Great Depression — causes and US political impact

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A hands-off government approach to the economy. In the 1920s it meant almost no regulation of banks or the stock market, letting speculation and risk build up unchecked.

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Raised US import tariffs; other countries retaliated with their own tariffs, shrinking international trade and weakening the global economy before 1929.

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About 25,000 small, local banks existed with limited reserves and no deposit insurance, so one bank failure could trigger panic and a chain of collapses.

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WWI overproduction continued after European demand recovered, so crop prices fell steadily through the 1920s, leaving indebted farmers in crisis years before 1929.

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Severe dust storms across the Great Plains in the early 1930s, caused by drought combined with soil damaged by years of over-ploughing.

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24 and 29 October 1929 — the two catastrophic days of the Wall Street Crash, when panic selling wiped out billions in stock value.

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Hoover favoured voluntary cooperation and limited government (rugged individualism); Roosevelt used the New Deal to massively expand federal intervention and executive power.

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A New Deal law guaranteeing workers the right to unionise and bargain collectively, greatly strengthening organised labour's power.

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Created the first national safety net in US history, providing old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.

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A group of conservative businessmen who claimed Roosevelt's New Deal threatened free enterprise and individual liberty by expanding government power too far.

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Long argued the New Deal did not go far enough to redistribute wealth to the poor, the opposite complaint from conservatives who said it went too far.

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Hoover and the Republicans lost in a landslide, and Roosevelt built a new Democratic coalition of urban, immigrant, and Southern voters that dominated politics for a generation.