Unit 7, Chapter 22: Managing the Great Depression, Forging the New Deal, 1929-1939

Smoot-Hawley Tariff

A high tariff enacted in 1930 during the Great Depression. By taxing imported goods, Congress hoped to stimulate American manufacturing, but the tariff triggered retaliatory tariffs in other countries, which further hindered global trade and led to greater economic contraction.

Bonus Army

A group of 15,000 to 20,000 unemployed World War I veterans who set up camps near the Capitol building in 1932 to demand immediate payment of pension awards due to be paid in 1945.

Fireside Chats

A series of informal radio addresses Franklin Roosevelt made to the nation in which he explained New Deal initiatives

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 business 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, unsecured investments with customers' deposits.

Agricultural Adjustment Act

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

Public Works Administration

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

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

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

Securities and Exchange Commission

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, to set rules for margin (credit) transactions, and to prevent stock sales by those with inside information about corporate plans.

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.

Welfare State

A term applied to industrial democracies that adopt various government-guaranteed social-welfare programs. The creation of Social Security and other measures of the Second New Deal fundamentally changed American society and established a national welfare state for the first time.

Social Security Act

A 1935 act with three main provisions: 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 blind, deaf, and disabled.

Works Progress Administration

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

Fair Labor Standards Act

One of the final major laws of the New Deal, it outlawed child labor, made the 40-hour workweek standard (and mandated overtime pay), and established a national minimum wage.

Indian Reorganization Act

A 1934 law that reversed the Dawes Act of 1887. Through the law, Indians 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 1941.

Tennessee Valley Authority

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

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

Federal Writers' Project

A program under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) from 1935 to 1939 in which historians, teachers, editors, novelists, poets, and playwrights were employed by the federal government to produce a variety of materials — this included, for example, interviews with hundreds of former slaves; a major survey of American foodways; and state-by-state guidebooks to history, geography, and culture.