Chapter 23: The Great Depression and the New Deal, 1933-1939

Great Depression (1929-1941)

The worst economic downturn in American history; it was spurred by the stock market crash in the fall of 1929 and lasted until World War II.

Dust Bowl

A vast area of the Midwest where windstorms blew away millions of tons of topsoil from parched farmland after a long drought in the 1930s, causing great social distress and a massive migration of farm families.

Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) (1932)

A federal program established under President Hoover to loan money to banks and other corporations to help them avoid bankruptcy.

Bonus Expeditionary Force (1932)

A protest march on Washington, D.C., in 1932 by thousands of military veterans and their families, calling for immediate payment of their service bonus certificates; violence ensued when President Herbert Hoover ordered their tent villages cleared.

First New Deal (1933-1935)

Franklin D. Roosevelt's ambitious first-term cluster of economic and social programs designed to combat the Great Depression.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) (1933)

An independent government agency, established to prevent bank panics, that guarantees the safety of deposits in citizens' savings accounts.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) (1934)

A federal agency established in 1934 to regulate the issuance and trading of stocks and bonds in an effort to avoid financial panics and stock market crashes.

National Recovery Administration (NRA) (1933)

A controversial federal agency established during the Great Depression that brought together business and labor leaders to create "codes of fair competition" and "fair-labor" policies, including a national minimum wage.

Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933)

Legislation passed during the Great Depression that paid farmers to produce less in order to raise crop prices for all; the AAA was later declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of United States v. Butler (1936).

Second New Deal (1935-1938)

An expansive cluster of legislation proposed by President Roosevelt that established new regulatory agencies, strengthened the rights of workers to organize unions, and laid the foundation of a federal social welfare system through the creation of Social Security.

Works Progress Administration (WPA) (1935)

A government agency established to manage several federal job programs created under the New Deal; it became the largest employer in the nation.

Wagner Act (1935)

Legislation that guaranteed workers the right to organize unions, granted them direct bargaining power, and barred employers from interfering with union activities.

Social Security Act (1935)

Legislation enacted to provide federal assistance to retired workers through tax-funded pension payments and benefit payments to the unemployed and disabled.