Exam Notes

Class Preparation Notes

Readings

  • Unemployment chart.
  • Huey Long material.

Geography Quiz

  • Capitals of states.
  • Mapping skills.
  • Solve it any way you can: alternate routes are acceptable.
  • The importance of understanding basic US geography.
  • Water in Florida may taste weird or give you a stomachache.
  • Kansas Capital: Topeka
  • Alabama Capital: Montgomery
  • Illinois Capital: Springfield
  • Delaware is north of Maryland; you have to cross over the bridge to get into Maryland.
  • Knowing more than 95% of Americans about their own country.

Announcements

  • Study guide for the next test on Thursday.
  • Geography completion: Come early on Tuesday to finish.
  • Fieldwork: Email with questions, historical society visits.

Field Work

  • Local historical societies.
  • Manchester Historical Society.
  • Lutz Children's Museum: Native American artifacts.
  • Limited hours: Call, don't email.
  • Attitude of Historical Societies' Staff: They are old; call them. If you tell them, "I can't get there until 6 PM", they'll probably stick around for it.
  • Civil War Museum in Vernon: Open weekends, free admission, email is okay.
  • Focus on what you learned, flea market approach.
  • Nathan Hale Homestead.

State Knowledge in the US

  • Americans' surprising ignorance of their own country.
  • Europeans often know more about the US
  • Make money at bars: ask people their states' geography knowledge after they had two or three drinks.

Field Work Write-up

  • Hand in with attendance.
  • Easy write-up unless you're messing something up.
  • Note what you learned.

Final Exam Information

  • Test on Thursday, hand in the next Thursday during finals week.
  • Time slot: around the usual class time.
  • Content: Same format as other tests, not cumulative (just a third test).

Essay Themes

  • 1920s: Roaring Twenties, Lost Generation, Harlem Renaissance.
  • The Depression and Right Radicals: Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler.
  • Possibly: World War I and aftermath (Versailles treaties) or lead-up to World War II.

Unemployment

  • Current unemployment: around 5% (easy to find a job).
  • 1920: 5.2% unemployment.
  • 1925: 3.2% unemployment (stores hiring).
  • Great Depression:
    • 1933: Officially 25% unemployment, but many historians believe it was closer to 38% (1 in 3 out of work).
    • PhDs working at Dunkin' Donuts.
    • Steelworkers doing hamburgers at McDonald's for $3.50/hour.
  • 1941 (gearing up for war): 10% unemployment (likely higher).

Challenges to the System

  • During the 1930s that mirror Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler.
  • Francis Townsend:
    • Focus on old folks.
    • No social aid programs at the start of the Depression.
    • Old people with no money = no food.
    • 1936: Social Security idea.
    • Social Security: designed to give old people something to live on.
    • Classic example: old folks eating dog food to survive.

Thompson's Social Security Plan

  • 200200 a month (approximately 4,0004,000 a month today).
    • Cover rent/mortgage, food, etc.
  • Election year, FDR responds.

FDR's Response

  • Social Security program (steals Townsend's idea):
    • 6565 a month (approximately 1,3001,300 a month today).
      • Pay rent or a small mortgage.
  • Takes wind out of someone's sails.
  • Prevents radical solutions.

Father Coughlin

  • Radio preacher.
  • Famous antisemite.
  • Early sermons: good to your neighbors, don't lie, cheat, steal.
  • Around 1935-36: Jewish conspiracy to control the world, FDR part of the conspiracy.
  • Rally at Madison Square Garden: Roosevelt and the worldwide jury.
  • American Nazi Party folks.
  • Kicked off the radio after 1938-39.
  • He passed on 1979.
  • Comparison to Billy Graham, Jimmy Swaggart.

Parallels to European Dictators

  • People worried: Townsend and Coughlin are similar to radicalism worldwide.
  • New way of transmitting information via radio.
  • Powerful speakers.

Huey Long

  • Democrat opposing FDR's approach to the Depression.
  • Program: Share the Wealth.
  • Response to FDR's borrowings.
Share the Wealth:
  • Every family owns a homestead worth at least 1/3 of the average family wealth (around 16,00016,000 at the time, or 320,000320,000 today).
  • No family should own over 300 times the average wealth (around 5,000,0005,000,000, or 100,000,000100,000,000 today).
    • Taxed out of existence.
  • Every family gets at least 1/3 of the average family income (minimum 2,000−2,5002,000-2,500).
  • Limit of $1 million income after ordinary taxes.
    * Tax people over a million dollars and tax it a %.
  • Old-age pensions from taxes on excess fortunes. * Not by taxing the old people or there children.
    • Undercuts Francis Townsend.
  • Care for veterans, including cash payment of the soldiers' bonus.
  • Free education for every youth, regardless of parents' financial means.
    * Free higher education should be available.

First Red Scare

  • Not so much after the 1920s.
  • Strangely enough, people are much more realistically scared of having a communist government.
  • 1930s: US had the largest communist party in the world.
  • Ended on 08/23/1939 when The United States had the largest communist party in the world., so they were all like, oh, Hitler's a nice guy, you know, and then everyone kind of began to have problems with that.. Signing of the nonaggression pact ended it.

Election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1932)

  • Marks entry into the modern world.
  • First time African Americans left the Republican Party in large numbers because, it's really not because of him. It's because of his wife who was actually truly into civil rights. He was lukewarm on the whole question, basically..

Roosevelt's Terms

  • From 1933-1945 is too long of an administration.
  • Elected for a fourth term (died in April).
  • Should have been 1933-1949.
  • The Supreme Court said that they were limiting to being the President for four terms.
  • He was criticized for everything.
  • A lot of what he did during the New Deal was not gonna be popular.
  • A lot of people accused him of being a socialist, he's going to have a lot of challenges to what he does.

Roosevelt's Personality

  • Full of energy.
  • Was a great leader.
  • The President's actions made people feel that they could solve the depression.

First Inaugural Speech

  • "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
  • Positive attitude could solve the Depression.

Propaganda and Media

  • Master of Propaganda and Media.
  • Radio skills.
  • Fireside chats (Sundays): His life, his stamp collection, assistant secretary of the navy, planting trees, homey stuff.

Layman

  • Spoke very much like a Layman.
  • From wealthiest families.
  • Would make the people cocktails and drink with them.

Public Speaking

  • One of the things I remember in 2016 when Donald Trump ran for president, the first thing everyone said was, my god. The guy can barely speak in public.
    • He doesn't speak like that one of the guys who said, never use words of more than two syllables to the American people. They will distrust you, and they will think you're too educated.

Inaugural Date Changes

  • Give him two months to move on stuff.
    Inaugural moved from March to January.
  • Based on a crisis.

Initial Actions

  • Runs of banks, people trying to get their money out.
    • No No legal recourse if they lost their money.
  • Declares a bank holiday (closes every bank in the US for the remainder of the week)..

Sunday Closure

  • Religious laws.

New Deal

  • Massive expansion of government activity into areas not seen before to combat economic problems.

Alphabet Soup Agencies

TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) - 1933
  • Tennessee River, Western North Carolina, Northern Georgia, and Alabama.
    *Dam up a lot of these rivers at strategic points to provide power and electricity to people in rural areas.
    *Make dams and electrical power stations.
    My grandmother is a Scott's Irish Presbyterian, and I realized that sounds bad, but she's my grandmother so I can say it. That's pure hillbilly folks. Scott's Irish Presbyterians, that's exactly what they are. She's some small coal mining town. And when you walked in her front door, as a Presbyterian, there's always something you get, which is on one side of the door, you get a portrait of Jesus with a burning heart.
    Then on the other one was Franklin Roosevelt. And I was a little kid, never have occurred to me, but when I was older, I I was like, hey, grandma, what's the deal with you know, the Jesus thing, But what's the deal with FDR? And she said, oh, mister Roosevelt gave us electricity.**
    National electric companies do not exist.
    Electricity mainly in urban areas not rural.
    Glenn, I was gonna also mention at this time, like, fuel was cheap enough that if you were wealthy, you could have your own generator.*
    ***You just run that, you know, another stop.
CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) - 1933 Program will end by 1942)Program will end by 1942**

Work relief was preferred over public assistance like welfare because it maintained self respect, reinforced the work ethic, and kept skills sharp. And what this did was essentially hired boys to men somewhere, you know, in that area, right? So basically 15 to 17 year olds. And what they were gonna do is natural projects.
*Young men are given uniform
*They live at the barracks with three square meals a day.
Pay per week and the money will send almost all of it home to your parents. You guys understand? So that basically, instead of you costing your parents money because of the food you're eating, you're not providing money for them and they can basically do what they want with it.
It went on until The United States enters World War two.
One thing he did a lot in his the state of Hyde Park was plant trees, and he always liked this idea. We need conservation.
*4,000,000 young men

Famous CCC Projects: Built Roads

Wickham Park, Sleeping Giant, Macedonia Brooks State Park, State Parks.
*Youguys ever been to state parks lately? Not that you saw. Garbage cans have disappeared from state parks because they're not picking them up anymore.
LaGuardia Airport
Major investment in people to be able to go out and do the work of the country.

WPA (Works Progress Administration/Works Project Administration) - 1935-1943

They would often work with the CCC. If you're really interested in this, I don't know what there is in Manchester. But if you're where where I live out in Torrington in the post office, there are murals that are WPA. The the WPA did all kinds of artistic things, and that's really what it was for, hiring people who are artistic in nature to make projects.
*WPA hires Photographer's

  • Bridgeport the Bridgeport Symphony Orchestra
    *Merritt Parkway, LaGuardia Airport was also a WPA project.
    Highway: People want to get down there in a few hours so it works pretty well. With the Merritt Parkway, you get down there in a few hours.

Famous projects:

  • WPA projects was not very popular to many people
    WPA we poke along, we putter along, we piddle around, whistle, piss, and argue. WPA, all of them. RightWhat about Mickey Mouse Steamboat Willie?" Mickey Mouse came out in 1929***.