What impact did the Great Depression make on the people of that time?

The Great Depression began in 1929 to continue for about
ten years, devastating not only the American economy, but economies across the
world.

After World War I, there was a period of prosperity
in America, but the realities of a weak economy brought this to an
end.

At least
in part, the Great Depression was caused by underlying weaknesses and imbalances within
the U.S. economy that had been obscured by the boom psychology and speculative euphoria
of the 1920s.

Because of
failures in the banking sector and the stock exchange, the devastation was terrible and
thousands lost everything.

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There were multiple causes for the first downturn
in 1929. These include the structural weaknesses and specific events that turned it into
a major depression... In relation to the 1929 downturn, historians emphasize structural
factors like massive bank failures and the stock market
crash.

Though there had been
some other moderate crashes before "Black Tuesday," things had improved, but not after
the Stock Market Crash of 1929. People lost savings, jobs, homes, etc. The
disenfranchised moved to find work. Many committed suicide. Bread lines were common,
where people stood hours to get food. When housing was lost, people would build
lean-to's if they were lucky enough to find materials to do so. Automobile manufacturers
had hundreds of cars on the lot, money already invested in their assembly with no way to
recoup their investment because no one could afford to buy a car. Farms that had done
well selling food in the U.S. and Europe after the war that had invested large sums of
money to buy new machines to plant and harvest crops by taking out loans, were
decimated.

By 1933, it was clear that the depression was
not a temporary situation. Unemployment sky-rocketed, farms were lost, the gross
national product had plummeted, and those hit the hardest were people who were already
poor.

By
spring of 1933...unemployment had risen from 8 to 15 million (roughly 1/3 of the
non-farmer workforce) and the gross national product had decreased from $103.8 billion
to $55.7 billion. Forty percent of the farms in Mississippi were on the auction block on
FDR's inauguration day. Although the depression was world wide, no other country except
Germany reached so high a percentage of unemployed. The poor were hit the
hardest.

Franklin D.
Roosevelt tried very hard to turn things around in America with programs to assist its
citizens, including "public works," "farm subsidies," and other projects to "restart the
economy. He also continue to attempt to balance the budget, but it is believed not
enough money was invested into the economy—at least until World War II. There is some
disagreement as to how much the war was responsible in improving the economy, but it did
help with unemployment.

The U.S. had suffered heavily after
the Civil War and was, in some ways, still recuperating. When the 1930s rolled around,
the entire country was financially connected, so what affected one part of the country
affected the entire country.

Even with intervention by the
government, unemployment continued—though it improved with only 15 percent of the work
force still unemployed in 1939. After the onset of World War II, unemployment dropped
quickly as factories in the U.S. were pressed to fill orders overseas for guns and
ammunition. Once the U.S. became involved in World War II, the Depression was
over.

Additional
Source:

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