unemployment line.
People say that history repeats itself, in this case it does. Unemployment has been higher now in 2009 than it was in 1930's and 1940's.
October 24, 1929, Black Thursday, the day the stock market crashed. This was indeed a traumatic day for those who owned stock as sales volume broke all records. But the decline in overall stock prices was only about 2.5%, from 261.97 to 255.39 as measured by the New York Times index of 50 stocks. Most of the decline still laid in the future; the market hit bottom on July 7 of 1932. By 1932 the unemployment rate had soared past 20 percent. Thousands of banks and businesses had failed. Millions were homeless. Men (and women) returned home from fruitless job hunts to find their dwellings padlocked and their possessions and families turned into the street. Many drifted from town to town looking for non-existent jobs. Many more lived at the edges of cities in makeshift shantytowns their residents derisively called Hoovervilles. People foraged in dumps and garbage cans for food.
People say that history repeats itself, in this case it does. Unemployment has been higher now in 2009 than it was in 1930's and 1940's.
October 24, 1929, Black Thursday, the day the stock market crashed. This was indeed a traumatic day for those who owned stock as sales volume broke all records. But the decline in overall stock prices was only about 2.5%, from 261.97 to 255.39 as measured by the New York Times index of 50 stocks. Most of the decline still laid in the future; the market hit bottom on July 7 of 1932. By 1932 the unemployment rate had soared past 20 percent. Thousands of banks and businesses had failed. Millions were homeless. Men (and women) returned home from fruitless job hunts to find their dwellings padlocked and their possessions and families turned into the street. Many drifted from town to town looking for non-existent jobs. Many more lived at the edges of cities in makeshift shantytowns their residents derisively called Hoovervilles. People foraged in dumps and garbage cans for food.
Roosevelt faced a banking crisis and unemployment that had reached 24.9 percent. Thirteen to 15 million workers had no jobs. Banks regained their equilibrium after Roosevelt persuaded Congress to declare a nationwide bank holiday. He offered and Congress passed a series of emergency measures that came to characterize his promise of a “new deal for the American people.” The legislative tally of the new administration’s first hundred days reformed banking and the stock market; insured private bank deposits; protected home mortgages; sought to stabilize industrial and agricultural production; created a program to build large public works and another to build hydroelectric dams to bring power to the rural South; brought federal relief to millions.
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