NEGOTIATED BRIEF: 1930s

• The Great Depression is considered to have begun with the stock market crash on September 4, 1929 and lasted through much of the 1930s.

• The entire decade is marked by widespread unemployment and poverty, although deflation (i.e. falling prices) was limited to 1930-32 and 1938-39. 

• Economic interventionist policies increase in popularity as a result of the Great Depression in both authoritarian and democratic countries. In the Western world, Keynesianism replaces classical economic theory.

• In an effort to reduce unemployment the government created work projects such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) which was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 to maintain National Parks and build roads. Other major government work projects included Hoover Dam which was constructed between 1931 and 1936.

• Rapid industrialization takes place in the Soviet Union.

• Prohibition in the United States ended in 1933. On December 5, 1933, the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

• Drought conditions in Oklahoma and Texas caused the Dust Bowl which forced tens of thousands of families to abandon their farms and seek employment elsewhere.