A long time ago, after a big war called World War I, the world went through a really hard time called the Great Depression. In the United States, things got really bad. The New York Stock Exchange, where people buy and sell parts of companies, crashed. Many lost their jobs, and factories shut down. People in big cities became homeless, and poor neighborhoods, called slums, appeared everywhere.
The Great Depression was a tough time all around the world. It was the worst economic crisis the modern world had ever seen. But before this hard time, the United States was doing really well after World War II. Many countries were jealous of how the U.S. was thriving.
During World War I, Europe was in a bad situation. The U.S. helped by sending food, weapons, and important things to Europe. This helped the U.S. grow because they were selling a lot to Europe. They built more industries and more people got jobs. America was becoming a rich and happy country.
Between 1920 and 1929, the stock market, where people buy and sell stocks, was doing great. Banks were giving money to people easily. But after the war, European countries wanted to become rich on their own, without depending on the U.S. So, they didn’t buy a lot from America anymore.
This was bad for the stock market. The sudden fall made everyone, including banks and regular people, very surprised. The economy started to get worse. People lost their jobs, and companies and banks had a hard time. Investors stopped putting money in, and farmers couldn’t sell their crops.
Many people who were doing well financially became poor. Just a few days ago, it was hard to find unemployed people. But in just a year, one and a half million people lost their jobs. This made things really tough, and bad things like suicides, murders, and robberies happened more often. People were struggling, and life became very hard during the Great Depression.
