According to each source, who or what is to blame for causing the Great Depression? How blameworthy - a lot, or just a little?
B. |
The United States has more money than any country in the world and more gamblers - they prefer to call themselves investors. Every man who is buying and selling on margin is gambling. And the snowball they have been rolling uphill got too big and heavy and rolled back over them. The little fellow is not alone to blame for present conditions; the big fellows, bankers, brokers, money lenders, are equally to blame. Newspaper commentary, October 30, 1929, The Denver Post
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C. |
1929: The Great Crash
by BBC Two, 2009 |
D. |
The experience taught one lesson that no one wants to learn: the ease of production, the folly of poverty in a world well able to furnish plenty for all, a world where abundance might and should prevail. But it has not taught the managers of industry, of business and politics, that the great problem of prosperity no longer depends on the production of wealth, but on its distribution... a few men with the organizing ability of our Captains of Industry could easily and rapidly solve this problem if they could only be inspired with the desire to help their fellow man. Clarence Darrow
1932 |
E. |
The Great Depression 2.0
by Izzit.org, 2007 |
F. |
The responsibility of the Federal Reserve, weighty as it is, must be shared by the Coolidge and Hoover administrations. For two years and more, while calamity was preparing, the country was again and again assured from Washington that everything was all right - industry prosperous, business good, savings increasing, the outlook fine. No warning has come from [Washington DC] to give the country pause - nothing but smug official complacence in a situation rotten to the core. 15 DAYS AFTER THE CRASH
“The Men Who Did It” The Nation, November 13, 1929 |
G. |
"The Presidents"
by the History Channel, 2005 |
H. |
The inflexible state of mind that underlay Hoover’s approach to the depression can be seen in his attitude toward relief... He earnestly believed that relief was a job for volunteers and local governments, not for the federal government... Herbert Hoover and the Crisis of American Individualism
by Richard Hofstadter, 1945 |