Great Depression & New Deal

• Agricultural Marketing Act

  • Even before the stock market crash, Hoover tried to set up a system to help struggling farmers

    • Established government program to maintain prices

    • Federally sponsored Farm Board was supposed to make loans

  • Smoot-Hawley act also was supposed to help farmers by raising agricultural tariffs

  • These two programs ultimately did not help farmers much, with the tariff in reality doing the opposite, stifling exports

• Black Tuesday

  • Markets rose rapidly, as a speculative fever grew more intense, and brokerage firms offered easy credit

  • Rising market collapsed, and on October 21 and 23 there were major drops in the stock market

    • Companies tried to buy up shares to restore public confidence

  • On October 29 all efforts to save the market failed, millions of shares of stock sold, industrial index dropped 43 points, and stocks in many companies became worthless

• Bonus Army

  • In 1924, congress approved a payment of $1,000 to WW1 veterans, to be paid in 1945

    • Because of the great depression veterans were struggling and wanted the stipend to be paid early, Hoover rejected their appeal

  • In June 1932, 20,000+ veterans marched to DC, set up camps around the city and refused to lose until Congress approved the bonus

  • In mid July hoover ordered police to clear out the protestors from abandoned buildings, got into some conflict with police and two veterans died

  • General Douglas MacArthur, Dwight. D. Eisenhower, and George S. Patton led a attack on the protestors, chasing them down Pennsylvania Avenue with infantry regiments and tanks

    • Burnt down their tent city and injured marchers

• Cliffard Odets

  • Playwright who demonstrated the appeal for political radicalism in his play “Waiting for Lefty”

• Dust Bowl

  • In addition to other struggles for farmers involved with the Great Depression, they also dealt with a major ecological disaster, one of the worst droughts in the history of the nation

    • Area from Texas to the Dakotas

  • High heat, and a decline in rainfall turned areas that used to be fertile farmland into deserts, with dust storms and grasshoppers destroying everything in the area

• Erskine Caldwell

  • Wrote “Tobacco Road” (1932), which was an exposé of southern poverty and later became a long-running broadway play

• Frank Capra

  • Hollywood director, provided subtle social messaging in some of his films

    • “Mr. Deeds goes to town”, “Meet John Doe”, “Mr. Smith goes to Washington”

  • Celebrated virtues of the small town and decency of common people, contrasting to “corrupt values” of the city and urban rich

  • Capra also directed escapist films, allowing people to get caught up in the film and ignore their issues

    • “It Happened One Night”

• Hindenburg

  • Radio provided people with more direct connection to public events

    • Hindenburg crash evoked large reaction partly because of live radio account and the broadcaster’s immense emotion

    • Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” was broadcast over radio causing panic from people who thought the fictional events he was describing were real

• Hoovervilles

  • Many Americans blamed Hoover personally for the Great Depression, and started calling the shack towns where unemployed people lived, “Hoovervilles”

• John Dos Passos

  • Writer whose trilogy “U.S.A.” (1930-1936) attacked modern capitalism outright

• John Steinbeck

  • Novelist, books portrayed trials of workers and migrants in California

• Life Magazine

  • While there was a lot of challenging and controversial literature, the most popular work was still escapist and romantic

  • Life magazine began publishing in 1936, and became one of the most successful magazines in US history, with one of the largest readerships of any US publication

  • Devoted some attention to politics and social issues, but mostly famous for it’s stunning photos of sports, landscapes, and impressive public projects

• “Okies”

  • Even through disastrous conditions, farmers supply was still higher than demand, as growers made little profit

  • In the south, farmers who lost their land wandered from town to town looking for jobs or handouts

  • Hundreds of thousands of families from Oklahoma (known as Okies) traveled to states like California, working as agricultural laborers

• Orson Welles

  • Radio host, broadcasted war of the worlds, many people thought the fictional events he described were real and it caused panic

• Popular Front

  • Broad coalition of “anti-fascist” groups on the left, most notably the American Communist Party

    • Harsh critics of American capitalism, believed it corrupted the government

  • Instructed by the soviet union to soften views towards FDR in 1935, as Stalin viewed him as a potential ally for WW1, began to support New Deal and even some anti-communist labor leaders

  • Greatly strengtehned communist influence in America, mobilized writers and artists, through a pattern of social criticism, even if those people weren’t associated with communism

  • For some, popular front helped them escape the lonely stance of alienation and detatchment from the 1920s, issues like the spanish civil war gave them purpose

    • Spanish civil war was Francisco Franco (Fascist supported by Hitler) vs the existing republican government

    • 3,000+ young americans traveled to Spain as a part of the Abraham Lincoln brigade, fought against Franco

      • Gave them purpose in life and made them feel like they were a part of a brotherhood

    • Communist party was also involved with marches for the unemployed, and union organizations

  • Party was under the close supervision and control of the Soviet Union, not as open and patriotic as it seemed, as when Stalin signed a nonagression pact with the Nazis, he asked the American Communist Party to abandon the Popular Front and go back to criticizing American Liberals, which they did. 

  • Anti-Radicalism was a popular force, government officials investigated communist influence and people tried to drive communists away from their area

    • Still, it was a time where being on the left was far more acceptable, as there was a widening of political views, especially represented in art, like Pare Lorentz’ social commentary films

• Southern Tenant Farmers Union (Connected to Popular Front) 

  • Socialist Party of America, under leadership of Norman Thomas, blamed capitalism for the economic crisis, trying to garner support for their own cause

  • Tried to mobilize the poor through Southern Tenant Farmers Union, aimed to create biracial coalition of farmers to demand economic reform, but did not succeed

• Reconstruction Finance Corporation

  • Hoover supported a series of measures to keep banks afloat, and protect homeowners from foreclosures, passed a bill in Jan 1932 establishing RFC

    • Provided federal loans to troubled banks, railroads, and other businesses

    • Also made funds available to local governments for public works projects

  • Large scale organization, $1.5 billion in budget for public works alone

  • Never made a real impact, as Hoover gave most of the money to large scale banks who didn’t need it as badly, and only funded public works projects which would pay for themselves

    • Most of the budget went unused

• Richard Wright

  • African-American novelist, exposed plight of residents in urban ghettoes in his novel “Native son”

• Scottsboro Case (and general life for African-Americans in the great depression)

  • As Great Depression began, over half of African-Americans still lived in the south, drop in crop prices decimated their livelihoods, some moved to southern cities but jobs were taken by unemployed whites 

    • Unemployed people drove black people from their jobs, believing that white people should have priority in employment

    • African-Americans migrated to the north

  • In March 1931, nine African-American teenagers were taken off a freight train and arrested for vagrancy and disorder, two white women riding the train then accused them of SA, despite minimal evidence it really happened

    • The nine men were arrested and sentenced to death, but the Supreme Court overturned it

    • NAACP and ILD (assosciated with communist party) came to the teeangers defense, they were never acquitted but they eventually got their freedom through dropped charges, early parole, and for one of them, escape

  • NAACP 

    • Began to work to get African-Americans a positon within the labor movement, breaking down barriers in labor unions and supporting formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations

      • Quite successful, many African-Americans were able to join unions

• Soap Operas

  • Radio programs directed towards women alone at the home during the day, called soap operas because Soap companies advertised a lot during the program (company’s main audience overlapped with the programs audience)

• Tariff Act of 1930

"bank holiday"

broker state

Charles E. Coughlin

Court-packing plan

Eleanor Roosevelt

Federal Writers' Project

Frances Perkins

Francis E. Townsend

Glass-Steagall Act

Harry Hopkins

Huey Long

John Collier

John L. Lewis

Marian Anderson

National Recovery Administration (NRA)

Schechter brothers case

Second New Deal

sit-down strike