Author of Carrying Albert Home (which is set during this desperate era)
Carrying Albert Home
(1) The Great Depression officially lasted 10 years, 1929-1939. It ended when World War II began and that may not be a coincidence! War makes factories hum.
(2) The Great Depression was caused by low consumer demand coupled with high production of consumer goods. Because of an inflated stock market, the bubble finally burst in 1929 when stocks were dumped. Panic ensued, workers were fired, stores and factories were closed, and fear began to feed on itself.
(3) Although he was blamed, U.S. President Herbert Hoover had little control over the Great Depression. Since he believed the downturn was temporary, his failure was he did almost nothing about it.
(4) When they began to fail en masse in 1930, many banks called in their loans which had the worsening effect of forcing farmers off their farms and businesses closing down. The Hoover administration tried to bail the banks out by loaning them money with the idea they would stop foreclosing farms and businesses. It didn't work.
(5) Although the Roosevelt administration implemented many programs to stem the Great Depression, the government's record was actually spotty at best. In 1937, a sharp recession struck the country which rolled back nearly all of the progress of the previous eight years.
(6) The effects of the Great Depression were worsened by severe drought in the midwestern farm belt in the 1920's and 1930's which forced even more farmers off the land.
(7) Perhaps the most successful program implemented by President Roosevelt was an odd series of dams across the Tennessee River and its tributaries. Although much arable land was flooded, the result was cheap electricity for businesses, the military, and ordinary people. This program continues under the agency known as the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Because of the abundant power available, the ingredients for the first atomic bomb were manufactured in the tiny town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
(8) The Great Depression was the incubator for some of America's greatest writers. John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Erskine Caldwell all rose to prominence in a country that had turned to reading and movies as their primary (and relatively inexpensive) entertainment.
(9) Although the Great Depression began in the United States, it soon spread world-wide as International trade dropped precipitously. In the United Kingdom, it struck while the country was still struggling to overcome the negative effects of World War I and unemployment surged. Oddly enough, because of protectionist policies, Greece was one of the few countries that rapidly recovered from the economic disaster. Since the Soviet Union had almost no International trade, the Depression had little effect on its economy that was, at the time, converting from agrarian to industrial. Although this forced conversion resulted in the loss of millions of lives due to starvation and displacement, the economic disaster ongoing in Capitalist countries convinced many intellectuals in the West that Communism was the wave of the future.
(10) "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck's great Depression-era novel about farmers from the mid-west forced off their land and onto the road, was originally titled "The Harvest Gypsies." Had that title remained, it is not certain his novel would have been so well received. Ironically, the novel came out just as the Depression was about to end because of World War II. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee's famous Southern novel, is also set during the Great Depression. So is Carrying Albert Home by Homer Hickam.