Economic Recovery in the Great Depression

The Nineteen Twenties proved to be a great decade for America. The end of the Great War marked the end of many world powers and weakened many other countries. However, amidst of this chaos, the stage was set for America to become a superpower and prosper greatly throughout the decade”just to break down and enter a longest-lasting economic downturn the country has ever seen. This would affect the lives of a lot of people as unemployment, suicide rates and death would rise, while the wages and the benefits of a steady livelihood would fall making it harder for people to survive. Regardless, many questions remain as to what caused it, how the people and our government dealt with it and more importantly how and when we got out of it?

Everything in this world has two sides. One that is warm and live, like daytime and the other that is dark and mysterious, like nighttime. Such is the story of The Great Depression, whose roots of the great depression lie all the way back to The Great War, in which the United States, for the most part, remained neutral which allowed America to grab large amounts of profits from the European countries who were willing to pay any amount of money to buy supplies. This drove up the demand for goods and as a result, American factories were producing and selling a lot more goods, while earning even greater profits. “The total value of U.S. exports grew from $2.4 billion in 1931 to $6.2 billion in 1917” (Michon, “The U.S. Economy in World War 1”). Furthermore, when the United States decided to intervene in the war, the profits of American factories grew even more, and many factories were converted to produce war equipment. Many people were employed, and farmers borrowed money to expand their farms to address the skyrocketing demand for food. All these advancements were right under the bright daylight which was about to turn into a long-lasting night known to us as The Great Depression.