For example, during the "roaring" twenties (between 1923 and 1929), manufacturing output per person-hour increased by 32%, while workers' wages grew by only 8%. (McElvaine 38) At the same time, massive tax-cuts were initiated to benefit the rich by the government
Conservative economists and analysts believe that the New Deal policies were responsible for prolonging the effects while those who support increased welfare programs and a regulated economy think otherwise. (Powell 48-49)
Between October 29 and November 13, over $30 billion disappeared from the American economy, which was more than the American government spent to fight the First World War. (Schultz, para on "The Crash") The Great Depression was now well and truly underway
For sometime, the stock market rose rapidly with the Dow Jones Industrial Average doubling (from 191 to 381) in less than two years from early 1928 to September 1929. (Temin 62-63) The stock-market bubble lasted until October 1929 when on a single day of mass panic (October 29-dubbed "Black Tuesday") the stocks lost $10 billion to $15 billion in value
S. The New York Stock Exchange grew to become the largest stock exchange in the World; further more the country also boasts of having the largest deposits and reserves in terms of gold in the entire world at its' New York Federal Reserve Bank (Embrechts, pp 1-33)
The impacts of the great depression were enormous as it didn't even spare any developed, developing or any under developed country during that time, but its important to note that countries whose economies mainly relied on heavy industries such as mining, crop production and logging were the worst affected by the economic depression unlike those countries who didn't. In the mid-1930's some countries' economies witnessed the start of economic recovery and end to recession while some economies dragged on in the great depression till beginning of the second World War when they witnessed some economic indictors which signaled the start of economic recovery (Mitchell, pp 462)
was more prepared and has acted in good time with effective measures to save the economy, as already recent studies have shown that there are signs of economic recovery in the U.S. economy (Taylor, pp 21-54)
A lot of attention was paid to music, literature, film, theatre and design to provide hope to the suffering people. Arts could play a critical role as it can enable "the helpless to become hopeful, the victims to become agents" (Dickstein 134)
The Great Depression may not happen again as the global economy is more integrated and central banks all over the world are working together. On the other hand we cannot ignore the fact that some "politicians and economists revise history and ignore the painful lessons of Depression era" (McElvaine 300)
As they were already accustomed to being discriminated, a great deal of African-American writers put across little to no hesitation in regard to openly stating their interest in communism as the answer to the U.S.' problems (Andrews, Smith Foster, Harris 117)
Many writers came to acknowledge the importance of their role in the American society as a result of watching the Great Depression and the damage that it caused. "Like the Great War, the Great Depression forced a similar radical reassessment of the role of the artist in American society and the response of writers to its social challenge" (Burt 3)
S. And came to focus on providing the masses with education in regard to the attitudes that they needed to employ in order to improve conditions in the country (Solomon 124)
His work is explicitly informed by the Depression through its subject matter, and it is implicitly informed by the Depression through its particular stylistic approach. However, John Steinbeck's work does not fully account for the literary response to the Great Depression, because even as he was documenting some of the social causes and effects of the Depression, other writers were taking advantage of the state of flux the country found itself in order to explore themes and subject matter previously unheard of in American literature (Ahern & Sandmann 277-278)
The first of these authors, Zora Neale Hurston, published her first major anthropological work Mules and Men in 1935, just as the Federal Writer's Project was getting underway. Mules and Men is a piece of literary anthropology, and in it Hurston attempts to record the folk tales of the South, and particularly of rural blacks, "before it's too late" (Hurston 8)
By considering Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath alongside Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men and Richard Wright's Native Son, one is able to better appreciate how the legacy of the Great Depression in American Literature is not solely one of darkness, despair, and the death of the American Dream, as seen in Steinbeck's work, but also, through the work of authors like Hurston and Wright, looks forward toward the potential for a world better that the world of the Depression or even what came before. Like Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, John Steinbeck participated in the Federal Writer's Project, and this is part of what gave him the freedom and support necessary to complete The Grapes of Wrath, a novel which follows Tom Joad and his family as they make their way West following the Dust Bowl, gradually realizing that opportunity promised them by optimistic handbills is nothing more than an illusion (Steinbeck 147)
The President had come to the conclusion that the American agricultural system was over producing and instituted a program of limiting production in an attempt to raise prices. (Coleman 2010) Roosevelt was a follower of the theory that an overly competitive, market driven economy, leading to overproduction and imbalances in the system, had been the cause of the depression
This legislation gave the President the authority to set credit policies, control currencies and gold movements and exchanges, and decide which banks were allowed to remain in business and which were to be closed. (Hillstrom 2009) Following this came the Banking Act of 1933, legislation which created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, (FDIC) as well as giving the government power to regulate the investment practices of financial institutions
His solution was maintaining a balance of prices and wages through government control of production. (Himmelberg 2001) In addition to the programs mentioned, Roosevelt's New Deal also saw the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the National Recovery Administration (NRA)
However, this decline did not necessarily mean that a depression was inevitable, for example, similar downturns had been experienced in 1907 and 1921 without the devastating effects of a depression. This industrial downturn in 1929, however, was caused by the Federal Reserve's "contractionary monetary policy in 1928 and 1929," (Temin) which attempted to stop what the Fed viewed as a speculative upswing in stock prices
This is significant, because it is a sign that various protectionist policies are ineffective at addressing the underlying challenges facing the nation. ("Hawley Smoot Tariff," 2011) (Griswold, 1998) Clearly, Keynesian economic policies can stabilize the economy