Great Depression in West Chester - Research Paper Example

? Great Depression in West Chester, PA Inserts His/Her Inserts Grade Inserts 19 April The Great Depression created the financial crisis to West Chester PA. The research focuses on the effect of the Great Depression on West Chester companies. The research focused on the effect of the Great Depression on employees working in West Chester. The movie ticket sales increases in West Chester community are only temporary. The Great Depression brought economic hardships to the United States residents. West Chester, PA1 is the village which had been ravaged by the Great Depression. The Great Depression took place in October 1929. The depression was triggered by the stock market crash. The crash was the offshoot of the social protest movements. The people had a growing sense that the government should step into the economic debacle. The people wanted the government, especially in Chicago, to directly give a positive impact on the ordinary citizen’s lives. The hardest hit community was Chicago. More than 50 percent of the 1929 Chicago factory workers had been retrenched due to the onslaught of the Great Depression. Chicago imposed taxes on its residents in 1928. In response, the citizens staged a strike. The strikes forced the Chicago government into bankruptcy because it could not collect the taxes needed to pay the government’s daily operating expenses that include government employee payroll. The 1929 Great Depression2 did not significantly reduce customer revenue in West Chester, P.A. On the other hand, the sales of movie theatre tickets increased during the difficult years. The West Chester movie scene indicates a stark difference between from the movie theaters in other parts of the United States. Specifically, the movie sales of theaters in other parts had declined to unprecedented levels. The secret of West Chester’s movie theater revenue increase is innovation. The West Chester movie theaters had installed a sound system in almost all of its movie theaters. The Warner movie theatre located in West Chester, PA included a sound system installed in the theatres. Likewise, the Garden movie theatre was forced to show movies having sounds to compete with its next-door competitor, Warner Theatre. On the other hand, most of the movie theaters in many parts of the United States did not include a sound system. The movies were soundless. Popular movies during the soundless movie era included the many movies of Charlie Chaplin, a comedian. In terms of the movie theater industry, West Chester, PA profitably continued its sound-engineered movie theater programs. In addition, Robert Himmelberg (3) emphasized “unforeseen and unexpected, inexplicable and inexorable, the Great Depression was a traumatic experience for many of the men and women of the 1930s and exercised a profound influence on the generation that lived through it. In its duration and magnitude, it was infinitely more severe than any other episode of “hard times” in American national life and was unquestionably the dominant force molding the nation’s history during the long decade reaching from mid-1929 through 1940”. The Great Depression had established great hardship and economic difficulties to a majority of the Americans, especially in West Chester. The 1929 Great Depression also produced a political and social environment that was ripe for a major negative transformation rippling across the entire range of economic, political, and social institutions and policies of the United States government. The 1929 Great Depression had created a strong impact on people’s everyday lives, especially in West Chester, PA. Many had suffered from economic hardship and insecurity. The majority of Americans escaped actual retrenchment from their current jobs or disappearance of their farm or home. However, the people’s faces shaped by the 1929 Great Depression in a significantly unfavorable manner because they had lived in an insurmountable fear that the 1929 Great Depression can easily swallow the residents up today, tomorrow, or any time in the foreseeable future time. Himmelberg (21) theorized that the most significant and vivid change the 1929 Great Depression had introduced was the New Deal. The deal consisted of a series of new detours in the United States government’s historical economic and social policy trends which precipitated from the leadership of the period’s key head of head, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The president, a democrat, had won his election campaign in 1932. What is remarkable about his election win is that it occurred during the tumultuous economic debacle of the 1929 Great Depression. Ad the decade was about to end, several New Deal partisans insisted that, out of the crisis of the depression, the Democratic Party under Roosevelt’s mentorship had shaped a virtual economic “revolution” that had literally changed the lives of every American during the 1929 time period. The revolution centered on the closure of many businesses due to low revenues, retrenchment of many employees to keep the company’s cash on hand, and the unprecedented increase in the unemployment rate, especially in West Chester, PA. According to Himmelberg (21) emphasized the financial difficulties during the 1929 Great Depression was an accident waiting t erupt on the faces of the unsuspecting American citizens. The focus of complexity and awe would be to personally ask “why was there a Great Depression, and what should have been done to overcome it? To this day no one has formulated answers to these questions that command general consent. To its contemporaries, the Great Depression was a catastrophic and frightening enigma, an unprecedented and unfathomable financial devastation. The economic depressions, long months of increasing joblessness, decline in the prices of goods and service (to the detriment of the suppliers or sellers); failing banks, and much increased human insecurity and misery did not under stranger situations of the strangers to American national life. They had on the contrary played an important role in shaping political and social life since the earliest days of the Republic and became all the more influential after the Civil War as the swiftness of business wheel started to quicken its pace, and the huge volume of salaried workers were dependent on large corporations for a livelihood. Most of the years of the late nineteenth century experienced an economic downturn, the depression of the 1890s being the most severe. Indeed, the Panic of 1893, as the 1890s depression was known, was so severe that went the same unfavorable fate during the merciless onslaught of the Great Depression. The Great Depression has literally changed the lives of the people during the Great Depression period, the Progressive era, of fundamental change in the relationship between government and economic and social life. Jo Ann Argersinger (113) reiterated the Great Depression went a different road from prior economic depressions because it travelled a steeper climb. The climb reached a global stage. The ravages of the economic catastrophe (includes rising unemployment rates) had rippled by the unexpected economic turn down had taken a huge financial toll from the years of 1929 to1933. The tragedy was the first of its horrible kind in ever since American history was written. Happily, the anemic quality of the Great Depression’s recovery started in 1933. The slow but sure economic recovery started to crawl from 1933 to 1937. However, there were some sporadic economic debacles that unsuccessfully threatened to pull back the economic situation from its steady course towards recovery. Rick Szostak (1) emphasized “the complicated economic theories can be easily resolved. They can easily be understood. As with any complex theoretical formulation, analysis of the theoretical approach to the Depression taken in this work could begin with any of several causal links. We will, in this chapter, argue that a lack of new product innovation could have caused the declines in both the propensity to consume and desired investment”. The investment had slowly started to untie itself from the shackles of economic gloom known as the Great Depression. The author also emphasized while the researches were too consumed on scrutinizing the consumption and investment aspect of the American economy, the people should take into account the factors that had served to depress consumption in some sectors. The people should naturally tend also to depress investment. After recovery from t he economic turmoil, the people should avoid being dragged back into the quagmire of the recently resolved Great Depression .The avoidance will be successful if the particular arguments to tread the delicate economic path is within the most appropriate heading pushes through with flying colors. Specifically, while comprehending both consumption and investment business decisions making activities, the individual or organization requires a sectoral approach, people will perform a selected brief sectoral survey only under the investment heading. Dietmar Rothermund (19) reiterated “In the chaotic times after the First World War, the prewar world appeared to have been paradise and there was a nostalgic feeling that one should return to it as soon as possible. This was particularly true of the international gold standard which had prevailed at that time and which most countries had to abandon during the war”. This standard had guaranteed monetary stability and economic growth for several decades, which now appeared like a golden age. The advantages of such a standard had already been praised by David Hume and David Ricardo, because it provided an equilibrium situation by means of a simple mechanism which seemed to work as if governed by a law of nature”. Dietmar Rothermund (19) reiterated “In direct opposition to bullionists and mercantilists Hume and Ricardo gave professional advices to recommend the free flow of the precious metals. If they flowed out of a country they would thereby lower the prices and their inflow would increase the prices elsewhere, which would then lead to their flowing back to countries where prices were lower. This process would work best without any interference”. Not even the United States Central Bank had been compulsorily ordered to freely flow the precious metals. However, if it did perform its major function, it would exist just like the car users. The company can work better if it accentuated the mechanism of the free flow of the precious metals. It would raise the discount rate when the precious metals flowed out of the country, thus lowering prices by enhancing deflation, and it would lower the discount rate whenever precious metals were flowing in, thus providing easy money and increasing prices. As a matter of fact, Randall Park (1) reiterated the economic belief in the beneficial qualities of the gold standard was a tragic illusion. The same author emphasized the great depression was a fertile ground from which modern macroeconomics cropped up. The Depression generated the economist of the 20th century who began and nurtured the economic literature on the effects of the Great Depression. This economic standard did not work automatically at all but depended on the existence of a powerful lender of last resort, an institution which was able to ensure the liquidity and stability of the world market. People should note that factors which serve to depress consumption in a particular sector will naturally tend also to depress investment. More specifically, while understanding of both consumption and investment requires the sectoral approach, we will perform a brief sectoral survey only under the investment heading. Ben Bernanke (33) opined “as the prices broke and incomes declines, farmers, shopkeepers, merchants and industrialists faced bankruptcy, the government to build up a complex and inchoate array of interventionist measure which interfered with the free operation of market forces in order to preserve certain situations”. Himmelberg (129) reiterated people had many occasions in the preceding chapters to hint at the causes of unemployment during the Great Depression. The researcher noted they have particularly noted the fact that product innovation will likely increase employment, and process innovation decrease employment, at least within the industry concerned. People will begin by expanding on the notion of technological unemployment here and suggesting that technological forces can induce unemployment at the aggregate level. We note in particular the number of economists who shared this view in the 1930s. We then discuss an alternative technological argument: that innovation created a mismatch between job vacancies and the skills and location of workers, and thus much jockeying into financial position interwar unemployment was structural. We argue that there were in fact few job openings and thus structural unemployment is primarily symbolic of a much greater unemployment problem. Susan Kellogg and Steven Mintz (136) emphasized the upsurges in unemployment and poverty after 1929 had created new political pressures to force the United States federal government to assume an active role in alleviating the sufferings caused by unemployment, dependency, and old age. But even the bold initiative of the social security net of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal had set up a two part system of social provision that will treat the old poor and the new poor in diverse ways. The great depression offered the fertile ground from which modern macroeconomics cropped up. In addition, depression generated the economist of the 20th century who began and nurtured the economic literature on the Great Depression in general. The Great Depression is the Holy Grail of macroeconomics. The people have the opportunity to pose questions on these subjects to some very first individuals who began the search for the Holy Grail and the live the events. In addition, Richard Jensen (92) emphasized the Great Depression had delivered its own version of the misery and economic malaise. The United State’s economic depression had overpowered residents from different races, classes, philosophy, and location within the United States. James Olson (42) emphasized the fundamental premise of this work is that the key to understanding the Great Depression is scrutinized through analysis at the industry level rather than through the highly aggregated research that has dominated the field in the past. This does not mean, of course, that we can turn our back on the concepts of macroeconomics. We must, indeed, couch our analysis carefully in a general equilibrium framework. It is too easy to describe why some sectors of the economy went into decline in or near 1929. This may provide limited insight into why the Depression began, but can tell us little about why recovery was so slow. We must understand why the resources released by some sectors did not -- indeed, could not -- flow smoothly into other sectors. The concept that economic depression did not affect West Chester is untenable. Accordingly, the 1929 Great Depression did not significantly reduce customer revenue in West Chester, P.A. On the other hand, the sales of movie theatre tickets increased during the difficult years. The West Chester movie scene indicates a stark difference between from the movie theaters in other parts of the United States. Specifically, the movie sales of theaters in other parts had declined to unprecedented levels. The secret of West Chester’s movie theater revenue increase is innovation. The West Chester movie theaters had installed a sound system in almost all of its movie theaters. The Warner movie theatre located in West Chester, PA included a sound system installed in the theatres. Likewise, the Garden movie theatre was forced to show movies having sounds to compete with its next-door competitor, Warner Theatre. On the other hand, most of the movie theaters in many parts of the United States did not include a sound system. The movies were soundless. Popular movies during the soundless movie era included the many movies of Charlie Chaplin, a comedian. In terms of the movie theater industry, West Chester, PA profitably continued its sound-engineered movie theater programs. The West Chester residents also suffered from the economic depression. The increase in ticket sales is a miniscule one because the people temporarily increase their movie time due to the new sound system. However, the people will soon be fed up seeing movies. After a few movies, the West Chester people will wake up and reduce their movie time because money will be better spent for food, medicines, and other necessities http://courses.wcupa.edu/jones/his480/reports/dep-movi.htm Based on the above discussion, the Great Depression caused economic hardships to the United States residents. The Companies folded up due to lack of revenues. The employees lost their jobs due to company shutdowns. The movie ticket sales increases in West Chester community are only temporary. Indeed, the Great Depression brought financial crisis to West Chester PA. Cited Works Cannice, Mark V. Management: A Global and Enterpreneurial Perpsective. New York: McGrawHill Press, 2009. Argersinger, H. Toward a New Deal . New York: North Carlina Press, 1988. Retrieved April 19, 2011 from Bernanke, B. Essays on the Great Depression. New York: Princeton University, 2004. Retrieved April 19, 2011 from < http://books.google.com/books?id=tGiktQc6yWMC&pg=PA248&dq=Bernanke,+B.+Essays+on+the+Great+Depression&hl=en&ei=d-itTZnuLYykvgPTgIHXCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=depression&f=false> Himmelberg, R. The Great Depression and the New Deal. New York: Westport Press, 2011. retrieved April 19, 2011, from Kellogg, S., Mintz, S., . Domestic Revolutions. New York: Simon & Shuster, 1989. Retrieved April 19, 2011 from Jensen, R. The Great Depression. New York: Infobase Press, 2010. Retrieved April 19, 2011, from Olson, J. Historical Dictionary of the Great Depression 1929-1940. New York: GreenWood Press, 2001. Retrieved April 19, 2011 from < http://books.google.com/books?id=CDD1aGiJJTkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=James+Olson++depression&hl=en&ei=ifOtTfq9E8nTiAKchOS7DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false> Parker, R. The Economics of the Great Depression. New York: Edward Elgar Press, 2007. Retrievd April 19, 2 Szostak, R. Technological Innovation and the Great Depression. New York: Westlaw Press, 1995. Retrieved April 19, 2011 from The Great Depression and effect on movie theaters in West Chester, PA http://courses.wcupa.edu/jones/his480/reports/dep-movi.htm xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Himmel also emphasizeds Instructions: Proper MLA documentation style- including 7 sources that must appear in parenthetical documentation throughout the paper. Arguable thesis statement- must take and argue a position in the argument synthesis research paper. Refutation section- essay must contain a section where you consider what informed readers who oppose your argument might believe and then refute their ideas or position I need photocopies or printouts of all sources used. Created:  2011-04-15 22:52  Deadline:   2011-04-19 20:55 Time Left:  2h 19m Style:  MLA  Language Style:   English (U.S.)  Grade:   n/a  Pages:  8  Sources:   10  Read More