President Hoover's Collapse Of Life During The Great Depression

When the dreaded “Black Tuesday” occurred in October 29, 1929, the entire United States economy collapsed in a single day. The sudden lost of stock forced companies to lay off workers and made wages go lower. President Hoover’s belief in the “Laissez Faire” policy gave assurance that the Depression would end soon but, in reality 6 million Americans were unable to acquire a job by 1931. Entire cities were filled with homeless people living and eating in unsanitary conditions. Millions of lives and jobs were ruined throughout the Great Depression. Not only were urban and modern jobs on the decline, rural work began to struggle even more. To reflect the tone of the Great Depression, a major drought started in the 1920s that caused the soil to dry out and for crops to …show more content…
This lead to food prices declining, making farming completely unprofitable. In an ironic twist, farmers had to abandon rotting fields of food while people starved in every state. Then in 1932, Hoover resigned from office and the calm, optimistic Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as the next President. By the time he was in office, close to 15 million Americans were unemployed and 20% of them were homeless. Roosevelt immediately went into work by closing every bank so that reforms could be passed to reopen banks considered stable. Other financial securities like the FDIC and SEC were created to protect bank accounts and regulate the stock market. The most important part of his New Deal was the Works Project Administration. This permanent job system gave work to those who applied there. The WPA employed 8.5 million people from 1935 to 1943. These Americans were put to work in exchange for