Great Depression Paper

As a result of the costs of World War One, industrial business generally became exceptionally more profitable in America based on the U.S. entry into the war and the concurrent increased demands on basic resources and industrial goods. Incentives offered by the government convinced most U.S. business to reinvest profits in their companies in a fashion that made make the more efficient and thereby more profitable. This increase in investment capital was also met by a general great leapt forward in the type of industrial machinery available as well, which was continuing to make the processing and creation of industrial goods more efficient and more profitable. The recent inclusion of other more abstract techniques like the assembly line created by Henry Ford also enabled an increase in general efficiency and productivity. With the end of World War One and the return of cheap manual labor in droves as a result of the soldiers who were now released from the military, industrial production and profitability increased even more dramatically after the war and continued through most of the 1920s in a fashion that greatly increased the wealth of the nation, resulting in the often showy ostentatious nature of the decade that leant it the name of the “roaring twenties.” Indeed, however, this is a bit of a misnomer, in that the majority of the wealth accrued to a relatively small percentage of the population such that the divide between rich and poor increased exponentially. Although some of this material gain did “trickle down”and increase prosperity all around, it was mostly given to the rich, who continued their investment and speculation, particularly in the stock Indeed, it is in the stock market that the woes of the Great Depression began. The amount of speculation in the stock market was generally extremely high and worked on the assumption that the ridiculous…