The 20's and 30's
The twenties and thirties were a great time for the U.S as well as a very bad time. Back in the early twenties was a time known as the roaring twenties. The economy was booming and the nations total wealth doubled. People were out dancing and having a good time just about every night. Cars were becoming popular allowing people to be more free and explore, jazz music was also very popular so many people of all ages went out and danced. Some of the most talked about dances of the time include the Charleston, the cake walk and the black bottom. Everything was close to perfect until 1929, the day the stock market crashed.
ooIn 1929 the stock market reached its peak. During this time, as the stock market was rising, production was declining and unemployment was rising. Since this was happening, it left the stocks in tremendous excess of their real value. People began to realize this was going on so on October 29th investors began trading and ended up trading over 16 million shares. This caused thousands of investors to be wiped out and billions of dollars to be lost. The stock market crash then spiraled into the largest economic downturn of its time. As this was going on and the economy was at an all time low, there was a new president in office. Many people blamed President Hoover for the depression. People say it is his fault because he failed to realize the severity of the situation and he did not leverage the power of the federal government to properly address the problem. Many people lost their jobs and homes in the depression so shanty towns began to pop up around the nation. Since people were blaming the president for the depression, the shanty towns weee called Hoovervilles.
While everything with the economy was going on, people were having to face another problem too, the dust bowl. In the thirties, also know as the dirty thirties, the southwestern great plains region began suffering a drought. Since people were poor, farming was becoming incredibly popular so people could sell crops and also provide food for themselves. They used poor farming methods and began tilling the land so much that they over farmed. This caused the land to become very dry and dusty. When the wind would blow hard enough it would send all the dirt up from the ground into the air to be blown everywhere. During the dust bowl over 100 million acres of land was affected. Children were constantly being sent home from school out of fear they would tbh pneumonia. The dust bowl caused approximately 2 million people to become homeless and it killed 6,500 people in just a span of one year.