Реферат: The Depression Essay Research Paper Depression of

as people with dwindling incomes nonetheless had to pay their creditors–it was apparent

that the United States was in the grip of economic breakdown. Most European countries

were hit even harder, because they had not yet fully recovered from the ravages of World

War I.) The deepening depression essentially coincided with the term in office (1929-33)

of President Herbert Hoover. The stark statistics scarcely convey the distress of the

millions of people who lost jobs, savings, and homes. From 1930 to 1933 industrial stocks

lost 80% of their value. In the four years from 1929 to 1932 approximately 11,000 U. S.

banks failed (44% of the 1929 total), and about $2 billion in deposits evaporated. The

gross national product (GNP), which for years had grown at an average annual rate of

3.5%, declined at a rate of over 10% annually, on average, from 1929 to 1932.

Agricultural distress was intense: farm prices fell by 53% from 1929 to 1932. President

Hoover opposed government intervention to ease the mounting economic distress. His

one major action, creation (1932) of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend

money to ailing corporations, was seen as inadequate. Hoover lost the 1932 election to

Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The depression brought a deflation not only of incomes but of hope. In his first

inaugural address (March 1933), President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that “the only

thing we have to fear is fear itself.” But though his New Deal grappled with economic

problems throughout his first two terms, it had no consistent policy. At first Roosevelt

tried to stimulate the economy through the National Recovery Administration, charged

with establishing minimum wages and codes of fair competition in every industry. It was

based on the idea of spreading work and reducing unfair competitive practices by means of

cooperation in industry, so as to stabilize production and prevent the price slashing that

had begun after 1929. This approach was abandoned after the Supreme Court declared the

NRA unconstitutional in Schecter Poultry Corporation V. United States (1935).

Roosevelt’s second administration gave more emphasis to public works and other

government expenditures as a means of stimulating the economy, but it did not pursue this

approach vigorously enough to achieve full economic recovery. At the end of the

1930s, unemployment was estimated at 17.2%. Other innovations of the Roosevelt