+- Farming was terrible because topsoil was removed
+- Oakies/Arkies (Oklahoma, Arkansa) moved to cities w/o money to pay
+  rent, mortgage
+    - Little Oklahoma squatter camps
+    - California farm labor was little better
+    - Derided by locals
+- *The Grapes of Wrath* by John Steinbeck
+    - traveled with workers during GD for research
+    - "Rich Fellas come up and they die, but [poor people] don't; they
+      just keep on coming."
+- Hollywood reassured people during the GD
+    - 60+ million Americans attended the movies each week
+    - "Gone with the Wind" and "The Grapes of Wrath" super popular
+        - as movies and as books
+        - represented worries about the collapse of agrarian life and
+          family
+        - Grapes of Wrath: theme of moving forward despite suffering and
+          loss
+        - Gone with the Wind: pub 1936 released 1939, nostalgia for
+          antebellum south
+            - Civil War happens to Scarlet, and she wants to survive as
+              a plantation owner despite social upheaval
+            - "Tommorow is another day" --- The South will rise again
+            - Greatest Hollywood success ever
+            - Presented docile slaves who "preferred servitude to
+              freedom," boycotted by NAACP
+            - Film reduced politics of the novel