The Great Depression

1929 -1941

What’s important to know about the Great Depression

• It was the worse economic calamity in the US and was part of a world-wide economic downturn

• The US government radically changed its domestic-economic policies

• Many Americans migrated within the US

• The US government slowly became less isolationist in its foreign policy

• The Depression had a huge impact and legacy on the country.

What questions about the Great Depression have appeared on the Regents Exam?

• The business practices of the 1920s• The government’s reversal in economic policy• Comparing Hubert Hoover to Franklin Delano Roosevelt• President Franklin Roosevelt’s conflict with the Supreme

Court and Congress• The purpose of Government programs• Geography: The migration of people and environmental

conditions• The role of organized labor• The movement away from Isolationism towards WWII

Capitalism in Conflict•Hubert Hoover (the republican) and FDR (the democrat)

held contrasting ideas about the Depression and what

government’s role ought to be. Their ideas were shaped

by two famous economists :

Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes

•Associate Adam Smith’s ideas of free enterprise and

laissez-faire with Hoover

•Remember that Keynesian Economics - government

should have a role in a capitalist economy, influenced

Franklin Roosevelt

What Would You Do?

• Lending rates are raising• American regulators are trying to stop giving

credit to American companies• Stock prices are greatly over-valued• Foreign countries can’t make their loan payments• Foreign economies are collapsing• American companies are defaulting on their loans• A great drought is turning precious farmland into

huge clouds of dust

Pretend you were President and your country’s unprecedented wealth suddenly evaporated.

What Would You Do?

• The Supreme Court rules some of your programs Unconstitutional• Congress is reluctant towards change and is resistant to add judges

to the Supreme Court who would favor your policies• The stock market is in ruins• Foreign countries can’t make their loan payments• Foreign economies have collapsing• American companies are not producing goods or services• Consumer spending continues to decline• The size of the economy continues to shrink• The farmland of the Great Plain is ruined• A new political philosophy called Fascism is on the rise in Japan,

Spain, Portugal and Germany - war looms on the horizon.

Pretend you are the new President and the impact of your new and radical economic programs are only marginal.