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Causes and Effects of The Great Depression in the United States

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The Great Depression is a defining moment in time for not only American, but world history. This was a time that caused political, economical, and social unrest. Not only did the Great Depression cause a world wide panic, it also caused a world wide crisis unlike any before it. This paper will analyze both the causes and the effects of the Great Depression in the United States of America. One cause of the depression is the effects of World War One. World War one had many devastating effects on countries all across the globe. In the United States millions of lives were lost to the war, as well as huge amounts of money that had been used to fund the war. All across the globe vast destruction of property was found. This in turn caused a …show more content…

The quote, “Economists still agree that Smoot-Hawley and the ensuing tariff wars were highly counterproductive and contributed to the depth and length of the global Depression” (http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20130325a.htm) shows that the Americans original plan of protecting their own businesses only hindered them. Another cause of the depression was the lack of prosperity for many groups, and the lack of spending that soon resulted from this. In the early 1920s we know that the United States had a high prosperity. What is less known is that not everyone was sharing the good times. Immigrants from most countries, including those in Africa and Mexico, were sharing the same poor treatment as the Aboriginals in the United States. These groups were not doing well socially or economically and had low paying jobs. Many Americans simply could not afford to pay for many goods, and this created a massive reduction in purchasing. Factory workers suffered greatly from the reduction in purchasing; many factories had no need to keep the high levels of production going, and were forced to fire many employees. More workers still lost their jobs to machinery that could be used to the employers advantage to reduce the spending on wages. People now found themselves unemployed and unable to pay for their items previously purchased through

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