Great Depression in America essays

Great Depression in America essays The Great Depression is probably one of the most concerning events in American history. It is also proof that capitalism was not a perfect type of government, as everyone believed. The American depression started in a different way than it did in Germany. The Treaty of Versailles was the main event that forced them into depression while a stock market crash was the main event which forced America. Everyone was putting their money into the stock market. People had a large margin to buy stocks with and their credit was up and up. Unfortunately, the only way to from the top, was down. In this case, very down with the stock market crash of October 24, 1929. This infamous day was to be remembered as "Black Thursday". Herbert Hoover has been accused of being a do-nothing president who allowed the country to continue to slide into its worst depression ever. Although Hoover actually did take some action, but that it was too little, too late. Hoover did intervene after the Stock Market crash, but the acts passed by Congress and signed by Hoover were the worst kind of intervention. As he was trying to help, he had made the problem much worse. For example, his most famous mistake was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. This act was placed in order to raise tariffs and promote deficit spending. A tariff does exactly the wrong thing, inflation. Other acts passed during Hoover's administration had similar effects of either raising prices or keeping them artificially high when they should have been dropping. All in all, it's not that Hoover was a "do nothing" president, it's that he intervened in exactly the wrong way. Ironically, FDR, the president who put in so many government programs himself, was elected as President after Hoover. He would try to change the government by taking over and changing things to his way. Although, he would try not to adopt the Menshevik, Soviet Union tactics, in doing so. His main c ...