The Coming of the Great Depression

1. The Coming of the Great Depression • Between 1928 and 1928 the average price of stocks increased 40% • Widespread speculative fever that grew steadily more intense- easy credit • October 29- Black Tuesday: all efforts to save the market failed, industrial index dropped 43 points, stocks in many companies became worthless.

2. The Coming of the Great Depression • Causes of the Depression: lack of diversification in American economy- prosperity depended on a few basic industries (construction, automobiles) • Misdistribution of purchasing power- weakness in consumer demand • Demand was not keeping up with supply

3. The Coming of the Great Depression • Half of Americans were too poor to buy the goods industrial economy was producing • Industries that were experiencing declining demand began laying off workers • Farmers deeply in debt- small banks tied to agriculture were in constant trouble

4. The Coming of the Great Depression • International debt structure: limited purchasing power of European countries- allied countries owed massive debts to American bankers after the war • Refused to forgive or reduce the debts- gave out loans instead to European governments • Collapse of much of the banking system followed the stock market crash- banking closures, nations money supply greatly decreased

5. The Coming of the Great Depression • Federal reserve system raised interest rates • Suffering extended into every area of society • Cities became paralyzed by unemployment

6. The Coming of the Great Depression • Many saw it as personal failure • Private charities attempted to supplement the public relief efforts • Breadlines stretched for blocks outside the Red Cross and Salvation army kitchens

7. The Coming of the Great Depression • Farm income declined by 60%- a third of farmers lost their land • Dust Bowl: stretched north from Texas into Dakotas- began to experience a steady decline in rainfall and an accompanying increase in heat- heat turned fertile land into dessert

8. The Coming of the Great Depression • Black Blizzards: great dust storms swept across the plains, blotting out the sun and suffocating livestock as well as any people unfortunate enough to stay outside . Farm prices fell from overproduction.

9. The Coming of the Great Depression • Okies: families from the dust bowl traveled to other states like California and found conditions little better than where they left

10. The Coming of the Great Depression • African Americans: experienced more unemployment, homelessness, malnutrition, and disease than they had in the past, considerably more than whites, some migrated to southern cities • Black Shirts: organized a campaign with the slogan "No Jobs fro Niggers Until Every White Man Has a Job.

11. The Coming of the Great Depression • Other areas whites used intimidation and violence to drive blacks away from jobs • Left the south for northern cities- little better conditions • Scottsboro Case: Scottsboro boys were arrested for vagrancy and disorder on a freight train, 2 white women claimed to be raped- sentenced 8 to death

12. The Coming of the Great Depression • International Labor Defense: organization associated its self with Communist Party came to the aid of the accused youths, NAACP provided assistance- all of them eventually gained their freedom • NAACP: Walter White, worked to win positions for blacks within the emerging labor movements

13. The Coming of the Great Depression • Unemployed whites demanded jobs held by Hispanics: forced to leave the country, faced persistent discrimination, most relief programs excluded Mexicans, no access to American schools, hospitals refused them admission, some joined American Communist Party

14. The Coming of the Great Depression • Younger Nisei organized Japanese American Democratic Clubs: worked for laws protecting racial and ethnic minorities from discrimination, encouraged assimilation • Japanese American Citizens League: promote assimilation

15. The Coming of the Great Depression • Illegal for more than one member the of the same family to hold a federal civil service job • Widespread assumption that married women should not work outside the home: both single an married women worked since families needed the money

16. The Coming of the Great Depression • By the end of the depression 20% more of women were working • As many as half of all black women lost their jobs • Depression saw the virtual extinction of the National Woman's Party

17. The Coming of the Great Depression • Retreat from consumerism: sewed their own cloths, preserved their own food, engaged in home businesses- taking in laundry, selling baked goods, accepting boarders, households expanded to take in more distant relatives • Decline in divorce rate

18. The Depression and American Culture • Robert and Helen Merrell Lynd: published study of Muncie Indiana- Middletown- concluded that the culture has not changed • Began to look to government for assistance- blamed corporate moguls, international bankers, economic royalists • Survival of the ideals of work and individual advancement: many blamed themselves

19. The Depression and American Culture • Dale Carnegies: How to win Friends and Influence People: a self help manual preaching individual initiative was one of the most best selling books of the decade • Farm Security Administration: traveled through the south recording the nature of agricultural life- Roy Stryker, Walter Evans, Arthur Rothstein, Marger Bourke- White, Dorothea Lange produced memorable studies

20. The Depression and American Culture • Erskine Caldwell's: Tobacco Road- expose of poverty in the rural south • Richard Wright: major black novelist, exposed the plight of residents to urban ghetto in Native Son • Escapism: in radio- comedies such as Amos'n Andy, soap operas, public performances, radio comedies dramas

21. The Depression and American Culture • King Vidor's Our Daily Bread, John Ford's Grapes of Wrath- movies which explored political themes • First Disney cartoon- Steamboat Willie • 1937 Snow White- Wizard ofOz, Gone wi the Wind

22. The Depression and American Culture • Most popular books and magazines where escapist and romantic • Popular Front: a broad coalition of "antifascist" groups on the left, of which the most important was the American Communist Party • Softened its attitude toward Franklin Roosevelt, formed loose alliances with many other "progressive" groups “Communism is twentieth century Americanism” Earl Browder

23. The Depression and American Culture • Spanish Civil War: good example of how the left helped give meaning and purpose to individual lives • Abraham Lincoln Brigade: 3,000 Americans who traveled to Spain to join in the fight against the fascists- Ernest Hemingway spent time as a correspondent in Spain, wrote Whom the BellTolls

24. The Depression and American Culture • Communist Party: staged hunger march in DC, most effective union organizers in some industries, helped organize a union of black sharecroppers in Alabama- always under close supervision of the Soviet Union • Socialist Party of America: Norman Thomas, citied crisis as evidence of the failure of capitalism and south to win public support for its own political program

25. The Depression and American Culture • Southern Tenant Farmers Union: supported by the party, organized by young socialist H.L Mitchell, attempted to create a biracial coalition of sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and others to demand economic reform • Antiradicalism: hostility towards communist party

26. The Depression and American Culture • Pare Lorentz: made a series of powerful and polemical documentaries- the plow that broke the Plains • James Agee and Walker: traveled to rural Alabama to capture poverty- used Fortune magazine to explore distressed areas of the nations economic life • John Steinbeck: celebrated novel The Grapes of Wrath- harsh portrait of agrarian life in the West

27. The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover • Hoover's response to Depression: attempt to restore public confidence in the economy- urged leaders of business, labor and agriculture to adopt a program of voluntary cooperation for recovery

28. The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover • Voluntary Cooperation: not to cut production or layoff men, forgo demands of higher wages or better hours- system collapsed • Proposed Congress an increase of 423 million in federal public works programs- not enough to face problems • Proposed a tax increase to help the government avoid a deficit

29. The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover • 1929 Agricultural Marketing Act: established the first major government program to help farmers maintain prices- Farm Board would make loans to national marketing cooperatives or buy surpluses and thus raise prices. • Raised agricultural tariffs: Hawley- Smoot Tariff of 1930: increased protection on 75 farm products

30. The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover • 1930 Democrats won control of the House • Hoovervilles: blamed Hoover for crises, began calling shanty towns of unemployed in outskirts of town

31. The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover • International financial panic of 1931: largest bank in Austria collapsed; panic gripped financial institutions of neighboring countries

32. The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover • Reconstruction Finance Corporation: government agency whose purpose was to provide federal loans to troubled banks, railroads and businesses- RFC failed to deal directly or forcefully enough with real problems of the economy

33. The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover • 1932 Farmers Holiday Associations: endorsed the withholding of farm products from the market- a farmers strike

34. The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover • Bonus Expeditionary Force (Bonus Army) WW1 veterans, marched into DC, built crude camps around the city, promised to stay until Congress approved legislation to pay the bonus- voted down, Hoover ordered police to clear the marches out, ordered army

35. The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover • General Douglas MacArthur: army chief of staff, led the 3rd Cavalry, veterans fled in terror 1932 Election: Republicans re-nominated Hoover

36. The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover • Democrats nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt- avoided such divisive cultural issues as religion and prohibition, emphasized the economic grievances- "I pledge you, 1 pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people" • Democrats won majorities in both houses of Congress

37. The Election of 1932