The Great Depression Answers and Questions Quiz
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The Great Depression that lasted from 1929 to 1939 was the greatest financial collapse in the history of modern civilisation. It all started with the crash of the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929, which led to the collapse of a large number of investors. Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment declined, causing a sharp decline in industrial production and employment as failed firms laid off workers. At the beginning of the thirties of the 19th century in the United States of America, 15 million people lost their jobs and half of the state banks went bankrupt.
What caused the Great Depression?
The American economy expanded rapidly during the 1920s, and the country’s total wealth doubled between 1920 and 1929, a period that has been dubbed the “Rising Twenties.”
The stock market crash of 1929
On October 24, 1929, as anxious investors began to sell off high-priced stocks en masse, the stock market crash that some had feared finally occurred. As a result, 12.9 million shares were traded that day, known as “Black Thursday.”
Runs the bank and Hoover’s management
Despite the assurances from President Herbert Hoover and other leaders that the crisis would run its course, things continued to deteriorate over the next three years. In 1930, there were four million unemployed in America. After only one year, this number increased to 6 million.
Meanwhile, the country’s industrial production has fallen by half. Bread lines, soup kitchens, and increasing numbers of homeless people are becoming more and more common in American towns and cities. The farmers could not afford to harvest their crops and had to let them rot in the fields while people were starving elsewhere. In the 1930s, the severe drought in the Southern Plains brought heavy winds and dust from Texas to Nebraska, killing people, livestock, and crops.
Roosevelt election
Hoover, a Republican who previously served as US Secretary of Commerce, believes that the government should not interfere directly in the economy and that it is not responsible for creating jobs or support socially vulnerable groups.
But in 1932, with the country mired in the depths of the Great Depression and 15 million unemployed, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt scored a landslide victory in the presidential election.
The New Deal: The Road to Recovery
Among the New Deal programs and institutions that helped recover from the Great Depression was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which built the dams and hydroelectric projects to control the flooding and provide electric power to the impoverished Tennessee Valley region, progressing the works. Between 1935 and 1943, the permanent jobs program employed over 8.5 million people. When the Great Depression began, the United States was the only industrialized country in the world that did not have some form of unemployment insurance or social security. In 1935, Congress passed the Social Security Act, which first introduced Americans to unemployment, disability, and old-age pensions.
African Americans in the Great Depression
One-fifth of all Americans who received federal relief during the Great Depression were black, mainly in the rural South. But farming and domestic work, two major sectors in which black workers work, were not included in the Social Security Act of 1935, which meant there was no safety net in times of uncertainty. So, instead of severing domestic service, private sector employers can pay them lower salaries without legal repercussions.
Women in the Great Depression
One group of Americans who got jobs during the Great Depression was women. Between 1930 and 1940, the number of working women in the United States increased by 24%, from 10.5 million to 13 million. Although they had steadily entered the labor market for decades, the financial pressures of the Great Depression drove women to seek employment. Put in more time. Many male dependents have lost their jobs. Between 1929 and 1939, marriage rates fell by 22%, increasing the number of unmarried women looking for work.
The end of the Great Depression and the beginning of the war
With Roosevelt’s decision to support Britain and France in the struggle against Germany and the other Axis powers, defense industrialization was established, producing more and more jobs in the private sector.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 led to America’s entry into World War II, and the country’s factories returned to full production mode.
This expanding industrial production, combined with extensive conscription beginning in 1942, brought the unemployment rate down below its pre-Depression level. As a result, the Great Depression finally ended, and the United States turned its attention to the global conflict of World War II.
The Great Depression question and answer quiz is an interactive quiz that covers all aspects of the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1939. The question-and-answer quiz can be taken by anyone who is interested in learning more about the Great Depression.