With the collapse of the stock market, the U.S. economy immediately fell into a devastating disaster, and terrible chain reactions quickly occurred.
Because of the losses they suffered, many families poured into banks to withdraw their deposits, and the large number of deposit withdrawals made many small banks unable to support them. Because they also suffered heavy losses in this stock market decline, many small banks were hit by withdrawals.
Bankruptcy occurred under such circumstances, and this caused more people to flood into the bank to withdraw their actual hard-earned money. So a larger scale
A wave of runs broke out.
When the depositors forced the bank to immediately find the loan company and ask for the loan to be withdrawn, the company that also suffered heavy losses could not pay the bank. The reason was the same, they had no money. It was like a cycle, the depositors ran on the bank, and the bank forced
Companies repay money, and corporate bankruptcies cause more people to run on banks. Banks force more companies to repay, so more people are unemployed.
During this period, the number of unemployed people in the United States reached 8.3 million, accounting for almost 9% of the total population of the United States. In cities across the United States, queues for poor people to receive food relief stretched for blocks.
Don’t forget that there are family members waiting for life behind the scenes. This is equivalent to one-quarter to one-third of American families losing their source of income. This has caused 2 to 4 million middle school students to drop out of school, and many people cannot bear the physical and mental stress.
Suicide due to psychological pain; social security is deteriorating day by day.
At this time, it is no longer an economic problem, but a social problem.
The US market is helpless because at this time they still believe that the market will automatically adjust. The difficulties at this time are only short-lived, and the US economy will still grow in the future.
In fact, the difficulties in the United States have just begun. According to later statistics, the U.S. economy began to decline year by year from 1929. Until the lowest point in 1933, the U.S. gross national product was cut by almost half, and the national economy reached a point where there was no confidence at all.
Fortune magazine in September 1932 estimated that 34 million adult men, women, and children in the United States had no income, which was close to 28% of the population. And this research report, like other reports, is suffering in a different kind of hell.
The 11 million rural households are not included.
Regarding finding a job, there were many legends around 1932. Some of them may sound bizarre, but they are not false at all.
It's true that people stayed up all night at the door of a Detroit employment agency. There was an Arkansas man who walked 900 miles to find a job.
An employment agency on Sixth Street in Manhattan was recruiting 300 people, but 5,000 people actually applied.
There are people in Washington state who actually set fires in the woods so they could be hired as firefighters.
In such an era of economic depression, more than 15 million people were looking for jobs everywhere, but there were no jobs anywhere. "Business Weekly" conducted a survey and confirmed that many people no longer like the United States, and some have already left the United States.
Some are trying to leave. In the early 1930s, the number of people moving abroad exceeded the number of people moving in every year.
And many people were attracted by the Soviet Union and immigrated to the Soviet Union.
So how did the poor in America spend this time?
Men sharpen their razor blades for reuse; they roll their own cigarettes or smoke Wings (a dime a pack). They switch to 25-watt light bulbs to save electricity. Children pick up soda bottles and return them to the store.
, two cents each, and queued up at the bakery to buy overnight bread. The women cut the old sheets and sewed the two sides together, thus moving the frayed area in the middle to both sides.
Change your own clothes for your daughter to wear, so that you don’t look shabby in front of the neighbor’s wife. In fact, the neighbor’s money is just as tight, so I’m afraid he takes the same approach. Many families save the Christmas cards they receive and look forward to next year.
I'd rather send it to another friend.
In the countryside, especially for farmers in the Midwest, life is extremely bleak. Due to the plummeting price of agricultural products, a large number of farmers went bankrupt. Millions of people were saved from death only by living like animals. Pennsylvania country people ate weed roots.
, dandelion. People in Kentucky eat violet leaves, wild onions, forget-me-nots, wild lettuce, and wild grasses that have always been eaten by livestock. The mothers of children in the city wait on the docks, waiting for rotten fruits and vegetables to be thrown out.
They went up to fight with wild dogs. When vegetables were loaded onto trucks from the dock, they ran behind them and picked up anything that fell.
A chef at a hotel in the Midwest placed a bucket of leftover food in the alley outside the kitchen. Immediately, a dozen people rushed out of the darkness to grab it. People also saw a family walking into the garbage dump to pick up bones and
Eat the watermelon rind. Because there are so many maggots, there is a widow in Chicago who always takes off her glasses when picking up food to eat.
Since the American people are living so poorly, what about Europe?
First of all, Britain and France, which played a leading role in Europe, also suffered heavy losses. At this time, Britain's traditional heavy industry was also declining. In 1921, the unemployment rate in the United Kingdom reached nearly 17%. Throughout the 1920s, Britain's unemployed population remained constant all year round.
Keep it around one million.
The Great Depression naturally added fuel to the fire. When Britain's foreign trade dropped by 23%, a large number of banks went bankrupt, companies closed down, and workers lost their jobs. During this period, the measures taken by the Labor government were also standard classical liberalism. The results of these measures were not
Unemployment, which means wage cuts, of course cannot save the British economy. Fortunately, Britain still has colonies where it can dump products, but it also prevents Britain from dealing with European affairs. First, it needs to do its best to save itself.
France was not directly hit by the Great Depression until 1931, but within two years, French industrial production dropped by 26%. The French economy was in crisis throughout the 1930s until 1939.
French industrial production did not return to the level of 1931 until June 2011. It was not until 1950, after World War II, that French industry returned to the level of 1929.
If Britain and France still have a chance to breathe, then Germany is the worst.
Starting in 1924, the Weimar German economy was temporarily stabilized through the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan. However, precisely because Germany followed the "economic rationalization" of the United States during this period, the working conditions of German workers were deteriorating, and the unemployment rate was also increasing.
rise.
It is precisely because of the role of these two plans that the Weimar economy was particularly dependent on the United States. As of 1928, the United States' investment in Weimar Germany amounted to four billion U.S. dollars, and the total U.S. investment in Europe at that time was
Eight billion dollars.
The Great Depression hit the Weimar economy particularly hard. Germany's industrial output dropped significantly, and workers were naturally in trouble. By early 1932, Germany's official unemployment rate was as high as one-third, or six million workers.
This figure does not include the two million "unofficially" unemployed.
As for other European countries, they also suffered huge losses in the Great Depression. Banks went bankrupt, businesses stopped working, and people became unemployed, which also tortured governments. This Great Depression also caused the ideological division of the European people, with left-wing and right-wing parties attracting a large number of people.
Concerned, they urgently need a government to help them out of trouble.
Romania, which also belongs to Europe, is naturally unavoidable and has also been affected by the Great Depression.
