“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” said Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the 1930’s there was a great deal of fear in the U.S as to what was coming in the future for them. But what led to this emotion? People bought more than they could afford on credit, advertised goods and services, and there was a high rate of unemployment. These aspects all led to the darkest times in the early 1900’s. Richard Wormser’s book Growing Up in the Great Depression proves that the conditions which led to the Great Depression are present in our society today. Many different conditions of society in the 1930’s eventually led to what we now know as the Great Depression. One of the many included people buying on credit. According to the passage, “for ten years,…show more content… Letting more people know about their items lead to more people buying it. In the 1930’s many companies advertised, trying to sell as many products as possible. To people in the communities, “advertising told them that they they too had a role to play in the general prosperity. They were urged to buy the goods and services the society was producing” (Wormser 85). All over the town, items were advertised as must buys, drawing in attention. Sales grew and it led to the problem of overspending; people bought more than they could afford. For example, a company might make an advertisement and pay money to have it printed in the daily newspaper. When people read the newspaper, they would come across the ad and buy the item. Essentially, it’s not the advertising itself that led to the Great Depression, but the effect of advertisement. In society today, there are many ways to publicize, such as billboards, buses, posters, and taxis. The world we live in consists of using cell phones in everyday life. It is even simpler now because the company could just pay money and the ad would pop right up on someone’s screen, whether it be a game or social media. Advertisement may be another aspect for a future Great Depression, not only for its simplicity, but also for it’s accessibility in daily
