the great depression
... stock market was an important but not the dominant influence. But however, by 1929 the market became the symbol of the nation's prosperity and an icon of American business culture. Everything was going great; the stock prices reached what looked to be a permanently high plateau. In September of that year the market began to slide, but people ignored the sign. But on October 29, 1929, "Black Tuesday", the stock market took a huge fall. More than 16 million shares changed hands in frantic trading. Investors soon realized they were heavily in debt so they started to sell their stocks, which led to others doing the same. That was the start of all the panic, everyone started selling but most of them couldn't find buyers. The impact of "Black Tuesday" led to bank failures because speculators who had borrowed from banks to buy their stocks could not repay the loans because they could not sell their stocks. This was the main start of the depression, because it not only wiped out the savings of thousands of Americans, it hurt commercial banks that had invested in the corporate stocks. Many of the middle class people lost their life savings and had no other way to cope with the crisis. Money was distributed disparately between the rich and the middle-class, between industry and agriculture within the United States, and between the U.S. and Europe. In the American economy, agriculture was in the worst shape. The farmers had still not fully recovered from the recession of 1920-1921, which made it worse. All the farming equipment was really expensive now and mortgage incurred during the inflationary war years. Because the prices were falling, farmers weren't getting enough money and had to risk foreclosure. The textile industry, the railroad industry, and mining and lumbering industries were affected too. The textile industry suffered from the decreased demand and excess capacity. The railroad industry had to worry about the shrinking passenger revenues, stagnant freight levels, and inefficient management. Also it was in competition with cheaper forms of transportation. The mining and lumbering industries were producing more than what was being bought. Herbert Hoover had plans to help those ailing industries, but the trade associations that he promoted were ineffectual. The depression of the United States affected not only it...