The Crash, Dust Bowl, and Depression

1. The Crash, Dust Bowl, and Depression America in Crisis

2. Economic Boom! • Values changing • Excessive, pleasure seeking • Entertainment and fun key • Credit on the rise • Consumerism having a hay day, for now • Business up, wages barley increasing • Bust soon to come

3. Crash • Effects of the Stock Market • Middle class folks hit hard • Great losses trickled into society • Impact felt across the nation and beyond • Start of the Depression • Consumers can’t keep up with production • Mismanagement in banking industry • No regulations of market activity Really only a symptom of a seriously diseased economy

4. Dust Bowl • 1932-1939 most severe weather activity in nation’s modern history • Drought followed by dust storms destroyed farms and towns • Exodus to follow • By 1940 2.5 million left Plains states • Most off to California • Rude awakening

5. This Too Shall Pass…… • Herbert Hoover saw Depression as a bump • Natural part of business cycle • Minor adjustments would get economy back on course • Trickle down economic plans failed • Miscalculations and underestimations brought about his presidential ruin • Smoot-HawleyTariff1930 • RFC: seen as aid to business and not the people

6. General Prosperity, General Despair • Hoovervilles established • Bonus Army • Group of WWI vets and their family, seeking bonuses • Hoover sends in the troops, Gen. MacArthur takes his own approach • Election of 1932 • Hoover vs. Roosevelt

7. FDR • Background: • Man of privilege • Life easy in the beginning • Assistant Secretary of Navy WWI • Charming, arrogant, sometimes brash • 1921 afflicted with polio • Different person after struggle • Charm still remained, determination and passions changed

8. 1932 Election • New look to campaign • In speech, called for “bold, persistent experimentation” • No real plan outlined • Exuded confidence

9. FDR as President • Whirlwind in the first 100 days • Three major goals: • Industrial recovery • Agricultural recovery • Short term emergency relief Seen as a Symbol of Hope!

10. New Deal • CCC: Civilian Conservation Corps • Jobless youth sent to work • Forest restoration, park maintenance ect… • AAA: Agricultural Adjustment Administration • Lesson production of surplus items • Subsidies put in place to compensate farmers • Share croppers hit hard, pushed off of land

11. Cont….. • NRA: National Recovery Administration • Idea was to create “fair competition” • Codes put in place • Banned all child labor • Unions back in business • Depended on voluntary support of both business and public “We Do Our Part” • Bogged down in red tape • 1935: deemed unconstitutional

12. Cont…. • TVA: Tennessee Valley Authority • Better luck than NRA • Goal: improve living conditions in the Tennessee River Valley while supplying cheap electricity • Critics and Supporters • Had an attack of being unconstitutional, but survived

13. New Deal on the Decline • 1937 FDR’s “court packing” scheme fails • 1938 recession comes back around, still 17% population unemployed • Writers and painters assisted by New Deal programs, earlier cynicism changed in late 1930’s • Foreign threats began to shape cultural climate, patriotism on the rise