The Great Economic Disaster

The decade of the 1920s was characterized by an unprecedented economic expansion, which resulted in a huge bull market on Wall Street. Business leaders and

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Homelessness and Hoovervilles

Millions were out of work during the Great Depression. Since the government provided no unemployment insurance, lost jobs resulted in repossessed homes and evictions. Homeowners

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The Plight of the Farmer

Thousands of farmers lost their land when they had no market for their crops and thus could not pay their mortgages. The plight of the

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The Dust Bowl

It was not bad enough that the economy dealt farmers a lousy hand, Mother Nature added salt to the wounds in the form of The

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Hoboes

Besides the dust bowl migrants, other groups of people were traveling the roads, or hopping freight trains, or going place-to-place looking for something better during

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The Bonus Army

After World War I, Congress voted a financial payment to veterans of the war as a bonus for their service. Every veteran of the Great

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Dance Marathons

During the Depression, dance halls were both a way of obtaining badly needed money and an escape of the harsh realities of daily life. The

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Hoover’s Failures

President Hoover believed that the economic problems that faced the country after the Wall Street Crash were best solved by private charities and/or local government.

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The Election of 1932

Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) was the cousin of Teddy Roosevelt. He graduated from Harvard. He was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson.

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