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Archival footage of American workers after the stock market crash of 1929

Archival footage of American workers after the stock market crash of 1929

“The unemployed, the soup kitchens, the grinding poverty, and the despair”—the worldwide consequences of the Great Depression, from The Second World War: Prelude to Conflict (1963), a documentary by Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation.
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Transcript

[Music in]

NARRATOR: . . . 1929! The financial house of cards collapses, and the over-inflated stock market plunges into a Great Depression. A financial panic grips the world.

[Sound of protesters]

For the majority, it means the interminable line outside factory gates, desperately hoping for a job that rarely comes. It means hunger, and a march of the unemployed on the nation's Capitol. With acute domestic problems America would now isolate herself more than ever from the international scene.

It started in America, but practically overnight an "economic blizzard" swept the world--in Japan--France--Britain. Always the unemployed--the soup kitchens--the grinding poverty, and the despair.

[Music out]
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