The US has suffered from Four "Great Depressions", time period where income went DOWN, wages went DOWN and you had a long term problem with the economy (I.e. ten years or longer).
These were the the Post Revolutionary War Depression of 1785-1800 and second, the Collapse of the US economy do to Jackson actually paying off the US Debt. This later depression lasted from about 1835-1845 (It was actually the shortest of all the Depression, almost over by 1840, but since the Rich disliked Jackson so much they made the most of it during the 1830s, 1840s and into the 1850s).
Lets look at the Post Revolutionary period. You had at least two "Communist" revolts, one only failed do to it being done on the Coldest day ever recorded in Massachusetts and this forced many people who supported the revolt to stay home AND the illegal use of Federal forces to put down that Revolt (We did have a Federal Government at that time, under the terms of the Article of Confederation, but the Federal Government had no power to assist any state in putting down a Revolt and thus the assistance to put down that revolt was illegal, but it was done anyway). This revolt was just the worse case of the financial hardship the working/Small farmers class were suffering from in the 1780s. The rich's response was first to separate Church from State, not so much for Religious Freedom, but since welfare was viewed as a CHURCH Function, the state freed itself from the cost of Welfare. For those people who said this did NOT help the Poor, the Poor was told to go west and steal land from the Native Americans (Yes, the Westward movement was tied in with the concept of Separation of Church and State, the Welfare program to replace the Church run welfare program was to move the poor west and leave then settle on land held by Native Americans. Worse, the law did NOT give these poor people title to the land, just certain limited rights, for example, right to be paid for any "improvements" to the land, such as clearing it for farming AND the right to any crop planted and not yet harvested. Once the crop was harvested the real owners of the land could kick such poor off their lands. David Crockett was still fighting for the rights of such poor frontiersmen as late as the 1830s, but no real changed occurred till the General Strike of 1877 (When it was found the Women of the Strikers supported the Striker and there was no way to punish such women for they only means of support was themselves or their husbands. To solve this problem the Modern Welfare system was adopted, restricted to those women who did NOT support the men on strike, this if they did support such strikers, they would lose their welfare benefits. This was adopted solely to be used as a hammer against women to make sure they did NOT support the men in their lives if they went on Strike).
While it sounds distaseful to modern ears, but even the price of Slaves declined in the 1780s and 1790s. Reaching the lowest prices ever for Slaves (With the invention of the Cotton Gin in 1795, the demand for slaves skyrocketed but prior to 1785 it was dropping so fast, that many people thought every state would outlaw slavery within 20 years for the simple reason the value of slaves was dropping that much). Land values also dropped in value. It was so bad people in the back country, the area with the Greatest support for the Revolution in 1775, were turning to the idea of returning to the rule of King George. This movement ended for two unconnected reasons. First the Cotton Gin lead to a revolution in Southern Agriculture, so by the 1860s over 1/2 of US Exports was Southern Cotton, something with no export market in 1790. Second, New England became the main source of Food for Wellington's Army in Spain in the period after 1808. This turned New England, from being the region most Anti-British in 1775 to the most pro-British in 1815.
Notice the radical changes in the US Economy that occurred in the late 1789s and into the 1790s. No one in 1775 would have thought of such a change, yet it occurred do to how BAD the economy became. Mostly do to the repayment of those Revolutionary War debts. The US even shifted sides again in the British-French Conflict, rejoining, for all practical purposes, the British Economic Empire by 1790 under George Washington (And even going to war with France, it the "Undeclared" War with France of the 1790s. One of the underlying reason for the Undeclared war with France was that France wanted a return on its investment, the right to use US Ports for its Ships attacking British Shipping. Washington feared this would harm US interests with Britain and forbade such use of US ports. The French viewed this as a betrayal of the French effort to support the US in the American Revolution, i.e. the French Loans were NOT repaid except in terms of Money.
Yes, the post Revolutionary American, where the Government was overthrown by a Cabal (The Constitutional Convention which violated the law setting it up, the law stated the purpose of the Convention was to suggest improvements to the Article of Confederation NOT a whole new Government, lead by an ex-military leader).
Yes, the debts of the Revolution lead to hard times and a new Government after the end of the war. Something the US has tried to avoid in its other three great Depressions.
The rest of this paper is on the "Long Depression" of the 1870s, and the "Great Depression" of the 1930s.
The "Long Depression" of 1870-1880s, some affect of it lasted till the 1890s. The causes of the "Long Depression" were numerous, but it started with the boom of the 1850s, when do to the huge increase in the amount of Gold in the world (Something like 1/3 of all gold in the world today was founded in California in the 1850s), inflation lead to a boom (Most Countries had adopted the "Gold Standard" had held their currency to a set value in terms of an ounce of Gold, for example the US had a rule that the one ounce of Gold equal $20.00 and would cut back the amount of Dollars, or increase the minting of Dollars to keep the Dollar at that rate per ounce of Gold. In the 1850s, do to the huge influx of gold this permitted the US to spend more and more dollars and yet keep the value of the Dollar at $20 an ounce. After the end of the Civil war (Where the Gold Standard was abandoned and the value of Gold went up to $188 an ounce in 1864)
Price of Gold in 1864:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_price_of_gold_in_1864By 1866, the US Congress wanted to get the Dollar back to $20 to an ounce of gold, it did so by raising taxes, reducing outlays, so that the Civil War debt was paid off by 1874 and the price of Gold per dollar was once again $20 to an ounce of gold. This rapid pay off of the debt, and the subsequent refusal to increase spending lead to a collapse of spending so that deflation set in. Deflation was the rule in the US from the late 1860s to the late 1890s. This is also considered the out side term for the "Long Depression". By 1900 prices in actual 1900 dollars the US was the lowest they had ever been and would ever be. Value of homes, farms and factories DROPPED in value, for the simple reason in terms of Gold they were worth less. Yet, any MONEY they borrowed stayed the same even as the value of their Crops (The US was still primary an agricultural economy at that time) so they ended up paying more and more, while the value of their land dropped in price (In the South, this lead to the small farmers losing most of their land to large land owners, who then hired the farmers to be share croppers on the land, which had the affect of making such share croppers even more in debt to such large land owners).
This deflation lead people to demand that the US return to a dual coinage system, one that NOT only used gold coins, but Silver Dollars. Silver production, unlike Gold Production, increased from the 1860s onward, so by 1900 the Silver in a Silver Dollar was worth only 55 cents (When in 1857, the last time the Coinage system was "reformed" it had been $1.00 in value). Thus the adoption of the idea of minting more silver dollars was a way to say, lets inflate the economy without getting to the huge inflationary problem that existed during the Civil War (The last time paper money was the main form of currency). The rich opposed this policy for such inflation would hurt the value of their financial assets, while the small farmers wanted it, for it would inflate the economy and give it a kick. By 1896 this push was so great that the Democratic Party (which from the Civil War onward had tended to be a "me to" party) switch its economic outlook and adopted the "Free Silver" Platform. The Democratic Party almost won in 1896 (and at least one commentator stated the Democrats only lost do to massive voting fraud) while being outspend 10 to one.
Now, by 1900, two huge Gold Finds were made in South African and Australia. While NOT as big as the California Strike of 1849, it was enough to cause much of the same inflation that had incurred in the 1850s. This finally ended the "Long Depression" but note it took inflation to do so.
Now, the Fourth "Great Depression" was the Great Depression of 1927-1939 (Yes, the Stock Market Crash did not occur till 1929, agricultural was already in a recession by 1927, furthermore the real decline in Stock Market Value did NOT start till March 1930, where it slowly declined for the next three years, till FDR was sworn in as President in March 1933). The causes for the Great Depression is again wide spread, but the main causes, tend to be the British insistence (push by Churchill, and is considered Churchill s greatest mistake) to return the British Pound to the pre-WWI gold Standard, which Britain did by 1927, and which it had to abandoned again in the early 1930s. The return to the World Economy of Russian agricultural Goods, which undid the huge increase in profits American Farmers had benefited from in the early to mid 1920s. While these causes were among the underlying problems, the real problem was the boom the US Economy went into starting in the 1920s, when Europe was having a hard time to recover from WWI. The US ceased being a Creditor nation and for the first time in US History became a Creditor Nation for more people wanted to invest in the US (which had NOT suffered anywhere near the economic damage caused by WWI, Russia and Germany faced revolution, Britain, Italy and France faced massive strikes at the end of WWI, such strikes also hit the US, but no were near what had been happening in Europe, thus the Smart Money invested in the US and the US economy boomed for the Federal Reserve did NOTHING to stop the obvious bubble that was occurring in the US financial market.
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