America has always been seen as a land of luxury and a never-ending supply of goods coming from some unknown place. In reality, there are limits to supply, and that supply doesn't just pop up from thin air. Never was this more blatantly apparent than it was in the Great Depression. Working conditions were going downhill due to many people being desperate for any form of work they could get and employers taking advantage of their desperation. People were working for next to no pay and they couldn't buy any luxurious items anymore which caused the economy to plummet even more. This cycle led to many people moving west to get jobs that they heard were readily available for them, only to find that even California had been devastated by the Great Depression.
The Great Depression was not given its name for no reason, suicides during the Great Depression spiked drastically. The decade before the Great Depression, there were about 12 suicides per 100,000 people, during the Great Depression there were nearly 19 per 100,000 people in the United States. During this time, people were pushed to, and in many cases past, their limits just to try to keep themselves and their families alive until things evened out again.
The Great Depression will always be one of the worst events in America's history next to the two World Wars. Not only did America's people lose their money and their jobs, but everyone lost faith in our nation. No longer, were we the poster nation that people all over the world wanted to come to, but we were the place where no one was happy and everyone was jobless. The Great Depression totally killed our nation's confidence in itself.
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