The Effects of the Great Depression of the South
As we all know, the Great Depression was the greatest economic crisis the United States has ever faced. On “Black Thursday,” too many people sold their shares of companies. Nearly 13 million shares leading prices of stocks to plummet by nearly 25%. By 1933, the national unemployment rate was estimated to be up to 25%. While many millions were out of a job, many more people also suffered from financial struggles. The effects of the stock market crash have particularly affected the southern states because they had not fully recovered from the civil war. The Southern economy depended much upon cotton, sugarcane, and tobacco as cash-crops. But these crops depended upon consumers buying cigars and clothes; Southerners could not eat their crops. Furthermore, if there was no startup capital or money to pay workers, a farm could not run, therefore, causing the shutdown of 3500 of the 5280 farms in North Carolina. The average per capita income of Southerners was half the national average. African Americans were almost always poor, but there are “No Jobs for Niggers until every white man has a job.” FDR even said that the nation’s number 1 problem was the depression in the south. In Georgia, large landowners were able to make it through the depression and a few farmers made it through by changing from growing cotton to soybeans, corn, livestock and peanuts. But the majority of the farmers were not large landowners and effects were catastrophic. These catastrophic effects included selling of land and homes. Many southern state governments thought that increasing taxes and reducing government spending would help the economy. But in actuality, sales tax hurt the southerners more and without the funding of the programs, the depression worsened.