APush 1920-1930s

Explain each of the FDR's "3 R's" What is meant by "priming the pump"? "Deficit spending"? What was Keynesian economics?

1. Roosevelt moved decisively. He declared a nationwide banking holiday as a prelude to opening the banks on a sounder basis. He then summoned the Democratic Congress into special session to cope with the national emergency. For the so called hundred days, members cranked out an unprecedented basketful of remedial legislation. 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 catastrophe. 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. A green Congress so fully shared the panicky feeling of the country that it was ready to rubber stamp bills drafted by White House advisers-measures that Roosevelt called "must legislation." More than that, Congress gave the president extraordinary blank-check powers: some of the laws it passed expressly delegated legislative authority to the chief executive. Roosevelt was inclined to do things by intuition-off the cuff. He was like the quarterback whose next play depends on the outcome of the previous play. So desperate was the mood of an action starved public that any movement, even in the wrong direction, seemed better than no movement at all. The Hundred Days Congress passed many essentials of the New Deal "three Rs," though important long-range measures were added in later sessions. These reforms owed much to the legacy of the pre-World War I progressive movement. Many of them were long overdue. New Dealers raided file cabinets full of old pamphlets on German social insurance, English housing and garden cities, Danish agricultural recovery, and American World War I collectivization. In time they embraced progressive ideas such as unemployment insurance, old-age insurance, minimum wage regulations, the conservation and development of natural resources and restrictions on child labor.

Frank Lloyd Wright

An American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures. Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture.

Babe Ruth

Ballyhooed by the "image makers," home run heroes like George H. (Babe) Ruth were far better known than most statesman. The fans bought tickets in such numbers that Babe's hometown park, Yankee Stadium, became known as "the house that Ruth built."

Lindenbergh Kidnapping

Criminal callousness sank to new depths in 1932 with the kidnapping for ransom, and eventual murder, of the infant son of aviator-hero Charles A. Lindbergh. The entire nation was inexpressibly shocked and saddened, causing Congress in 1932 to pass the so-called Lindbergh Law, making interstate abduction in certain circumstances a death-penalty offense.

What did Harding mean by a "return to normalcy"?

1. By normalcy, Harding means returning to American roots of neutrality and self-preservation opposed focus upon imperialistic desires and foreign diplomacy. It was no longer an era of "radical" foreign ideas. People condemned "un-American" lifestyles and clanged shut the immigration gates against foreign peoples. They partly sealed off the domestic economy from the rest of the world and plunged headlong into a dizzying decade of homegrown prosperity. The boom of golden twenties showered genuine benefits on Americans, as incomes and living standards rose for many. New technologies, new consumer products, and new forms of leisure and entertainment made the twenties roar. Yet just beneath the surface lurked widespread anxieties about the future and fears that America was losing sight of its traditional ways.

What help did Hoover attempt to give farmers in 1929 and 1930?

1. The agricultural marketing act, passed in 1929, was designed to help the farmers help themselves, largely through producers' cooperatives. It set up the federal farm board, with a revolving fund of half a billion dollars at its disposal. Money was lent generously to farm organizations seeking to buy, sell, and store agricultural surpluses. In 1930, the Farm Board itself created both the Grain Stabilization Corporation and the Cotton Stabilization Corporation. The prime goal was to bolster sagging prices by buying up surpluses. But the two agencies were soon suffocated by an avalanche of farm produce, as wheat dropped to fifty-seven cents a bushel and cotton to five cents a pound. Farmers had clutched a tariff as a possible straw to keep their heads above the waters of financial ruin. Hoover then promised to call congress into special session to consider agricultural relief and to bring about "limited" changes in the tariff.

Good Neighbor Policy

As an advocate of international goodwill, Hoover strove to abandon the interventionist twist given to the Monroe Doctrine by Theodore Roosevelt. In 1932 he negotiated a new treaty with the French speaking Republic of Haiti, and this pact, later supplanted by an executive agreement, provided for the complete withdrawal of American platoons by 1924. Further pleasing omens came early in 1933, when the last marine "leathernecks" sailed away from Nicaragua after an almost continuous stay of some twenty years. Herbert Hoover, the engineer in politics, thus happily engineered the foundation stones of the Good Neighbor policy. Upon them rose a imposing edifice in the days of his successor, Franklin Roosevelt.

Buying on Margin

As the 1920s lurched forward, everyone seemed to be buying stocks "on margin"-that is, with a small down payment. Barbers, stenographers, and elevator operators cashed in on some "hot tips" picked up while on duty. 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.

Henry Ford

Assembly line production reached such perfection in Henry Ford's famed Rouge River plant near Detroit that a finished automobile emerged every ten seconds. He erected an immense personal empire on the cornerstone of his mechanical genius, though his associates provided much of the organized talent. Ill-educated, this multimillionaire mechanic was socially and culturally narrow. After two early failures, he grasped and fully applied the technique of the moving assembly line-Fordism. The flood of Fords was phenomenal. In 1914, the "Automobile Wizard" turned out his 500,000th Model T.

St. Valentine's Day Massacre

Capone, though branded "Public Enemy Number One," could not be convicted of the cold-blooded massacre, on St. Valentine's Day in 1929, of seven disarmed members of a rival gang. But after serving most of an eleven-year sentence in a federal penitentiary for income tax evasion, he was released as a syphilitic wreck.

Emergency Quota Act of 1921

Congress temporarily plugged the breach with the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. Newcomers from Europe were restricted in any given year to a definite quota, which was set at 3 percent of the people of their nationality who had been living in the United States in 1910. This national-origins system was relatively favorable to the immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, for by 1910 immense numbers of them had already arrived

Reconstruction Finance Corporation

Early in 1932 Congress established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). With an initial working capital of half a billion dollars, this agency became a government lending bank. It was designed to provide indirect relief by assisting insurance companies, banks, agricultural organizations, railroads, and even hard-pressed state and local governments. But to preserve individualism and character, there would be no loans to individuals from this "billion-dollar soup kitchen." "Pump priming" loans by the RFC were no doubt of widespread benefit, though the organization was established many months too late for maximum usefulness. Projects that it supported were largely self liquidating and the government as a banker actually profited to the tune of many millions of dollars. Giant corporations so obviously benefited from this assistance that the RFC was dubbed-rather unfairly-"the millionaires' dole." The irony is that the thrifty and individualistic Hoover had sponsored the project, though with initial reluctance. It actually had a strong New Dealish favor.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald, a handsome Minnesota-born Princetonian then only twenty-four years old, became an overnight celebrity when he published This Side of Paradise in 1920. The book became a kind of Bible for the young. It was eagerly devoured by aspiring flappers and their ardent wooers, many of whom affected an air of bewildered abandon toward life. He followed this melancholy success with The Great Gatsby a brilliant commentary on the illusory American ideal of the self-made man. Midwesterner James Gatz reinvented himself as tycoon Jay Gatsby, only to be destroyed by the power of those with established wealth and social standing.

Nine Power Treaty

Finally, the Washington Conference gave chaotic China- "the Sick man of the Far East" -a shot in the arm with the Nine Power treaty of 1922, whose signatories agreed to nail wide-open the Open Door in China.

Immigration act of 1929 (Johnson-Reed Act)

Five years later the Immigration act of 1929, using 1920 a the quota base, virtually cut immigration in half by limiting the total to 152,574 a year. In 1965 Congress abolished the national-origins quota system.

Frederick Taylor and Scientific Management

Frederick W. Taylor, was a prominent inventor, engineer, and tennis player who sought to eliminate wasted motion. His epitaph reads "Father of Scientific Management."

Guglielmo Marconi

Guglielmo Marconi invented wireless telegraphy in the 1890s, and his brainchild was used for long-range communication during WWI.

Veto of Muscle Shoals Bill

Hoover sternly fought all schemes that he regarded as "socialistic." Conspicuous among them was the Muscle Shoal Bill, designed to dam the Tennessee River and ultimately embraced by Franklin Roosevelt's Tennessee Valley Authority. Hoover emphatically vetoed this measure, primarily because he opposed the government's selling electricity in competition with its own citizens in private companies.

Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injuction Act

Hoover's administration also provided some indirect benefits for labor. After stormy debate, Congress passed the Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act in 1932, and Hoover signed it. The measure outlawed "yellow-dog" contracts and forbade federal courts to issue injunctions to restrain strikes, boycotts, and peaceful picketing. The truth is that Herbert Hoover, a despite criticism of his "heartlessness," did inaugurate a significant new policy. Slow though Hoover was to abandon this nineteenth century bias, by the end of his term had had started down the road toward government assistance for needy citizens-a road that Franklin Roosevelt would travel.

Charles Lindberg

In 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh, electrified the world with the first solo west-to-east conquest of the Atlantic. Seeking a prize of $25,000, the lanky stunt flier courageously piloted his single-engine plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, from New York to Paris in a grueling 33 hours and 29 minutes. The American people found in this wholesome and handsome youth a genuine hero.

Explain the Supreme Court Case Adkins v. Children's Hospital. What earlier court decision did it reverse? In what ways did Harding's policies impact business? Labor Unions?

In the landmark case of Adkins v. Children's Hospital, the Court reversed its own reasoning in Muller v. Oregon, which had declared women to be deserving of special protection in the workplace, and invalidated a minimum wage law for women. Its strained ruling was that because women now had the vote, they were now the legal equals of men and could no longer be protected by special legislation. The contradictory premises of the Muller and Adkins cases framed a debate over gender differences that would continue for the rest of the century: were women sufficiently different than men that they merited special legal and social treatment, or were they effectively equal in the eyes of the law and therefore undeserving of special protections and preferences? Corporations, under Harding, could once more relax and expand. Antitrust laws were often ignored, circumvented, or feebly enforced by friendly prosecutors in the attorney general's office. The Interstate Commerce commission, came to be dominated by men who were personally sympathetic to the managers of the railroads. Big business now had a free hand to set up trade associations. Although many of these associations ran counter to the spirit of existing antitrust legislation, their formation was encouraged by secretary Hoover.

Describe the gains made by veterans group after WWI.

Needy veterans were among the few nonbusiness groups to reap lasting gains from the war. Congress in 1921 generously created the Veterans Bureau, authorized to operate hospitals and provide vocation rehabilitation for the disabled. Veterans quickly organized into pressure groups. The American Legion had been founded in Paris in 1919 by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. Legionnaires met periodically to renew old hardships and let off steam in good natured horseplay. The legion soon became distinguished for its militant patriotism, rock ribbed conservatism, and zealous antiradicalism. The legion also became notorious for its aggressive lobbying for veteran's benefits. The chief grievance of the former "doughboys" was monetary. The former servicemen demanded "adjusted compensation" to make up for the wages they had "lost" when they turned in their factory overalls for military uniforms. Critics denounced this demand as a holdup "bonus." But the millions of veterans deployed heavy political artillery. They browbeat Congress into passing a bonus bill in 1922, which Harding promptly vetoed. Reforming their lines, the repulsed veterans gathered for a final attack. In 1924, Congress again hoisted the white flag and passed the Adjusted Compensation Act. It gave every former soldier a paid-up insurance policy due in twenty years.

The Florida Land Boom Scandal

Numerous underwater lots were sold to eager purchasers for preposterous sums. The whole wildcat scheme collapsed when the peninsula was devastated by a West Indian hurricane, which belied advertisements of a "soothing tropical wind."

Father Charles Coughlin

One danger signal was the appearance of various demagogues, notably a magnetic "microphone messiah," Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest in Michigan who began broadcasting in 1930 and whose slogan was "Social Justice." His anti-New Deal harangues to some 40 million radio fans finally became so anti-Semitic, fascistic, and demagogic that he was silenced in 1942 by his ecclesiastical superiors. Father Coughlin and Huey Long frightened many Americans because they raised troubling questions about the link between fascism and economic crisis. Danger seemed to lurking ominously in man corners of the world. Authoritarian rule was strengthening in Japan, Adolf Hitler was acquiring absolute authority in Germany. Some even worried that Franklin Roosevelt himself would turn into a dictator.

Ransom Olds

One of the American inventors and sponsors like Henry Ford that were developing the infant automobile industry. Lindbergh's achievement did much to dramatize and popularize flying, while giving a strong boost to the infant aviation industry.

How did WWI lead to the the 18th amendment? What was the Volstead Act? What groups were for the amendment and what groups were against it?

One of the last peculiar spasm 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, 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 popular 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 represented an attack on all the vices associated with the ubiquitous western saloon; public drunkenness, prostitution, corruption, and crime. But despite the overwhelming ratification of the "dry" amendment, strong opposition persisted in the larger eastern cities. For many "wet" foreign-born people, Old World styles of sociability were built around drinking in beer gardens and corner taverns. Yet most Americans now assumed that prohibition had come to stay. Everywhere carousers indulged in last wild flings, as the nation prepared to enter upon a permanent "alcoholiday." But prohibitionists were naïve in the extreme. They overlooked the tenacious American tradition of strong drink and weak control by the central government. Peculiar conditions hampered the enforcement of prohibition. Profound disillusionment over the aftermath of the war raised serious questions as to the wisdom of further self-denial. Slaking thirst became a cherished personal liberty, and many ardent wets believed that the way to bring about repeal was to violate the law on a large enough scale. Prohibition might have started off on a better foot if there had been a larger army of enforcement officials. The "noble experiment" was not entirely a failure. Bank savings increased, and absenteeism in industry decreased, presumably because of the newly sober ways of formerly and soused barflies. Death rates from alcoholism and cirrhosis declined, and on the whole, less alcohol was consumed than in the days before prohibition.

Langston Hughes

Poet Langston Hughes' first volume of verses, The Weary Blues, appeared in 1926.

Public Works Projects

President Hoover at last recommended that Congress vote immense sums for useful public works. Though at heart an antispender, he secured from Congress appropriations totaling $2.25 billion for such projects. Most imposing of the public enterprises was the Hoover dam on the Colorado river, which succeeded in creating a huge man-made lake for purposes of irrigation, flood control, and electric power.

Immigration Act of 1924

Replaced the Emergency Quota Act. Quotas for foreigners 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. 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. Th purpose was clearly to freeze America's existing racial composition, which was largely northern European. A flagrantly discriminatory section of the Immigration Act of 1924 slammed the door absolutely against Japanese immigrants. Mass "Hate America" rallies erupted in Japan, and one Japanese superpatriot expressed his outrage by committing suicide near the American embassy in Tokyo. Exempt from the quota system were Canadians 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. By 1931, probably for the first time in the American experience, more foreigners left than arrived. Quotas thus caused America to sacrifice something of its tradition of freedom and opportunity, as well as its future ethnic diversity.

Mellon's Tax Policies

Republican Congress created the Bureau of the Budget to assist the president in preparing careful estimates of receipts and expenditures for submission to Congress as the annual budget. The burdensome taxes inherited from the war were especially distasteful to Secretary of the Treasury Mellon, as well as to his fellow millionaires. Their theory was that such high levies forced the rich to invest in tax-exempt securities rather than in the factories that provided prosperous payrolls. The Mellonites also argued, with considerable persuasiveness, that high taxes not only discourages business but, in doing so, also brought a smaller net return to the Treasury than moderate taxes. Seeking to succor the "poor" rich people, Mellon helped engineer a series of tax reductions. Congress followed his lead by repealing the excess-profits tax, abolishing the gift tax, and reducing excise taxes, the surtax, the income tax, and estate tax.

In the 1932 election what did FDR argue with regard to the Hoover Administration policies? What did FDR mean by the New Deal? How did Blacks begin voting during the Depression and why?

Roosevelt seized the offensive with a slashing attack on the Republican Old Dealers. Roosevelt consistently preached a New Deal for the "forgotten man," but he was annoyingly vague and somewhat contradictory. Many of his speeches were "ghostwritten" by the "Brains Trust", a small group of reform-minded intellectuals. 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. The high spirits of the Democrats found expression in the catchy air. Grim faced Hoover remained in the White House, conscientiously battling the depression through short lunches and long hours. Out on the firing lines, his supporters halfheartedly assured half listening voters. Hoover never ceased to insist that the uncertainty and fear produced by Roosevelt's impending victory plunged the nation deeper into the depression. With the campaign going badly for the Republicans, a weary and despondent Hoover was persuaded to take to the stump. He stoutly reaffirmed his faith in American free enterprise and individual initiative, and gloomily predicted that if the Hawley-Smoot Tariff was repealed, grass would grow "in the streets of a hundred cities." Such down-at-the-mouthism contrasted sharply with Roosevelt's tooth-flashing optimism and sparkling promises. One striking feature of the election was the beginning of a distinct shift of blacks, traditionally grateful to the Republican party of Lincoln, over to the Roosevelt 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 ruined the Republicans. Democrats had only to harness the national grudge and let it pull them to victory. An overwhelming majority of Democrats appear to have voiced a demand for change: a new deal rather than the New deal, for the latter was only a gleam in the eyes of its sponsors. Hoover privately confessed, he was trying to bind his successor to an anti-inflationary policy that would have made impossible many of the later New Deal experiments.

Huey Long

Senator Huey P. Long of Louisiana, who was said to have more brass than a government mule. He used his abundant rabble-rousing talents to publicize his "Share Our Wealth" program, which promised to make "Every Man a King." Every family was to receive $5,000, supposedly at the expense of the prosperous. Fear of Long becoming a fascist dictator ended when he was shot by an assassin in the Louisiana state capitol.

The Birth of a Nation

Spectacular among the first full-length classics was D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation which glorified the Ku Klux Klan of Reconstruction days and defamed both blacks and Northern carpetbaggers. White southerners reputedly fired guns at the screen during the attempted "rape" scene. African Americans were outraged at the film and angrily organized protest marches, petition campaigns, and public hearings.

Five Power Treaty

The Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 embodied Hughes's ideas on ship ratios, but only after face-saving compensation was offered to the insecure Japanese. The British and Americans both conceded that they would refrain them from fortifying their Far Eastern possessions, including the Philippines. The Japanese were not subjected to such restraints in their possessions.

Stimson Doctrine

The League was handicapped in taking two fisted action by the nonmembership of the United States. Washington flatly rebuffed initial attempts in 1931 to secure American cooperation in applying economic pressure on Japan. Washington and Secretary of State Henry Stimson in the end decided to fire only paper bullets at the Japanese aggressors. The so-called Stimson doctrine, proclaimed in 1932, declared that the United States would not recognize any territorial acquisitions achieved by force. Righteous indignation-or a preach-and-run policy- would substitute for solid initiatives. This verbal slap on the wrist from American did not deter the march of the Japanese militarists. They bombed Shanghai in 1932, with shocking losses to civilians. Outraged Americans launched informal boycotts of Japanese goods, chiefly dime-store knickknacks. But there was no real sentiment for armed intervention among a depression ridden people, who remained strongly isolationist during the 1930s.

What was the red scare? Who was Mitchell Palmer? What conditions led to it?

The big red scare was due to the Bolshevik revolution and resulted in a nationwide crusade against left wingers whose Americanism was suspect. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who "saw red" too easily, earned the title of the "Fighting Quaker" by his excess of zeal in rounding up suspects. They ultimately totaled about six thousand. This drive to root out radicals was redoubled in June 1919, when a bomb shattered both the nerves and the Washington home of Palmer. The "Fighting Quaker" was thereupon dubbed the "Quaking Fighter." Other events highlighted the red scare. Late in 1919, a shipload of 249 alleged alien radicals was deported to the "workers' paradise" of Russia. A number of legislatures passed criminal syndicalism laws. These anti-red statutes, some of which were born of the war, made unlawful the mere advocacy of violence to secure social change. Critics protested that words were not criminal deeds.

What ethnicities and nationalities were most negatively affected by the "National Origins Acts"?

The immigrant tide was now cut off, but it left on American shores by the 1920s a patchwork of ethnic communities separated from each other and from the larger society by language, religion, and customs. Many of the most recent arrivals, including the Italians, Jews, and Poles, lived in isolated enclaves with their own houses of worship, newspapers, and theaters. Ethnic variety thus undermined class and political solidarity.

The Great Train Robbery

The real birth of the movie came in 1903, when the first story sequence reached the screen. This breathless melodrama, The Great Train Robbery, was featured in the five-cent theaters, popularly called "nickelodeons."

What was the relationship between the Red Scare and the Labor Union Movement? to Immigrants? What was the "close shop"? American plan?

The red scare was a godsend to conservative businesspeople, who used it to break the backs of the fledgling unions. Employers hailed their own antiunion campaign for the "open" shop as the American plan.

Jack Dempsey

The slugging heavyweight champion, knocked out the dapper French light heavyweight Georges Carpentier. The Jersey City crowd in attendance had paid more than a million dollars-the first in a series of million-dollar "gates" in the golden 1920s.

The "Bull" Market

The stock exchange provided even greater sensations. Speculation ran wild, and an orgy of boom-or-bust trading pushed the market up to dizzy peaks as Wall Street bulls gored one another and fleeced greedy lambs. The stock market became a veritable gambling den.

Give examples of how the lives of women changed in 1920's. What did the "flapper" symbolize?

Women continued to find opportunities for employment in the cities, though they tended to cluster in a few low-paying jobs that became classified as "women's work." An organized birth control movement, openly championed the use of contraceptives. Alice Paul's National Woman's party campaigned for an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. Even the churches were affected. The fundamentalist champions of the old-time religion last ground to the Modernists. Even before the war, one observer thought the chimes had "struck sex o'clock in America," and the 1920s witnessed what many old-timers regarded as a veritable erotic eruption. Advertisers exploited sexual allure to sell everything from soap to car tires. Once modest maidens now proclaimed their new freedom as "flappers" in bobbed tresses and dresses. Young women appeared with hemlines elevated, stockings rolled, breasts taped flat, cheeks rouged, and lips a "crimson gash" that held a dangling cigarette. Thus did the "flapper" symbolize and yearned for and devil may care independence in some American women. Still more adventurous females shocked their elders when they sported the new one piece bathing suit.

Describe the Scopes Monkey Trial. What is meant by "fundamentalism"? With regard to the trial, who was William Jennings Bryan and who was Clarence Darrow? Who won the case? What was the overall significance?

8. Fundamentalists were devoted religionists charged that the teaching of Darwinian evolution was destroying faith in God and the Bible, while contributing to the moral breakdown of youth in the jazz age. Numerous attempts were made to secure laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools, and three southern states adopted such shackling measures. The trio of states included Tennessee (the heart of the Bible Belt). The stage was set for the memorable "Monkey Trial" at the hamlet of Dayton, in eastern Tennessee. A likable high school biology teacher, John T. Scopes, was indicted for teaching evolution. Batteries of newspaper 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 says 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 was found guilty and fined $100. The Fundamentalists won only a hollow victory, for the absurdities of the trial cast ridicule on their cause. Yet even though increasing numbers of Christians were coming to reconcile the revelations of religion with the findings modern science, Fundamentalism, with its emphasis on a literal reading of the Bible, remained a vibrant force in American spiritual life. It was especially strong in the Baptist Church and in the rapidly growing Churches of Christ, organized in 1906.

Describe the ways the car industry changed American life both socially and industrially.

10. Of all the inventions, 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 gasoline engine. By the 1890s a few daring American inventors and promoters were developing the infant automobile industry. An enormous industry sprang into being, as Detroit became the motorcar capital of America. A gigantic new industry emerged, dependent on steel but displacing steel from its kingpin role. Employing directly or indirectly, it was a major wellspring of the nation's prosperity. Thousands of new jobs were created by supporting industries. America's standard of living rose to an enviable level. New industries boomed lustily; older ones grew sickly. The petroleum business experienced an explosive development. The once-feared railroad was it hard by the competition. Speedy marketing of perishable foodstuffs was accelerated. Countless new roads ribboned out to meet the demand of the American motorist for smoother and faster highways. The era of mud ended as the nation made haste to construct the finest network of hard-surfaced roadways in the world. At first a luxury, they rapidly became a necessity and developed into a badge of freedom and equality. Leisure hours could now be spent more pleasurable with joyriding vacations. Women were further freed from dependence on men. Autobuses made possible the consolidation of schools and to some extent of churches. The sprawling suburbs spread out further from the urban core. However, the American mania for speed made citizens statistics. Moral standards upon the youth were imposed as some called the automobile "a house of prostitution on wheels." Even crime was aided by the getaway car.

How did FDR attempt to put the unemployed back to work? How successful were his public works programs?

10. Roosevelt had no hesitancy about using federal money to assist the unemployed and at the same time to "prime the pump" of industrial recovery. The Hundred Days Congress responded to Roosevelt's spurs when it created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which proved to be perhaps the most popular of all the New Deal "alphabetical agencies." This law provided employment in fresh-air government camps for about 3 million uniformed young men, many of whom might otherwise have been driven by desperation into criminal habits. Their work was useful- including reforestation, firefighting, flood control, and swamp drainage. The recruits were required to help their parents by sending home most of their pay. Both human resources and natural resources were thus conversed though there were minor complaints of militarizing the nation's youth. Critics charged that CCC "soldiers" would later claim pensions for exposure to poison ivy. The first major effort of the new Congress to grapple with the millions of adult unemployed was the Federal Emergency Relief Act. Its chief aim was immediate relief rather than long-range recovery. The resulting Federal Emergency Relief Administration was handed over to zealous Hopkins. Hopkins's agency in all granted about $3 billion to the states for direct dole payments or preferably for wages on work projects. Immediate relief was also given to two large and hard pressed special groups by the Hundred Days Congress. One section of the Agricultural Adjustment Act made available many millions of dollars to help farmers meet their mortgages. Another law created that Home Owners' Loan Corporation. Designed to refinance mortgage on nonfarm homes, it ultimately assisted about a million badly pinched households. The agency not only bailed out mortgage-holding banks, it also bolted the political loyalties of relieved middle class homeowners securely to the Democratic party. Harassed by the continuing plague of unemployment, FDR himself established the Civil Rights Administration. As a branch of the FERA, it also fell under the direction of Hopkins. Designed to provide temporary jobs during the cruel winter emergency, it served a useful purpose. Tens of thousands of jobless were employed at leaf raking and other make-work tasks, which were dubbed "boondoggling." As this kind of labor put a premium on shovel-leaning slow motion, the scheme was widely criticized.

Describe the National Recovery Act? What happened to it? What was the Schechter v. U.S. case?

12. A daring attempt to stimulate a nationwide comeback was initiated when the Emergency Congress authorized the National Recovery Administration. 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. Individual industries were to work out codes of fair competition under which hours of labor would be reduced so that employment could be spread over more people. A ceiling was placed on the maximum hours of labor; a floor was placed under wages to establish minimum levels. Labor, under the NRA, was granted additional benefits. Workers were formally guaranteed the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing. The hated "yellow dog," or antiunion, contract was expressly forbidden, and certain safeguarding restrictions were placed on the use of child labor. Industrial recovery through the NRA's "fair competition" codes would a best be painful, for these called for self-denial by both management and labor. Patriotism was aroused by mass meetings and monster parades. A handsome blue eagle was designed as the symbol of the NRA, and merchants subscribing to a code displayed it in their windows with the slogan "We Do Out Part." Such enthusiasm for the NRA was for a brief period. There was a marked upswing in business activity, but too much self-sacrifice was expected of labor, industry, and the public for such a scheme to work. A new "age of chiselry" dawned as certain unscrupulous businesspeople publicly displayed the blue bird on their window but disobeyed the code. Complete collapse was imminent when the Supreme Court shot down the dying eagle in the famed Schnechter "sick chicken" decision. The learned justices unanimously held that Congress could not "delegate legislative powers" to the executive. They further declared that congressional control of interstate commerce could not properly apply to a local fowl business, like that of the Schenchter brothers in Brooklyn, New York. Roosevelt as incensed by this "horse and buggy" interpretation of the Constitution, but actually the Court helped him out of a bad jam.

What was the Agricultural Adjustment Act? What happened to it?

13. A radical new approach to farm recovery was embraced when the Emergency Congress established the Agricultural Adjustment administration (AAA). Through "artificial scarcity" this agency was to establish "parity price" for a product that gave it the same real value, in purchasing power, that it had enjoyed during the period from 1909 to 1914. The AAA would eliminate price-depressing surpluses by paying growers to reduce their crop acreage. The millions of dollars needed for these payments were to be raised by taxing processors of farm payments were to be raised by taxing processors of farm payments were to be raised by taxing processors of farm products, such as flour millers, who in turn would shift the burden to consumers. Unhappily the AAA got off to a wobbly start. It was begun after much of the cotton crop 1933 had been planted, and balky mules, trained otherwise, were forced to plow under countless young plants. Several million squealing pigs were purchased and slaughtered. Much of their meat was distributed to people on relief, but some of it was used for fertilizer. This "sinful" destruction of food, at a time when thousands of citizens were hungry, increased condemnation of the American economic system by many left-leaning voices. The whole confused enterprise met acid criticism. Farmers, food processors, consumers, and taxpayers were all to some degree unhappy. Paying the farmers not to farm actually increased unemployment, at a time when other New Deal agencies were striving to decrease it. When the Supreme Court finally killed the AAA by declaring its regulatory taxation provisions unconstitutional, foes of the plow-under program rejoiced loudly. The New Deal Congress hastened to pass the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act. The withdrawal of acreage from production was not achieved by paying farmers to plant soil-conserving crops or to let their land lie fallow. The Supreme Court placed its stamp of approval on the revamped scheme. The Second Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 was more comprehensive substitute, although it continued conservation payments. If growers observed acreage restrictions on specified commodities like cotton and wheat, they would be eligible for parity payments. Other provisions of the new AAA were designed to give farmers not only a fairer price but a more substantial share of the national income. Both goals were partially achieved.

What was the Harlem Renaissance? Who were some of the major black writers of the period? Who were some of the famous Jazz musicians? What was the so-called "Great Migration"?

13. If the flapper was the goddess of the "era of wonderful nonsense," jazz was its sacred music. With its virtuoso wanderings and tricky syncopation, jazz moved up from New Orleans along with the migrating blacks during WWI. Tunes like W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" became instant classics, as the wailing saxophone became the trumpet of the new era. Black performers such as Handy "Kelly rolls" Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Joe "King" Oliver gave birth to jazz, but the entertainment industry soon spawned all white bands. A new racial pride also blossomed in the northern black communities that burgeoned during and after the war. Harlem in New York City, counting some 150,00 African American residents in the 1920s, was one of the largest black communities in the world. Harlem sustained a vibrant, creative culture. 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 Hurston, 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 modernist techniques, Hughes and Hurston captured the oral and improvisational traditions of contemporary blacks in dialect-filled poetry and prose.

What was the Dust Bowl?

14. Later in 1933, a prolonged frought 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 protective masks on their faces, watching their farms swirl by. Overawed victims of the Dust Bowl disaster predicted the end of the world or the second coming of Christ. 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 during WWI had enticed farmers to bring countless acres of marginal land under cultivation. Worse, dry-farming techniques and mechanization had revolutionized Great Plains agriculture. The stream tractor and the disk plow tore up infinitely more sod than a team of oxen ever could, leacing the powdery topsoil to be swept away at nature's whim. Burned and blown out of the Dust Bowl, tens of thousands of refugees fled their ruined acres. In five years about 350,000 Oklahomans and Arkansans trekked to Southern Colifornia in "junkyards on wheels." Many found new homes in the San Joaquin Valley, which shared much in common with the southern plains-arid climate, cotton growing, newfound oil deposits, and abundant land. Yet the transition was cruel. Food, shelter, and clothing were scarce; the winter months, without work and heat, proved nearly unendurable for the migrants. The dismal story of these human tumbleweeds was realistically portrayed by John Steinbeck's best selling novel. Zealous New Dealers, sympathetic towards soil tillers, made various other efforts to relieve their burdens. The Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act made possible a suspension of mortgage foreclosures for five years, but it was voided the next year by the Supreme Court. A revised law, limiting the grace period to three years, was unanimously upheld. In 1935 the president set up the Resettlement Administration, charged with the task of removing near farmless farmers to better land. And more than 200 million young trees were successfully planted on the bare prairies as windbreaks by the young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps, even though one governor jeered at trying to "grow hair on a bald head." Native Americans also felt the far reaching hand of the New Deal reform. Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier ardently sought to reverse the forced assimilation policies in places since the Dawes Act. Inspired by the sojourn among the Pueblo Indians in Taos, New Mexico, Collier promoted the Indian Reorganization Act. The new law encouraged tribes to establish crafts and traditions. The act also helped to stop the loss of Indian lands and revived tribes' interest in their identity and culture. Yet not all Indians applauded it.

Who was Marcus Garvey? What was the UNIA and what did they do?

14. Marcus Garvery was Jamaican born and 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 Steamship company, to keep blacks' dollars in black pockets. 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 Garvey inspired among the 4 million blacks who counted themselves UNIA followers at the movement's height helped these newcomers to norther cities gain self-confidence and self reliance. And his example proved important to the later founding of the Nation of Islam movement.

What was meant by the term "the Lost Generation"? What were some of the names of the "Lost Generation" of writers? Why were they so disillusioned with the times?

15. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and many other American writers and painters formed an artistic "Lost Generation" as expatriates in postwar Europe. They found shelter and inspiration in the Paris salon of their brainy and eccentric countrywoman, Gertrude Stein. Hobnobbing in Paris with the iconoclastic artists Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, Stein wrote radically experimental poetry and prose. Stein also joined fellow American poets Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot in the vanguard of modernist literary innovation. These "high modernists" experimented with the breakdown of traditional literary forms and exposed the losses of associated with modernity. They wrote in a self-consciously internationalist mode, haughtily rejecting the parochialism they found at home. Mot all literary efforts of the era proved so radical. Many American writers continued to employ a familiar regionalist style that was by turns celebratory and critical. Robert Frost wrote hauntingly about the nature and folkways of his adopted New England. Carl Sandburg extolled the working classes of Chicago in strong, simple cadences. Other regionalist writers caustically proved Middle American small-town life. Though novelists and poets dominated modernist literary output in the 1920s, American composers and playwrights also made important contributions on the stage.

What was the Tennessee Valley Authority? What was it designed to do? Why was it controversial?

15. Inevitably, the sprawling electric power industry attracted the fire of New Deal reformers. As a public utility, it reached directly and regularly into the pocketbooks of millions of consumers for vitally needed services. Ardent New Dealers accused it of gouging the public with excessive rates. The Tennessee River provided New Dealers with a rare opportunity. With its tributaries, the river drained a badly eroded area about the size of England. The federal government already owned valuable properties at Muscle Shoals, where it had erected plants for needed nitrates in World War I. By developing the hydroelectric potential of the entire area, Washington could combine the immediate advantage of putting thousands of people to work and a long-term project for reforming the power monopoly. An act created the Tennessee Valley Authority 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 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 agency was determined to discover precisely 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 companies. Utility corporation lashed back at this enterprising wedge of government control, charging that the low cost of TVA power was due to dishonest bookkeeping and the absence of taxes. Critics complained that the whole dream was "creeping socialism in concrete." But the New Dealers pointed a prideful finger at the amazing achievements of the TVA. The gigantic project brought of cheap electric power, but low-cost housing, abundant cheap nitrates, the restoration of eroded soil, reforestation, improved navigation, and flood control. Rivers ran blue instead of brown, and a once-poverty-cursed area was being transformed into one of the most flourishing regions in the United State. New Dealers agitated for parallel enterprises in the valleys of the Columbia, Colorado and Missouri Rivers. Hydroelectric power from those dams would drive the growth of the urban West, and the waters they diverted would nurture agriculture in the previously bone-dry western deserts.

What was the Social Security Act of 1935?

16. Incomparably 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 and were financed by a payroll tax on both employers and employees. Provision was also made for the blind, the physically handicapped, delinquent children, and other dependents. Republican opposition to the sweeping new legislation was bitter. "Social Security," insisted Hoover, "must be builded upon a cult of work, not a cult of leisure." The GOP national chairman falsely charged that every worker would have to wear a metal dog tag for life. Social Security was largely inspired by the example of some of the more highly industrialized nations of Europe. In the agricultural America of an earlier day, there had always been farm chores for all ages, and the large family had cared for its own dependents. But in an urbanized economy, at the mercy of boom-or-bust cycles, the government was now recognizing its responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. By 1939 over 45 million people were eligible for Social Security benefits. In subsequent years further categories of workers were added, including, belatedly, farm and domestic workers. For decades millions of poor men and women were excluded from Social Security.

Who was John L. Lewis and what was the CIO?

18. Under the encouragement of a highly sympathetic National Labor Relations Board, a host of unskilled workers began to organize themselves into effective unions. The leader of this drive was beetle-browed, domineering, and melodramatic John L. Lewis, boss of the United Mine Workers. In 1935 he succeeded in forming the Committee for Industrial Organization within the ranks of the skilled-craft American Federation of Labor. But skilled workers, ever since the days of the ill-fated Knights of Labor in the 1880s, had shown only lukewarm sympathy for the cause of unskilled labor. In 1936, following inevitable friction with the CIO, the older federation suspended the upstart unions associated with the newer organization. The rebellious CIO moved on a concerted scale into the huge automobile industry. Late in 1936 the workers resorted to a revolutionary technique known as the sit-down strike: they refused to leave the factory building of General Motors at Flint, Michigan, and thus prevented the importation of strikebreakers. Conservation respecters of private property were scandalized. The CIO won a resounding victory when its union was recognized. A better deal for labor continued when Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. The CIO surged forward, breaking completely with the AF of L in 1938. On that occasion the Committee for Industrial Organization was formally reconstitute as the Congress of Industrial Organizations, under the visionary though high-handed presidency of John L. Lewis. By 1940 the CIO could claim about 4 million members in its constituent unions. Nevertheless, bitter and annoyed jurisdictional feuding involving strikes continued with the AF of L. At times labor seemed more bent on costly civil war than on its age old war with management.

Who was Alf Landon and what platform did he run on?

19. The Republicans were hard-pressed to find someone to feed to "the Champ." They finally settled on the colorless but homespun and honest governor of the Sunflower State of Kansas, Alfred M. Landon. Landon himself was a moderate who accepted some New Deal reforms, although not the popular Social Security Act. But the Republican platform vigorously condemned the New Deal of Franklin "Deficit" Roosevelt for its radicalism, experimentation, confusion, and "frightful waste." Backing Landon, ex-president Hoover called for a "hold crusade for liberty," echoing the cry of the American Liberty League, a group of wealthy conservatives who had organized in 1934 to fight "socialistic" New Deal schemes. The president took to the stump and denounced the "economic royalists" who sought to "hide behind the flag and the "Constitution." A landslide overwhelmed Landon, as the demoralized Republicans carried only two states, Maine and Vermont. Democratic majorities, riding in on Roosevelt's magic coattails, were again returned to Congress. Jubilant Democrats of the seats in the house and like a proportion in the Senate. The battle of 1936 partially bore out Republican charges of class warfare. Even more than in 1932, the needy economic groups were lined up against the so called greedy economic groups. CIO units contributed generously to FDR's campaign chest. Many left-wingers turned to Roosevelt, as the customary third party protest vote sharply declined. Blacks, several million of whom had also appreciated welcome relief checks, had by now largely shaken off their traditional allegiance to the Republican party. FDR won primarily because he appealed to the "forgotten man," whom he never forgot. Some of the president's support was only pocketbook-deep: "reliefers" were not going to bite the hand that doled out the government checks. But Roosevelt in fact had forged a powerful and enduring coalition of southerners, blacks, urbanites, and the poor. He proved especially effective in marshaling the support of the multitudes of "New Immigrants"-mostly the Catholics and Jews who had swarmed into the great cities since the turn of the century. These once-scorned newcomers, with their now-numerous sons and daughters, had at last come politically of age. In the 1920s one out of every twenty five federal judgeships went to a Catholic; Roosevelt appointed Catholics to one out of every four.

What was the Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 and what was its effect?

2. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 followed the pattern of Washington horse trading. It started out in the House as a fairly reasonable protective 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 thousand amendments. It thus turned out to be the highest protective tariff in the nation's peacetime history. The average duty on nonfree goods was raised from 38.5 percent to nearly 60 percent. To angered foreigners, the Hawley-Smoot Tariff was a blow below the trade belt. It seemed like a declaration of economic warfare on the entire outside world. It reversed a promising worldwide trend toward reasonable tariffs and widened the yawning trade gaps. It plunged both America and other nations deeper into the depression. It increased international financial chaos and forced the United States further into the bog of economic isolationism. And economic isolationism was playing directly into the hands of a hate filled German demagogue, Adolf Hitler.

Explain FDR's "court packing scheme"? Did it work? Did it have an impact on future New Deal Policy?

20. Roosevelt hit upon a Court Scheme that proved to be one of the most costly political misjudgments of his career. When he sprang his brainstorm on a shocked nation in 1937, he caught the country and Congress by surprise. Roosevelt bluntly asked Congress for legislation to permit him to add a new justice to the Supreme Court for every member over seventy who would not retire. The maximum membership could then be fifteen. Roosevelt pointed to the necessity of injecting vigorous new blood, for the court, he alleged, was far behind in its work. This charge, which turned out to be false, brought heated accusations of dishonesty. At best Roosevelt was headstrong and not fully aware of the fact that the Court, in popular thinking, had become something of a sacred cow. Franklin "Double-crossing" Roosevelt was vilified for attempting to break down the delicate checks and balances among the three branches of government. He was accused of grooming himself as a dictator by trying to browbeat the judiciary. In the eyes of countless citizens, mostly Republicans but including many democrats, basic liberties seemed to be in jeopardy. The Court saw the ax hanging over its head. Some conservative Justices began to vote on the side of their liberal colleagues. Roosevelt's Court packing plan was further undermined when Congress voted full pay for justices over seventy who retired, whereupon one of the oldest conservative members resigned, to be replaced by a New Dealer, Justice Hugo Black. Congress finally passed a court reform bill, but this watered down version applied only to lower courts. Roosevelt, the master politician, thus suffered his first major legislative defeat at the hands of his own party in Congress. Americans have never viewed lightly a president's tampering with the Supreme Court, no matter how popular their chief executive may be. Yet in losing this battle, Roosevelt incidentally won his campaign. The Court, as he hoped, became markedly more friendly to New Deal reforms. Furthermore, a succession of deaths and resignations enabled him in time to make nine appointments to the tribunal-more than any of his predecessors since George Washington. Yet in a sense, FDR lost both the Court battle and the war. He so aroused conservatives of both parties in Congress that few New Deal Reformers were passed after 1937, the year of the fight to "pack" the bench. With this catastrophic miscalculation, he squandered much of the political goodwill that had carried him to such a resounding victory in the 1936 election.

Kellogg-Briand Pact. What were the problems with this treaty?

20. The conviction spread that if quarreling nations would only take the pledge to forswear war as an instrument of national policy, swords could be beaten into plowshares. Calin Coolidge's secretary of state, Frank Kellogg, was lukewarm about the idea. But after petitions bearing more than 2 million signatures cascaded into Washington, he signed with the French foreign minister in 1928 the famed Kellogg-Briand Pact. Officially known as the Pact of Paris, it was ultimately ratified by sixty two nations. This new parchment peace was delusory in the extreme. Defensive wars were still permitted, and what scheming aggressor could not cook up and excuse of self-defense? The pact was a diplomatic derelict-a virtually useless in a shutdown. Yet it accurately reflected the American mind in the 1920s, which was all too willing to be lulled into a false sense of security. This mood took even deeper hold in the ostrich like neutralism of the 1930s.

Explain the Fordney-McCumber Tariff. How did this tariff impact European countries? How did it backfire on the U.S.?

21. In 1922 Congress passed the comprehensive Fordney-McCumber Tariff Law. Glib lobbyists once more descended upon Washington and helped boost schedules from the average of 27 percent under Wilson's Underwood Tariff of 1913 to an average of 38.5 percent, which was almost as high as Taft's Payne-Aldrich Tariff of 1909. Duties on farm produce were increased, and the principle was proclaimed that the general rates were designed to equalize the cost of American and foreign production. A promising degree of flexibility was introduced for the first time, when the president was authorized, with the advice of the fact-finding Tariff Commission to reduce or increase duties by as much as 50 percent. Harding and Coolidge were much more friendly to tariff increases opposed to reductions. The high tariff course thus charted by the Republican regimes set off an ominous chain reaction. European producers felt the squeeze, for the American tariff walls prolonged their postwar chaos. An impoverished Europe needed to sell its manufactured goods to the U.S., 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. International trade is a two way street. The American example spurred European nations to pile up higher barriers themselves. These artificial obstacles were doubly bad: they hurt not only American-made goods but the products of European countries as well. The whole vicious circle further deepened the international economic distress.

Explain why the economy took a sharp downturn in 1937? What was FDR's response?

21. 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. Only at this late date did Roosevelt frankly and deliberately embrace the recommendations of the British economist John Maynard Keynes. The New Deal had run deficits for year, but all of them were small and unintended. Now, Roosevelt announced a bold program to stimulate the economy by planning 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-the use of government spending and fiscal policy to "prime the pump' of the economy and encourage consumer spending- became the new economic orthodoxy and remained so for decades. Roosevelt was pushing the remaining reform measures of the New Deal. He urged Congress to authorize a sweeping reorganization of the national administration in the interests of streamlined efficiency. But the issue became tangled up with his presumed autocratic ambitions in regard to the Supreme Court, and he suffered another stinging defeat. Two years later, in 1939, Congress partially relented and in the Reorganization Act gave him limited powers for administrative reforms, including the key new Executive Office in the White House. The New Dealers were accused of having the richest campaign chest in history, and in truth government relief checks had a curious habit of coming in bunches just before ballot time. To remedy such practices, Congress adopted the much heralded Hatch Act of 1939. This act barred federal administrative officials, except the highest policy making officers, from active political campaigning and soliciting. It also forbade the use of government funds for political purposes, as well as the collection of campaign contributions from people receiving relief payments. The Hatch Act was broadened in 1940 to place limits on campaign contributions and expenditures, but such clever ways of getting around it were found that on the whole the legislation proved disappointing. By 1938, the New deal lost most of its early momentum.

Explain the Tea Pot Dome Scandal. What was its significance?

22. The Teapot Dome scandal was an affair that involved priceless naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome (Wyoming) and Elk Hills (California). The secretary of interior, Albert Fall, induced his careless colleague, the secretary o the navy, to transfer these valuable properties to the Interior Department. Harding indiscreetly signed the secret order. Fall then quietly leased the lands to oilmen Harry Sinclair and Edward Doheny, but not until he received a bribe of $100,000 from Doheny and about three times that amount in all from Sinclair. Teapot Dome finally came to a boil. Details about the transaction leaked out. Fall, Sinclair, and Doheny were indicted the next year, but the case dragged through the courts. Finally Fall was found guilty through taking a bribe and was sentenced to one year in jail. By quick justice, the two bribe givers were acquitted while the bribe taker was convicted. The Teapot Dome polluted the prestige of the Washington government. The acquittal of Sinclair and Doheny undermined faith in the courts.

What was the biggest complaint of the farmer in the 1920s? What was the McNary-Haugen Bill? What happened to it?

23. Peace brought an end to the guaranteed high prices and to massive purchases by other nations, as foreign production reentered the stream of world commerce. Machines also threatened farmers with their own overabundant crops. They could grow bigger crops on larger areas, using fewer horses and hired hands. The wartime boom had encouraged them to bring vast new tracts under cultivation, but such improved efficiency and expanded agricultural acreage helped to pile up more price dampening surpluses. A withering depression swept through agricultural districts, when one farm was sold for debt or taxes. Schemes abounded for bringing relief to the hard pressed farmers. A bipartisan "farm bloc" from agricultural states coalesced in Congress in 1921 and succeeded in driving through some helpful laws. The farm bloc's favorite proposal was the McNary-Haugen Bill, pushed energetically from 1924 to 1928. It sought to keep agricultural prices high by authorizing the government to buy up surpluses and sell them abroad. Government losses were to be made up by a special tax on the farmers. Congress twice passed the bill, but frugal Coolidge twice vetoed it. Farmer prices stayed down, and farmer's political temperatures stayed high.

Explain the relationship between war reparations demanded of Germany and the international debt problem. How did high tariffs also impact this? What was the Dawes Plan? How did this further complicate the problem?

24. The French and the British demanded that the Germans make enormous reparations payments, as compensation for war inflicted damages. The allies hoped to settle their debts to the United States with the money received from Germany. The French sent troops into Germany's Ruhr Valley in 1923. Berlin responded by permitting its currency to inflate astronomically. German society teetered on the brink of anarchy, and the whole international house of financial cards threatened to flutter down in colossal chaos. Sensible statesmen now urged that war debts and reparations alike be drastically scaled down or canceled outright. The Washington administration proved especially unrealistic in its dogged insistence that there was no connection whatever between debts and reparations. Reality finally dawned in the Dawes Plan of 1924, which rescheduled German reparation payments and opened the way for further American private loans to Germany. The whole financial cycle now became still more complicated, as U.S. bankers loaned money to Germany, Germany paid reparations to France and Britain, and the former Allies paid war debts to the United States. After the crash in 1929, President Herbert Hoover declared a one year debt moratorium in 1931, and before long all the debtors had defaulted. The U.S. never did get all its money but it harvested a bumper crop of ill will. Irate French crowds on occasion attacked American tourists, and throughout Europe Uncle Sam was caricatured as Uncle Shylock, greedily whetting his knife for the last pound of Allied flash. This "bad taste" contributed powerfully to the storm-cellar neutrality legislation passed by Congress in the 1930s.

Describe the issues in the 1928 campaign between Herbert Hoover and Al Smith. What segment of the American public did each man appeal to? What part did religion play in the election?

25. Coolidge bowed out of the 1928 presidential election. His logical successor was Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, who was unpopular with the political bosses but the much-admired darling of the masses. He was nominated on a platform that clucked contently over both prosperity and prohibition. Democrats still nominated Alfred Smith, governor of New York and one of the most colorful personalities in American politics. He was "wet", too urban, Roman Catholic, and many other things that fought against the common majority. Radio figured prominently in this campaign for the first time and helped Hoover more than Smith. The New Yorker had more personal spark, but it couldn't be seen through the radio. Hoover was a living example of the American success story and an intriguing mixture of two centuries. His experiences abroad helped further his faith in American individualism, free enterprise, and small government. Never before elected to public office, he was thin skinned in the face of criticism, and he did not adapt readily to the necessary give and take of political accommodation. His real power lay in his integrity, his humanitarianism, his passion for assembling facts, his efficiency, his talents for administration, and his ability to inspire loyalty. Hoover was the ideal businessperson's candidate, for he recoiled from anything suggesting socialism, paternalism, or "planned economy." He did endorse labor unions and support federal regulation of the new radio broadcasting industry. He even thought of an idea for a government owned radio. Despite the best efforts of Hoover and Smith, below the belt tactics were employed to a disgusting degree by lower-level campaigners, regarding things such as Smith's Catholicism. The proverbially solid south and stronghold of Protestant Ku Klux Klan members avoided Smith. Hoover triumphed in a landslide. Thousands of dry southern democrats- Hoovercrats- rebelled against Smith, and Hover proved to be the first Republican candidate in 53 years.

Explain the Stock Market Crash of 1929. How did it contribute to the Depression?

3. A catastrophic crash came in October 1929. It was partially triggered by the British, who raised their interest rates in an effort to bring back capital lured abroad by American investments. Foreign investors and wary domestic speculators began to dump their "insecurities," and an orgy of selling followed. Tension built up to the panicky Black Tuesday of October 29, 1929, when 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 were unbelievable. The stock-market collapse heralded a business depression, at home and abroad, that was the most prolonged and prostrating in American or world experience. By the end of 1930, more than 4 million workers in the United States were jobless; two years later the figure had about tripled. Hungry and despairing workers pounded pavements in search of nonexistent jobs. Where employees were not discharged, wages and salaries were often slashed. The misery and gloom were incalculable, as forests of dead chimneys stood stark against the sky. Breadlines formed, soup kitchens dispensed food, and apple sellers stood shivering on street corners trying to peddle their wares for five cents. Families felt the stress. Mothers nursed fewer babies.

What caused the re-emergenceof the KKK in the 20s? How was it different from the earlier KKK in terms of purpose and geography?

4. Despite the familiar sheets and hoods, it more closely resembled the antiforeign "nativist" movements of the 1850s than the anti-black nightriders of the 1860s. It was antiforeign, anti-Catholic, anti-black, anti-Jewish, antipacifist, anti-Communist, anti-internationalist, anti-evolutionist, anti-bootlegger, antigambling, antiadultery, and anti-birth control. It was also pro-Anglo-Saxon, pro-"native" American, and pro-Protestant. The Klan spread with rapidity among white Protestants in the Midwest and South. It capitalized on the typically American love of an-the-edge adventure and in-group camaraderie, to say nothing of the adolescent ardor for secret ritual. The "Knights of the Invisible Empire" included among their officials Imperial Wizards, Grand Goblins, Kind Kleagles, and other horrendous "kreatures". This reign of horror collaspedrather suddenly in the late 1920s. Decent people at last recoiled from the orgy of ribboned flesh and terrorism, while scandalous embezzling by Klan officials launched a congressional investigation.

What were the other more underlying causes of the Depression?

4. One basic explanation is overproduction by both farm and factory. Ironically, the depression of the 1930s was one of abundance, not want. 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. Overexpansion of credit through installment plan buying overstimulated production. Paying on so-called easy terms caused many consumers to dive in beyond their depth. Normal technological unemployment, resulting from new laborsaving machines, also added its burden to the abnormal unemployment of the "threadbare thirties." Plus Britain and the continent had never fully recovered from the upheaval of WWI. Depression in America was given a further downward push by a chain-reaction financial collapse in Europe, following the failure in 1931 of a prominent Vienna banking house. A drying up of international trade had been hastened by the shortsighted Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930. European uncertainties over reparations, war debts, and defaults and loans owed to America caused tensions that reacted unfavorably on the United States. A terrible drought scorched the Mississippi Valley in 1930. Thousands of farms were sold at auction for taxes, though in some cases kind neighbors would intimidate prospective buyers, bid one cent, and return the property to its original owner. The insidious effect of all this dazed despair on the nation's spirit was incalculable and long lasting. Initiative and self-respect were stifled. Paper shantytowns were cynically named Hoovervilles.

What was Hoover's overall philosophy of how to deal with the Depression?

5. Hoover was finally forced to turn reluctantly from his doctrine of log cabin individualism and accept the proposition that the welfare of the people in a nationwide catastrophe is a direct concern of the national government. 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 pyramid, unemployment would be relieved at the bottom on a trickle-down basis. Partisan critics sneered at the "Great Humanitarian"- he who had fed the faraway Belgians but would not use federal funds to feed needy Americans. Hostile commentators remarked that he was willing to lend government money to the big bankers, who allegedly had plunged the country into the mess. He would lend money to agricultural organizations to feed pigs-but not people. Most of the criticism was unfair. Although continued suffering seemed to mock the effectiveness of Hoover's measures, his efforts probably prevented a more serious collapse than did occur. His expenditures for relief paved the path for the enormous federal outlays of his new deal successor, Franklin Roosevelt

What did FDR attempt to do to solve the nation's currency and banking problems?

9. Congress 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. Roosevelt next turned to the radio to deliver the first of his thirty famous "fireside chats." He gave assurances that it was now safer to keep money in a reopened bank than "under the mattress." Confidence returned with a gush, and the banks began to unlock their doors. The Hundred Days, or emergency, Congress buttressed public reliance on the banking system by enacting the Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act. This measure provided for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insured individual deposits up to $5,000. Thus ended the disgraceful epidemic of bank failures, which dated back to the "wildcat" days of Andrew Jackson. Roosevelt sought to protect the melting gold reserves and to prevent panicky hoarding. He ordered all private holdings of gold to be surrendered to the Treasury in exchange of paper currency and then took the nation off the gold standard. The Emergency Congress responded to his recommendation by canceling the gold-payment clause in all contracts and authorizing repayment in paper money. The goal of Roosevelt's "managed currency" was inflation, which he believed would relieve debtors' burdens and stimulate new production. Roosevelt's principal instrument for achieving inflation was gold buying. He instructed the treasury to purchase gold at increasing prices, ratcheting the dollar price of gold up from $21 an ounce in 1933 to $35 ounce in 1934, a price that held for nearly four decades. This policy did increase the amount of dollars in circulation, as holders of gold cashed it in at the elevated prices. But this inflationary result also provoked the wrath of "sound money" critics, who gagged on the "baloney dollar." The gold-buying scheme came to an end in Feb 1934, when FDR returned the nation to a limited gold standard for purposes of international trade only. Thereafter the United States pledged itself to pay foreign bills, if requested, in gold at the rate of one ounce of gold for every $35 due. But domestic circulation of gold continued to be prohibited, and gold coin became collectors' items.

Four Power Treaty

A Four-Power treaty replaced the twenty year old Anglo-Japanese alliance. The new pact bound Britain, Japan, France, and the U.S. to preserve the status quo in the Pacific-another concession to the jumpy Japanese.

Bruce Barton: The Man Nobody Knows

A founder of the new advertising profession was Bruce Barton, prominent New York partner in a Madison Avenue firm. In 1925 Barton published a best seller, The Man Nobody Knows, setting forth the provocative thesis that Jesus Christ was the greatest adman of all time. Barton even had a good word to say for Christ's executive ability.

Al Capone

A grasping and murderous booze distributor, began six years of gang warfare that netted him millions of blood spattered dollars. He zoomed through the streets in an armor plated car with bulletproof windows.

The Jazz Singer

A new era began in 1927, with the success of the first "talkie" - The Jazz Singer, staring the white performer Al Jolson in blackface. The age of the "silent" was ushered out as theaters everywhere were "wired for sound." At about the same time, reasonably satisfactory color films were being produced.

The Wright Brothers

After near successful experiments by others with heavier-than-air craft, the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, performed "the miracle at Kitty Hawk," North Carolina. On a historic day, Orville took aloft a feebly engine plane that stayed airborne for 12 econds and 120 feet. Thus the air age was launched.

Francis Townshend

Dr. Francis E. Townsend, a retired California physician who promised everyone over sixty $200 a month.

Routing of the Bonus Army

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 created a menace to the public health, while attempting to intimidate Congress by their presence in force. After the pending bonus bill had dialed 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 authorities by ordering the army to evacuate the unwanted guests. Although Hoover charged that the Bonus Army was led by riffraff and reds, in fact only a sprinkling of them were former convicts and communist agitators. The eviction was carried out by General Douglas MacArthur with bayonets and tear gas-and with far more severity than Hoover had planned. A few of the former soldiers were injured as the torch was put to their pathetic shanties in the "Battle of Anacostia Flats." This brutal episode brought down additional abuse on the once popular Hoover, who by now was the most loudly booed man in the country. The Democrats, not content with Hoover's vulnerable record, employed professional "smear" artists to drive him from office.

Andrew Mellon

Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's tax policies favored the rapid expansion of capital investment.

What was the Sacco and Venzetti case?

Violence was done to traditional American concepts of free speech as IWW members and other radicals were vigorously prosecuted. Anti-redism and anti-foreignism were reflected in a notorious case regarded by liberals as a "judicial lynching." Nicola Sacco, a shoe-factory worker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted of murder of a Massachusetts paymaster and his guard. The jury and judge were prejudiced in some degree against the defendant because they were Italians, atheists, anarchists, and draft dodgers. Liberals and radicals from all over the world rallied to the defense of the aliens. The case continued for six years until they were electrocuted. Communists and other radicals were presented with two martyrs while American liberals hung their heads.

How did the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Wagner Act attempt to solve some of the problems of labor?

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 commonly known as the Wagner Act, after its congressional 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 representatives of its own choice. Considered the Magna Carta of American labor, the Wagner Act proved to be a major milestone for American workers. Industries involved in interstate commerce were to set up minimum wage and maximum hour levels. The eventual goals were forty cents an hour and a forty hour week. Labor by children under sixteen was forbidden. These reforms were bitterly though futilely opposed by many industrialists, especially by those southern textile manufacturers who had profited from low wage labor. But the exclusion of agricultural, service, and domestic workers meant that blacks, Mexican Americans, and women-who were concentrated in these fields-did not benefit from the act. In later New Deal days, labor unionization thrived. The president received valuable support at ballot-box time from labor leaders and many appreciative working people.

In what ways through the treaties at the Disarmament Conference of 1921 were more illusory than real?

When the final gavel banged, the Hardingites boasted with much fanfare-and some justification-of their globe-shaking achievement in disarmament. But their satisfaction was somewhat illusory. No restrictions had been placed on small warships, and the other powers churned ahead with the construction of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, while penny-pinching Uncle Sam lagged dangerously behind. Congress also pointedly declared that it was making no commitment to the use of armed force or any kind of joint action when it ratified the Four Power Treaty. These reservations, in effect rendered the treaty a dead letter. Ominously, the American people seemed content to rely for their security on words and wishful thinking rather than on weapons and hardheaded realism.