The Great Depression and the New Deal

The Great Depression: Economic Weakness

• Low Wages

• Overproduction

• Oligopoly

• Weak Industries

• Over-Extended Banks

• High Tariffs

• Stock Market Bubble

The Great Depression: The Crash and the Fall

• Stock Market Crash: October 24-9, 1929

• Hawley-Smoot Tariff

• Banks

• Economic Signposts by 1932– Production drops 50%– Unemployment up 25%; income down 50%– Vicious Circle

Hoover vs. The Depression

• Voluntarism

• Agricultural Marketing Act

• Reconstruction Finance Corporation

• Federal Home Loan Bank Act

• Bonus Army

Hoover and the World, 1929-33

• International Collapse

• Manchuria

• Failure of the League

• Hoover-Stimson Doctrine

Life in the Depression

The Hard Luck Life (I)

• 15 Million Unemployed

• Urban Migration

• Vagrancy

• Family Problems

• Hoovervilles

The Hard Luck Life (II)

• Women’s Work

• Women’s Responsibilities

• Innovation

• “Last Hired, First Fired”

• Protests

Middle and Upper Class in the Depression

• Washington, DC

• The Rich (5% own 3/4ths of wealth)

• The Middle Class

• Class Themes in Entertainment

1932 Election

• Hoover (R)

• Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D)

• “New Deal”

• FDR: 22.8 to 15.8 million, 472 to 59 EV

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt

The Roosevelts

• FDR– Professional Politician– Former legislator and Governor– Polio– Media-savvy

• Eleanor Roosevelt– Well educated– Active First Lady, not just a hostess

The Hundred Days (I)

• March 4 - Mid-June 1933

• The Banking Crisis– March 6: Bank Holiday– March 9: Emergency Banking Relief Act– March 12: 75% of Federal Reserve members

reopen– Federal Deposit Insurance Act– End of Panic

The Hundred Days (II): Agencies

• CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps)

• AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration)

• Farm Credit Act

• Home Owners Loan Corporation

• TVA

The Hundred Days: NIRA

• National Industrial Recovery Act– National Recovery Administration– Codes of Competition

• Fair Wages, Working Conditions, and Prices

– Right to Collective Bargaining– Unionization Ensues– CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations)

Post 100 Days

• End of Prohibition: December 5, 1933

• SEC (Security Exchange Commission)

• FCC (Federal Communications Commission)

• Spring 1935: Unemployment still 20%

• NRA under attack

The Second Hundreds

• Works Progress Administration

• Wagner Act

• Social Security Act of 1935

• Banking Act of 1935

• The Revenue Act of 1935

Outside the New Deal (I)

• The Far Right

• Political Conservatives

• The Left– Communists– Socialists

• “Did that mean, my friends, that someone would come into this world without having had an opportunity, of course, to have hit one lick of work, should be born with more than it and all of its children and children's children could ever dispose of, but that another one would have to be born into a life of starvation?”--Huey P. Long, “Every Man a King”

Outside the New Deal II: The National Union

• Huey P. Long– Share Our Wealth– Death

• Father Charles Coughlin

• Francis E. Townsend

• The National Union of Social Justice: 882,479 in 1936

1936

• FDR vs. Alf Landon vs. National Union

• Alf Landon (R)

• FDR: 27,751,597 (523 EV)

• Alfred Landon: 16,679,583 (8 EV)

• William Lepke (National Union): 882,479

• Biggest electoral victory since 1820

The New Deal and American Life

• Congress of Industrial Organizations

• Sit-Down Strikes

• Women and the New Deal

• Minorities and the New Deal

• The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934

• New Deal in the South: TVA and Rural Electrification Administration

• New Deal in West: Bureau of Reclamation

Tennessee Valley Authority

Leisure Activities

• Parlor Games

• Radio

• Vacation

• Sports

• Crime

• Persistent Optimism

Waning of the New Deal

• The Depression Worsens

• The Court Packing Scheme

• Supreme Court Backs Down