APUSH Ch 24
Organization for Unemployment Relief (POUR)
1931 successor of the 1930 President's Emergency Committee for Unemployment. It did little more than encourage local groups to raise money to help the unemployed.
Social Security Act (SSA)
1935 act establishing federal old-age pensions and unemployment insurance
Father Coughlin
A Catholic priest in suburban Detroit who attracted a huge national radio audience with passionate sermons attacking Wall Street, international bankers, and "plutocratic capitalism." He at first supported Roosevelt but then began attacking him as a tool of special interests, and said New Deal policies were communistic. Founded the National Union for Social Justice.
Brain Trust
A group of key advisers FDR assembled to follow him to Washington. Composed of Columbia Law School professor and progressive Raymond Moley; two economists, Rexford G. Tugwell and Adolf A. Berle; and attorneys Samuel Rosenman, basil O'Connor, and Felix Frankfurter. Believed that structural economic reform must accept the modern reality of large corporate enterprise based on mass production and distribution, and involve government-business cooperation.
Wagner Act
Act establishing federal guarantee of right to organize trade unions and collective bargaining. Congress passed in in July 1935. Formally known as the National Labor Relations Act
Emergency Relief Appropriation ACT
Allocated $5 billion for large-scale public works programs for the jobless.
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
An unemployment relief effort which provided work for jobless young men in protecting and conserving the nation's national resources. Most projects involved road construction, reforestation, flood control, and national park improvements.
Frances Perkins
Appointed secretary of labor, the first woman cabinet member in U.S. history. Her department created the Social Security Act and Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, both of which incorporated protective measures long advocated by women reformers.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
As governor of New York, he won a national reputation for reform. He was elected in 1932 by pledging himself to a "New Deal" for the American people.
Election of 1932
Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt won in a landslide. Roosevelt committed himself to reconstructing the nation's economy, and Hoover condemned his ideas as "radical."
Herbert Hoover
During the Great Depression, this president resisted growing calls from Congress and local communities for a greater federal role in relief efforts or public works projects. His plan for recovery centered on restoring business confidence and making government credit available to them - however, the effectiveness of this plan was limited due to the public's low purchasing power.
Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
Established in early 1932 and based on the War Finance Corporation of the World War I years. Designed to make government credit available to ailing banks, railroads, insurance companies, and other businesses.
"Hundred Days"
From March to June 1933; FDR passed through Congress an extraordinary number of acts designed to combat various aspects of the Depression.
Temporary Emergency Relief Administration
In May, Congress authorized $500 million for the FERA. Half the money went as direct relief to the states; the rest was distributed on the basis of a dollar of federal aid for every three dollars of state and local funds spent for relief.
Public Works Administration (PWA)
Involved federal public works projects (construction of roads, public buildings, etc) to increase employment and consumer spending.
Emergency Relief Act (ERA)
July 1932; authorized the RFC to lend $300 million to states that had exhausted their own relief funds. Less than $30 million had actually been given out by the end of 1933.
Huey Long
Louisiana governor who improved public education, roads, medical care, and other public services, winning the loyalty of poor farmers and other industrial workers. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1930. He first supported Roosevelt, but broke with him in 1934. He organized the Share Our Wealth society. if he were not assassinated in September 1935 he might have threatened Roosevelt's reelection.
John Maynard Keyes
New Deal economist who argued that each dollar spent had a multiplier effect.
"Black Tuesday"
October 29, 1929, the day that the stock market crashed
Banking Holiday
On Roosevelt's second day as president he issued an executive order calling for this. The banks were closed for four days in order to shore up the country's ailing financial system.
Election of 1936
Roosevelt defeated Republican Alfred M. Landon in a landslide
Andrew Mellon
Secretary of the Treasury who described benefits of the economic slump, claiming it would "purge the rottenness out of the system"
Court Packing
The Court was mainly composed of old Republican appointees. They kept ruling measures of the New Deal unconstitutional. Roosevelt asked Congress for legislation that would expand the Supreme Court from 9 to 15 judges, and empower him to make a new appointment whenever an incumbent judge failed to retire upon reaching age seventy. Roosevelt claimed age prevented them from doing their job, but the bill faced much opposition. Eventually, he accepted a compromise bill that left the Supreme Court untouched and reformed the lower court, but his relations with Congress suffered as a result of this incident.
Douglass MacArthur
This General led U.S. Army troops to forcibly evict the remaining 2,000 members of the Bonus Army from their encampment. He exaggerated the menace of these peaceful demonstrators.
Works Progress Administration (WPA)
Under Harry Hopkins' leadership, it oversaw the employment of over 8 million Americans on a vast array of construction and community service projects. In 1935 Roosevelt banned discrimination from these such projects. However, after 1937 aliens were ineligible to participate in them.
Bonus Army
Unemployed veterans of World War I gathering in Washington in 1932 demanding payment of service bonuses not due until 1945.
