Henretta, America's History for the AP® Course, 11e, Chapter 22

Smoot-Hawley Tariff

A high tariff on imports enacted in 1930, during the Great Depression, that was designed to stimulate American manufacturing. Instead it triggered retaliatory tariffs in other countries, which hindered global trade and led to greater economic contraction.

Bonus Army

A group of fifteen to twenty thousand unemployed World War I veterans who set up camps near the Capitol building in 1932 to demand immediate payment of pension awards due in 1945.

fireside chats

A series of informal radio addresses that Franklin Roosevelt made to the nation between 1933 and 1944 in which he explained New Deal initiatives and, later in his presidency, his wartime policies.

Hundred Days

A legendary session during the first few months of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration in which Congress enacted fifteen major bills that focused primarily on four problems: banking failures, agricultural overproduction, the manufacturing slump, and soaring unemployment.

Glass-Steagall Act

A 1933 law that created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insured deposits up to $2,500 (and now up to $250,000). The act also prohibited banks from making risky investments with customers’ deposits.

Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)

New Deal legislation passed in May 1933 that aimed at cutting agricultural production to raise crop prices and thus farmers’ income.

National Recovery Administration (NRA)

Federal agency established in June 1933 to promote industrial recovery during the Great Depression. It encouraged industrialists to voluntarily adopt codes that defined fair wages, set prices, and minimized competition.

Public Works Administration (PWA)

A New Deal construction program established by congress in 1933. Designed to put people back to work, the PWA built the Boulder Dam (renamed Hoover Dam) and Grand Coulee Dam, among other large public works projects.

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

Federal relief program that provided jobs to millions of unemployed young men who built thousands of bridges, roads, trails, and other structures in state and national parks, bolstering the national infrastructure.

Federal Housing Administration (FHA)

An agency established by the Federal Housing Act of 1934 that refinanced home mortgages for mortgage holders facing possible foreclosure.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

A commission established by Congress in 1934 to regulate the stock market. The commission had broad powers to determine how stocks and bonds were sold to the public, and to prevent insider trading.

American Liberty League

A group of Republican business leaders and conservative Democrats who banded together to fight what they called the “reckless spending” and “socialist” reforms of the New Deal.

National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)

An association of industrialists and business leaders opposed to government regulation. In the era of the New Deal, the group produced radio programs, motion pictures, billboards, and direct mail campaigns to promote free enterprise and unfettered capitalism.

Townsend Plan

A plan proposed by Francis Townsend in 1933 that would give $200 a month (nearly $4,000 today) to citizens over the age of sixty; stimulated mass support for old-age pensions.

welfare state

A term for industrial democracies that have adopted government-guaranteed social-welfare programs. The creation of Social Security and other measures of the Second New Deal established a national __________ __________ for the first time.

Wagner Act

A 1935 act that upheld the right of industrial workers to join unions, protected workers from employer coercion, and guaranteed collective bargaining.

Social Security Act

A 1935 act that provided old-age pensions for workers, a joint federal-state system of compensation for unemployed workers, and a program of payments to widowed mothers and the disabled.

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

Federal New Deal program established in 1935 that provided government-funded public works jobs to millions of unemployed Americans in areas ranging from construction to the arts.

Keynesian economics

The theory, developed by British economist John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s, that deficit spending and interest rate adjustment by government could prevent depressions and limit inflation.

Fair Labor Standards Act

New Deal legislation passed in 1938 that outlawed child labor, standardized the forty-hour workweek, mandated overtime pay, and established a federal minimum wage.

Indian Reorganization Act

A 1934 law that reversed the Dawes Act of 1887. Through the law, Native people won a greater degree of religious freedom, and tribal governments regained their status as semisovereign dependent nations.

dust bowl

An area including the semiarid states of Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arkansas, and Kansas that experienced a severe drought and large dust storms from 1930 to 1939.

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

An agency funded by Congress in 1933 that integrated flood control, reforestation, electricity generation, and agricultural and industrial development in the Tennessee Valley area.

Rural Electrification Administration (REA)

An agency established in 1935 to promote nonprofit farm cooperatives that offered loans to farmers to install power lines.

Federal Writers' Project (FWP)

A New Deal program, part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), that provided jobs for out-of-work writers, which included the collection of oral histories.