APUSH Unit 9

challenging women's role (flappers)

-Women were interested in themselves and their own interests -Women became more independent -Birth rate declines -19th Amendment voting cannot be restricted by gender

NRA

A daring attempt to stimulate a nationwide comeback was initiated when the Emergency Congress autho- rized the National Recovery Administration (NRA). This ingenious scheme was by far the most complex and far-reaching effort by the New Dealers to combine immediate relief with long-range recovery and reform. Triple-barreled, it was designed to assist industry, labor, and the unemployed. Under the NRA roughly 200 individual industries were designed to workout codes of fair competition Hours of labor were to be reduced sp the companies could employ more people, a minimun wage level was partially established. Workers were formally guaranteed the right to organize and bargain collectively through represen- tatives of their own choosing—not through handpicked agents of the company's choosing.

KKK

A new Ku Klux Klan, spawned by the postwar reac- tion, mushroomed fearsomely in the early 1920s. Despite the familiar sheets and hoods, it more closely resembled the antiforeign "nativist" movements of the 1850s than the antiblack nightriders of the 1860s. It was antiforeign, anti-Catholic, antiblack, anti-Jewish, antipacifist, anti-Communist, anti- internationalist, anti-evolutionist, antibootlegger, antigambling, antiadultery, and anti-birth control. It was also pro-Anglo-Saxon, pro-"native" American, and pro-Protestant. In short, the besheeted Klan betokened an extremist, ultraconservative uprising against many of the forces of diversity and moder- nity that were transforming American culture.

Emergency Banking Relief Act

Banking chaos cried aloud for immediate action. Con- gress pulled itself together and in an incredible eight hours had the Emergency Banking Relief Act of 1933 ready for Roosevelt's busy pen. The new law invested the president with the power to regulate banking transactions and foreign exchange and to reopen solvent banks.

Harlem Renaissance

After the war a black cultural renaissance also took root uptown in Harlem, led by such gifted writers as Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hur- ston, and by jazz artists like Louis Armstrong and Eubie Blake. In an outpouring of creative expression called the Harlem Renaissance, they proudly exulted in their black culture and argued for a "New Negro" who was a full citizen and a social equal to whites. Adopting mod- ernist techniques, Hughes and Hurston captured the oral and improvisational traditions of contemporary blacks in dialect-filled poetry and prose. Harlem sustained a vibrant, creative culture that nourished poets like Langston Hughes, whose first volume of verses, The Weary Blues, appeared in 1926. Harlem in the 1920s also spawned a charismatic political leader, Marcus Garvey.

TVA

An act creating the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was passed in 1933 by the Hundred Days Congress. This far-ranging enterprise was largely a result of the steadfast vision and unflagging zeal of Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska, after whom one of the mighty dams was named. From the standpoint of "planned economy," the TVA was by far the most revolutionary of all the New Deal schemes. This new agency was determined to discover pre- cisely how much the production and distribution of electricity cost, so that a "yardstick" could be set up to test the fairness of rates charged by private com- panies. Utility corporations lashed back at this enter- ing wedge of government control, charging that the low cost of TVA power was due to dishonest book- keeping and the absence of taxes. The gigantic project brought to the area not only full employment and the blessings of cheap electric power.

Buying stock on a margin

As the 1920s lurched forward, everybody seemed to be buying stocks "on margin"—that is, with a small down payment. Barbers, stenographers, and eleva- tor operators cashed in on "hot tips" picked up while on duty. One valet was reported to have parlayed his wages into a quarter of a million dollars. "The cash register crashed the social register," as rags-to-riches Americans reverently worshiped at the altar of the ticker-tape machine. So powerful was the intoxicant of quick profits that few heeded the warnings raised in certain quarters that this kind of tinsel prosperity could not last forever.

Red Scare

Erupted in the early 1920's. The American public was scared that communism would come into the US. Left-winged supporters were suspected. This fear of communism helped businessman who used it to stop labor strikes.

the racial issues; lynching

By 1932, approximately half of black Americans were out of work. In some Northern cities, whites called for blacks to be fired from any jobs as long as there were whites out of work. Racial violence again became more common, especially in the South. Lynchings, which had declined to eight in 1932, surged to 28 in 1933.

Causes of Dust Bowl

Drought and wind triggered the dust storms, but they were not the only culprits. The human hand had also worked its mischief. High grain prices dur- ing World War I had enticed farmers to bring count- less acres of marginal land under cultivation. Worse, dry-farming techniques and mechanization had revolutionized Great Plains agriculture. The steam tractor and the disk plow tore up infinitely more sod than a team of oxen ever could, leaving the powdery.

American People in the depression

During this time many of the rich American citizens were oblivious to the situation of the impoverished Americans. During this time a majority of Americans were living in poverty and jobless.

Social values, women, ethnic groups

Family and Home, Impact of the Great Depression on. The Great Depression challenged American families in major ways, placing great economic, social, and psychological strains and demands upon families and their members.

President Harding and Coolidge's economic policy

Fiscal conservatives whom of which favored low taxes, limited government spending and programs, and minimal government regulation of business.

Consumerism: Automobile, radio, movies

Great new industries suddenly sprouted forth. Supplying electrical power for the humming new machines became a giant business in the 1920s. Above all, the automobile, once the horseless chariot of the rich, now became the carriage of the common citizen. By 1930 Americans owned almost 30 million cars. Next came the voice-carrying radio, a triumph of many minds. A red-letter day was posted in November 1920, when the Pittsburgh radio station KDKA broad- cast the news of the Harding landslide. Later miracles were achieved in transatlantic wireless phonographs, radiotelephones, and television. The earliest radio pro- grams reached only local audiences. But by the late 1920s, technological improvements made long-distance broadcasting possible, and national commercial net- works drowned out much local programming. While other marvels of the era—like the automobile— were luring Americans away from home, the radio was drawing them back. For much of the decade, family and neighbors gathered around a household's sole radio as they once had around the toasty hearth. Radio knitted the nation together. Various regions heard voices with standardized accents, and countless millions "tuned in" to perennial comedy favorites like "Amos 'n' Andy." Pro- grams sponsored by manufacturers and distributors of brand-name products, like the "A&P Gypsies" and the "Eveready Hour," helped to make radio-touted labels household words and purchases.

1932 election

Hoover had been swept into office on the rising tide of prosperity; he was swept out of office by the reced- ing tide of depression. The flood of votes totaled 22,809,638 for Roosevelt and 15,758,901 for Hoover; the electoral count stood at 472 to 59. In all, the loser carried only six rock-ribbed Republican states. One striking feature of the election was the begin- ning of a distinct shift of blacks, traditionally grateful to the Republican party of Lincoln, over to the Roo- sevelt camp. As the "last hired and first fired," black Americans had been among the worst sufferers from the depression. Beginning with the election of 1932, they became, notably in the great urban centers of the North, a vital element in the Democratic party. Hard times unquestionably ruined the Republi- cans, for the electoral upheaval in 1932 was as much anti-Hoover as it was pro-Roosevelt.

AAA

Immediate relief was also given to two large and hard-pressed special groups by the Hundred Days Con- gress. One section of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) made available many millions of dollars to help farmers meet their mortgages.

Immigration restrictions & nativism

Immigration Act of 1924. Quotas for foreign- ers were cut from 3 percent to 2 percent. The national- origins base was shifted from the census of 1910 to that of 1890, by which time comparatively few southern Europeans had arrived.* Great Britain and Northern Ire- land, for example, could send 65,721 a year as against 5,802 for Italy. Southern Europeans bitterly denounced the device as unfair and discriminatory—a triumph for the "nativist" belief that blue-eyed and fair-haired northern Europeans were of better blood. T Immigration Act of 1924 slammed the door absolutely against Japanese immigrants. Mass "Hate America" rallies erupted in Japan, and one Japanese superpatriot expressed his out- rage by committing suicide near the American embassy in Tokyo. Exempt from the quota system were Canadi- ans and Latin Americans, whose proximity made them easy to attract for jobs when times were good and just as easy to send back home when they were not.

mass media effect

Mass Media gave the public the same source of news. Therefore, people all watched the same shows and listened to the same programs as there was not lots of variety. the effects of the new mass media were not all negative. The insularity of ethnic communities eroded as the immigrants' children, especially, forsook the neighborhood vaudeville the- ater for the downtown movie palace or turned away from Grandma's Yiddish storytelling to tune in "Amos 'n' Andy." If some of the rich diversity of the immi- grants' Old Country cultures was lost, the standard- ization of tastes and of language hastened entry into the American mainstream—and set the stage for the emergence of a working-class political coalition that, for a time, would overcome the divisive ethnic differ- ences of the past.

Agrarian unrest

Nature meanwhile had been providing some unplanned scarcity. Late in 1933 a prolonged drought struck the states of the trans-Mississippi Great Plains. Rainless weeks were followed by furious, whining winds, while the sun was darkened by millions of tons of powdery topsoil torn from homesteads in an area that stretched from eastern Colorado to western Missouri—soon to be dubbed the Dust Bowl. Despondent citizens sat on front porches with protec- tive masks on their faces, watching their farms swirl by. AAA Is established to help the farmers maintain their jobs and create a profit.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

New Deal legislation. Roosevelt rashly promised a balanced budget and berated heavy Hooverian deficits, amid cries of "Throw the Spenders Out!" and "Out of the Red with Roosevelt." All of this was to make ironic reading in later months.

Automobile

Of all the inventions of the era, the automobile cut the deepest track. It heralded an amazing new industrial system based on assembly-line methods and mass-production techniques. Americans adapted rather than invented the gaso- line engine; Europeans can claim the original honor. By the 1890s a few daring American inventors and promoters, including Henry Ford and Ransom E. Olds (Oldsmobile), were developing the infant automotive industry. By 1910 sixty-nine car companies rolled out a total annual production of 181,000 units. The early contraptions were neither speedy nor reliable. Many a stalled motorist, profanely cranking a balky automo- bile, had to endure the jeer "Get a horse" from the occupants of a passing carriage. Best known of the new crop of industrial wizards was Henry Ford, who more than any other individual put America on rubber tires. His high and hideous Model T ("Tin Lizzie") was cheap, rugged, and reason- ably reliable, though rough and clattering. The parts of Ford's "flivver" were highly standardized.

Effect of 18th Amendment

One of the last peculiar spasms of the progressive reform movement was prohibition, loudly supported by crusading churches and by many women. The arid new order was authorized in 1919 by the Eighteenth Amendment (see the Appendix), as implemented by the Volstead Act passed by Congress later that year. Together these laws made the world "safe for hypocrisy." The legal abolition of alcohol was especially popu- lar in the South and West. Southern whites were eager to keep stimulants out of the hands of blacks, lest they burst out of "their place." In the West prohibition rep- resented an attack on all the vices associated with the ubiquitous western saloon: public drunkenness, pros- titution, corruption, and crime. People known as bootleggers would illegally sell alcohol and ran speakeasies to sell alcohol to Americans during these tumultous times.

John Maynard Keynes

Only at this late date did Roosevelt at last frankly and deliberately embrace the recommendations of the British economist John Maynard Keynes. The New Deal had run deficits for several years, but all of them had been rather small and none was intended. Now, in April 1937, Roosevelt announced a bold pro- gram to stimulate the economy by planned deficit spending. Although the deficits were still undersized for the herculean task of conquering the depression, this abrupt policy reversal marked a major turning point in the government's relation to the economy. Keynesianism is the use of government spending and fiscal policy to "prime the pump" of the economy and encourage consumer spending.

WPA

Partly to quiet the groundswell of unrest that might lead to a political explosion, Congress autho- rized the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935. The objective was employment on useful proj- ects. Launched under the supervision of the ailing but energetic Hopkins, this remarkable agency ulti- mately spent about $11 billion on thousands of public buildings, bridges, and hard-surfaced roads. Not every WPA project strengthened the infrastructure: for instance, one controlled crickets in Wyoming, while another built a monkey pen in Oklahoma City. John Steinbeck, future Nobel Prize novelist, counted dogs in his California county. One of the most well-loved WPA programs was the Federal Art Project, which hired artists to create posters and murals—many still adorning post office walls. Critics sneered that WPA meant "We Provide Alms." But the fact is that over a period of eight years, nearly 9 million people were given jobs, not handouts. The WPA nourished much precious talent, preserved self-respect, and fostered the creation of more than a million pieces of art, many of them publicly displayed.

Hoover response to Great Depression

President Hoover feared that a government doling out doles would weaken, perhaps destroy, the national fiber. The president at last worked out a compromise between the old hands-off philosophy and the "soul- destroying" direct dole then being used in England. He would assist the hard-pressed railroads, banks, and rural credit corporations, in the hope that if financial health were restored at the top of the economic pyra- mid, unemployment would be relieved at the bottom on a trickle-down basis.

Postwar "return to normalcy"

Public desire for a change found vent in a resound- ing repudiation of "high-and-mighty" Wilsonism. Tired of star-reaching idealism, and soothed by Hard- ing's promise of a "return to normalcy," voters were willing to accept a second-rate president—and they got a third-rate one. A return to isolationism.

Philosophy of New Deal;"3 R's"

Roosevelt's New Deal programs aimed at three Rs—relief, recovery, and reform. Short-range goals were relief and immediate recovery, especially in the first two years. Long-range goals were permanent recovery and reform of current abuses, particularly those that had produced the boom-or-bust catastro- phe. The three-R objectives often overlapped and got in one another's way. But amid all the topsy-turvy haste, the gigantic New Deal program lurched forward.

Wall Street crash

Signals abounded that the economic joyride might end in a crash; even in the best years of the 1920s, sev- eral hundred banks failed annually. Tension built up to the panicky Black Tuesday of October 29, 1929, when 16,410,030 shares of stocks were sold in a save-who-may scramble. Wall Street became a wailing wall as gloom and doom replaced boom, and suicides increased alarmingly. Losses, even in blue-chip securities, were unbeliev- able. By the end of 1929—two months after the initial crash—stockholders had lost $40 billion in paper val- ues, or more than the total cost of World War I to the United States (see Figure 31.3). The stock-market collapse heralded a business depression, at home and abroad, that was the most prolonged and prostrating in American or world experience. No other industrialized nation suffered so severe a setback. By the end of 1930, more than 4 million workers in the United States were jobless;

Harding scandals

Teapot Dome, no tempest in a teapot, finally came to a whistling boil. Details of the crooked transaction gradually began to leak out in March 1923, two years after Harding took office. The oily smudge from Teapot Dome polluted the prestige of the Washington government. Right- thinking citizens wondered what was going on when public officials could sell out the nation's vital resources, especially those reserved for the U.S. Navy

Palmer Raids

The "Palmer raids" of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer resulted in about six thousand deportations of people suspected of "subversive" activities.

Supreme court Roberts' switch

The Court had meanwhile seen the ax hanging over its head. Whatever his motives, Justice Owen J. Roberts, formerly regarded as a conservative, began to vote on the side of his liberal colleagues. "A switch in time saves nine" was the classic witticism inspired by this ideological change. By a five-to-four decision, the Court, in March 1937, upheld the principle of a state minimum wage for women, thereby reversing its stand on a different case a year earlier.

Tariff Policy/ Hawley-Smoot Tariff

The Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 followed the well-worn pattern of Washington horse trading. It started out in the House as a fairly reasonable pro- tective measure, designed to assist the farmers. But by the time the high-pressure lobbyists had pushed it through the Senate, it had acquired about a thou- sand amendments. It thus turned out to be the high- est protective tariff in the nation's peacetime history. The average duty on nonfree goods was raised from 38.5 percent, as established by the Fordney-McCumber Act of 1922, to nearly 60 percent. To angered foreigners, the Hawley-Smoot Tariff was a blow below the trade belt. It seemed like a decla- ration of economic warfare on the entire outside world. It reversed a promising worldwide trend toward rea- sonable tariffs and widened the yawning trade gaps. It plunged both America and other nations deeper into the terrible depression that had already begun.

Glass-Steagall Act; FDIC

The Hundred Days, or Emergency, Congress but- tressed public reliance on the banking system by enacting the Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act. This measure provided for the Federal Deposit Insur- ance Corporation, which insured individual deposits up to $5,000 (later raised). Thus ended the disgrace- ful epidemic of bank failures, which dated back to the "wildcat" days of Andrew Jackson.

Marcus Garvey/UNIA

The Jamaican-born Garvey founded the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) to promote the resettlement of American blacks in their own "African homeland." Within the United States, the UNIA sponsored stores and other businesses, like the Black Star Line Steam- ship Company, to keep blacks' dollars in black pock- ets. Most of Garvey's enterprises failed financially, and Garvey himself was convicted in 1927 for alleged mail fraud and deported by a nervous U.S. government. But the race pride that Garvey inspired among the 4 mil- lion blacks who counted themselves UNIA followers at the movement's height helped these newcomers to northern cities gain self-confidence and self-reliance.

Impact and legacy of the New Deal

The New Deal's greatest legacy was a shift in government philosophy. As a result of the New Deal, Americans came to believe that the federal government has a responsibility to ensure the health of the nation's economy and the welfare of its citizens.

Second New Deal

The Second New Deal (1935-36) is the term used by commentators at the time[1] and historians ever since to characterize the second stage, 1935-36, of the New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his address to Congress in January 1935, Roosevelt called for five major goals: improved use of national resources, security against old age, unemployment and illness, and slum clearance, as well as a national work relief program (the Works Progress Administration) to replace direct relief efforts.

US Supreme court in 1920s

The Supreme Court was a striking example of this trend. Harding lived less than three years as president, but he appointed four of the nine justices. Several of his choices were or became deep-dyed reactionaries, and they buttressed the dike against popular currents for nearly two decades. Harding's fortunate choice for chief justice was ex-president Taft, who not only per- formed his duties ably but surprisingly was more lib- eral than some of his cautious associates. In the first years of the 1920s, the Supreme Court axed progressive legislation. It killed a federal child- labor law, stripped away many of labor's hard-won gains, and rigidly restricted government intervention in the economy. In the landmark case of Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923), the Court reversed its own reasoning in Muller v. Oregon (see p. 646), which had declared women to be deserving of spe- cial protection in the workplace, and invalidated a minimum-wage law for women.

Myth of Isolation (Foreign war debt)

The high-tariff course thus charted by the Repub- lican regimes set off an ominous chain reaction. Euro- pean producers felt the squeeze, for the American tariff walls prolonged their postwar chaos. An impov- erished Europe needed to sell its manufactured goods to the United States, particularly if it hoped to achieve economic recovery and to pay its huge war debt to Washington. America needed to give foreign nations a chance to make a profit from it so that they could buy its manufactured articles and repay debts. Inter- national trade, Americans were slow to learn, is a two- way street. In general, they could not sell to others in quantity unless they bought from them in quantity— or lent them more U.S. dollars.

IWW

The radical, antiwar Industrial Workers of the World, known as the "Wobblies" and sometimes derided as the "I Won't Works," engineered some of the most damag- ing industrial sabotage, and not without reason. Tran- sient laborers in such industries as fruit and lumber, the Wobblies were victims of some of the shabbiest working conditions in the country.

Depression economy

The nation's ability to produce goods had clearly outrun its capacity to consume or pay for them. Too much money was going into the hands of a few wealthy people, who in turn invested it in factories and other agencies of production. Not enough was going into salaries and wages, where revitalizing pur- chasing power could be more quickly felt. Other maladies were at work. Overexpansion of credit through installment-plan buying overstimulated production. Paying on so-called easy terms caused many consumers to dive in beyond their depth. Nor- mal technological unemployment, resulting from new laborsaving machines, also added its burden to the abnormal unemployment of the "threadbare thirties."

100 Days "alphabet agencies"

The period of congress during which FDR passed lots of legislation and created many new agencies. noteworthy agencies: AAA NRA TVA FDIC

Prosperity and wealth

The prosperity during this time was great for those of the higher class but the poverty rate increased as the times grew tougher. 40% of population in poverty

religious fundamentalism vs modernists (scopes trial)

The stage was set for the memorable "Monkey Trial" at the hamlet of Dayton, in eastern Tennessee, in 1925. A likable high-school biology teacher, John T. Scopes, was indicted for teaching evolution. Batteries of news- paper reporters, armed with notebooks and cameras, descended upon the quiet town to witness the spectacle Scopes was defended by nationally known attorneys, while former presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, an ardent Presbyterian Fundamentalist, joined the prosecution. Taking the stand as an expert on the Bible, Bryan was made to appear foolish by the famed criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow. Five days after the trial was over, Bryan died of a stroke, no doubt brought on by the wilting heat and witness-stand strain. This historic clash between theology and biology proved inconclusive. Scopes, the forgotten man of the drama, was found guilty and fined $100.

Roosevelt Recession of 1937

Then, in 1937, the economy took another sharp downturn, a surprisingly severe depression-within-the- depression that the president's critics quickly dubbed the "Roosevelt recession." In fact, government policies had caused the nosedive, as new Social Security taxes began to bite into payrolls and as the administration cut back on spending out of continuing reverence for the orthodox economic doctrine of the balanced budget.

Bonus Army (BEF) march

Thousands of impoverished veterans, both of war and of unemployment, were now prepared to move on Washington, there to demand of Congress the immediate payment of their entire bonus. The "Bonus Expeditionary Force" (BEF), which mustered about twenty thousand souls, converged on the capital in the summer of 1932. These supplicants promptly set up unsanitary public camps and erected shacks on vacant lots—a gigantic "Hooverville." They thus cre- ated a menace to the public health, while attempt- ing to intimidate Congress by their presence in force. After the pending bonus bill had failed in Congress by a narrow margin, Hoover arranged to pay the return fare of about six thousand bonus marchers. The rest refused to decamp, though ordered to do so. Following riots that cost two lives, Hoover responded to the demands of the Washington authori- ties by ordering the army to evacuate the unwanted guests.

Wagner Act

When the Supreme Court axed the blue eagle, a Congress sympathetic to labor unions undertook to fill the vacuum. The fruit of its deliberations was the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, more com- monly known as the Wagner Act, after its congres- sional sponsor, New York senator Robert F. Wagner. This trail-blazing law created a powerful new National Labor Relations Board for administrative purposes and reasserted the right of labor to engage in self- organization and to bargain collectively through rep- resentatives of its own choice. Considered the Magna Carta of American labor, the Wagner Act proved to be a major milestone for American workers.

Critics, left and right

With the beginning of the radio outlets began to broadcast stations that favored different political views.

Social Security Act

ncomparably more important was the success of New Dealers in the field of unemployment insurance and old-age pensions. Their greatest victory was the epochal Social Security Act of 1935—one of the most complicated and far-reaching laws ever to pass Congress. To cushion future depressions, the measure provided for federal-state unemployment insurance. To provide security for old age, specified categories of retired workers were to receive regular payments from Washington. These payments ranged from $10 to $85 a month (raised periodically) and were financed by a payroll tax on both employers and employees. Provi- sion was also made for the blind, the physically handi- capped, delinquent children, and other dependents.