25 Test Flashcards
(45 cards)
Soup Kitchens
In the cities, hungry men and women lined up at soup kitchens. People survived on potatoes, crackers, or dandelion greens; some searched through garbage for bits of food.
Farmers and what they did to combat low prices
Farmers tried to compensate for lower prices by producing more, thus adding to the surplus and depressing prices even further.
Marginal Workers
In the south, where opportunities were already most limited for African Americans, jobs that many white men had considered below their dignity before the depression—street cleaner, bellhop, garbage collector—seemed suddenly desire able.
African and Mexican Americans and how they were affected
In 1930 a short-lived facist-style organization, the Black Shirts, protested “No Jobs for N— Until Every White Man Has a Job!” As industry cut production, African Americans were the first fired. Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals trying to make a living also felt the impact. Their wages on California farms fell. Throughout the Southwest, Anglo-Americans claimed that foreign workers were stealing their jobs. Campaigns against “foreigners” hurt not only Mexican immigrants but also American citizens of Hispanic backgrounds. In 1931 the Labor Department announced plans to deport illegal immigrants to free jobs for American citizens.
The school system and women
Even before the crisis, women of all classes and races were barred from many jobs and were paid significantly less. With widespread male unemployment, it was easy to believe that women who worked took jobs from men. Of 1,500 urban school systems surveyed in 1930 and 1931, 77 percent refused to hire married women as teachers, and 63 percent fired female teachers who married while employed.
The school system and women
Even before the crisis, women of all classes and races were barred from many jobs and were paid significantly less. With widespread male unemployment, it was easy to believe that women who worked took jobs from men. Of 1,500 urban school systems surveyed in 1930 and 1931, 77 percent refused to hire married women as teachers, and 63 percent fired female teachers who married while employed.
Hoover’s Limited Solutions
Hoover had great faith in “associationalism”: business and professional organization, coordinated by the federal government, working together to solve the nation’s problems. The federal government’s role was limited to gathering information and serving as a clearing-house for ideas and plans that state and local governments could then voluntarily implement. Hoover feared that government “relief” would destroy the spirit of self-reliance among the poor. He eventually endorsed limited federal action to combat the crisis, but it was much too little.
P.O.U.R.
Hoover continued to encourage voluntary responses to mounting need, creating the President’s Organization on Unemployment Relief to generate private contributions to aid the destitute. Although 1932 saw record charitable contributions, they were nowhere near adequate.
Hawley-Smoot Tariff
Hoover signed into law the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, which was meant to support American farmers and manufacturers by raising import duties on foreign goods to a staggering 40 percent. Instead it hampered international trade as other nations created their own protective tariffs.
R.C.F.
In 1932, the administration took its most forceful action. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation provided federal loans to banks, insurance companies, and railroads, an action Hoover hoped would shore up those industries and halt disinvestment in the American economy.
Farmers’ Holiday Association
In August 1932, a new group, the Farmers’ Holiday Association, encouraged farmers to take a “holiday”—to hold back agricultural products as a way to limit supply and drive prices up.
Bonus Army
More than 15,000 unemployed WW1 veterans and their families converged on the nation’s capital as Congress debated a bill authorizing immediate payment of cash “bonuses” that veterans had been scheduled to receive in 1945. Calling themselves the Bonus Expedition Force, or Bonus Army, they set up a sprawling “Hooverville” shantytown just across the river from the Capitol. Hoover opposed the bill, and after most of the Bonus Marchers left Washington, some stayed however. Hoover called them “insurrectionists” and set a deadline for their departure. When they failed to leave, he sent federal troops on them.
Presidential election of 1932
Roosevelt had made it clear he would use federal power to help with the crisis which made everyone vote for him.
The New Deal
Roosevelt had pledged “a new deal for the American people.” He had never been very specific about it during his campaign, but it was a series of legislation aiming to better the economic crisis.
20th amendment
The so-called Lame Duck Amendment, ratified in 1933, shifted all future inaugurations to January 20.
Banking Crisis
The origins of the banking crisis came from WW1 and the 1920s, when American banks made countless risky loans. After real-estate and stocks went down and agricultural prices collapsed, many of these loans went bad. As a result, many banks lacked sufficient funds to cover their customers’ deposits. Fearful of losing their savings in a bank collapse, depositors pulled money out of banks.
Emergency Banking Relief Bill
Roosevelt used powers legally granted to close the nation’s banks for a four-day “holiday” and summoned Congress to an emergency session. He immediately introduced the Emergency Banking Relief Bill, which was unanimously approved, and signed into law the same day. This bill provided federal authority to reopen solvent banks and reorganize the rest, and authorized federal money to shore up private banks.
N.I.R.A.
At the heart of the New Deal experiment in planning were the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The N.I.R.A. was based on the belief that “destructive competition” had worsened industry’s economic woes. The N.I.R.A. authorized competing businesses to cooperate in crafting industry-wide codes. Competition among manufacturers would no longer drive down prices and wages. Individual businesses’ participation in this program, administered by the National Recovery Administration, was voluntary—with one catch. Businesses that adhered to the industry-wide codes could display the Blue Eagle, the N.R.A. symbol. In 1935, the Supreme Court put an end to the administration’s floundering. Using an old definition of interstate commerce, the Supreme Court found that the N.R.A. extended federal power past its constitutional bounds.
A.A.A.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act had a more enduring effect on the U.S. Establishing a national system of crop controls, the A.A.A. offered subsidies to farmers who agreed to limit production of specific crops. The subsidies, funded by taxing the processors of agricultural goods, were meant to give farmers the same purchasing power they had had during the time before WW1. But to reduce production, the nation’s farmers agreed to destroy 8.5 million piglets and to plow under crops. The A.A.A. was also terrible for tenant farmers and sharecroppers. In 1936, the Supreme Court found that the A.A.A. was unconstitutional for having a discriminatory processing tax. However, it was too popular with its constituency to disappear. The legislation was rewritten to meet the Court’s objections.
First Hundred Days
During the 99-day-long special session of Congress, the federal government took on dramatically new roles. Roosevelt aided by a group of advisers, who were collectively named “the Brain Trusts”, set out to revive the economy. They had no single, coherent plan, and Roosevelt’s economic policies fluctuated between attempts to balance the budget and deficit spending. The first priority was economic recovery. Two basic strategies emerged during the First Hundred Days. New Dealers experimented with national economic planning, and they created a range of “relief” programs to help those in need.
Second Hundred Days
During the Second New Deal, Roosevelt introduced a range of progressive programs aimed at providing “greater security for the average man than he has ever known before in the history in America.”
Father Charles Coughlin
A Roman Catholic priest whose weekly radio sermons reached up to 30 million listeners, spoke to those how felt they had lost control of their lives to distant elites and impersonal forces. Increasingly anti-New Deal, he was also increasingly anti-Semitic, telling his listeners that an international conspiracy of Jewish bankers caused their problems.
Dr. Francis E. Townsend
A public health officer in Long Beach, California, who was thrown out of work at age 67 with only $100 in savings. His situation was not unusual. With social welfare left to the states, only about 400,000 of the 6.6 million elderly Americans received any sort of state supplied pension. Many older people fell into desperate poverty. Townsend proposed that Americans over the age of 60 should receive a government pension of $200 a month, financed by a new “transaction” (sales) tax. In fact, his plan was fiscally impossible and profoundly regressive. Thus he actually sought a massive transfer of income from the working poor to the nonworking elderly.
Huey Long
Perhaps the most successful populist demagogue in American history. Long was elected governor of Louisiana in 1928 with the slogan “Every Man a King, But No One Wears a Crown.” As a U.S. senator, he initially supported the New Deal but soon decided that Roosevelt had fallen captive to big business. He countered in 1934 with the hare Our Wealth Society, advocating the seizure of all income exceeding $1 million a year and of wealth in excess of $5 million per family. From these funds, the government would provide each American family an annual income of $2,000 and a one-time homestead allowance of $5,000. He was killed before he could try for president.
