Crash Course
October 29, 1929 - the day the stock market collapsed and roughly 16 million shares were dumped, wiping out billions in value.
Black Tuesday
The mocking name Americans gave the shantytowns of tents, packing crates, and scrap wood that appeared on the edges of cities.
Hoovervilles
The nickname for the southern Great Plains, where years of drought and plowed-up prairie sod let windstorms carry the topsoil away.
The Dust Bowl
The name for the opening stretch of FDR's presidency in 1933, when Congress passed 15 major pieces of legislation in rapid succession.
The Hundred Days
The 1935 law that created old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, and aid for people with disabilities and dependent children.
The Social Security Act
Elected in 1932 on a promise of a "new deal for the American people," he reassured the country by radio and won four terms.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The New Deal permanently expanded what Americans expect the federal government to do. Name three New Deal agencies or programs that are still operating today, and state what each one does.
Any three of the following
Paying only a small share of a stock's price up front and borrowing the rest from a broker, with the stock itself as collateral.
Buying on margin
Hoover's core belief that churches, charities, and local communities - not the federal government - should handle direct relief to the poor.
Volunteerism (rugged individualism)
Charities and cities set these up so the unemployed could get a free meal. Long lines outside them became one of the era's defining images.
Soup kitchens and breadlines
FDR's first act in office: he shut every bank in the country for four days so federal examiners could inspect them and only sound banks could reopen.
The bank holiday
The largest New Deal jobs program. It built roads, schools, bridges, and airports, and it also put artists, writers, actors, and musicians on the federal payroll.
The Works Progress Administration (WPA)
The First Lady who traveled constantly as her husband's eyes and ears, wrote a daily newspaper column, and pressed the administration on civil rights.
Eleanor Roosevelt
A stock market crash by itself does not cause a ten-year depression. Name three underlying weaknesses in the 1920s American economy that turned the crash of 1929 into the Great Depression.
Any three of the following -
Buying a radio, a car, or a refrigerator now and paying for it in monthly chunks. It propped up 1920s consumer spending and buried families in debt.
Installment buying (buying on credit)
Roughly 15,000 World War I veterans camped in Washington in the summer of 1932, demanding early payment of the bonus Congress had promised them.
The Bonus Army (Bonus Expeditionary Force)
At the depth of the Depression in 1933, roughly this share of American workers had no job.
About 25 percent (one in four)
This agency hired young unmarried men to plant trees, fight fires, build trails, and develop parks. Most of their pay was sent straight home to their families.
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
This 1935 law guaranteed workers the right to form unions and bargain collectively, and it set up a board to investigate unfair labor practices.
The Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act)
His 1939 novel followed the Joad family from a foreclosed Oklahoma farm to the migrant camps of California.
John Steinbeck
Hoover and Roosevelt both put federal money into a collapsing economy. Explain the single biggest difference in where that money went, and give one program from each president to prove it.
Hoover sent federal money to institutions at the top - banks, railroads, and large businesses - through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, expecting the benefits to filter down to workers. He opposed direct federal relief to individuals. Roosevelt sent federal money directly to individuals through jobs and relief programs such as the CCC, the WPA, or Social Security.
Factories and farms churning out more goods than Americans could afford to buy. Inventories piled up, then layoffs followed.
Overproduction
Created in 1932, this agency loaned federal money to banks, insurance companies, and railroads on the theory that the benefits would filter down to workers.
The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
The label, often used as an insult, for Plains families who loaded up their cars and headed to California looking for farm work.
Okies
Created by the Glass-Steagall Act, this agency insured deposits so that savers would not lose their money if their bank failed.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
This 1938 law set a federal minimum wage, capped the standard workweek, and banned most child labor.
The Fair Labor Standards Act
The general who led troops, tanks, and tear gas against the Bonus Marchers and burned their camp in July 1932.
Douglas MacArthur
The New Deal did not reach everyone equally. Identify two groups of Americans who received little or no benefit from New Deal programs, and explain why each was left out.
Any two of the following -
This 1930 law pushed import taxes to record highs. Other nations retaliated with tariffs of their own and world trade collapsed.
The Hawley-Smoot Tariff
Hoover's massive public works project on the Colorado River, begun in 1930 and the largest dam in the world when it was finished.
Boulder Dam (later renamed Hoover Dam)
April 14, 1935 - the worst dust storm of the decade, a black wall of soil that turned afternoon into night across the Plains.
Black Sunday
This agency paid farmers to cut back production of crops and livestock, on the theory that scarcity would drive prices back up.
The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)
FDR's 1937 proposal to add as many as six new justices to the Supreme Court. It failed and cost him support inside his own party.
The court-packing plan
The Louisiana senator whose "Share Our Wealth" plan promised every family $5,000 by taxing the fortunes of the rich. He was assassinated in 1935.
Huey Long
This institution raised interest rates and tightened the money supply as the economy fell, choking off credit when the country needed it most.
The Federal Reserve
Before the RFC, Hoover pressured the nation's bankers to form this voluntary private lending group to rescue failing banks. It flopped, because healthy banks refused to risk their own money.
The National Credit Corporation
During the 1930s, federal and local officials pressured and deported large numbers of people of Mexican descent, including many who were U.S. citizens by birth.
Mexican Repatriation
This agency built a chain of dams across seven states to control flooding and deliver cheap electricity to one of the poorest regions in the country.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
This 1935 Supreme Court case struck down the National Recovery Administration, ruling that Congress had handed away too much of its lawmaking power.
Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States
Founder of the National Council of Negro Women and the leading voice of FDR's informal "Black Cabinet," she advised the administration on the concerns of African Americans.
Mary McLeod Bethune