America's Great Depression: Th

             The Great Depression of the 1930s affected America. America changed from being prosperous in the '20s to being pitiful in the '30s. When the stock market crashed, farmers, African Americans, children, men, and women lost their money, jobs, possessions, and ways of life. The Great Depression caused panic, devastation, and fear among many American citizens. The Southwestern farmers especially experienced the most hardships during the Great Depression because they had no money to grow or sell their crops, so they had no way to support themselves, and the Dust Bowl made it impossible for the farmers' soil to stay nice and rich for the crops.
             The Southwestern farmers started to be hit hard about a decade before the Depression. Most of them were black and not treated equally in terms of their salary and land. As Gail B. Stewart saw the situation: "Even before the Great Depression was a thought, the Southwestern farmers could barely scrape by on three hundred dollars a year. Four out of every five of them didn't even own land." (26). Stewart felt that the farmers were already poor in the twenties, and shouldn't have had to suffer through the Great Depression:
             The Southwestern farmers had the bare necessities in the twenties and absolutely nothing in the thirties. The poor farmers generally were not employed. Therefore, they had to keep themselves and their families alive without work and
             money. They had to be sharecroppers, which lost them more money then they ever made. The black farmers were hurt even more deeply because they usually weren't even allowed to be sharecroppers. During the period following World War I in the twenties, prosperity had reigned due to the demand for United States farm products and the increase in the use of machinery in agriculture. There was more money put towards the machinery and less money to grow the crops, which resulted in economic distress amon...

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America's Great Depression: Th. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 07:12, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/23067.html