Discusses the hardships suffered in the Great Depression that occured during the 1930's and how the government and the people dealt with it.

Essay by steady__eddieA-, August 2003

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"...Make the best of things with a smile and a laugh; there is no bowing down before fate in spiritless resignation..." Those were enlightening words spoke by Lady Game, wife of the Governor which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on the tenth of June in 1931 inspiring others across Australia not to give up hope in their fight for survival. They definitely needed such inspiration. The Great Depression spanned five long and hard years from 1929 to 1934 and it struck a chord in every soul throughout Australia. It was the most devastating economic crash in the country's history. The dispiriting and demeaning effect it had on the population has gone unrivalled through time as the governments were befuddled and lost all sense of leadership. Australia lost countless numbers of jobs, stocks and lives and the poverty level rose dramatically.

Australia had seen economic difficulty before the 1930's, as various financial scares had taken place during the nineteenth century.

But the Great Depression would prove to be unequaled in its amplitude and consequences. It struck at the fibre of every social, ethnic, and economic class or group in the nation and in the world. The threat of an economic depression had loomed on the horizon even during the prosperous twenties. Banks began failing, and on October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed. A wave of selling wiped billions of dollars off the values of US companies. Many thousands of people lost all of their savings and unemployment started to climb. Eventually, the market had to fall. A common misconception is that the crash was the cause of the Depression. However, it was simply an inevitable climax to the events of the "roaring twenties." Almost everyone was positive that the crisis would be over in a year or two. Based...