hello and welcome to the first of my revision videos on depression one recovery 1930-1951 this is unit one um within the exam series it's the first exam that you will set there are seven key questions as with every unit that we do and today we're going to be making a start with the coming of the depression um as always i'm going to ask you to pause the video at this point so that you can take down the the topics that we're going to be discussing today either in spidey diagram form or in note form totally up to you whatever works best and also remind you as they always do as well it's not just this video that you should be using it's the booklet that we've uploaded onto teams it's your class books it's bbc bite size any other kind of information you can get your hands on as well so britain is the first industrial nation it's where the first train um was was produced and developed it's where the industrial revolution had the biggest impact it happens the earliest um it's textile coal iron and steel industries benefit a lot from lack of competition because britain is so early to the party with this there isn't much competition around in the 18th sort of late 18th centuries and the early 19th century as well but as the 19th century progresses other countries start to copy um britain's industrial development and they also start to develop technology at a much quicker rate than britain does as well um by the 1920s britain has major economic rivals in the usa in japan and even germany starting to catch up with the rest of the world as well despite the first world war um and this means that britain is experiencing huge economic hardships and it's having economic problems before the wall street crash occurs anyway um so these are the old industries the the sort of old heavy industries that contributed to the depression or the decline so um you should say contributed to the depression um coal could now be produced much more cheaply abroad um in the mid twenties it could be produced in the usa for sixty five p a ton compared with 1.56 a ton in britain um british coal was more expensive because it was more difficult to mine and the mines also aren't really invested in upstate machinery and the industry is run by coal mine owners who in most cases don't want to modernize they don't want to invest their money in modern technologies this is particularly true in south wales once this was the home of raw materials of britain's industrial revolution it was it was where most of britain's coal was mined um and its coal was sent all over the world but by the 1920s and early 30s it was in a really poor way it lost its european markets because germany was making some of its reparation payments to countries in coal um the french favored buying call from america rather than britain and this meant that the demand for coal from large coal fields dropped significantly also investment in the coal industry was stagnant meaning that modern mining methods had not been introduced like in competitive countries um this results in unemployment in places like swansea and mirtha at reaching 25 percent and in dow lies which is up in mr turville a little village up above method but it was actually 18 unemployment the iron and steel industry suffered for a lot of reasons as well um there's far less demand for ships and armaments after the first world war um competitors like usa and japan again regularly undercutting british prices and the steel making plants are mostly larger much more efficient and much more modern the steel industry in south wales was particularly ill-equipped to cope with this um it had real stern competition from the usa and germany whose steel making plants were more technologically advanced um and much more efficient as well 19 in 1929 never veiled steel making cease completely um a major part of the steel works in dallas also closed in 1930 and that left 3 000 steel workers unemployed as well the textiles industry declined as man-made fibers such as polyester become more popular because they're more hard wearing and combining these these materials with cotton as well um and well it actually makes for a hard more hardware and easier to wash garment which so it became much more popular um british textile industries also had the competition from japan in the usa during the 20s um the safe home markets become vulnerable to foreign competition like usa and japan particularly up in lancashire where the cotton industry had been um so dominant in the past it actually now couldn't compete with cheaper cotton produced in other countries in the world like usa japan and india as well and then ship building it this took a massive massive nosedive in the 1920s um the fallen trade after the first world war um meant there was less need for ships international disarmament meant a fallen demand for warships and again you've got your other countries that can produce warships much more cheaply and quicker as well so a lot of these um a lot of the the buyers the countries going to other countries to buy them whereas they used to come to britain um also really important when thinking about uh the coming of the depression and why the depression happened you've got competition from a broad much of the british industry um in the 20th century is developed on the coal fields in the north because they depend on steam power um these old industries mostly produce raw materials on heavy goods such as ships iron and steel and they depended upon exports and they were only profitable if they could sell aboard in the 20s the british industry faced more and more competition that had bigger bigger factories that could produce more cheaply i've already alluded to that when we looked at like japan um and usabia and massive competitors india being huge a huge competitor in the textiles industry um so lots of competition from different countries meaning that people were just not on countries and governments were just not buying from britain anymore obsolete methods as well america um america was very very fast it's calling it on to things like mass production um and as we've already um discovered when we looked at um america as well during the 20s the cut there was cars being produced um very very rapidly during this time as well henry ford could predict with the mass production line could produce a car very very very quickly and for um for quite cheaply as well um this was coffee by many other industries in the usa i mean in the usa was one of the world's leading economies during this time of the world's leading economy during this time um britain were really slow to update they did not make the most of the emerging industries such as chemical and car making industries their methods of production were really slow they didn't they didn't cut onto the to mass production until too late they didn't cop gotten onto the production line until too late um and their methods unfortunately became obsolete meaning again the other countries weren't looking to buy from britain because one it was too expensive because britain couldn't afford to lower their prices because it took so much time and effort to make the products um and two it was just easier to buy from these other countries that were producing things much more quickly um new markets as well finding new markets to sell british goods was really difficult um the british british government in the 20s allowed foreign countries to trade with britain without having to pay import tax there was no tax on products coming into the country um this made foreign goods seem cheap well the british ought to pay taxes in other countries so it was actually cheaper to buy foreign goods in britain sometimes than it was to actually buy homemade british goods um because they hadn't put import taxes on them this hit the ship building industry in particular in particular very very hard no one was buying and selling um and there was no need to build ships to transport goods this had a massive impact on the steel and coal industries as well because obviously to build ships you need steel to get them going you needed coal um and it was just a domino effect then but because of these things um import duties british governments had tried to encourage free trade between countries meaning no taxation on anything coming in and out in the 20s but many others especially the usa use tariffs to protect their homegrown industries you already know in the 20s there was things like the fornicator if the usa was put in massive taxes on things coming into their own country to try and encourage americans to buy american goods britain didn't do that and following the wall street crash import duties around the world rose anyway um an international trade declined sharply uh between 1929 and 1931 exports from britain actually fall by half um again demand for ships to transport goods falls dramatically and then this has a domino effect on other industries as we've already discussed there's a rapid growth then in unemployment six percent of the population in 1929 are unemployed 15 by 1932. over three million people no longer had a wage can't buy consumer goods um this leads to a further decrease in demand for british goods because people just come can't afford to buy them and this causes more businesses to go bankrupt and creates greater unemployment and then the wall street crash happens um so there's that term that we always think about that phrase when america sneezes europe catches a cold um this is very very true of america and britain the depression in the usa had a major impact on the uk economy um american economic policies which resulted in numerous countries including britain and germany sliding into a huge economic slump germany in particular suffered probably the worst um but a lot of the countries in europe suffered because of this um any event which caused the collapse of the largest richest and most powerful economy in the world with impact on other countries um which depended on u.s loans and trade after the first world war uh the the usa had loaned um money out to germany it had loaned money up to france and and britain during the war um to pay for armaments as well um and they called all those all those loans back in president hoover tried to put high tariffs on to stop american consumers buying goods from other nations um and these made the non-us goods more expensive but this led to a decline in the abandoned profits this is all stuff that you've already done when studying the american unit um unit two um in britain though business confidence falls really dramatically so this is the impact the wall street crash has specifically on britain um international trade declines so there's no more trade in between countries because countries just can't afford to do that anymore um exports in britain between 29 and 31 as we've discussed fall by half britain's balance of trade was badly affected it had a trade deficit of 114 million so it was in 114 million worth of debt complained compared to being in a surplus of 104 million in 1928. so in three years um it had gone from being 104 million uh pound in surplus to 114 million in debt there was a rapid growth of unemployment and by 1930 at least 2 million and 3 million by 1952 and all of these reasons that the depression happened in britain