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The Great Depression, 1929–1941

The Great Depression in the United States and around the world: the boom of the 1920s and its cracks, the Crash of 1929 and the market's three-year fall, the banking panics, the European crisis and the end of the gold standard, the Hoover years and the Bonus Army, the Dust Bowl, Roosevelt's New Deal, the court fight and the recession of 1937–38, the culture of the decade, and the war economy that ended it. **How to read it.** Chapter headings mark the stages. Presidencies, programs, panics, droughts, recessions and the market's slide are durations; everything else is a moment, tagged by thread (market, banking, policy, politics, world, labor, farm, culture, economy). Related moments are linked: a cause and what it led to. **Dates and figures.** Local days, shown at a fixed UTC−5, New York's standard time, so the Crash's market hours read as Wall Street's. The business cycle follows the NBER's dates (to the month); unemployment rates are the Bureau of Labor Statistics' later annual estimates, placed at mid-year. Where a date or a figure is approximate, its dating note or its notes say so. A sample timeline built from the cited sources (Wikipedia, the NBER, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Federal Reserve's history essays, the National Archives and others); not a definitive history.

121 moments · 1920-01-01T00:00:00-05:00 CE – 1954-11-23T00:00:00-05:00 CE · by @athan · @athan

Moments

  1. The boom and its cracks
  2. Prohibition begins
  3. Farm prices collapse
  4. The bull market begins
  5. Coolidge becomes president
  6. The Miami hurricane
  7. Coolidge vetoes farm relief
  8. Hoover inaugurated
  9. A warning break
  10. Agricultural Marketing Act
  11. Unemployment: 3.2%
  12. The business cycle peaks
  13. The Crash
  14. The Dow peaks at 381.17
  15. The Babson break
  16. The Hatry crash in London
  17. "A permanently high plateau"
  18. Black Thursday
  19. The bankers' meeting
  20. Whitney bids 205 for Steel
  21. Black Monday
  22. Black Tuesday
  23. The Crash bottoms at 198.60
  24. The slide, 1930–1932
  25. Brüning becomes chancellor
  26. The Dow recovers to 294
  27. Smoot–Hawley tariff
  28. Nazis gain in Germany
  29. Caldwell and Company fails
  30. The Bank of United States closes
  31. Creditanstalt fails
  32. The Hoover Moratorium
  33. Danatbank fails
  34. Britain leaves gold
  35. The Fed raises its rate
  36. Japan leaves gold
  37. Six million out of work in Germany
  38. The RFC
  39. Revenue Act of 1932
  40. Senate rejects the bonus
  41. Unemployment: 23.6%
  42. "A new deal for the American people"
  43. The Dow hits bottom: 41.22
  44. Emergency Relief and Construction Act
  45. The Bonus Army driven out
  46. The Nazis become the largest party
  47. "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"
  48. Roosevelt elected
  49. Hitler becomes chancellor
  50. Michigan closes its banks