The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941
The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941 () is a 1984 history of the Great Depression by acclaimed historian Robert S. McElvaine. In this interpretive history, McElvaine discusses the causes and the results of the worst depression in American history, covering the time from 1929 to 1941. He examines the causes of this cataclysmic event, its impact upon the American people, and the political, governmental, and cultural responses to it. He comes down firmly in favor of the "demand-side" argument that maldistribution of income in the 1920s having left the bulk of potential consumers with too small a share of national income to buy all that mass production was putting on the market was the principal cause of the collapse. Building on his innovative use of letters written by "ordinary" Americans during the Depression that were collected in his first book, "Down and Out in the Great Depression", McElvaine takes readers into the experience of Depression victims to an extent never before achieved.
Causes of the Great Depression
The stock market crash was not the first sign of the Great Depression. "Long before the crash, community banks were failing at the rate of one per day". It was the development of the Federal Reserve System that misled investors in the 1920s into relying on federal banks as a safety net. They were encouraged to continue buying stocks and to overlook any of the fluctuations. Economist Roger Babson tried to warn the investors of the deficiency to come, but was ridiculed even as the economy began to deteriorate during the summer of 1929. While England and Germany struggled under the strain on gold currencies after the war, economists were blinded by an unsustainable 'new economy' they sought to be considerably stable and successful.