Great Depression Audio Script PDF

Audio 1 : In 1929, the stock market crash took place because of the falldown of the prices of shares. This sparked the Great Depression. It left millions of Americans grappling with unemployment, poverty, and widespread social dislocation due to the banking system collapse. At that time, the preside...

Audio 1 : In 1929, the stock market crash took place because of the falldown of the prices of shares. This sparked the Great Depression. It left millions of Americans grappling with unemployment, poverty, and widespread social dislocation due to the banking system collapse. At that time, the president of the United States was over a liberal like the other presidents before. He didn't do anything to stop the crisis. Have no fears for the future of our country. It is bright with hope. This quote is completely contradictory. This shows his denial towards the economic situation of the country and his confidence. What are the challenges that everyday Americans face? Uh, and what is the government's response? Transcripts provided by Transcription Outsourcing, LLC. At the end of 1932, 60 million of people were affected by this poverty due to this great famine. Then, federal help was limited and national charities had neither capacity to help people in the largest scale. In order to survive to this famine in 1932, Eighty two bread lines were located in New York City. Despite efforts, destitute and starving attacking attacked the population. In 1939, 60 percent of rural households and 82 percent of farm families were classified impoverished. The unemployment level exceeded national average. To give some statistics, there were approximately 1 million of jobless people in New York City and more than a half million in Chicago. Middle class was not starved but experienced hunger. They had to learn to be poor. Everybody was doing economy of calories, movement, staying in bed in order to not be exhausted and hungry. They started to eat new part of animal. They were obliged to do so, to survive. American families also did economies of electricity and swapped their clothes between brother and sister. All the difficulties that the American population faced during the Great Depression is partially linked to the fact that the government didn't want to provide assistance. Indeed, there was very few economic and social policies decided by the US government to help its citizens. We can explain that by the fact that The president, Hoover, was a right winged liberal. Liberalism is a school of thought that states that the government should not intervene in the country's economy because the market handles itself. Because of that, during the crisis, Hoover did not take any measures to slow down unemployment and to get the economy back up. Thus, the majority of the population stayed poor and hungry. However, liberalism doesn't work during economical crisis, so the government should take social measures to help its people. Instead of that, there was private association, mainly religious, that gave food to people. But it was obviously not enough. After 1933, with the election of Roosevelt, more social measures were decided, and the rebuilding of the US economy thus started. The Great Depression was indeed a difficult time for Americans, with the impoverishment and the important lack of food. Living there at the time was a real test. Moreover, the government's politics wasn't involved itself in the crisis, which only got worse. We had to wait several years for a change of government to occur and propose concrete solutions to the crisis. Audio 2 : The Great Depression, marked by the stock market crash of 1929, was one of the most devastating periods in American history. For farmers in the Great Plains, however, the crisis was even more severe due to the Dust Bowl, a massive environmental catastrophe that coincided with the economic collapse. But how deep was the Great Depression? First, we are going to analyze the causes of the Dust Bowl and then examine the challenges it created for farmers in the Great Plains. Firstly, the Dust Bowl happened because of bad farming practices and the long drought. Farmers had ploughed up the natural grasses to plant wheat, encouraged by the high demand during WWI. They stopped using traditional methods like crop rotation and letting the land rest. When the drought began in 1931, this soil dried out. and turned to dust. Strong rains created massive storms blowing away huge amounts of topsoil, over 850 million tons in 1935 alone. The land became useless for farming and much of the disaster was caused by human overuse of the soil. Moreover, the Dust Bowl made life even harder for farmers already struggling during the Great Depression. Crops failed, livestock died, died and farmers couldn't repay their loans because the prices for crops were so low. Many lost their land to banks and were forced to leave. Thousands of families, especially in Oklahoma, packed up and moved west in search of a new life, a better life. These Okies became a symbol of the struggles farmers faced. Faced during this time to conclude the dust bowl combined with the great depression Made life incredibly hard for farmers in the great plains It showed how bad farming practices and economic problems together could cause disaster For many it was a time of loss and hardship Changing their lives forever Audio 3 : During the Great Depression between 1929 and 1939 in America, African Americans faced a variety of challenges that were worsened by economic obstacles, racial discrimination, and political inequalities. Most African Americans were skeptical about benefiting from the New Deal. Fewer economic rights and programs to help people were granted to them. In fact, Local administrators often discriminated against African Americans, denying them aid or providing less support than their white counterparts, like soup kitchens. Most African Americans were not involved in the speculative land and stock market activities. As agricultural prices collapsed, many black farms were laid. There was also job insecurity and discrimination to finding a job. Jobs historically held by African Americans, such as domestic work, began to be filled by white workers. In urban areas, such as the cities, there was high unemployment rates, as African Americans experienced rampant unemployment, losing their jobs to the hands of white people. Many whites believed that available jobs should go to them first, be reserved for whites. This led to the displacement of African American workers and a huge decrease of work available for African Americans. By 1932, half of all black Americans were unemployed. So, in the social way, the period saw a rise in racial violence, particularly lynching, which became more common in the South. The number of documented lynchings increased from 8 in 1932 to 28 in 1933. Communities preoccupied with their own struggles often ignore or resign themselves to this culture of racism and violence. Now, in a political way, the case of Stocksboro Boys exemplified the racial injustices. An incident during this period was the Stocksboro Boys case in 1931, where nine black boys were falsely accused of raping two white women. Despite significant evidence of their innocence, they were sentenced to death. This case highlights the racial injustices and inadequacies with the legal system. Overall, the association or the gathering of economic difficulties, social discrimination, and also racial violence created a brutal environment where African Americans struggled to survive. The outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929 caused widespread suffering and despair in black communities. Audio 4 : The term genocide often evokes images of the Holocaust, the Rwanda genocide and other horrific events of mass extermination. However, the term also encapsulates the tragedy of Holodomor, a famine that claimed millions of lives in Ukraine during the early 1930s. While the rest of the world was affected by the Great Depression, the Soviet Union faced this starvation at that time. The Holodomor, translating to death by hunger, was a catastrophic event orchestrated by the Soviet regime. While the devastating effects of the famine are indisputable, the classification of Holodomor as genocide remains a topic of intense debate among historians, politicians, and scholars. Was Holodomor a deliberate act of genocide orchestrated by Stalin to suppress the Ukrainian population, or was it an unwanted consequence of the Soviet policies of collectivization? Industrialization to answer this question, this essay will explore the causes of the famine, the suffering of the Ukrainians farmer, and the evidence of totalitarian practices. During this period, the Soviet government forced Ukrainian farmers to manage their individual farms into state control, a collective called Cold Coast, in order to increase productivity and, uh, industrialization, the Soviet regime imposed, uh, in possibly high grain production quotas on Ukraine. This policy led to widespread resistance among Ukrainian peasants who were deeply attached to the land and way of life. Stalin responded with brutal measures such as blacklisting villages, cutting off food supplies and deporting people to labor camps. Stalin saw the famine as an opportunity to weaken Ukrainian nationalism and crush opposition to Soviet policies. This policy highlights the totalitarian nature of Stalin's regime. Among the 3. 9 million Ukrainian victims, farmers were severely impacted by repression and famine. The state requisitioned grain and food to meet industrialization goals, leaving farmers without enough to eat. Brutal confiscations left villages without provisions. Farmers resisting collectivization, called kulaks, were targeted as state enemies. Kulaks and accused farmers faced several penalties, including execution and deportation to labor camps. Surveillance and sanction intensified under economic pressure despite the Great Depression. The Soviet regime enforced strict laws with violence and repression, leading to widespread starvation. This suffering raises questions about the famine's intent. The labeling of resisting peasants as kulaks and their subsequent repression is a clear indication of Stalin's totalitarian approach. The conditions in labor camps and collective farms were notoriously brutal, with high mortality rates due to starvation. About 13 percent of the population but also disease and overwork. These conditions were a direct result of the state's policies and its disregard for human life. Whether the Holodomor was genocide depends on the intention behind the famine. While the debate continues, the recognition of Holodomor as a genocide underscores the importance of acknowledging and remembering this tragic chapter in history. Understanding the Holodomor is vital for historical accuracy and for preventing future atrocities by highlighting the impact of totalitarian regimes and resilience for their victims. Correct version (topic 1, part 1-2-3) The Great Depression affected huge segments of the American population—sixty million people by one estimate. But certain groups were hit harder than the rest. African Americans faced discrimination in finding employment, as white workers sought even low- wage jobs like housecleaning. Southern blacks moved away from their farms as crop prices failed, migrating en masse to Northern cities, which had little to offer them. Rural Americans were also badly hit. The eight-year drought that began shortly after the stock market crash exacerbated farmers’ and ranchers’ problems. The cultivation of greater amounts of acreage in the preceding decades meant that land was badly overworked, and the drought led to massive and terrible dust storms, creating the region’s nickname, the Dust Bowl. Some farmers tried to remain and buy up more land as neighbors went broke; others simply fled their failed farms and moved away, often to the large-scale mi- grant farms found in California, to search for a better life that few ever found. Maltreated by Californians who wished to avoid the unwanted competition for jobs that these “Okies” represented, many of the Dust Bowl farmers were left wandering as a result. There was very little in the way of public assistance to help the poor. While private charities did what they could, the scale of the problem was too large for them to have any lasting effects. People learned to survive as best they could by sending their children out to beg, sharing clothing, and scrounging wood to feed the furnace. Those who could afford it turned to motion pictures for escape. Movies and books during the Great Depression reflected the shift in American cultural norms, away from rugged individualism to- ward a more community-based lifestyle. GLOSSARY Dust Bowl the area in the middle of the country that had been badly over farmed in the 1920s and suffered from a terrible drought that coincided with the Great Depression; the name came from the “black blizzard” of topsoil and dust that blew through the area. Scottsboro Boys a reference to the infamous trial in Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931, where nine African American boys were falsely accused of raping two white women and sentenced to death; the extreme injustice of the trial, particularly given the age of the boys and the inadequacy of the testimony against them, garnered national and international attention. Correct version (topic 2) By 1932-33 Ukrainian famine under Joseph Stalin, which was a clear case of a man-made famine, killed 3.9 million people, about 13 percent of the population. That tragedy affected both Ukraine and Kazakhstan. As the famine worsened, many tried to flee in search of places with more food. wanderers dug into empty gardens with their bare hands. Many were so emaciated, he recalled, that their bodies began to swell and stink from the extreme lack of nutrients. Some died by the roadside, while others were thwarted by the secret police and the regime’s system of internal passports. Ukrainian peasants resorted to desperate methods in an effort to stay alive, according to the Congressional commission’s report. They killed and ate pets and consumed flowers, leaves, tree bark and roots. However, faced with the prospect of an even wider food catastrophe, Stalin’s regime in the fall of 1933 started easing off collections. They were accused to be food hoarders. Waves of refugees fled the villages in search of food in the cities and beyond the borders of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. In response, the Soviet regime derided the resisters as kulaks—rich peasants, who in Soviet ideology were considered enemies of the state. Soviet officials drove these peasants o! their farms by force and Stalin’s secret police further made plans to deport 50,000 Ukrainian farm families to Siberia. Stalin appears to have been motivated by the goal of transforming the Ukrainian nation into his idea of a modern, proletarian, socialist nation, even if this entailed the physical destruction of broad sections of its population It became apparent that Ukraine’s grain harvest was going to miss Soviet planners’ target by 60 percent. There still might have been enough food for Ukrainian peasants to get by, but, Stalin ordered what little they had be confiscated as punishment for not meeting quotas. The current Russian government has acknowledged that famine took place in Ukraine, but denied it was genocide. Genocide is defined in Article 2 of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines so far. But, at least 16 countries have recognized that Stalin had committed genocide, the Holodomor. The Holodomor remains a painful part of Ukrainians’ common identity and generated so much hatred and resentment that it solidified Ukrainian nationalism.