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Episode #07-Was the Great Depression Avoidable?
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In this episode of Hooked on History, we dive deep into the causes of the Great Depression to ask the big question—was it a perfect storm of bad luck, or could it have been prevented? From stock market speculation to government missteps, we explore the warning signs, the missed opportunities, and the what-ifs that still echo today.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Hooked on History'
00:00:03
Speaker
Hey there, and welcome to Hooked on History, the podcast where we don't just talk about what happened, we dig into why it happened. I'm your host CJ, and every week we take one big historical question and break it down.
00:00:17
Speaker
We follow the threads from cause to consequence and pull out the strange, surprising, and sometimes even hilarious moments that history usually leaves out.
Was the Great Depression Avoidable?
00:00:25
Speaker
Today's question, was the Great Depression in America avoidable?
00:00:29
Speaker
It's one of the most devastating economic disasters in history. Banks failed, jobs vanished, and families lost everything. But was it inevitable? Or were there warning signs we missed, choices we could have made differently?
00:00:42
Speaker
We're going to go unpack how the roaring highs of the 90s led straight into the crushing lows of the 90s. We'll look at the stock market crash, the government's response, and how a whole lot of regular people got caught in the crossfire.
00:00:53
Speaker
And stick around to the end because we've got a story that will give you a little hope about how a bunch of farmers armed with pennies took on the system during the worst of the Depression. It's weird, it's brilliant, and it actually worked.
00:01:05
Speaker
So, whether you're a history buff or just history curious, you're in the right place. Let's rewind the clock. and asked the big one, was the Great Depression in America avoidable? Let's start with a scene that might sound familiar.
The Roaring Twenties: Boom and Bust
00:01:18
Speaker
Imagine you're in New York City in the late 1920s. The skyline's exploding with new buildings. The Empire State Building is under construction. Jazz is pouring out of every speakeasy. Cars are everywhere.
00:01:29
Speaker
The sidewalks are packed. People are buzzing about business, about progress, about the future. It feels like America is on top of the world. The Roaring Twenties weren't just a decade.
00:01:40
Speaker
They were a full-on vibe. After World War I, the United States emerged as a global powerhouse. The war had devastated Europe, but America came out with factories humming and its the economy booming.
00:01:51
Speaker
The country was ready to celebrate, and celebrate it did. With champagne, flapper dresses, and the Charleston dance marathons. But beneath all the glitter and jazz, something else was happening.
00:02:02
Speaker
Something more transformative. Americans were buying things they'd never bought before. Radios, refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and not just the wealthy. Thanks to the rise of consumer credit, middle class families could buy now and pay later.
00:02:16
Speaker
That's right. Credit. was the magic word. Department stores began offering installment plans. Car companies like Ford made it possible for everyday folks to drive off in a brand new Model T with just a small down payment.
00:02:28
Speaker
By 1929, nearly 60% of all cars were bought on credit. Advertising exploded as well. Companies started using psychology to sell, tapping into emotions, aspirations, and even people's insecurities.
00:02:41
Speaker
They weren't just selling soap anymore. They were selling beauty popularity success, and people were buying it, literally and figuratively. Radio became a nationwide obsession. Before the 1920s, most people got their news from newspapers or word of mouth.
00:02:55
Speaker
But by the end of the decade, radios were in more than 10 million homes. Suddenly, people across the country were listening to the same music, the same baseball games, the same presidential speeches. It was the beginning of the national culture as we know it today. And then there were the celebrities.
00:03:10
Speaker
Movie stars like Clara Bow and Rudolph Valentino... became icons. Babe be Ruth was blasted home runs. Charles Lindbergh was flying across the Atlantic solo. America was fascinated with fame, and the media fed that hunger daily.
00:03:23
Speaker
But all this celebration masked a growing divide. Urban America was thriving, yes, but rural America, not so much. Farmers had borrowed heavily during World War I to increase production, thinking the demand would last forever, but when the war ended, prices dropped.
Economic Imbalance and Rising Tensions
00:03:39
Speaker
They were stuck. Stuck with debt, with too much land, and with crops they couldn't sell for a profit. There was also a widening wealth gap. The richest Americans, that top 1%, saw their income skyrocket, while wages for the average worker barely budged.
00:03:53
Speaker
This meant that even though the economy looked great on paper, most people weren't actually sharing in the prosperity. And if you're wondering about Wall Street, oh it was going wild. The stock market became the new playground for the middle class.
00:04:05
Speaker
Everyone and their cousin was investing, not just the big players, but school teachers, small business owners, even farmers were getting in on the action. And many of them were buying on margin, meaning they were putting down just a fraction of that money and borrowing the rest.
00:04:18
Speaker
It was high risk investing on a massive scale, like playing poker with someone else's cash. And it wasn't just individuals. Banks were investing in the market too. Stigulators were basically asleep at the wheel.
00:04:30
Speaker
There was no oversight, no stress testing, no separation between commercial banks and investment banks. It was a financial free for all. Then there's prohibition, America's big social experiment in the 20s.
00:04:42
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In 1920, the 18th amendment made it illegal to manufacture, sell, or transport alcohol. But instead of creating a sober utopia, it fueled the rise of organized crime. Speakeasies popped up everywhere, bootleggers made fortunes, and figures like Al Capone became legends.
00:04:57
Speaker
Prohibition didn't just fail, it undermined respect for the law and funneled more money into the shadow economy. The 1920s were modern, flashy, chaotic, and unstable. It was an economy on roller skates barreling downhill with no brakes.
00:05:11
Speaker
And here's what's wild. Even with all of these signs of imbalance, most people thought the good times would just keep rolling. Politicians talked about permanent prosperity. Economists praised the stock market boom.
00:05:23
Speaker
the few wanted to talk about the obvious question. What if this doesn't last? And when things finally went wrong, they went wrong fast. So if the Roaring Twenties were the party, this is where we start to notice the foundation under that dance floor cracking a little, and nobody's really paying attention.
00:05:40
Speaker
Let's talk about the stock market. It wasn't just booming. It was exploding. Between 1924 and 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average more than quadrupled. That kind of growth should have raised eyebrows.
00:05:52
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But at the time, it just raised champagne glasses. The problem with how people were investing was the issue. A huge number of Americans were buying stocks on margin. Now, That may sound technical, but it's actually pretty simple.
00:06:04
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Buying on margin meant that you only had to put down a small fraction of the stock's price, sometimes as little as just 10%, and borrow the rest from a broker. So with $100 of your own money, you could buy $1,000 worth of stock.
00:06:16
Speaker
That sounds great, right? Until the price of that stock drops even a little. Then... The broker calls you up and says, hey, I need more money to cover your losses, like now. And if you couldn't pay, your stocks got sold off, often at a huge loss.
00:06:29
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And if everyone was doing this at the same time, that's when the whole thing starts to collapse. Now, let's back up a bit because the warning signs were already blinking red long before October 1929. Let's start with agriculture.
00:06:41
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Remember all those farmers who borrowed heavily during the war? They never really recovered. Prices dropped, debt mounted, and the 1920s were basically a quiet depression for rural America. Some called it the Farm Crisis, but it was largely ignored in Washington and by Wall Street. One-third of Americans still lived in rural areas, and they were hurting, even as the cities were partying.
00:07:01
Speaker
Then there was the income gap. The top 1% of Americans controlled about a third of the nation's wealth by the late 1920s. Meanwhile, the majority of people were living paycheck to paycheck. That booming consumer culture, it was being propped up by credit, not actual income growth.
00:07:16
Speaker
People were borrowing to buy everything. Radios closed, even food. And it wasn't sustainable. And here's the big irony. As production soared thanks to new technology and efficiency, companies made more stuff than consumers could actually afford to buy.
00:07:30
Speaker
So factories began cutting hours, laying off workers, or lowering wages, which of course made it even harder for people to keep buying things. It was a classic case of overproduction and underconsumption.
00:07:41
Speaker
Meanwhile, the banks were throwing money around like it was monopoly cash. There were over 25,000 banks in the US, many of them small, poorly regulated, and overly exposed to the stock market. Banks weren't just loaning to businesses or homeowners, they were lending it to people who were gambling in the market.
00:07:56
Speaker
Some banks were even investing in their own deposits directly into the stocks. Think about that, your life savings could be tied up in somebody else's risky bet. And then there was real estate. Florida in the mid-1920s became ground zero for a speculative land bubble.
00:08:10
Speaker
People bought swamp land thinking they were going to build resorts. Prices shot up, then crashed when buyers realized much of the land was literally underwater. It was a preview of the national stock market collapse, but nobody learned the lesson.
00:08:22
Speaker
And let's not forget tariffs. The U.S. passed the Fordney-McCumber tariff in 1922, raising duties on imported goods to protect American manufacturers. But this triggered retaliatory tariffs from other countries, which hurt the U.S. exports, especially the farmers.
00:08:36
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It made a shaky agricultural sector even shakier, and more trade barriers were coming on the horizon. Now, a few people did see trouble coming. Economist Robert Bobson famously warned in early 1929 that sooner or later a crash is coming.
00:08:52
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Most economists insisted the fundamentals were still strong. Newspapers kept printing stories about new market highs. Even President Hoover, still just months from taking office, said in late 1928 that we in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before.
00:09:09
Speaker
Oh boy. That quote's going to age terribly. All these signs, the speculative bubble, the growing debt, the fragile banking system, the struggle, farm economy, the yawning income gap, they weren't invisible.
00:09:20
Speaker
But they were ignored, brushed aside because people didn't want to believe the party would end. The idea that the economy might be built on sand, it just wasn't something most people wanted to hear. Until the crash came and the sand gave way
Herbert Hoover's Leadership and Challenges
00:09:32
Speaker
underneath their feet.
00:09:32
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Now let's talk about Herbert Hoover. And not just a guy blamed for the Great Depression, let's rewind and look at who he was before anything went sideways. Basically, here's the thing. Before he became president, Hoover had a great reputation.
00:09:44
Speaker
Like, seriously, he was kind of a rock star back in the day. He was born in Iowa in 1874, orphaned by the age of nine, and raised by relatives. He wasn't born into wealth, in fact, far from it.
00:09:55
Speaker
But he worked hard, got into Stanford University as part of its very first class, and became a mining engineer. By his 30s, he was a self-made millionaire traveling the world to oversee massive mining operations.
00:10:06
Speaker
He was a brilliant organizer and problem solver. The guy knew how to get things done. When World War I broke out, Hoover turned his energy to humanitarian work. He organized relief for straight-ed Americans and then went on to run food relief programs for Belgium, which had been devastated by the fighting.
00:10:21
Speaker
After the war, President Wilson tapped him to head the US Food Administration. Hoover coordinated food distribution not just at home, but across Europe, and he did it so well. People admired him, crossed party lines,
00:10:33
Speaker
And he was seen as the ideal technocrat, smart, efficient, apolitical, and driven by service. By the nineteen twenty s he had served in both Republican and Democrat administrations and was hailed as the great humanitarian.
00:10:45
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So when the 1928 election rolled around, Hoover was a natural choice for the Republicans, and he won in a landslide. But here's the problem. Being a great administrator isn't the same as being a great president.
00:10:57
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And when the crash hit less than a year or two into his term, Hoover struggled to adapt. He had this deeply held belief in what he called American individualism. The idea that the government should foster cooperation and innovation, but not interfere directly in the economy.
00:11:11
Speaker
To Hoover, The federal government was supposed to guide, not manage. He thought voluntary cooperation among businesses, banks, and local governments was the way to solve big problems. That philosophy made sense in normal times, but in the Great Depression, it wasn't normal.
00:11:25
Speaker
When the crash happened in October 1929, Hoover initially played it cool. He told Americans the economy was fundamentally sound and he urged business leaders not to lay off workers. He said recovery was just around the corner, but as the months dragged on, unemployment soared, banks started collapsing, and people lost their homes, Hoover's hands-off approach looked more and more out of touch.
00:11:45
Speaker
Now to be fair, he wasn't completely inactive. He expanded public works programs, including the massive Hoover Dam project, he supported the Federal Farm Board to stabilize agricultural prices, and in 1932 he even helped create the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which loaned money to banks and big businesses to keep them afloat.
00:12:03
Speaker
But here's the catch. Most of that aid went to institutions, not individuals. Hoover didn't believe in direct relief. He thought handouts would weaken American character. Instead, he pushed charities and its local governments to step up. But they were already overwhelmed. City budgets were collapsing. Bread lines stretched for blocks. People were desperate.
00:12:20
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And the optics? Brutal. One of the most damaging moments came in 1932 with the Bonus Army. Over 40,000 World War I veterans and their families marched on Washington demanding early payment of a bonus they'd been promised but for their wartime service.
00:12:34
Speaker
They camped out peacefully near the Capitol, but Hoover saw them as a threat. And so he ordered the U.S. Army to clear them out. And that's exactly what General Douglas MacArthur did. Using tear gas, tanks, and bayonets, this was a massive PR disaster. Images of soldiers attacking veterans shocked the public and sealed Hoover's image as cold and uncaring.
00:12:55
Speaker
By the time the 1932 election rolled around, Hoover's name was basically political poison. Chanty towns built by the homeless were nicknamed Hoovervilles, newspapers used as blankets were called Hoover Blankets, and empty pockets turned inside out were called Hoover Flags.
00:13:09
Speaker
now To be fair, it's easy to scapegoat Hoover. The Depression was already in motion when he took office. No one, not Hoover, not the economicists, not Congress, truly grasped the scale of what was coming.
00:13:20
Speaker
And it's not like there was a New Deal playbook just sitting on the shelf. But Hoover was rigid, he didn't pivot, and he clung to ideology his ideology even as the country sank deeper into crisis. And in times like that, the president can't just be competent.
00:13:34
Speaker
They need to be a visionary. Unfortunately, Hoover wasn't that kind of leader, and when Americans went to the polls in 1932, they didn't just vote against Hoover, they voted for someone who promised bold, sweeping change.
00:13:45
Speaker
And that brings us to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But before we get to the other deal, we've got to talk about how bad things really got, especially in the banking system. Alright, so let's paint the picture. It's early 90s in America. You've just lost your job, or maybe your hours have been slashed.
00:13:59
Speaker
You're behind on rent, there's not much food in the pantry, but what little money you do have. Your savings, your emergency fund, the cash you've managed to hand onto, it's in the bank. And then you start to hear whispers.
00:14:09
Speaker
Your neighbors say, hey, my cousin's bank just collapsed without warning. People are lining up outside your local bank, trying to withdraw their money, and suddenly, panic starts to set in. You grab your coat, you rush out the door, hoping it's not too late.
00:14:22
Speaker
That scene, classic image of a bank run, played out thousands of times across the country. Because unlike today, back then, there was no federal insurance on your money. If the bank failed, your savings were gone.
00:14:34
Speaker
Vanished. You didn't get a check in the mail. You didn't get a reimbursement from the government. You just lost everything. The banking system in the early 90s was fragile to begin with. The U.S. had over 25,000 banks, and many of them were tiny, undercapitalized local operations.
00:14:49
Speaker
There were very few federal regulations governing how much money banks had to keep on hand, and there were no stress tests, no safety nets, and no central coordination. So when people got scared... the banks were gonna fail and the news spread quickly, panic would ripple through entire communities.
00:15:05
Speaker
People didn't stop to check if their bank was solvent, they just lined up and demanded their cash. And when too many people did that at once, even healthy banks collapsed under the pressure.
Consequences and Lessons of the Depression
00:15:14
Speaker
Between 1930 and 1933, over 9,000 banks failed.
00:15:18
Speaker
That's more than a third of all the banks in the country. And think about that, one in three banks just gone. 1932 alone, over 1,400 banks closed their doors. These weren't just businesses,
00:15:29
Speaker
They were community anchors. And when a bank failed, it wiped out life savings, closed off credit to local farmers and businesses, and sent shockwaves to entire towns. And remember, this is before deposit insurance. There was no FDIC.
00:15:42
Speaker
Your bank closed. You didn't just lose a paycheck. You lost your home, your farm, and your future. And to make matters worse, the Federal Reserve, which had been created back in 1913 to kind of stabilize the economy, didn't do much to stop the bleeding. In fact, it arguably made things worse.
00:15:58
Speaker
The Fed was divided at the time. The regional banks, especially the powerful New York Fed, was reluctant to act aggressively. They didn't lower interest rates significantly. They didn't step in to lend to struggling banks.
00:16:09
Speaker
They were afraid of inflation, even though the economy was collapsing and deflation was actually the bigger threat. There's a ah famous phrase from the economist Milton Friedman about this period. He said the Federal Reserve let the banks fail and the money supply collapse.
00:16:23
Speaker
This turned a recession into a full-blown depression. And he wasn't wrong. Meanwhile, Hoover still clung to the idea that the federal government shouldn't interfere too much. He worried that a bold action would unbalance the budget to create or create dependency.
00:16:36
Speaker
So while some emergency loans were made to things like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, they weren't enough. and they didn't go to people who needed help. It's hard to overstate just how devastating this banking c collapse was, not just financially, but psychologically.
00:16:49
Speaker
Imagine watching your entire life savings just disappear overnight. Imagine the fear of not knowing if your money was safe. This erosion of trust was enormous, and when the bank stopped functioning,
00:16:59
Speaker
it froze the entire economy. Businesses couldn't get loans, farmers couldn't get equipment, workers couldn't be paid. The whole engine of commerce just stopped. And while the urban centers took a beating, rural America was absolutely decimated.
00:17:12
Speaker
Banks and farming communities were often deeply entangled with local landowners. When these banks failed, they dragged entire agricultural regions down with them. One particular grim result was the wave of foreclosures occurring. Farmers who couldn't pay their debts or taxes were thrown off their land.
00:17:26
Speaker
Sometimes their homes and belongings were auctioned off by the county sheriff right on the courthouse step. And remember, these people weren't reckless spenders. Many had worked the same land for generations, but the economy was so broken that no amount of hard work could fix it.
00:17:40
Speaker
So where does that leave us? By 1933, confidence in the entire banking system had collapsed. Unemployment had soared past 25%, industrial production had been cut in half, and families were skipping meals, leaving towns, living in makeshift camps, and riding the rails in search of work.
00:17:55
Speaker
And what about Washington? Washington had no roadmap. No one had ever seen anything quite like it. If this wasn't just a downturn, it was a breakdown. The country needed bold leadership, new ideals, and fast action.
00:18:07
Speaker
And just in time, a new president arrived with all three. All right. We've seen how the party started, how the crack spread, and how the whole house came crashing down. So let's get to the big question.
00:18:17
Speaker
Was the Great Depression in America avoidable? Short answer, maybe. Long answer, now let's unpack that one. Historians and economicists have debated this for decades, and like most big historical questions, the answer isn't ah black and white.
00:18:31
Speaker
There's no single moment we can point to and say, If you had just fixed this, the depression wouldn't have happened. But when we stay back step back and connect the dots, we do see opportunities and moments where different choices might have changed the outcome.
00:18:44
Speaker
Let's start with the 1920s economic policies. The federal government was laser focused on promoting business growth, but not nearly as focused on regulating it. The stock market operated like the Wild West, where minimal oversight, no protections, and wild speculation ran the day.
00:18:57
Speaker
Margin buying was out of control, and if regulators or Congress had stepped in to impose basic controls, maybe like limiting margin purchases or increasing transparency around stock values, the bubble might not have grown so dangerously large. Now, some people did sound the alarm. As we mentioned before, robert Roger Babson warned of a coming crash,
00:19:16
Speaker
Economist Irving Fisher, on the other hand, infamously said the stocks had reached a permanently high plateau. Spoiler alert, they hadn't. But warnings were largely ignored.
00:19:26
Speaker
Policymakers in the 1920s believed the market would regulate itself, so they stood back and the bubble kept growing. Now let's talk about the income inequality. The roaring economy was not lifting all boats. Most Americans weren't getting rich, they were just going deeper into debt to maintain the illusion of prosperity.
00:19:42
Speaker
If wages had risen in step with productivity, If workers had shared more in the gains, the economy might have been more resilient. Consumer demand might have stayed stronger, and maybe the downturn would have would not have been so devastating.
00:19:53
Speaker
Same with agriculture. Rural America was in a depression long before the Wall Street crash. Farmers were overproducing and sinking into debt. If policymakers had taken that seriously earlier, ah providing like real support of or addressing overproduction, they might have prevented some of the broader economic strain from building up.
00:20:10
Speaker
And then there's monetary policy. The federal government had taken a lot of heat for all of its action or inaction during this time. Instead of easing credit and acting as a lender of last resort, when banks started failing, the Fed tightened money supply. It raised inflation.
00:20:24
Speaker
interest rates in 1928 and 1929 to combat stock speculation, then failed to lower them quickly once the crash hit. Now why does that matter? Because when you shrink the money supply during a downturn, it deepens the crisis. Prices fall, wages fall, debt becomes harder to repay.
00:20:39
Speaker
And that's exactly what happened. Another big one, the international picture. After World War I, the US was the world's largest creditor nation, but instead of investing and rebuilding Europe, we slapped on tariffs.
00:20:50
Speaker
first with the Fordney-McCumber tariff and then infamously with the Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1930. That one raised tariffs on over 20,000 goods and triggered a trade war. In other countries retaliated, global trade collapsed and the depression spread like wildfire. If we had been more focused on cooperation, rebuilding, and global trade, the international economy might have stayed healthier or at least not collapsed in sync with ours.
00:21:12
Speaker
And finally, there's Hoover. It's easy to pin everything on him, but the truth is he inherited ticking time bomb. Still, his philosophy, the government shouldn't interfere directly, Arguably made things worse.
00:21:22
Speaker
He hesitated when bold immediate action might have slowed the collapse. Had he embraced large-scale public works or direct relief earlier, it could have softened the blow for millions. So, back to the big question, was this all avoidable?
00:21:36
Speaker
Now, if you mean completely avoidable, like we could have prevented it entirely, probably not. There was too many underlying problems, structural inequality, speculative bubbles, a fragile banking system, global economy and stability to really fix it.
00:21:48
Speaker
But could it have been less severe? Absolutely. Could smarter policies, earlier and interventions and better regulations have shortened it or saved millions from suffering? Almost certainly. In other words, the depression didn't have to be this bad.
00:22:02
Speaker
And that's the tough truth. It wasn't just a natural disaster. It was a human one, a slow motion train wreck with multiple opportunities to pull the brake. Yet no one did. And maybe that's one of the biggest takeaways. Economic crises don't just happen. They're shaped by the choices we make or fail to make along the way. All right.
00:22:18
Speaker
We've talked policy, economics, politics, and it's been a bit of a heavy ride. So let's just take a moment for one of those strange, surprising, even kind of funny stories from the middle of the Great Depression. Believe it or not, even the darkest moments, people found creative and sometimes hilarious ways to fight back.
00:22:34
Speaker
Let me introduce you to the penny auction. So imagine you're a farmer in Iowa or Nebraska in the early nineteen thirty s You've been working the same land for years, maybe decades, but prices have collapsed.
00:22:46
Speaker
You can't make your mortgage payments. And now the bank is foreclosing your land, your house, and your livestock, everything going to auction. Now, In normal auction, the bank would send in representatives, buyers would show up, and they'd bid on your stuff. Highest bidder wins, right?
00:23:01
Speaker
It's simple, brutal, and kind of cold. But during the Depression, local communities started flipping the script. On the day of the auction, dozens, sometimes hundreds of your neighbors would show up.
00:23:12
Speaker
They weren't there to bid. They were there to stop the auction in its tracks. And as soon as the auction started the bidding, set a cow up for sale, someone would shout, one cent, and that was it.
00:23:22
Speaker
No one else bid. The crowd would glare at anyone who tried. Sometimes they'd cough or crack their knuckles or accidentally block a view. And occasionally things got a little more physical. Not violent exactly, but intimidating enough to send a clear message.
00:23:36
Speaker
Don't mess with this auction. So, what happened to that cow? What sold for a penny? The tractor. Up next. What did sell for? Oh, a penny. The entire barn. One cent. The auctioneer would go down the list selling item after item for pennies and once the auction was over, the community would turn around and give everything back to the original owner. It was a grassroots resistance, rural mutual aid if you will, a depression era like Robin Hood, minus the tights, and it wasn't just a one-off stunt.
00:24:04
Speaker
Penny auctions became a movement across the Midwest organized by groups like the Farmers Holiday Association. These weren't just protests, they were full-blown acts of economic civil dis disobedience. communities protecting their own when the system failed them.
00:24:17
Speaker
Sure, banks and shares tried to crack down, but they quickly realized it's hard to outbid a crowd of 200 angry farmers. It's even harder when they bring their own lunch, staying all day. Now, were penny auctions sustainable in the long one? Probably not.
00:24:30
Speaker
They didn't fix the larger economic collapse, but they did something powerful. They reminded people that even in the worst of times, solidity solidarity mattered. but That the Depression wasn't just a story of suffering. It was also a story of resistance, humor, and grit.
00:24:44
Speaker
And honestly, you've got admire the strategy. Facing foreclosure and despair, these folks didn't just give up. They showed up in force with a pocket full of pennies and a plan. So, was the Great Depression in America avoidable? As we've seen, there's no simple answer.
00:24:57
Speaker
The seeds were planted in the boom of the roaring 20s, fueled by speculation, inequality, and a lack of oversight. And when the crash came, it was devastating. But didn't have to spiral as far as it did. Poor choices, poor policy choices, timid responses, and a failure to act boldly turned a bad situation into an economic catastrophe.
00:25:15
Speaker
But what makes the story so human and honestly so compelling is that even in the face of massive failure, people didn't give up. They organized, they resisted, they held penny auctions, and soup lines and built communities out of sheer will.
00:25:27
Speaker
History isn't just about what happened, it's about why it happened. and what we do with that knowledge now. Economic warning signs don't always come with flashy lights. They come quietly in stagnant wages, in rising debt, in bubbles no one wants to pop. The Great Depression reminds us what can happen when we ignore those signs or when leaders wait too long to act.
00:25:47
Speaker
But it also reminds us of something else, that people are incredibly resilient. And sometimes, even in the middle of crisis, all it takes is a barn full of neighbors and a one-cent bid to change the ending of the story.
00:25:59
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Hooked on History. If you liked this episode, there's a lot more where it came from. We dig into the why behind the world's most pitiful and often overlooked historical moments. Whether it's Washington's secret spy ring, the revolution that changed the world, or a forgotten rescue in World War II, we're here to make history feel alive, unpredictable, and way more interesting than your high school textbook ever let on. If you enjoyed this show, I've got a favor to ask. Rate and review us wherever you listen. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get hooked.
00:26:27
Speaker
It helps us helps new listeners discover the show and keeps us digging into more great stories. And follow us on social media for updates, extras, and behind-the-scenes fun. On Twitter, we're at hooked__on__hist. That's hist, not history.
00:26:41
Speaker
Got a question you want answered in a future episode? Hit us up. You might just hear that question on the next show. Until next time, stay curious, keep asking the big questions, and most of all, stay hooked.
00:26:54
Speaker
Bye.