A world-wide economic collapse hit market countries hard in the 1930's just before World War Two. In some counties it did not affect countries that much, but others including the United states which was a severe outcome of the depression. Many people starved, lost their homes and family and started a life on the tracks to find work. There were small recoveries as well but did not fix the problem. Because of the slow recovery, the entire decade was called the Great Depression or in other words, the "dirty thirties" by many countries. Given the importance of the Great Depression, economists do not completely agree on what caused it. Many countries, including Canada, were caught in the great depression. Researchers debate about the reason, but many of them agree on the international gold standard theory. "By 1914, most developed countries had adopted the gold standard with a fixed exchange rate between their national currency and gold." In World War I, European nations went off the gold standard to print money. Most importantly there was too much cash created during World War One. Gold exchange could not run without large currency devaluations or major price deflations. "The US gold stock doubled, and valued 40% of the entire world's monetary gold." (Smiley) This ended the stock market boom in 1929 and ignited the stock market crash. For example, France had more inexpensive exports and pricier imports. But it is a tad too complicated for anybody to understand except economists, so moving on now.
The Great Depression was surely depressing moment in a slew of people's everyday lives. "25 percent of all workers and 37 percent of all non-farm workers were completely out of work" (Smiley). Also in Canada, the workforce who had become unemployed was 40 percent across the whole country. (Struthers) This in turn prompted an action against the rising number of people being unemployed.