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