Using Primary Sources in the Classroom: The Great Depression
Unit Introduction to the Great Depression Unit After World War
I, America and Alabama experienced an economic boom. Large
segments of the Alabama economy enjoyed the same boom, the war
needs of the country having stimulated manufacturing in the
state. A relatively diversified industrial sector featuring
textile mills, coal mines, iron and steel furnaces, and timber
saw mills produced treasured resources for the needs of World
War I and after. As Alabama's population grew in the 1920s,
business and industry increasingly were attracted to the state
where labor was abundant and cheap. The resulting boom was
concentrated in urban areas but much of Alabama shared in the
immediate post-war prosperity. Although the Great Crash of the
stock market in November 1929 was the accepted chronological
starting point of the Great Depression, the economy of the
United States had begun its downward slide earlier. In Alabama,
agriculture had been "depressed" for the e