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American Literature: Great Depression 2054 Views
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Transcript
- 00:01
No How depressing Great depression market in front It's coming
- 00:26
Some people come a bill others just call me cash
- 00:29
but you you can call me boss just josh and
- 00:36
i'm really a nice guy I went to get to
- 00:38
know me want to know what wasn't nice the greater
Full Transcript
- 00:41
the broch rawdon on point with the evil music today
- 00:44
huh Thie great depression was as bad as the name
- 00:47
implies This tidal wave formed in october nineteen twenty nine
- 00:50
when the american stock market collapsed The dow industrial average
- 00:54
the primary measure of the stock market back then peaked
- 00:57
in september nineteen twenty nine at three hundred eighty one
- 01:00
point seventeen points and would plunge to a staggering forty
- 01:04
one point twenty two points by nineteen thirty two Okay
- 01:08
some context might be useful here The proceeding decade was
- 01:10
known as the roaring twenties due to rising income inequality
- 01:14
and general debauchery by fancy folks The stock market crash
- 01:18
ended this decade of decadence in an instant The story
- 01:21
of the great depression can be told with a litany
- 01:23
of the leak statistics It was like a magic trick
- 01:26
Billions of dollars in assets disappeared Just like that Wealthy
- 01:31
americans who owned almost all the nation's stock at the
- 01:35
time were walloped by an eighty percent decline in the
- 01:38
value of their holdings More troubling to the wider population
- 01:41
were rampant bank failures between nineteen twenty nine and nineteen
- 01:45
thirty three Two out of every five banks in america
- 01:48
collapsed effectively annihilating more than seven billion dollars of their
- 01:54
customers Hard earned savings By nineteen thirty three the country's
- 01:58
gnp i'ii gross national product had fallen to barely half
- 02:03
of its nineteen twenty nine level which is huge Imagine
- 02:07
if your country suddenly started producing half the amount of
- 02:10
products as usual there probably wouldn't be any good job
- 02:13
opportunities right What's more it could even lead to higher
- 02:16
prices as a reduced supply of something usually causes increased
- 02:20
demand which is known as the law of supply and
- 02:23
demand The combination of few jobs and high prices huh
- 02:27
Sounds like a recipe for disaster Industrial production fell by
- 02:31
fifty percent Production of automobiles dropped by two thirds The
- 02:35
steel plants operated at just twelve percent capacity Bad times
- 02:39
people all around These were big booming industries at the
- 02:43
time So it's a huge deal that they went sour
- 02:45
it be like apple suddenly stopping production on the ipad
- 02:49
The horror The unemployment picture is even nastier if you
- 02:52
can believe it Between nineteen twenty nine and thirty three
- 02:55
more than thirteen million americans lost their jobs Of those
- 03:00
sixty two percent found themselves out of work for longer
- 03:03
than a year forty four percent longer than two years
- 03:06
twenty four percent longer than three years and eleven percent
- 03:09
longer than four years Can you imagine being an adult
- 03:13
without a Job 4:4 years At that point you're basically
- 03:17
retired unemployment peaked at a staggering twenty four point one
- 03:22
percent in nineteen thirty three and never drop below fourteen
- 03:26
point three percent until world war two For context the
- 03:30
unemployment rate has never surpassed nine point seven percent in
- 03:33
all of the economic downturns since the economy got so
- 03:37
bad that even calvin coolidge who's business friendly presidency had
- 03:40
fueled the roaring twenties boom lost faith in the free
- 03:44
markets ability to fix itself A turning point came in
- 03:47
nineteen thirty two when franklin delano roosevelt was elected president
- 03:51
of the united states Shortly after taking office roosevelt made
- 03:54
it his mission to deliver relief recovery and reform the
- 03:58
so called three r's he allegedly wanted to include a
- 04:01
fourth our rodeo but his advisers counseled against it Roosevelt
- 04:05
christened his relief efforts the new deal This ambitious plan
- 04:09
begun during his first hundred days in office created a
- 04:12
host of new government programs including the civilian conservation corps
- 04:16
and works progress administration which provided work from millions of
- 04:20
needy americans Roosevelt also pushed through regulations like the nineteen
- 04:24
thirty three banking act that sought to rectify the structural
- 04:27
issues leading to the great depression Around nineteen thirty five
- 04:30
roosevelt launched another policy initiative known as the second new
- 04:34
deal a big part of the second round was making
- 04:36
permanent the first batch of temporary new deal measures but
- 04:39
the biggest part of it by far was the social
- 04:42
security act which created an american institution that remains a
- 04:46
key political issue today Of course not everyone loved the
- 04:50
new deal In particular conservative politicians thought that government spending
- 04:54
wouldn't stop the crisis and they weren't entirely wrong Although
- 04:58
the new deal stopped the flow of blood caused by
- 05:00
the great depression it ultimately didn't solve the crisis And
- 05:03
of course others argue that roosevelt's new deal policies weren't
- 05:06
progressive enough For instance advocates for socialism wanted more government
- 05:11
Programs for the working class Either way unemployment remained brutally
- 05:14
high throughout the thirties and it wasn't until roosevelt's third
- 05:17
term and the mobilization of u s forces in world
- 05:20
war two that the country finally reached full employment Of
- 05:23
course war is in a way a government sponsored economic
- 05:27
initiative which sort of proves roosevelt right Then again there
- 05:31
are plenty of valid arguments to the contrary worth examining
- 05:34
notice that we've hardly talked about the actual causes of
- 05:37
the great depression which is because they're kind of hard
- 05:39
to nail down legendary british economist John maynard keane's champion
- 05:43
1 major interpretation of the crisis in nineteen thirty six
- 05:46
is general theory of employment interest and money He suggested
- 05:50
that the great depression had been caused by something called
- 05:52
a failure of aggregate demand which basically means that we
- 05:55
had enough stuff just not the ability to buy it
- 05:58
In this interpretation widespread unemployment and economic stagnation were the
- 06:03
new normal a situation that might persist indefinitely in order
- 06:06
to get the economy moving again Keane's argued that the
- 06:09
government should increase spending even if it means running a
- 06:12
significant budget deficit As you can tell this philosophy was
- 06:15
influential on the new deal and similar stimulus programs In
- 06:18
contrast economies of the lays a fair tradition which emphasizes
- 06:21
the wisdom of free markets argued that the stock market
- 06:24
crash was a natural reaction to the decadence of the
- 06:27
nineteen twenties and would naturally revert back to a normal
- 06:30
state of affairs after a quick recalibration decades later a
- 06:33
third interpretation of the great depression would be championed by
- 06:36
milton friedman and anna schwartz In their nineteen sixty three
- 06:39
book a monetary history of the united states Freed minute
- 06:42
schwartz We're big believers of the free market similar to
- 06:45
the lays a fair economists of the nineteen thirties but
- 06:48
their analysis differed on a few key points To them
- 06:51
The crash was caused by the policies of the federal
- 06:53
reserve as well as individuals hoarding of cash After the
- 06:56
bank started going bad This reduced the amount of money
- 06:59
circulating in the economy and kicked the crisis into top
- 07:02
year So who's right Well the real answer might be
- 07:06
all of the above Each of these analyses touch on
- 07:08
valid ideas but none of them tell a complete story
- 07:11
on their own Instead we have to look at all
- 07:14
Of them to gain a fully rounded view of the
- 07:16
situation Besides its impact on the economy the great depression
- 07:19
completely changed american society The crisis had the effect of
- 07:23
radicalizing americans and pushing them towards extreme positions Some became
- 07:27
supporters of charles e coughlin a catholic priest who was
- 07:30
launched into national stardom by his radio show which was
- 07:34
a novel thing at the time Coughlin was initial supporter
- 07:36
of roosevelt's new deal but he eventually swung hard to
- 07:39
the right and threw his support behind the fascist movement
- 07:42
in europe Strange as it sounds in hindsight many americans
- 07:45
at the time look to these authoritarian states for inspiration
- 07:49
in turning around their economy Another example is louisiana governor
- 07:53
huey p long who happened to be buddies with coughlin
- 07:56
Long too was launched into national prominence though he did
- 07:59
it through a simple slogans share our wealth He even
- 08:02
ran against roosevelt as a democrat in nineteen thirty six
- 08:05
by arguing that the new deal was too conservative So
- 08:08
why are we spending so much time talking about the
- 08:10
great depression when we all really want to talk about
- 08:13
is the grapes of wrath Well because it's important background
- 08:16
Information Although the novel isn't exactly about the great depression
- 08:19
the economic crisis hangs heavy over its plot If you
- 08:23
remember the joad family left home because of the dust
- 08:26
bowl a fearsome weather phenomenon primarily in the oklahoma area
- 08:31
naturally they hope to find work elsewhere But this little
- 08:34
thing called the great depression is wreaking havoc on the
- 08:36
rest of the country As a result the jobs are
- 08:39
rarely able to find jobs for themselves and when they
- 08:42
dio conditions are far from pretty We see further impact
- 08:46
of the great depression in the local residents of these
- 08:48
regions who being an economic hardship themselves hate interlopers like
- 08:53
the jobs stealing their jobs The joes even spent some
- 08:56
time at a government operated work camp which eludes the
- 09:00
new deal efforts made by president roosevelt there's also a
- 09:03
strain of anti bank sentiment in the novel At one
- 09:05
point a bank is described as a monster that can't
- 09:08
stop growing or it will die whether you agree with
- 09:11
this assessment or not It's clear that steinbeck's mistrust of
- 09:14
financial institutions is based on his view of the great
- 09:17
depression Unsurprisingly the great depression figured prominently in steinbeck's personal
- 09:21
Life in fact he was just starting his career as
- 09:24
a writer when the depression hit in thirty four he
- 09:26
spent time with two labor organizers in california who gave
- 09:29
him insight into the worker's rights movement Two years later
- 09:32
he traveled with a group of okies who had fled
- 09:35
the dust bowl just like joe ds and wrote a
- 09:37
newspaper article about them All in all steinbeck spent a
- 09:40
lot of time with poor folks who were crushed by
- 09:42
the great depression which helped solidify his own left leaning
- 09:45
political views Is it a coincident that this time was
- 09:48
also steinbeck's most productive time as an author Nah thirty
- 09:52
sawed the publication of steinbeck's most beloved books like tortilla
- 09:55
flat of mice and men and the grapes of wrath
- 09:58
of course to different extents and too varied purposes All
- 10:01
of these novels are shaped by steinbeck's personal encounters with
- 10:04
the great depression See what i mean when i said
- 10:07
that economic me real bomber even though it makes us
- 10:09
sad there are some really important lessons to learn about
- 10:12
the great depression First the depression was one of the
- 10:14
defining events of the twentieth century just as much as
- 10:17
any world war or cold one for that matter Because
- 10:20
of this the great depression shaped the world we live
- 10:21
in today even if we don't realize it After all
- 10:24
no depression means no social security And why is this
- 10:27
relevant for our purposes It's Because understanding the great depression
- 10:30
is crucial to understanding the grapes of wrath Not doing
- 10:33
so would be like watching a star wars movie without
- 10:35
knowing what the forces Finally the great depression helped shape
- 10:38
john steinbeck's political views which in turn helps us better
- 10:42
understand his fiction Which brings us to the end of
- 10:44
today's lesson I hope you've thought about how financial downturns 00:10:48.514 --> [endTime] makes us dollar bills feel it's depressing just depressing
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