Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), America’s 31st president, took office in 1929, the year the U.S. economy plummeted into the Great Depression. Although his predecessors’ policies undoubtedly contributed to the crisis, which lasted over a decade, Hoover bore much of the blame in the minds of the American people.

Speculation

Before the Great Depression, there were limited regulations that governed the stock market. Investors were able to speculate wildly and buy stocks on margin or using borrowed money. This rampant speculation led to erroneously high stock prices. So, when the stock market began to falter in the months before the October 29 crash, the speculative investors could not make their margin calls.

Black Tuesday

 Black Tuesday was the fourth and last day of the stock market crash of 1929. It took place on October 29, 1929. Investors traded a record 16.4 million shares. They lost $14 billion on the New York Stock Exchange, worth $199 billion in 2017 dollars. After the crash, stock prices continued to fall. They hit their 1929 bottom on November 13. 

Business Cycle

with a business cycle there are five stages. Prosperity, Inflation, Recession, Depression, and Recovery.

Prosperity- Time of economic growth.

Inflation-People make money so there are higher prices.

Recession-Too many products and people are not buying.

depression-People are not spending money because of fear of losing their jobs.

Recovery-Prices stabilize and those who saved start spending again.

The Great Depression

The Great Depression was a worldwide economic depression that lasted 10 years. Its kickoff was “Black Thursday," October 24, 1929. That's when traders sold 12.9 million shares of stock in one day, triple the usual amount. Over the next four days, stock prices fell 23 percent in the stock market crash of 1929. But the Great Depression really started in August when the economy contracted.

Hawley-Smoot Tariff

in 1930 a large majority of economists believed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act would exacerbate the U.S. recession into a worldwide depression. On May 5 of that year 1,028 members of the American Economic Association released a signed statement that vigorously opposed the act. The protest included five basic points. First, the tariff would raise the cost of living by “compelling the consumer to subsidize waste and inefficiency in [domestic] industry.”

Bread Line

The Great Depression left the nation devastated. Families were financially unable to scrape up money for their next meal. Breadlines and soup kitchens were established as charitable organizations giving free bread and soup to the impoverished. A breadlinerefers to the line of people waiting outside a charity.

Hooverville

A “Hooverville” was a shanty town built by homeless people during the Great Depression. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States during the onset of the Depression and widely blamed for it. ... Hooverville of Bakersfield, California.

Tenant farmer

Before tractors, landowners often had several farmersrenting a given parcel of land, farming with horses. When the New Deal agricultural programs began sending checks to land owners, some used the money to buy tractors, then rented them to one of their tenantsand told the others they were no longer needed.

Dust bowl

The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion (the Aeolian processes) caused the phenomenon ...