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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
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