widely used as a barometer of the stock market's health

measure based on prices of stocks of 30 large companies

Speculation

spec-u-la-tion

buy on the margin

(mar-gin)

buying stocks at the stock exchange on credit.

paying only a small percentage of the price and porrowing the rest

planning on the stock going up and never having to pay the real amount, but selling it before credit is due

October 29, 1929

prices on stocks fell

stocks on the margin worth pennies of what people owed

investors lost millions on paper when they had to cover the debt owed at the original price

1929-1940

U.S. economy in severe decline and millions of Americans unemployed

banks forclosed on mortgages

many families lost homes, farms (1930's farms in west dried up and had crop failures could not pay mortgages)

1930

highest protective tariff in US history

sorsening depression in US and abroad

neighborhood where poor live in homemade houses

hobo area

free or low cost food was served to needy

often only meal poor had in Depression

1930's farms in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico literally blew away from drought and dust storms causing:

crop failure

mortgage forclosure

migration to California

President during the beginning of the Great Depression1929-1933

• hoped big business could help fix it
• ordered Army to attack Bonus Army camps

dam on Colorado River

built during Depression as a Public Works Program to provide jobs/business

now called Hoover Dam

Federal Home Loan Bank Act

FHA

1931

lowered mortgage rates and allowed farmers to refinance loans and avoid foreclosure

Reconstruction Finance Corporation

RFC

agency

1932

emergency financing to banks,

life-insurance companies,railroads, and other large business

WWI veterans or widows

1932 to demand immediate payment of a bonus they were promised for military service in WWI

Ordered out by US Army troops led by Douglas McArthur under orders from Herbert Hoover