Episode Recording -- "The Great Depression"

Good evening, you're listening with students podcasting history podcast. This episode,

depressing times, is for any of you who are interested in taking a deeper look into the

transformative aspects of the great depression and in life in the 1930s. The great depression is

especially interesting to me because I grew up with two grandparents that grew up during this

time period. They used to tell stories about how things were and how different it is today than it

was back then. I take the stance in this topic that the Great Depression was an extremely

transformative period in American history, not only bad but also for the good later on in the

future, we will discuss government policies such as the Social Security Act, the civilian

conservation Corps, and the banking act of 1933, we will also discuss the impact on banks and

businesses, such as unemployment raid, the decline of production and trade and the closing of

failure closing and failures of banks. Lastly, we will discuss the impact it had on communities,

such as things like poverty, homelessness, government assistance, programs and migration

during this time. To reiterate in this podcast, we will be discussing the Great Depression in how

it was one of the most transformative periods in American history due to government policies

and the new deal that impact on paying some businesses and the impact on civilians and

communities. Before we go into that, I would like to start by playing an audio clip of an

interview done by PBS with a man who lived during this time named Ben Air Bellefont.

“I noticed that first in… 1931. That was when I came back from Pittsburgh and went to work at

dad’s grocery store. By then people were beginning to hurt.”

That would be the end of that video clip, and it just kind of goes to show it it gives a first person

point of view from a man who lived during this time and he times telling is just a short clip, butyou can hear in his voice the emotion behind it. So moving on, the first one to discuss is

government policies and some aspects of the New deal during the 30s. According to the race and

social welfare policy, article, the Social Security Act of 1935, the Social Security Act of 1935,

created um a social insurance program in order to give people over 65 people who were disabled

and other things like that and income when they needed, or once they retire. And this is a system

that we still use today. um, even though even though that back then there were some very racial,

racially motivated standards behind it, uh they very much um didn't include some people that

they didn't feel like should get it at that time. This is kind of another thing that relates to me

personally because I grew up with older parents that were on Social Security and disability. So

programs like this were often uh an only source of income and then so the Social Security Act

gave people in need a more stable income and way to keep bringing in money so that they knew

they had something to rely on. And then in the thirties, when the markets crashed, so when in the

30s, when the markets crashed, the government was looking for any way possible to keep the

economy standing in the US. The new deal created many programs and opportunities to help the

financial standing of individuals. According to an article called the civilian conservation Corps,

the civilian C conservation Corps started in 1933, which and it created millions of jobs

opportunities for unemployed people by offering them positions in like national forests and parks

and fields, where they were just given jobs like cleaning them up and reducing the number of

forest fires and trash and this this was one thing that really helped unemployment. And then

moving on to the Banking Act of 1933, this created this this separated a commercial and

investment bank, meaning that banks that accept deposits and loans are separated from banks

that deal in securities. It also created the FDIC, which created government-backed insurance ondeposits. This really helped restore confidence within people in the country and it helped them

believe in banks again a little more.

So moving on to second point is to talk about the impact, the Great Depression had on banks and

businesses. And during the peak of the Great Depression, unemployment rates reached up to 25.

It was around 25.6%, I believe. And to put that in perspective, unemployment during the peak of

COVID was 14.7, meaning it was pretty close to almost doubling what it was during COVID

when we thought it was really bad. So all around the US at this time, people are being laid off,

businesses are closing, production rates went down, and this caused an extreme decline in the

production and trade in the US. Trade fill for trade fell 41% from 1929 to 1932 in the GDP in

America dropped 30%. This shows the severity of the great depression and what it did to the

economy and industry in America. We had 9,000 banks failed, which caused a loss of $7 billion.

That is equal to about $133 not $7 billion. I apologize. Seven uh yeah, seven billion. And that's

equal. I think about 13 billion today. This information comes from this all the information from

that point comes from articles uh called trade barriers in the collapse of the world, world trade

during the Great Depression, and then also bank portfolios and bank failures during the Great

Depression. The last point to highlight is um the impact it had on these communities and all

around the country, what it had the impact put on civilians and citizens. Poverty and

harmlessness and deb during this time was like the biggest issue and that's what everybody

knows about the Great Depression is. It was just extreme poverty. It was the main that that was

the main um motivation for all the government policies and the new deal orders that were put

into place. Many government assistance programs were created during this time to help out and

try to restore what America was really during the 20s and before. So one example of um a

government assistant program was the Public Works administration or PWA, which wasestablished in 1933. And according to an article called the an article called unemployment relief

in the public Works administration article, this aimed to create jobs through construction of

things such as like bridges, buildings, architecture, et cetera, and it overall just helped decrease

the emplo unemployment rates, kind of kind of similar to this uh um the um civilian conservation

Corps. It was just another way to get people jobs. And this was also a main reason for the

migration during this time. There was a lot of people that were moving out west to these newly

developed cities because one there was a cheaper cost of living, and two they figured there

would be a lot more job opportunities out in the West than there would be in the highly populated

cities back in the east. There was less competition for jobs out there. And along with that, along

with just people in the east, there was also people in the what was known during this time as the

dust bowl, which was the Midwest area because farming was so bad during this time that people

were leaving here just to go west as well and look for different careers and job pasts and wait in

ways to make money. This this is all discussed in um an article titled The Effect of Internal My

internal migration on local label markets, American cities during the Great Depression. So as we

conclude this episode, I'd like to mainly just reiterate my argument, my stance that the Great

Depression was extremely transformative, as we see, like it just that we still have these

government assistant programs in place, a lot of them, the Social Security Act, and these were

and these were things that were extremely important to the progression of America during this

time and what we had. We know it has today. So, again, we saw this through the discussion of

government policies, the new deal, impact on businesses and banks, and just the impact on

communities overall. So, as we conclude, I'd just like to say, if you like this podcast, please read

it and visit our website, students podcasting history. We'd love it if you subscribe and give us any

feedback you may have. Have a wonderful day.