Listen to "Great Depression New Deal Module One - Introduction" on Spreaker. *******
The links below will help you with translating tools between English and Spanish.
1. Audio of a words in both English and Spanish. Will also translate phrases.
2. Google Search - Espana: The word can be typed in English, and the search finds results in Spanish, including images
3. Also Google Arabic is available.
2. Google Search - Espana: The word can be typed in English, and the search finds results in Spanish, including images
3. Also Google Arabic is available.
What do you notice in this picture?
What do the words tell you about the people?
What would YOU do if you were alive then?
The Great Depression
How did The Great Depression impact this boy?
No! Not emotional depression when a person is REALLY sad. This unit is about the really bad times with money in U.S. and world history that started in the late 1920’s, and lasted until World War Two. The “New Deal” part came in around 1933, and lasted until about 1937. It was a collection of programs designed to help stop people’s suffering right away, help them make improvements in their lives for the long term, and make changes so the same problems would not happen again.
YES!!! The 1920s were absolutely a time that could be called roaring. By 1927 Our factories were making 64% more products (stuff) than they had in 1920.
1920s car factory. Look at how many they are making.
Our workers were working harder and smarter. By the end of the 1920s workers could make 40% more stuff in ONE hour than they could in 1920 ( What this means is that If you made 10 cars in one hour before, now you made 14 in one hour.)
The sale of electricity doubled from the 1920-1929.
It doubled because people were buying lots of products like these
This is what climbing income looks like
The value of a dollar went up. What this means is that the amount of stuff a dollar would buy also went up. Here is an example: In 1920 your $5 might buy 10 candy bars. In 1925 that same $5 might buy 12 candy bars.
The value of the dollar grew
Cities also grew during the 1920s. One city near Detroit grew 700%.
Buildings being built near Detroit
Beverly Hills, where they made movies, grew 2,500%. For example… If there 100,000 people living in Hollywood in 1920 there were over 2,000,000 by 1930. It is hard to really think about this much growth.
This is a picture of the people in just ONE company in Beverly Hills that made their living selling houses. Does this tell you there were a lot of houses being sold, or not many being sold?
HOWEVER, all was NOT well. Americans were spending more money than they were making. The amount of money owed (debt) by Americans was going up FASTER than the amount of money they made. By the way, what is going to eventually happen if you get more of other people’s money (borrow) than you have of your own? Will they like it when you don’t have enough to pay them back???
People collecting money you owe them will track you down and make you pay what you owe. Maybe take the things you own to pay off what you owe them
In fact the amount Americans were borrowing went up 2 ½ times more than their income (the amount they made).
***An example: If your income went up $100 for the year, your debt, the amount you owed, went up $250. To go up one time was $100. To go up two times was $200. To go up 2 1/2 times was $250.***
This is the way a loan NORMALLY works: You borrow, say $100 for 12 months. You have to pay the bank what is called interest for the right to borrow the money. In a normal loan some of each payment goes to the interest, and some goes to pay back the amount the bank gave you. It was figured out so that at the end of the loan, it would all be paid back. Both the interest and the amount you borrowed.
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It was different in some of these loans of the 1920s. Banks were giving people loans where they had to pay only the interest (El monto que usted paga por usar el dinero de otra persona) on the loan. That means they would NEVER pay back what was borrowed.
This chart shows you how a loan is supposed to work
Then there were the farmers. At the start of the 1920s you could add up the value of ALL the factories and railroads and it would still not be worth as much as the value of all that farmers did. If farmers lost income in a big way, it would hurt the entire nation.
This is what happens when income is lost. The amount you have drops.
During WWI farmers in the U.S. borrowed (to buy lots of farm equipment) and spent a lot of money so they could increase the amount of food they made. This was necessary because the entire world depended on them to make the food that could not be made in areas where there was a lot of fighting going on. They also saw they could make lots of money of they could make more food.
Farmers using machinery in the 1920s to raise crops
Then after the war the farms in Europe started making food again, and there was not as much need for what the U.S. farmers made. The problem was that U.S. farmers had borrowed a lot of money to buy all that extra equipment, and now could not make enough money to pay back the loans.
In 1919 farmers made $21.4 BILLION. By 1929 this had dropped to $11.8 BILLION. That means they lost almost half of their income (the amount they made).
Soon many farmers lost their land when they could not make enough money to pay their bills.
People at a farm that a farmer lost because he could not pay his bills. They are buying all of the things he no longer owned.
It was also bad for farmers when people in the U.S. started eating less than they had before. In 1920s Americans ate 75 fewer pounds of food than 10 years before. This happened in part because people began to eat less fat and meat, and more fruits and vegetables.
Times looked good for some people in the 1920s, but the problems farmers were having showed there was a storm coming.
Storms cause destruction. Economic storms cause people's money to go away (be destroyed)
