The Great Depression And The New Deal

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Stock Market Crash 1929

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During the 1920s, the U.S. stock market underwent rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929, after a period of wild speculation. By then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value.
Stock prices began to decline in September 1929. On October 24 = Black Thursday; October 28 = Black Monday; October 29 = Black. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression.

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Great Depression (1929-1939)

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Deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world up to that time.

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John Maynard Keynes

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English economist.
Authored Economic Consequences of Peace, predicted punitive treatment of Germany post-WWI would lead to world-wide economic collapse.
Gained reputation as world's foremost economist by advocating large-scale government economic planning to keep unemployment low and markets healthy.
Today, all major capitalist nations adhere to key principles of Keynesian economics.
He died in 1946.

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New Deal

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When President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, he acted swiftly to try and stabilize the economy and provide jobs and relief to those who were suffering. First 100 days.Over the next eight years, the government instituted a series of experimental projects and programs, known collectively as the New Deal, that aimed to restore some measure of dignity and prosperity to many Americans. Permanently changed the federal government's relationship to the U.S. populace.

Post stock market crash speculators lost their shirts; banks failed; the nation’s money supply diminished; and companies went bankrupt and began to fire their workers in droves. President Herbert Hoover urged patience and self-reliance since thought just "a passing incident in our national lives" that it wasn't the federal government's job to try and resolve. By 1932, one of the bleakest

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Schechter Brothers Poultry Corp. v. United States

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In the midst of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt worked with the Democratic Congress to enact several sweeping economic reform bills, known as the New Deal. In 1935, in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a central piece of this New Deal legislation. In reviewing the conviction of a poultry company for breaking the Live Poultry Code, the Court held that the code violated the Constitution's separation of powers because it was written by agents of the president with no genuine congressional direction. The Court also held that much of the code exceeded the powers of Congress because the activities it policed were beyond what Congress could constitutionally regulate.

Ties to NIRA.

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Scottsboro Case

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During the 1930s, much of the world's attention was riveted on the "Scottsboro Boys," nine black youths falsely charged with raping two white women in Alabama. This case, more than any other event in the South during the 1930s, revealed the barbarous treatment of blacks.

The all-white jury convicted the nine, and all but the youngest, who was 12 years old, were sentenced to death.

In 1932 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions (Powell v. Alabama) on the grounds that the defendants had not received adequate legal counsel in a capital case. The state of Alabama then retried one of the accused, Haywood Patterson, and once again convicted him. But the trial judge, James Horton, set aside the verdict on the grounds that he did not believe the defendant committed the crime. That decision caused him to be defeated in the next election. The state then retried Clarence Norris to see if the Supreme Court would again intervene. Norris was sentenced to death, but in 1935 decision

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Robert Moses

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(December 18, 1888 – July 29, 1981) Urban Planner, was the "master builder" of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, Rockland County, and Westchester County, New York. built 13 bridges, 416 miles of parkways, 658 playgrounds, and 150,000 housing units, spending $150 billion in today’s dollars” across the City of New York.

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The Grapes of Wrath

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The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. For it he won the annual National Book Award[1] and Pulitzer Prize for novels and it was cited prominently when he won the Nobel Prize in 1962. About migration of people from Oklahoma to California due to Dust Bowl (drought, winds and previous over-farming led to erosion top soil).

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/grapesofwrath/context.html

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NIRA

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The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) was a law passed by the United States Congress in 1933 to authorize the President to regulate industry in an attempt to raise prices after severe deflation and stimulate economic recovery. It also established a national public works program known as the Public Works Administration (PWA, not to be confused with the WPA of 1935). The National Recovery Administration (NRA) portion was widely hailed in 1933 but by 1934 business opinion had soured. The NRA was abolished by the Supreme Court in 1935 and not replaced.

The National Industrial Recovery Act is widely considered a policy failure, both in the 1930s and by historians today. (see Justice Louis Brandeis)

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/volpe/newdeal/nira.html

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TVA

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Tennessee Valley Authority was a government program that hired workers during the Great Depression.The Tennessee River valley was continually dealing with floods, deforestation, and eroded land. The TVA aimed to help reduce these problems by teaching better farming methods, replanting trees, and building dams. This agency was also important because it generated and sold surplus electricity, created jobs, and conserved water power. The TVA was a great success almost from the beginning and helped ease some of the economic hardship not only in the state of Tennessee but also in parts of Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia.

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CCC

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On April 11,1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), an innovative federally funded organization that put thousands of Americans to work during the Great Depression on projects with environmental benefits.

The CCC, also known as "Roosevelt's Tree Army," was open to unemployed, unmarried U.S. male citizens between the ages of 18 and 26. All recruits had to be healthy and were expected to perform hard physical labor. Blacks were placed in de-facto segregated camps, although administrators denied the practice of discrimination. From 1933 to 1942, the CCC employed over 3 million men.
Of Roosevelt's many New Deal policies, the CCC is considered by many to be one of the most enduring and successful. It provided the model for future state and federal conservation programs. In 1942, Congress discontinued appropriations for the CCC, diverting the desperately needed funds to the effort to win World War II.

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WPA

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On May 6, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an executive order creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA). In return for monetary aid, WPA workers built highways, schools, hospitals, airports and playgrounds. They restored theaters--such as the Dock Street Theater in Charleston, S.C.--and built the ski lodge at Oregon's Mt. Hood. The WPA also put actors, writers and other creative arts professionals back to work by sponsoring federally funded plays, art projects, such as murals on public buildings, and literary publications. FDR safeguarded private enterprise from competition with WPA projects by including a provision in the act that placed wage and price controls on federally funded products or services.

Out of the 10 million jobless men in the United States in 1935, 3 million were helped by WPA jobs alone.

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Father Charles Coughlin

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Charles E. Coughlin was an American Catholic priest and a popular radio figure of the 1930s.
In the first year of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, Coughlin supported the Democratic president, but broke with him after a short time. From 1934 onward Coughlin's targets included Roosevelt, individual Jewish leaders, and Jewish institutions, all branded as Communists.
Coughlin, a right-wing populist, advocated a form of corporatism influenced by Italian Fascism. In 1938 the National Union developed into the Christian Front which was even more ardent in its support of fascism and became a mouthpiece for Nazi propaganda. Coughlin continued to argue against American participation in World War II even after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. These arguments led to his undoing.
Coughlin was thus the most visible of the American right-wing activists during the 1930s and his antisemitism deeply troubled American Jewry.

http://www.history.com/speeches/coughlin-denounces-new-deal#cough

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Huey Long

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A Lawyer, Governor of Louisiana, and radically outspoken Louisiana Senator who forcefully pushed through populist reforms during the Great Depression. He created the Share Our Wealth program with the motto "Every Man a King," earning him the nickname The Kingfish. A leftist politician always fighting the rich, his proposals expanded his home state's infrastructure, but many critics simply paint him as a demagogue. Long was shot by the son-in-law of an opponent September 1935 and died days later.

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Social Security

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1935 law pushed by FDR which guaranteed income for unemployed + retirees. Hoped the act would prevent senior citizens from ending up impoverished. Now functions primarily as a safety net for retirees and the disabled, and provides death benefits to taxpayer dependents. Relatively unchanged since 1935.

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National Labor Relations Act

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Act of 1935 is informally known as the Wagner Act, for its sponsor, Senator Robert Wagner of New York.
Created the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and established workers' right to collective bargaining. (The right had been recognized in the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, but that act had been declared unconstitutional.) Viewed as obstructions to free-trade/broke anti-trust laws.

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Court packing plan

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Announced February 5, 1937 by Pres.Roosevelt.
Plan to expand the Supreme Court to as many as 15 judges, for efficiency, and proposed retirement at full pay for all members of the court over 70. If a justice refused to retire, an "assistant" with full voting rights was to be appointed, thus ensuring Roosevelt a liberal majority. Critics immediately charged that Roosevelt was trying to "pack" the court and thus neutralize Supreme Court justices hostile to his New Deal. Congress opposed plan. During previous two years Supreme Court had struck down several key pieces of New Deal legislation on the grounds that the laws delegated an unconstitutional amount of authority to the executive branch and the federal government. By 1942 all but two of the justices were his appointees.