Great Depression

Great Depression, in U.S. history, the severe economic crisis generally considered to have been precipitated by the U.S. stock-market crash of 1929. Although it shared the basic characteristics of other such crises (see depression), the Great Depression was unprecedented in its length and in the wholesale poverty and tragedy it inflicted on society. Economists have disagreed over its causes, but certain causative factors are generally accepted. The prosperity of the 1920s was unevenly distributed among the various parts of the American economy—farmers and unskilled workers were notably excluded—with the result that the nation's productive capacity was greater than its capacity to consume. In addition, the tariff and war-debt policies of the Republican administrations of the 1920s had cut down the foreign market for American goods. Finally, easy-money policies led to an inordinate expansion of credit and installment buying and fantastic speculation in the stock market.

The American depression produced severe effects abroad, especially in Europe, where many countries had not fully recovered from the aftermath of World War I; in Germany, the economic disaster and resulting social dislocation contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler. In the United States, at the depth (1932-33) of the depression, there were 16 million unemployed—about one third of the available labor force. The gross national product declined from the 1929 figure of $103,828,000,000 to $55,760,000,000 in 1933, and in two years more than 5,000 banks failed. As a social consequence of the depression, the birthrate fell precipitously, for the first time in American history falling below the replacement rate. The economic, agricultural, and relief policies of the New Deal administration under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did a great deal to mitigate the effects of the depression and, most importantly, to restore a sense of confidence to the American people. Yet it is generally agreed that complete business recovery was not achieved and unemployment ended until the early 1940s, when as a result of World War II the government began to spend heavily for defense.

Longest and most severe economic depression ever experienced by the Western world. It began in the U.S. soon after the New York Stock Market Crash of 1929 and lasted until about 1939. By late 1932 stock values had dropped to about 20percnt of their previous value, and by 1933 11,000 of the U.S.'s 25,000 banks had failed. These and other conditions, worsened by monetary policy mistakes and adherence to the gold standard, led to much-reduced levels of demand and hence of production, resulting in high unemployment (by 1932, 25–30percnt). Since the U.S. was the major creditor and financier of postwar Europe, the U.S. financial breakdown precipitated economic failures around the world, especially in Germany and Britain. Isolationism spread as nations sought to protect domestic production by imposing tariffs and quotas, ultimately reducing the value of international trade by more than half by 1932. The Great Depression contributed to political upheaval. It led to the election of U.S. Pres. Franklin Roosevelt, who introduced major changes in the structure of the U.S. economy through his New Deal. The Depression also advanced Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany in 1933 and fomented political extremism in other countries. Before the Great Depression, governments relied on impersonal market forces to achieve economic correction; afterward, government action came to assume a principal role in ensuring economic stability.

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America's Great Depression is a 1963 treatise on the 1930s Great Depression and its root causes, written by Austrian School economist and author Murray Rothbard. The fifth edition was released in 2000.

Brief summary

Rothbard blames the interventionist policies of the Herbert Hoover administration for magnifying the duration, breadth, and intensity of the Great Depression. Rothbard explains the Austrian theory of the business cycle, which holds that government manipulation of the money supply sets the stage for the familiar "boom-bust" phases of the modern market. He then detailed the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve from 1921 to 1929 as evidence that the depression was essentially caused not by speculation, but by government and central bank interference in the market.

Table of contents

Part I: Business Cycle Theory

1. The Positive Theory of the Cycle
2. Keynesian Criticisms of the Theory
3. Some Alternative Explanations of Depression: A Critique

Part II: The Inflationary Boom: 1921-1929

4. The Inflationary Factors
5. The Development of the Inflation
6. Theory and Inflation: Economists and the Lure of a Stable Price Level

Part III: The Great Depression: 1929-1933

7. Prelude to Depression: Mr. Hoover and Laissez-Faire
8. The Depression Begins: President Hoover Takes Command
9. 1930
10. 1931—"The Tragic Year"
11. The Hoover New Deal of 1932
12. The Close of the Hoover Term

Appendix

• Government and the National Product, 1929-32

See also

• Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle

Publishing history

• 5th Edition: Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, June 15, 2000. Hardcover. 368 pages. ISBN 0-945466-05-6.
• 4th Edition: New York: Richardson & Snyder/E.P. Dutton. 1983. Hardcover. 361 pages. ISBN 0-943940-03-6.
• 3rd Edition: New York: New York University Press. Co-sponsored by Institute for Humane Studies. January 1, 1975. Paperback. 361 pages. ISBN 0-8362-0647-9. Hardcover ISBN 0-8362-0634-7.
• 2nd Edition: Menlo Park, California: Institute for Humane Studies, 1972. 361 pages. ISBN 0-8402-5003-7.
• 1st Edition: Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1963. Hardcover. 361 pages.

External links

• America's Great Depression: Complete Text in HTML format (also in PDF format)