The Great Depression In The Caribbean

The Great Depression was a period of time lasting from 1929 to 1939 (a ten year span). The event that started it all was the stock market crash in October of 1929. 12.9 million shares were traded on October 12, 1929. The day became known as “Black Thursday.” Five days later 16 million shares were traded, making that day known as “Black Tuesday.” By March of 1930, 3.2 million Americans were unemployed and most had already lost their lifesavings, homes, and their hope. Riots began to break out by February of 1931 when seven hundred individuals started smashing windows and stealing food from a local Minneapolis market. Another riot happened in March of 1932 when three thousand unemployed workers marched onto the Ford Motor Company in Michigan. …show more content…
It was published in 2000 and has several different authors/contributors. The Great Depression is located in chapter five of the book and is written by Peter Temin. Obviously, I will only be mainly looking at the United States, but will also take into account how Canada and the Caribbean were affected as well. Temin describes the depression as being “a unique failure of the industrial economy.” By calling the Great Depression a unique failure completely sums up the period of time perfectly and I completely agree with his statement. He also describes the fall of economic activity (the stock market) to be “unprecedented, unsmooth, and bewildering.” The stock market crash from 1929 to 1933 was definitely bewildering and far from predictable, like the previous historian mentioned. “This large event has to be evidence either of a great instability in the economy or of great shock to it.” Temin believes that the following theory is one reason that most people believe the Great Depression happened, but he shows absolutely no support towards it: the main cause of the Great Depression was “underconsumption.” The average person could suddenly not afford to buy the products being made during the late 1920s and that affected the economy greatly. This evidence to Temin is not persuasive. “Underconsumption and its converse, overproduction are not useful concepts in the investigation of the Great Depression.” While I have several different opinions/options for what I think really caused the Great Depression, I believe that underconsumption is one of them. Temin makes a strong point in the following statement though, “Industrial production began to decline in 1929. This decline did not appear to be the start of a great depression; it was a downturn similar in appearance