Mass Unemployment
The need for large-scale government spending was tied to mass unemployment; as the financial crisis led to cuts in production, workers lost their jobs and purchased less
In Britain between 1930 and 1935, an average of 18 percent of the workers were unemployed while in 1932, unemployment soared to about 33 percent of the entire labor force in the United States (fourteen million people were out of work)
Only by pumping new money into the economy could the government increase demand and break the vicious cycle of decline; along with economic effects, mass unemployment posed a great social problem that mere numbers cannot express
Millions of people lost their spirit and dignity in an apparently hopeless search for work; homes and ways of life were disrupted in millions of personal tragedies
People postponed marriages they could not afford, and birthrates fell sharply; there was an increase in suicide and mental illness; poverty became a reality
Mass unemployment was a terrible time bomb preparing to explode