Chapter 31 Keyterms & People to Know

Brain Trust

Specialists in law, economics, and welfare, many of them young university professors, who advised President Franklin D. Roosevelt and helped develop the policies of the New Deal.

New Deal

The economic and political policies of Franklin Roosevelt's administration in the 1930s, which aimed to solve the problems of the Great Depression by providing relief for the unemployed and launching efforts to stimulate economic recovery.

Hundred Days (1933)

The first hundred days of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, stretching from March 9 to June 16, 1933, when an unprecedented number of reform bills were passed by a Democratic Congress to launch the New Deal.

Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act (1933)

A law creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insured individual bank deposits and ended a century-long tradition of unstable banking that had reached a crisis in the Great Depression.

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) (1933)

A government program created by Congress to hire young unemployed men to improve the rural, out-of-doors environment with such work as planting trees, fighting fires, draining swamps, and maintaining national parks.

National Recovery Administration (NRA) (1933)

An early New Deal program designed to assist industry, labor, and the unemployed through centralized planning mechanisms that monitored workers' earnings and working hours to distribute work and established codes for 'fair competition'.

Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) (1933)

A New Deal program designed to raise agricultural prices by paying farmers not to farm, based on the assumption that higher prices would increase farmers' purchasing power.

Dust Bowl

Grim nickname for the Great Plains region devastated by drought and dust storms during the 1930s, leading to the migration into California of thousands of displaced 'Okies' and 'Arkies.'

Indian Reorganization Act of 1934

Also known as the 'Indian New Deal' and the Wheeler-Howard Act, aimed to reverse the policy of forced assimilation and promote the economic wellbeing of reservations.

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) (1933)

One of the most revolutionary New Deal public works projects, bringing cheap electric power, full employment, low-cost housing, and environmental improvements to the Tennessee Valley.

Social Security Act (1935)

A flagship accomplishment of the New Deal, providing for unemployment and old-age insurance financed by a payroll tax on employers and employees.

Wagner Act (1935)

Also known as the National Labor Relations Act, this law protected the right of labor to organize in unions and bargain collectively with employers.

Fair Labor Standards Act (1938)

Important New Deal labor legislation that regulated minimum wages and maximum hours for workers involved in interstate commerce and outlawed labor by children under sixteen.

Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)

A New Deal-era labor organization that broke away from the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in order to organize unskilled industrial workers regardless of their particular economic sector or craft.

Court-packing plan (1937)

Franklin Roosevelt's politically motivated and ill-fated scheme to add a new justice to the Supreme Court for every member over seventy who would not retire.

Keynesianism

An economic theory based on the thoughts of British economist John Maynard Keynes, holding that central banks should adjust interest rates and governments should use deficit spending and tax policies to increase purchasing power and hence prosperity.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945)

The thirty-second president of the United States, credited with having developed a program called the New Deal that shepherded the nation out of crisis.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

The wife of Franklin Roosevelt, known for her devotion to the impoverished and oppressed as the most active First Lady the United States had ever seen.

Harry L. Hopkins (1890-1946)

A former New York social worker who became one of the major architects of the New Deal, heading up the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and Works Progress Administration.

Father Charles Coughlin (1891-1979)

A Catholic priest from Michigan known for his weekly anti-New Deal harangues, goading 40 million radio listeners.

Francis E. Townsend (1867-1960)

A retired physician who promoted a plan to pay every person over sixty $200 a month, provided that the money was spent within the month.

Huey P. ("Kingfish") Long (1893-1935)

Louisiana Governor, later Senator, whose anti-New Deal 'Share Our Wealth' program promised to make 'Every Man a King.'

John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

Author of The Grapes of Wrath, a novel about life during the Dust Bowl.

Frances Perkins (1882-1965)

The first woman cabinet member and Secretary of Labor under Roosevelt, who helped draw labor into the New Deal coalition.

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955)

The highest-ranking African-American in the Roosevelt administration, who headed up the Office of Minority Affairs.

Robert F. Wagner (1877-1953)

A Democratic Senator from New York State responsible for the passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, popularly known as the Wagner Act.

New Deal

A program developed by Franklin Roosevelt to help the nation recover from the Great Depression.

Great Depression

A severe worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s.

Federal Emergency Relief Administration

An agency that provided financial assistance to the unemployed during the Great Depression.

Works Progress Administration

A New Deal agency that provided jobs for millions of Americans during the Great Depression.

National Labor Relations Act of 1935

Legislation that established the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively.

National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933

A law aimed at stimulating economic recovery during the Great Depression.

Wagner-Steagall Housing Act of 1937

Legislation that provided for the construction of public housing.