Apush unit 10

Chapters 31-32

Red Scare (1919-1920) –The real if unsubstantiated fear of potential Communist subversion in the U.S. in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution.  A series of bombings in 1920 including Mitchell Palmer’s house and Wall Street seem to substantiate these fears. The response known as the Red Scare led to restrictive immigration policies in the 1920s. 

Sacco & Vanzetti –The notorious case where it is alleged a miscarriage of justice occurred when the two suspects in a double murder where convicted.  The judge and jury were overtly racist and biased against the suspects.  The accused were given the death penalty and died by electric chair in 1927. In 1961, a ballistics test verified that the gun Sacco was carrying was the murder weapon.

Ku Klux Klan (reemergence in the 1920s)

Emergency Quota Act of 1921-The first immigration Act of the decade with national quotas at < 3% of the 1910 levels.

Immigration Act of 1924 (National Origins Act) –The second immigration act of the decade with national quotas at < 2% of the 1890 volume and entirely bans East Asians.

Prohibition (18^th Amendment) -The “Noble Experiment” which prohibited the manufacture, sale and consumption of alcohol for beverage purposes. While some notable gains are made according to the WCTU’s original goals, the law was ultimately repealed by 1933 in part due to the widespread flaunting of the law. 

Scopes Trial –The Dayton, TN evolution case that attracted national attention. Biology teacher John Scopes was convicted and fined for teaching evolutionary theory in violation of state law.  The cross-examination between the defense attorney and the prosecutor coupled with the intense nationwide media coverage embarrassed the Biblical literalist point of view.

Modernism – A difficult to define artistic or cultural response to the advent of modernity.  Core values included a rejection of Victorian belief in absolute truth in a stable, predictable world instead focusing on change, randomness, uncertainty and fragmentation emphasizing a discontinuity with the past.   

Impact of the automobile:  economic, social –Because of the assembly line and the efficiency of the process cars were built so quickly that the prices were substantially reduced. It became normal for most family units to own a car.  Geographic mobility increased dramatically.  Children everywhere were only a school bus trip away from attending school which normalized a K-12 education.  Other industries such as rubber, steel, glass and petroleum thrive due to the rise of the automobile.  Garages change the architecture of homes built in the 1920s.

Charles Lindbergh -One of the early celebrity sensations.  He was the first pilot to fly a plane across the Atlantic alone in May, 1927.

Impact of radio & movies –Homogenization of culture and standardization of American English accents occurs.  The first “talkie” is released in 1927.  

“Flappers” & social changes of the 1920s         –A cultural style for women reflecting their relatively new status in society after attaining the right to vote.  They would wear more revealing clothing, cut their hair short, wear gaudy jewelry and live for a good time.  New social mores including dating habits that challenged Victorian standards, drinking and smoking in public, and driving alone, all things that earlier were considered taboo for women.

Marcus Garvey –The Jamaican-born leader of the United Negro Improvement Association advocating re-settlement of blacks in their African homeland. Garvey helped blacks migrating to Northern cities to have self-confidence and self-reliance.  He was deported in 1927 under the shadow of a mail fraud scandal. 

Culture: literature, music, Harlem Renaissance

A rebirth of Black artistic expression and cultural achievement in the Northern Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem in the 1920s.  Key figures include poet Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, Writer Zora Neale Hurston and Jazz artists Louie Armstrong and Duke Ellington.  Key places include the Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom.

Stock speculation/buying “on margin” –The habit of buying shares of stock by only paying 10% down. The investors would typically gain a large return on investment as long as stock prices continued to go up.  In the event the market goes down it would be/was catastrophic for investors.

Andrew Mellon- The Secretary of the Treasury for 3 different presidential administrations, he kept he reduced the highest federal income tax bracket rates significantly from 66% to about 20% thereby stimulating economic growth among industry and the banking community.

U.S. foreign policy/isolationism -After Warren G. Harding’s 1920 campaign pledge of a return to “normalcy”, the mood shifted from the Treaty of Versailles’ Wilsonian idealism to keep America out of Europe’s entangling and sometimes violent drama. 

Washington Conference (1921) -An arms control agreement hosted by Harding’s White House prompted by the American business community to not have to foot the onerous bill of an ever growing U.S. Navy.  The ratios of total naval tonnage were set on a 5 to 3 to 3 ratio with Britain and the U.S. on 5 and Italy, France and Japan at 3/5 of that tonnage.

Kellogg-Briand pact (1928) –The well intentioned yet very naïve plan to declare war illegal as a means of solving international diplomatic crises. In all, 60 countries sign the pledge brokered by the French and U.S. governments.

Fordney-McCumber Tariff (1922)

Teapot Dome scandal –Secretary of the interior Albert Fall issues a license for an oil drilling friend to drill for oil in the teapot dome area for a substantial bribe.  The area’s oil reserves were for the U.S. Navy.  Once this news hits the press there is a massive corruption scandal that hits the Warren G. Harding administration.  The president dies from a heart attack from the stress caused and Calvin Coolidge becomes president. (1923).  Albert Fall becomes the first cabinet member convicted of a felony.

Farm issues in the 1920s –Because of the previous overproduction of crops that were in greater demand during World War I 

War debts & reparations –The obligations of the Treaty of Versailles that kept the German Government swimming hopelessly in massive amounts of debt.  The failure of the Weimar Democracy and German humiliation means Germany is fertile ground for the Nazi movement in the 1930s.

Dawes Plan (1924) –A U.S. banker’s plan to use American cash payments to help German banks to meet their Treaty of Versailles obligations to Britain and France.  Ironically, this money-merry-go-round is used in payments by Britain and France to the U.S. for obligations to her for contributions in WWI.

Hawley-Smoot Tariff (1930) –An ill-advised, massive increase in the tariff as the solution to America’s deepening depression. Instead this tariff starts a trade war by encouraging European nations to raise their tariffs on American made goods.  Global trade drops 67% between 1930 and 1934 thus deepening the Depression on both sides of the Atlantic.

Stock market crash (1929) –The frenzied panic of selling that sent the market into a tailspin on Black Tuesday, October, 1929.  This was the start of the decade-long Great Depression economic privation of the 1930s.  The market does not regain its 1929 levels until 1954.

The bank failures – The event that truly deepened the Great Depression.  Starting with the collapse of a major Austrian Bank Credit Gestalt, this touches a raw nerve with the financial panic elicited by the stock market collapse in New York. Panicked customers demand immediate withdrawal of all of their funds.  Soon hundreds of American banks are failing every month.  Many people who had their life savings in banks see them wiped out and lose everything.

Bonus Army March 1932 –The 10,000 person march on Washington in 1932 of WWI veterans who wanted immediate payment of the veteran’s bonus promised them by Congress to be paid in 1945. The Depression has caused most of these veterans to be unemployed. The gathering is violently dispersed by Douglass Macarthur and this causes a severe public relations problem for Hoover who is defeated in November by FDR in the presidential election.

“Good Neighbor” policy -A promised change of U.S. government perspective towards Latin America. 

Presidents:

Warren G. Harding –slightly incompetent for the job, his corrupt cabinet member Albert Fall causes him tremendous stress. President Harding dies of a heart attack 3 years into his term.

Calvin Coolidge – “The business of America is business.”  He was very cautious with the American budget and vetoed a bill to help the farmers.

Herbert Hoover –He was perhaps the best prepared man for the presidency ever but suffered the most while president.  He is largely remembered by historians for doing little to nothing to ease the suffering of the Great Depression but in fact, in a departure from his Republican predecessors, did a lot more including creating the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, signing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff into law and sanctioning the construction of Boulder Dam.  He gets bad press by his mishandling the Bonus Army March in 1932 and loses the fall election in a landslide to FDR.

Chapter 33

Franklin D. Roosevelt –The U.S. President from 1933 to 1945. He runs and wins 4 terms breaking the tradition established by George Washington of only 2 terms and before it becomes a Constitutional amendment. He guides the nation through 2 major storms, the Great Depression and WWII. In proposing the various measures of the New Deal, he gives America hope that he is working to end the Depression. This belief is strengthened by his fireside chats where many Americans feel he is speaking straight to them. The President’s critics accuse him of acting like a king by running for 4 consecutive terms and that he did not know what he was doing in trying to “medicate” the Great Depression with a “Try anything approach”.  During World War II FDR’s alliance/friendship with Winston Churchill was significant in defeating the Axis powers.

Causes of the Great Depression – A combination of buying stocks on margin, instability of the banks, overproduction of goods, over extended credit due to purchasing goods on installment plans, the Dust Bowl environmental catastrophe, lack of prosperity’s money put into worker’s wages.

Psychological and social outcomes of the Great Depression -Lower birth rates, lower rates of marriage and a rise in acts of suicide and the divorce rate.

Reconstruction Finance Corporation –Hoover’s major attempt to get the economy back on track.  The government would make loans to businesses where it was hoped they would hire more workers and move the country out of the Depression.  For that time, it was a very far reaching government intervention measure.  Compared to what FDR does later, it was seen only as a tepid measure. The RFC is criticized by some as “welfare capitalism”.

Home Loan Bank Act of 1932. 

New Deal Coalition –A political realignment that took place in 1932 after which the Democratic Party largely holds on to the White House until 1968.  Inner city Americans from Irish, Italian, Jewish and Black heritage combine with the traditional Democratic Party base in the white South to control national politics for the next 35 years. 

New Deal programs –Sometime nicknamed the “alphabet soup” programs, these various government measures go by acronyms.  The general idea is that desperately needed government deficit spending could jolt the country out of the economic recession.  The results are inconclusive since the unemployment problem is not solved until U.S. entry into WWII and the stock market does not reach its 1929 level again until 1954. Only Social Security and the Tennessee Valley Authority programs are still with us today.

The 100 days –Because of large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress and the Democrat FDR in office an unprecedented amount of legislation quickly becomes law between March and June of 1933.

Bank Holiday –the executive decision by FDR to force all banks nationwide to close for a week. At the end of 7 days, only banks with healthy balance sheets could reopen.  About half of all others would remain permanently closed. This single action decisively stops the avalanche of bank failures plaguing the country. It additionally re-established trust between the people and the banking system.

Glass/Steagal Banking Act –legislation early in the New Deal which provided the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) guaranteeing an individuals deposit up to $5,000 thus further eliminating the possibility of depositor’s panic helping to eliminate further bank closures.  Today the FDIC guarantees individual accounts up to $250,000. In order to operate banks must have this guarantee.

Civilian Conservation Corps. –A job program for males aged 18-25 who suffered disproportionately from Depression Era unemployment who were shipped to national parks and rural areas to work on trails and environmental protection.  The workers would send home a large proportion of their income while their room and board was provided for.

Frances Perkins –The first female cabinet member as Secretary of Labor in FDR’s administration.

Dust Bowl –The ecological disaster on the Great Plains that was especially bad in the mid-1930s. It was due to dry farming, (Shallow tilling of dry ground) drought and high winds.   

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck –Labeled the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the Depression” a sobering account of the farmers of Oklahoma during the Great Depression’s ecological disaster known as the Dust Bowl.  The forlorn “Okies” must sell most of their possessions at bargain basement prices and move West to the promise of plentiful fruit picking jobs in California.  Once they get there, the crush of other migrant workers in the same situation permits foremen to offer impossibly low wages which the desperate workers have no choice but to accept.

Court-packing scheme -FDR’s attempt to aggressively appoint justices to the courts who will not declare his New Deal programs unconstitutional after the National Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act had both been declared so.  This scheme intends to simply add six justices to the court who are favorable to FDR’s New Deal since tradition rather than Constitutional requirement keeps the number of justices at 9.  The pushback against FDR, even from his own party is tremendous.  To his critics, this move is an attempt by the executive branch to unduly influence the judicial branch and therefore is wrongly tampering with the carefully calibrated separation of powers. 

Huey Long –the dynamic Depression-era governor turned senator of Louisiana who advocated for considerably more intervention from the Federal Government to ameliorate poverty. Specifically, everyone should automatically receive $5,000 at the expense of the wealthy.  He is assassinated on the steps of the Louisiana state capitol at Baton Rouge in 1935.

John Maynard Keynes/deficit spending –The British economist who postulated that there are only three possible groupings in society that could willfully take action to put an end to the Great Depression.  The first one is that people could decidedly spend more and this would get the economy rolling again. The second is that businesses could simply hire more to achieve the same objective.  The third is that the government could exercise deficit spending and use this money to “prime the pump” to get the economic engine moving again.  Since the first two respond cautiously to supply and demand, only the government through willful action could be decisive to solve the problem by deficit spending.

Wagner Act (1935) –A federal law encouraging unionization and the opportunities for workers to collectively bargain nationwide with representatives of their choice. Considered labor’s Magna Carta.

Recession of 1937 –Known as the “Roosevelt Recession”, unemployment spikes back up to 19% frustrating confidence that FDR’s “alphabet soup” measures are working.

London Economic Conference –The 1934 meeting of major nations gathering with the goal of solving the Great Depression.  The U.S. delegation packs up and leaves early, deepening U.S. isolationism.