Causes of the Great Depression

Causes of the Great Depression http://www.authorstream.com/presentation/zwhs-312139-Great-Depression-Causes-the-depre-Entertainment-ppt-powerpoint/

The Great Depression President Herbert Hoover http://jc-schools.net/write/Depression_files/frame.htm

The Dust Bowl The Dust Bowl was caused by several different factors that all seemed to come together at the same time. The reasons for this disaster didn’t just happen overnight, they had been building up for at least a decade.

Causes of the Dust Bowl • Over planting of crops during World War I. • Farmers were buying new land and equipment on credit. • New technologies were developed that farmers used to tear up land even faster. • The farmers didn’t rotate crops nor did they leave areas of native grasses, they just dug up everything exposing massive areas of bare unprotected soil.

Other Causes of the Dust Bowl • In 1931 there was a record wheat harvest, which depressed (lowered) the price of wheat. In order to make payments on land and machinery on time and to make up for the lower price of wheat, farmers had to plant more and more which meant tearing up the land further. • Farmers were warned by Native American Indians and also old time cattle ranchers that had known that land for many years, not to tear up the native grasses. But the farmers had to by now and continued to plow under even more native grasslands and plant crops. Soil conservation practices had to be abandoned so that extra crops could be planted to meet payments as the price fell for wheat and other crops.

The Dirty 30s • By the early 1930s the Great Depression had hit the country. And at this time a severe drought had started in the Great Plains. The rains didn’t come anymore as expected. In the high plains, the 1930s were known as the Dirty 30s. • The Soil Conservation Service described the area of the severe drought as in western Kansas, eastern Colorado, the Oklahoma panhandle and the Texas panhandle. • There were 14 severe dust storms in 1932 and in 1933 there were 38 of them reported. In 1937 there were 134 dust storms. These dust storms were called black blizzards.

The Storm Grows • On May 9, 1934, a major dust storm started over the northern plains of Montana and the Dakotas and by night it had reached Chicago dumping an estimated 6,000 tons of dust. • By the next morning the dust had reached Boston and New York where the streetlights came on at midday and cars had to use headlights. The dust storm was 1,800 miles wide.

Dust Bowl Hardships • By the spring of 1935, people began to do die of what was called dust pneumonia. • During the dust storms, the static electricity was so bad it would short out cars leaving people stranded in the middle of these dust storms. Farm equipment buried in dirt - South Dakota 1936

Okies on the Move • By December 1935, experts had estimated that 850 million tons of topsoil had blown off of the southern plains. • About 25% of the population left the affected states and by 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Plains states. • Reporter Ernie Pyle wrote, “If you would like to have your heart broken, just come out here”.

Effects of the Dust Bowl • The rains came again in the fall of 1939 and with the start of World War II in 1941, the price of crops were rising. New farming and conservation techniques were learned and put into practice. In the middle 1950s another severe drought hit the same area. There were dust storms, but the lessons learned from the dirty 30s saved the area from having another Dust Bowl. • Historian Robert Worster wrote, "The ultimate meaning of the dust storms of the 1930s was that America as a whole, not just the plains, was badly out of balance with its natural environment. Unbounded optimism about the future, careless disregard of nature’s limits and uncertainties, uncritical faith in Providence, devotion to self-aggrandizement - all these were national as well as regional characteristics."

Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal: • 1.) Relief for the Needy • 2.) Economic Recovery • 3.) Financial Reform http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu7ZyKXNL4BIBqT1XNyoA?p=New+Deal+powerpoint&fr2=sb-top&fr=yfp-t-901-s&sao=0

Causes of the Great Depression