Chapter 31: The Great Depression and the New Deal

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Governor of New York and fifth cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, he had graduated from Harvard and been elected as a politician to the New York legislature. He removed the nation from the gold standard

Elanor Roosevelt

The niece of Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt's distant cousin/spouse ; she traveled countless miles with Franklin or on his behalf in all his campaigns, considering herself "his legs"; she would join the Women's Trade Union League and the League of Women Voters

Brain Trust

Small group of reform-minded intellectuals; they were predominantly youngish college professors who, as a kind of kitchen cabinet, later authored much of the New Deal legislation

New Deal

A series of programs and projects instituted during the Great Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that aimed to restore prosperity to Americans (aimed at three R's - relief, recovery, and reform)

Hundred Days (March 9-June 16, 1933)

Days in which members hastily cranked out an unprecedented basketful of remedial legislation (some of it derived from earlier progressivism, but these new measures sought to cope with a desperate situation)

Tennessee Valley Authority

Oversee the construction of dams to control flooding, improve navigation, and create cheap electric power in the Tennessee Valley basin

Emergency Banking Relief Act of 1933

Invested the president with the power to regulate banking transactions and foreign exchange and to reopen solvent banks

Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act

Created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insured individual deposits up to $5000 (later raised)

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

This law provided employment in fresh-air government camps for about 3 million uninformed young men, many of whom might otherwise have been driven by desperation into criminal habits

Federal Emergency Relief Act

The act established the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, a grant-making agency authorized to distribute federal aid to the states for relief

Harry L Hopkins

A wire-thin, chain smoking New York social worker who had earlier won Roosevelt's friendship and who became one of his most influential advisers, he led the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and Works Progress Administration

Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)

Made available millions of dollars to help farmers meet their mortgages

Home Owners' loan Corporation (HOLC)

Designed to refinance mortgages on non farm homes, it ultimately assisted about a million badly pinched households

Civil Works Administration (CWA)

Designed to provide purely temporary jobs during the cruel winter emergency; tens of thousands of jobless were employed at leaf raking and other make-work tasks, which were dubbed "boondoggling"

Charles Coughlin

A Catholic priest in Michigan; he began broadcasting in 1930, preaching the slogan "Social Justice." His anti-New Deal harangues reached some 40 million fans and finally became so anti-Semitic, fascisti, and demagogic that he was silenced in 1942 by his eccesiastical superiors

Dr. Francis E. Townsend

A retired California physician who promised everyone over sixty years of age $200 a month

Senator Huey P

Was said to have more brass than a government mule. He used his abundant rabble-rousing talents to publicize his "Share Our Wealth" program , which promised to make "every Man a King" (was assassinated in 1935)

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

Sought employment on useful projects. Launched under the supervision of the ailing but energetic Hopkins, this remarkable agency ultimately spent about $11 billion on thousands of public buildings, bridges, and hard-surfaced roads

John Steinbeck

Nobel Prize novelist; he wrote The Grapes of Wrath

Federal Art Project

Hired artists to create poster and murals-many still adorning post office walls

Frances Perkins

Secretary of Labor, she burst through the gender barrier when she became America's first woman cabinet member

Mary McLeod Bethune

Director of the Office of Minority Affairs in the National Youth Administration, she served as the highest-ranking African American in the Roosevelt administration

Ruth Benedict

Carried on the work of her mentor, Franz Boas, by developing the "culture and personality movement" in the 1930s and 1940s. Her landmark work, Patterns of Culture, established the study of cultures as collective personalities

Margaret Mead

She drew from her own scholarly studies of adolescence among Pacific island people to advance bold new ideas about sexuality, gender roles, and intergenerational relationships.With thirty-four books and curatorship at the American Museum of natural History in New York City, she helped popularize cultural anthropology and achieved a celebrity status rare among social scientists

Pearl S Buck

She introduced American readers to Chinese peasant society. Her best-selling novel, The Good Earth, earned her the Nobel Prize for literature in 1938, making her the third American (after Sinclair Lewis and Euguene O'Neill) to win the award

National Recovery Administration (NRA)

This ingenious scheme was by far the most complex and far-reaching effort by the New Dealers to combine immediate relief with long-range recovery and reform. Triple-barreled, it was designed to assist industry, labor, and the unemployed

Schenter Decision

Learned justices unanimously held that Congress could not "delegate legislative powers" to the executive. They further declared that congressional control of interstate commerce could not properly apply to a local fowl business, like that of the Schechter brothers in Brooklyn, New York

Public Works Administration (PWA)

Intended both for industrial recovery and unemployment relief; long-range recovery was the primary purpose of the new agency, and in time over 4$ billion was spent on some thirty-four thousand projects, which included public buildings, highways, and parkways

Harold L Ickes

A free-swinging former bull mooser, he was the secretary of the interior under Franklin Roosevelt

Twenty-First Amendment

Officially repealed Prohibition late in 1933

Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)

Through "artificial scarcity: this agency was to establish "parity prices" for basic commodities "Parity" was the price set for a product that gave it the same real value, in purchasing power, that it had enjoyed from the period from 1909 to 1914

The Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936

A United States federal law that allowed the government to pay farmers to reduce production so as to conserve soil and prevent erosion

The Second Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938

An Act to provide for the conservation of national soil resources and to provide an adequate and balanced flow of agricultural commodities in interstate and domestic commerce and for other purposes.

Dust Bowl

Millions of tons of powdery topsoil torn from devastated homesteads blotted the sun from the sky from eastern Colorado tro western Missouri

Resettlement Administration

Administration charged with the task of removing near-farmless farmers to better land

John Collier

Commissioner of Indian Affairs, he ardently sought to reserve the forced assimilation policies in place since the Dawes Act of 1887

Indian Reorganization Act of 1934

Sought to restore Indian autonomy, revive tribes' interest in their identity and culture, preserve native crafts and traditions, and stop the loss of Indian lands

"Truth in Securities Act" (Federal Securities Act)

Required promoters to provide potential investors with independently audited information regarding the soundness of their stocks and bonds

Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC)

A U.S. government oversight agency responsible for regulating the securities markets and protecting investors

Samuel Insull

A Chicagoan who's multibillion dollar financial empire crashed

Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935

A US federal law giving the Securities and Exchange Commission authority to regulate, license, and break up electric utility holding companies

Federal Housing Administration (FHA)

Primary function was to insure home mortgage loans made by banks and other private lenders, thereby encouraging them to make more loans to prospective home buyers

United States Housing Authority (USHA)

An Agency designed to lend money to states or communities for low-cost construction

Social Security Act of 1935

Provided for federal-state unemployment insurance. To provide security for old age, specified categories of retired workers were to receive regular payments from Washington. These payments ranged from $10 to $85 a month and were financed by a payroll tx on both employers and employees

Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act of 1935)

This trail blazing law, considered the Magna Carta of American abor, created a powerful new National Labor Relations Board to protect the right of workers to engage in self organization and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choice

John L Lewis

Bos of the United Mine Workers. He succeeded in forming the committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) within the ranks of the skilled-craft American Federation of Labor

Memorial Day Massacre (1937)

In a bloody fracas, police fired upon pickets and workers, leaving the area strewn with several score dead and wounded

Fair Labor Standards Act (Wage and Hours Bill)

It required industries involved in interstate commerce to adhere to minimum-wage and maximum-hour standards

Congress of Industrial Organizations (The New CIO)

Formal reconstitution of the Committee for Industrial Organization, this would claim about 4 million members in its constituent unions, including some 200,000 blacks

Alfred M Landon

Governor of Kansas, he was chosen as the Republican candidate in the presidential campaign of 1936 (He wasn't a strong candidate, losing electoral count 523 to 8; a newspaper would quip "If (name) had given one more Speech, Roosevelt would have carried Canada, too")

Court-Packing Plan

Proposed to reorganize the federal judiciary by adding a new justice each time a justice reached age 70 and failed to retire

Keynesianism

The use of government spending and fiscal policy to "prime the pump" of the economy and encourage consumer spreading-became the new economic orthodoxy and remained so for decades

John Maynard Keynes

A British economist during the first half of the 20th century best known for his revolutionary theories on the causes of unemployment and recession, which came to be known as Keynesian economics

Reorganization Act of 1939

Created the Executive Office of the President, giving the chief executive limited but substantial power to structure his office and hire staff

Hatch Act of 1939

Prohibited federal administrative officials, except the highest policy making officers, from activel political campaigning and soliciting

Will Rogers

Poet Lariat of the era, he remarked that if Roosevelt were to burn down the Capitol, people would say, "wll, we at least got a fire started, anyhow."