Introduction
The Great Depression is considered to be the worst time period in the history of the US and the other industrialized nations. The depression began in late 1929 and lasted for about a decade. There are many factors which contributed to projecting Depression but two main factors that are of utmost importance is the unequal distribution of wealth among the nations as well as among the people throughout the 1920's and the high market speculation which lead to the Wall Street stock market crash in the later part of the decade. (Robert, p. 38)
Main factors of Great Depression
As I have already mentioned that one of the major contributors of Great Depression was the unequal distribution of wealth. An unstable economy was created because the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting more and circulation of wealth was only among the rich and the middle class of the society and the people who owned their industries and agriculture in United States and Europe.
Another major contributor was the excessive speculation of the stock market in 1920s that kept the stock market artificially high, but eventually leads to stock market crashes. These market crashes, combined with the misdistribution of wealth, caused the Great Depression. (White, pp. 67-71) As Salsman writes, “Three days later the stock market suffered its first one-day crash. Then records of 13 million shares were traded. The market was crashing and the floor of the NYSE was in a state of panic. By noon on Black Thursday, there had been eleven suicides of fairly prominent investors.” (Salsman, p. 15)
In the United States, unemployment increased from 5% to nearly 33%, while manufacturing output declined by one-third..................
