The Great Depression

The USA began as a country that prospered and had been very optimistic before the Depression. But as we invested too much into the stock market, things went down hill on October 29, known as Black Tuesday. That was the day the stock market crashed. People had been investing too much, which caused the stock prices to lower drastically. It had once been a secure way to invest money to become rich but when thGreatDepression began, people went bankrupt. As time went on, banls slowly closed all over the country. While there were remaining open banks people went to withdraw their savings quickly, and the major withdraws caused more banks to close. People stopped spending what money they had on things they wanted and had decided to conserve money for absolute necessities instead. Many people were laid off since wages had been cut back due to the lack of customers. Some buisinesses were to corrupt to stay open so they had to shut down, leaving many employees unemployeed. During the Depression, farmers in the Great Plains were hit hard by a storm of many dust storms and droughts. This time has been called the Dust Bowl. The farmers that endured this were left with dead crops and so it became hard to feed their families.
As the Depression progressed, people either walked the rail roads or drove around in order to find a job. When a job opened, many people wold apply for that one job. Those that were rejected tended to stay in a small shantytown. These small homes on the outskirts of town would ususally be made of cardboard and anything found on the ground that seemed suitable to add to the homemade house.
 President Hoover had tried to speak of optism, but people started to ridicule Hoover for starting the Depression. These shantytowns, also called "Hoovervilles", were named after him. Some other things such as newspapers had been named after Hoover. When Rooselvelt took office, he began to help rebuild America.
 http://history1900s.about.com/od/1930s/p/greatdepression.htm