This is the start of the biggest national crisis since the civil war. The stock market was going in a slump that started in October. By the end of Hoover's term in office unemployment rates had sky rocketed and left 12 to 14 million without jobs, and the supply of money was scarce and only getting worse (Encyclopedia Americana: Herbert Hoover 1-2).
There are many reasons that the Great Depression started. One of the most well known causes is the stock market crash that happened on October 29, 1929. Before this day the stock market had grown considerably, making companies profits go up. General Electric had tripled in value which came out to about $396 per share of stock. After October 29th, 1992 many business lost thousand of dollars, money that had just seemed to vanish into this air, never to be seen again. The stock market crash was followed by many cuts that had to be made by businesses concerning how many workers they could have and how much to pay the workers that they could keep. Since companies could not afford to keep many of its workers and actually pay them, Hoover ordered federal departments and head of the government of organization for construction processes to be sped up to make more rooms for jobs for the unemployed. After the shock had passed Hoover announced that the worst was over and that unemployment rates were starting to get back on track. Little did he know that at that time unemployment was the only thing getting back on track for the United States. Another reason for the start of the Great Depression was overproduction. Many companies made too many products and people did not have the money to buy the products to get businesses back the money that they spent making that product, so businesses lost a large amount of their money by overproduction (Gallery Six 1-2).
After seeing that the depression was getting worse he realized that he had to do something to try and stop it from growing out of hand.
