Great Depression and New Deal Study Guide

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering terms, legislative acts, agencies, historical figures, and key concepts of the Great Depression and New Deal era.

Black Tuesday

The day when stock prices fell sharply in the Great Crash.

Great Depression

Period lasting from 1929 to 1941 in which the U.S. economy faltered and unemployment soared.

Dust Bowl

Term used for the central and southern Great Plains during the 1930s, when the region suffered from drought and dust storms.

Repatriation

Process by which government officials return persons to their country of origin.

New Deal

Programs and legislation pushed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression to promote economic recovery and social reform.

Collective bargaining

Process in which employers negotiate with labor unions about hours, wages, and other working conditions.

Court Packing

President FDR's plan to add six new justices to the nine-member Supreme Court after the Court had ruled some New Deal laws to be unconstitutional.

Sit-Down strike

Organized labor action in which workers stop working and occupy the workplace until their demands are met.

Pump priming

Economic theory that favored public works projects because they put money into the hands of consumers who would buy more goods, stimulating the economy.

Indian New Deal

1930s legislation that gave Native Indians greater control over their affairs and provided funding for schools and hospitals.

Welfare state

Government that assumes responsibility for providing for the welfare of the poor, elderly, sick, and unemployed.

Black Cabinet

Group of African-American leaders who served as unofficial advisers to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Tenant Farmers

A system in which a farmer paid rent to a landowner for the use of the land.

Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)

Federal agency set up by Congress in 1932 to provide emergency government credit to banks, railroads, and other large businesses.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

Government agency created during the New Deal that insures bank deposits, guaranteeing that depositors' money will be safe.

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

Government agency created during the New Deal to build dams in the Tennessee River Valley to control flooding and generate electric power.

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

New Deal program that provided young men with relief jobs on environmental conservation projects, including reforestation and flood control.

National Recovery Administration (NRA)

New Deal agency that promoted economic recovery by regulating production, prices, and wages.

Public Works Administration (PWA)

New Deal agency that provided millions of jobs constructing public buildings as well as airports, dams, and bridges.

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

Key New Deal agency that provided work relief through various public works projects, employing more than 3 million Americans each year until ending in 1943.

Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)

Labor organization founded in the 1930s composed of industrial unions representing all workers in an industry regardless of job or skill.

Fair Labor Standards Act

1938 law that set a minimum wage, a maximum work week of 44 hours, and outlawed child labor.

Social Security Act

1935 law that set up a pension system for retirees, established unemployment insurance, created insurance for victims of work-related accidents, and provided aid for poverty-stricken mothers and children, the blind, and the disabled.

Wagner Act

New Deal law, also known as the National Labor Relations Act, that abolished unfair labor practices, recognized the right of employees to organize labor unions, and gave workers the right to collective bargaining.

Federal Trade Commission

Government agency established in 1914 to identify monopolistic business practices, false advertising, and dishonest labeling.

Herbert Hoover

Served as Secretary of Commerce and later as President of the United States from 1929 to 1933, whose response to the Great Depression was widely criticized for ineffectiveness.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Governor of New York elected President in 1932 who led the nation through the Great Depression and World War II before dying in office in 1945.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist best known for his advocacy of government intervention and deficit spending to protect the economy from recessions, depressions, and booms.

Three R's of the New Deal

Relief (gave help, usually money, to poor people in need), Recovery (intended to fix the economy short-term and put people to work), and Reform (designed to regulate the economy in the future to prevent depressions).

First New Deal

New Deal programs and legislation passed before 1935, many of which were enacted during FDR's first hundred days.

Second New Deal

The phase of the New Deal beginning around 1935 that shifted emphasis away from recovery and toward economic security.

Glass-Steagall Act

New Deal legislation that barred commercial banks from buying and selling stocks.

Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA)

New Deal administration created to provide direct welfare payments to desperate citizens.

Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)

Program that gave the government power to raise farm prices by setting production quotas and paying farmers to plant less food, later struck down by the Supreme Court in 1936.

Civil Works Administration (CWA)

New Deal program launched in November 1933 that eventually employed 4 million people building bridges, schools, and airports.

Keynesian economics

The idea embraced during FDR's presidency that the government should spend money, even into deficits, in order to prop up demand.

Imperial presidency

Arthur Schlesinger's term describing the tendency of the American public to associate all government policy with the president.