Great Depression

1929 The American stock market crash triggered the Great Depression.

1929- 1933 the great depression was a nightmare for the United States and the western world, leaving Americans with painful memories. At present, the unemployment rate in the United States has reached a new high in nine years, and some people in the United States think of the disaster that shocked the world more than 70 years ago.

"Capitalism has come to an end"

After a short economic crisis from the middle of 1920 to the end of 192 1 after World War I, the American economy began to recover and gradually became prosperous.

This prosperity has created the golden age of capitalist development, but there are also profound contradictions lurking. American agriculture has been in a long-term recession, rural purchasing power is insufficient, and farmers have gone bankrupt in large numbers. In addition, industrial growth and the redistribution of social wealth are extremely unbalanced, and social wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people.

In this era, the values of the whole American society are changing. Organized crime is getting worse, hedonism and speculation are prevalent, and politics is extremely corrupt. 1920, Democratic President Wilson leaves office. After Wilson, three presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover came to power one after another, which was the most serious period of corruption in American history. During Harding's administration, corruption prevailed within the government. Coolidge's finance minister Mellon himself was caught in speculation. Arthur Schlesinger, a famous American historian, later said that American materialism in the 1920s made people feel that "capitalism has come to an end".

The stock market crash triggered a crisis.

Due to the lack of purchasing power of consumers, it leads to the increase of goods and the difficulty of capital export in the operation of the American economy, which in turn leads to overproduction and capital surplus. Although financial giants have made huge profits in speculation, a lot of money has not been invested in the process of reproduction, but in the field of securities investment that can get higher returns.

1927, the new york stock market set off the first frenzy. This year, the stock trading volume reached an unprecedented 575 million shares. In the first few weeks of 1928, the stock market has become a spent force, showing the hidden danger of collapse. However, President Coolidge and the U.S. Treasury used deceptive propaganda to temporarily calm the stock market.

At the beginning of March, 1928, as the most powerful speculators in new york stock market bought a large number of shares of American General Motors and Radio Company, a new wave of speculation spread and the stock price soared again. This round of inflation did not fall back until June 1928. In the following 16 months, the stock market fluctuated from time to time, but it never returned to the level before 1928 March.

1929 at the beginning, the stock market frenzy was out of control. On September 26th, the Bank of England announced that it would raise the rediscount rate and bank interest rate by 6.5% to prevent the outflow of gold and protect the position of the pound in international exchange. On September 30th, London withdrew hundreds of millions of dollars from new york, which triggered a sharp drop in the US stock market. 10 On June 5438+05, the new york stock market began to sell in large quantities, but the market reaction was relatively calm due to the cautious selling by big speculators.

10 year1On October 24th, the new york stock market crashed suddenly. On that day, the stock turnover reached 6.5438+0.289 million shares. The stock price fell so fast that even the automatic market recorder in the venue couldn't catch up! People fell into a panic. On this day, 1 1 senior stock speculators committed suicide one after another.

In the afternoon, Morgan Consortium, together with other banking giants, took out a $240 million joint fund to buy shares at a price higher than the market. In the next few days, the stock market gradually stabilized. The U.S. Treasury Department and some economists, bankers and big city newspapers assured the public that the problem of falling stock prices was not serious, and more money should be spent on investment, which was beneficial to the national economy. 10 year 10 On October 25th, President Hoover also issued a proclamation: "The basic enterprises in the United States, that is, the production and distribution of commodities are based on soundness and prosperity", in an attempt to stimulate a new round of investment.

10 year 10 On October 28th, the third day announced by Hoover, the American stock market plunged again. 1Tuesday, October 29th,1929 10, the American stock market crashed again. According to The New York Times's statistics, the average price of 50 stocks in new york stock market has dropped by almost 40 grades. In the following week, Americans lost $654.38+000 billion in wealth on the stock exchange!

America in depression

The sharp "diving" of the stock price has caused a series of chain reactions in the American economy: the transaction prices of grain have also fallen all the way; Railway freight volume has been greatly reduced; Steel prices plummeted, cotton prices plummeted. ...

By the middle of 1 1/,the share price of new york Stock Exchange had fallen by more than 40%, and the losses of securities holders were as high as $26 billion, and the hard-earned money of thousands of ordinary Americans was wiped out.

During the Great Depression, 10937 1 went bankrupt, and the net profit of private companies dropped from $8.4 billion in 1929 to $3.4 billion in 1932. 193 1 year, the total index of American industrial production decreased by 53.8% compared with 1929. The production reduction of heavy industry is particularly serious, especially the decline of steel, automobile and construction industry, which are all signs of the economic prosperity of the United States in the 1920s.

At the beginning of 1933, four days before the death of former President Coolidge, he lamented: "Looking around, there is no hope." Even franklin roosevelt, who has always been optimistic about life, exclaimed when he saw the collapse of the Bank of Maryland: "I wonder if this cardboard house will collapse?"

Due to the shrinking of industry, agriculture and commerce, by March of 1933, there were17 million completely unemployed workers in the United States, and countless semi-unemployed workers. The cash income of farmers dropped from $65,438+062 to $48 per year, and about 65,438+0,065,438+0.93 million farmers went bankrupt, becoming tenant farmers, joint-stock farmers and farm labourers, and many middle-class people also went bankrupt.

During the crisis, on the one hand, overproduction and tight consumption led to a backlog of goods; On the other hand, ordinary Americans are well-fed and living in poverty. In order to maintain the price of agricultural products, agricultural capitalists and large farmers destroyed a large number of "surplus" products, used wheat and corn instead of coal as fuel, and poured milk into the Mississippi River, turning the river into a "galaxy".

Due to people's general lack of confidence in the future, social morality has further deteriorated, and cases of theft, fighting and murder have emerged one after another. President Hoover once asked comedians to relieve people's psychological pressure by giving them laughter, but as a result, a large number of jokes made fun of him appeared in society. For example, the homeless in the city built a simple shelter with wooden boards, old iron sheets, tarpaulins and even kraft paper. The villages where these huts gather are called "Hoover Village", the beggars' bags of tramps are called "Hoover bags", the cars pulled by animals because they can't buy fuel are called "Hoover cars", and the newspapers covered by tramps sleeping on street benches are called "Hoover carpets". There is a popular children's song on the street in new york: "Mellon blows the whistle and Hoover rings the bell. Wall Street signals that the United States is heading for hell! "

According to the estimation of Happiness magazine in September 1932, there are 34 million adults, men, women and children in the United States, accounting for about 28% of the total population of the country. They can't make a living (excluding rural population 1 1 10,000), and the homeless population reaches 2 million, only in new york. Children born in this period were short and later called "the depressed generation". There are 330,000 out-of-school children in the United States. Girls risk pregnancy to support their families and go to the streets for prostitution at the price of 10 cents. Due to long-term malnutrition, the United States needs to recruit a large number of soldiers to participate in World War II, and 40% of the soldiers were eliminated because of their unqualified physique!

On Roosevelt's inauguration day, Hoover sent a message to the new government: "We are at the end of our tether."

Two ways to deal with the crisis

The Great Depression, which lasted for four years, made people doubt the capitalist system. Arnold Tong, a famous British historian, put forward such a question on the first page of Overview of International Affairs published in 1932: "Members of this great, ancient and always successful society are asking themselves: Is it possible for the long-term course of western life and its growth to end in their time?"

In the face of the Great Depression, western countries adopted different coping strategies. Fascist organizations have appeared in Germany, Japan, the United States, Britain, France and other countries. The German Nazi Party also seized power under Hitler's planning. There have also been many military coups in Japan, and finally the fascist rule of the army was established. Germany and Japan, together with the fascist regime of Mussolini in Italy, which came to power shortly before the Great Depression, brought the world to the brink of war.

The Great Depression triggered a series of class contradictions in American society, and the wave of struggle swept across the country. Some workers, peasants and radical intellectuals shouted the slogan of "learning from the Russians", and a few people also incited a vicious wave of fascism at home. At that time, American President Hoover was an "American hero" who made a fortune by himself. In his campaign speech, he promised that "Americans have two chickens in the pot and two cars in each family" and "poverty should disappear from this country". However, because Hoover stubbornly adhered to the classical theory of liberal capitalism in the economic field and was unable to cope with the subsequent economic crisis, his promise became a blank check that Zhang Yongyuan could not honor.

Since serving as the governor of new york from 65438 to 0929, Roosevelt has carried out a series of policies representing the direction of the United States. These policies were later called "New Deal". 1933 On March 4th, Roosevelt finally became the 32nd president of the United States. Roosevelt told Americans in his inaugural address: "I firmly believe that the only thing we bring terror is terror itself."

Roosevelt's sonorous voice resounded throughout the United States through the radio network: from sweatshops to desolate bus stations; From "Hoover Village" to homeless shelters; From the hard-working barren land of tenant farmers to the ragged people shivering in the cold wind of the factory. The typist in California wrote this sentence on a typewriter: Even if Roosevelt set the Congress on fire, we would shout, "All right, it's on fire!" " "