Effects of the Great Depression Essay

Words: 1400
Pages: 6

The Effects of the Great Depression The Great Depression was a horrible event that took place almost 100 years ago. It was a time in our society when people had no money and no food. Everyone was losing their jobs because the companies couldn’t afford to pay them and stay in business at the same time. After the Stock Market crashed and the economy went downhill, a lot of changes were made within the government to make sure that nothing like this would ever happen again. This period in time was a sad period, but there were a lot of good things that happened and took place because of it. In order to really understand all the effects that happened after the Great Depression, you truly needed to live during the time period, but we can’t do
During these work projects, highways, bridges and national parks were built during the Great Depression and most of them still stand till this very day. Roosevelt also created a program called the Social Security Act. The Social Security Act is still in effect in today’s society. This act was created to make a system, which would allow “pensions for old age workers, survivor’s benefits for victims of industrial accidents, unemployment insurance, aid for dependent mothers and children, and for the blind and physical disabled” (New Deal Achievements). This act gave many Americans hope that the economy was changing for the better and that the Americans felt much more secure financially. During this time banks were going under and were closing their doors. It is said that by 1933, of the nation’s 25,000 banks, a total of 11,000 of them had disappeared and closed. With the economy in chaos and the cause of the stock market, thousands of people had withdrawn their deposits from the bank. By the time Franklin D. Roosevelt took office, there were several banks that closed and the worse part of it all is that shortly after FDR took office, a third banking panic was being threatened. Meaning that more banks were soon on the rise of closing. FDR set up a “flagging banking system”, in which he announced that there would be a three-day bank holiday, that would cause a