APUSH Henretta Chapter 23

Smoot-Hawley Tariff

1930- raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 goods to record levels- taxes on imported goods designed to encourage American manufacturing. It triggered retaliatory tariffs in other countries, which further hindered global trade and led to greater economic contraction throughout the industrialized world.

Bonus Army

15,000 unemployed WWI vets. that marched to D.C. in 1932 to demand the immediate payment of their goverment war bonuses in cash that were due to be paid in 1945. Hoover's popularity plunged after the US army attacked and injured the veterans.

fireside chats

Series of radio broadcasts made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the nation, which made him an intimate presence in people's lives.

Hundred Days

During this, Congress enacted 15 major bills that focused on the four problems of banking failures, agricultural overproduction, the business slump and soaring unemployment.

Glass-Steagall Act

This created the FDIC, which insured deposits of up to $2,500. This also prohibited banks from making risky, unsecured investments with the deposits of ordinary people. Roosevelt removed the U.S. Treasury from the gold standard in June 1933, which allowed the federal reserve to lower interest rates; since 1931, it had been raising rates, which had only depended the downturn- mild, brief recovery. This separated investment and commercial banking activities.

Agricultural Adjustment Act

Reduced agriculture production by paying farmers subsidies if they cut production of 7 major commodities: wheat, cotton, corn, hogs, rice, tobacco, dairy. They hoped that farm prices would rise as production fell.

National Recovery Administration

The agency set up separate self-governing private associations in six hundred industries. Each industry- ranging from large corporations producing coal, cotton textiles and steel to small businesses making pet food and costume jewelry- regulated itself by agreeing on prices and production quotas. They solidified their power at the expense of smaller enterprises and consumer interest because large companies usually ran these associations. Created by the National Industrial Recovery Act to reduce competition in order to combat the Depression. It worked with business and labor to write codes regulating production, wages and hours.

Public Works Administration

Large-scale construction agency in the United States.

Civilian Conservation Corps

Public work relief program that operated to help the unemployed. It employed 250,000 young men to do reforestation and conservation work. Over the course of the 1930s, the boys built thousands of bridges, roads, trails and other structures in state and national parks, bolstering the national infrastructure.

Federal Housing Administration

Set standards for construction and insured loans made by banks or other lenders for home building. Helped regulate interest rates for mortgages. It was a branch under the Federal Housing Act of 1934. With the Home Owners Loan Corp, the Federal Housing Admin and the Housing Act of 1937, the mortgage system permanently changed and set the foundation for broad expansion of home ownership.

Securities and Exchange Commission

In 1934, Congress established this to regulate the stock market. It had broad powers to determine how stocks and bonds were sold to the public, to set rules for credit transactions and to prevent stock sales by those with inside information about corporate plans.

Liberty League

In 1934, Republican business leaders joined with conservative democrats in this to fight what they called the "reckless spending" and "socialist" reforms of the new deal. Hoover condemned the NRA as a state controlled or state-directed social or economic system (tyranny).

National Association of Manufacturers

It was more important than the Liberty League in opposing the New Deal as the influence stretched far into post-WWII decades. Sparked by new generation of business leaders who believed that a publicity campaign was needed to serve the purposes of business salvation, the NAM produced radio programs, motion pictures, billboards and direct mail in the late 1930s. The NAM promoted free enterprise and unfettered capitalism.

Townsend Plan

In 1933, he proposed the Old Age Revolving Pension plan, which would give $200 a month to citizens over the age of 60. To receive payments, the elderly would have to retire and open up their positions to younger workers.

Welfare State

Industrial democracies that adopted various government-gauranteened social-warfare programs.

Social Security Act

1935- had main three provisions of 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. Roosevelt limited the reach of the legislation- he dropped the provision for national health insurance knowing that it might prevent the bill from being passed.

Wagner Act

1935- upheld the right of industrial workers to join unions. The act outlawed many practices that employers had used to suppress unions, such as firing workers for organizing activities. It also established the National labor Relations Board, a federal agency with the authority to protect workers from employer coercion and to guarantee collective bargaining.

Classical Liberalism

The 2nd New Deal created what historians called New Deal ______. This held individual liberty to be the foundation of a democratic society, and the word liberal had traditionally denoted support for free market politics and weak government. Roosevelt and his advisors disagreed because to preserve individual liberty, government must assist the needy and guarantee the basic welfare of citizens. This was opposed by laissez-faire capitals.

Works Progress Administration

1936- Employing millions of unemployed people to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. However, it only reached about 1/3 of the nation's unemployed.

Roosevelt Recession

1937-1938. Roosevelt thought that the economy had stabilized -> slashed the federal budget. Congress then cut the WPA's funding in half, causing 1.5 million layoffs and the federal reserve feared inflation and raised interest rates. The stock market then dropped and unemployment hiked to 19%. He then began to spend his way out of the recession by boosting funding for the WPA and resuming public works projects.

Keynesian Economics

Theory that stated that government intervention could smooth out the highs and lows of the business cycle through deficit spending and the manipulation of interest rates, which determined the money supply. This view was criticized by the Republicans and conservative democrats in the 1930s, who disliked government intervention in the economy. But it gained wider acceptance as WWII defense spending finally ended the great depression.

Indian Reorganization Act

Collier helped write and push this act through Congress in 1934. This law reversed the Dawes Act of 1887 by promoting Indian self-gvonernment through formal constitutions and democratically elected tribal councils. A majority of Indian peoples- some 181 tribes- accepted the reorganization policy, but 77 declined to participate because they preferred the traditional way of making decisions by consensus rather than majority vote Through the new law, Indians won a greater degrees of religious freedom, and tribal governments regained their status as semi sovereign dependent nations. However, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Congress continued to interfere in internal indian affairs and retained financial control over reservation governments.

Dust Bowl

Between 1930 and 1941, a severe drought afflicted the semiarid states of the Great Plains. Farmers in these areas had stripped the land of its native vegetation, which destroyed the delicate ecology of the plains. To grow wheat and other crops, they had to push agriculture beyond the natural limits of the soil, making their land vulnerable and in times of drought, to wind erosion of the topsoil. When the winds came, high clouds of thick dust rolled over the land. At least 350,000 okies loaded their belongings into cars and trucks and headed to CA from Oklahoma. The Grapes of wrath (1939) was a novel about this.

Tennessee Valley Authority

The most extensive New Deal environment undertaking was this, which Roosevelt saw as the first step in modernizing the South. Funded by Congress in 1933, the TVA integrated flood control, reforestation, electricity generation and agricultural and industrial development. The dams and the hydrot-electric plants provided cheap electric power for homes and factories and recreational opportunities for valley's residents. (A relief, recovery, and reform effort that gave 2.5 million poor citizens jobs and land. It brought cheap electric power, low-cost housing, cheap nitrates, and the restoration of eroded soil.)

Rural Electrification Administration

An agency established in 1935 that also worked with the TVA to keep farmers on the land by enhancing the quality of rural life. It promoted nonprofit farm cooperatives that offered loans to farmers to install power lines.