Romanian Eagle

As the stock market collapsed, the U.S. economy was plunged into full-blown catastrophe, and a horrific chain reaction occurred quickly.

Because of the losses, many families rushed to the bank to withdraw their deposits, and the withdrawal of a large number of deposits made many small banks unable to support them. Because they also lost a lot of money in this stock market downturn, many small banks were crowded by people who were withdrawing money because they couldn't get the money to give to these depositors. Bankruptcies happen in just such a situation, which in turn leads to more people rushing into the bank to get their actual hard-earned money out. Then a larger wave of runs broke out.

However, the enterprises that were forced by the depositors to find the loan immediately demanded to recover the loan, and the enterprises that also suffered heavy losses could not pay the bank. For the same reason, they also have no money. It's like a cycle, depositors run on banks, banks force companies to pay back, corporate bankruptcy makes more people run on banks, banks force more companies to pay back, so more people lose their jobs.

During this time, the unemployed in the United States reached 8.3 million, accounting for almost 9% of the total population of the United States. In cities across the United States, the poor line up for blocks of food.

Don't forget that there are family members waiting to live behind it, which equates to a quarter to a third of American households losing their source of income. As a result, 2 to 4 million middle school students dropped out, and many committed suicide because they could not bear the physical and psychological pain; the social order was deteriorating day by day.

At this time, it is no longer an economic problem, but a social one.

And the amplitudes in the US are helpless because at this point they still believe that the market will automatically adjust. The difficulties at this time are only short-lived, and the US economy will continue to grow in the future.

In essence, America's difficulties have only just begun. According to later statistics, the US economy has been declining year by year since 1929. Until the trough of 1933, the U.S. gross domestic product was almost halved, and the national economy reached the point of no confidence at all.

The September 1932 Fortune magazine estimated that 34 million adults, men, women and children in the United States had no income, nearly 28 percent of the population. And this study, like other reports, does not include the 11 million rural households that are suffering in another hell.

About finding a job, there are many legends around 1932. Some of them sound bizarre, but they are not true at all.

There were indeed people at the door of the Detroit employment agency all night. There is indeed an Arkansas man who walks 900 miles to find a job.

An employment agency on Sixth Street in Manhattan recruited 300 people, and indeed 5,000 people came to apply.

Someone did set fires in the woods in Washington state,

So that people can hire him as a firefighter.

In that era of economic depression, there were more than 15 million people looking for work everywhere, but there was no work anywhere. "Business Week" conducted a survey and confirmed that many people no longer like the United States, some have left the United States, and some are trying to leave. In the early 1930s, the number of people who moved abroad exceeded those who moved in every year.

And many people were attracted by the Soviet Union and immigrated to the Soviet Union.

So how did the poor in America get through this time?

Men's razor blades are sharpened and reused; roll your own cigarettes, or smoke "wings" cards (a pack of a dime). To save power, use 25-watt bulbs instead. The children picked up soda bottles and went to the shop to get their money back, one for two cents, and went to the bakery to line up to buy the bread for Gesu. The women cut the old sheets and sewed the sides together, thus moving the frayed areas in the middle to the sides.

Change your clothes to your daughter, so that you won't look shabby in front of the neighbor's wife - in fact, the neighbor's money is just as tight, and I'm afraid the same approach will be adopted. Many people keep the Christmas cards they receive, so that they can be sent to other friends next year.

In the countryside, especially the peasants in the Midwest, life is extremely bleak. As agricultural prices plummeted, a large number of farmers went bankrupt. Millions of people are saved from death only by living like beasts. Pennsylvania rednecks eat grass roots and dandelions. People in Kentucky eat violet leaves, wild onions, forget-me-nots, wild lettuce, and weeds traditionally reserved for livestock. The mothers of the children in the city lingered and waited on the pier, and as soon as rotten fruits and vegetables were thrown out, they went up to compete with the wild dogs. Vegetables were loaded into trucks from the dock, and they ran after them, picking up anything that fell.

A cook at a Midwest hotel left a bucket of leftovers in an alley outside the kitchen, and a dozen people rushed out of the darkness to grab it. Families were also seen walking into the rubbish heap to pick up bones and watermelon rinds to chew on. Because of the abundance of maggots, there is a widow in Chicago who always takes off her glasses when picking up something to eat.

Since the American people are living so badly, what about the European side?

First of all, Britain and France, which played a leading role in Europe, also lost weight. At this time, Britain's traditional heavy industry was also declining. In 1921 Britain's unemployment rate reached nearly seventeen percent. Throughout the 1920s, the number of unemployed in the United Kingdom remained around one million per year.

The Great Depression naturally added fuel to the fire, when British foreign trade fell by 23%, with a large number of bank failures, business failures, and workers losing their jobs. The measures taken by the Labour government during this period were also standard classical liberalism. The result of these measures, either job losses or wage cuts, certainly cannot save the UK economy. Fortunately, the United Kingdom still has colonies to dump products, but it also makes the United Kingdom unable to deal with European affairs. First of all, he needs to save himself.

France, on the other hand, was not hit directly by the Great Depression until 1931, but within two years French industrial production fell by 26 percent. The French economy was in crisis throughout the 1930s, and it was not until June 1939 that French industrial production returned to 1931 levels. It was not until 1950, after World War II, that French industry returned to its 1929 level.

If Britain and France still have a chance to breathe, then Germany is the worst.

From 1924, through the Dawes plan and the Jan plan, the Weimar German economy was temporarily stabilized. However, it was precisely because Germany followed the "economic rationalization" of the United States during this period that the labor conditions of German workers were deteriorating and the unemployment rate was also rising.

It is precisely because of the role of these two plans that the Weimar economy's dependence on the United States is particularly profound. As of 1928, U.S. investment in Weimar Germany was as high as $4 billion, when total U.S. investment in Europe was $8 billion.

The Great Depression hit the Weimar economy particularly hard. Germany’s industrial output fell sharply, and workers were doomed. By early 1932, Germany’s official unemployment rate was as high as one-third, or six million workers, not counting the two million “unofficial” workers. unemployed.

As for other European countries, they suffered huge losses in this Great Depression. Banks went bankrupt, businesses stopped working, and people lost their jobs, which also tormented governments of all countries. And this Great Depression has also divided the minds of the European people. Left-wing and right-wing parties have attracted a lot of attention. They urgently need a government to help them out of the predicament.

As for Romania, which belongs to Europe, it is inevitable that it is also affected by the Great Depression.