hoover urges voluntary help for the crisis
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Hoover urges voluntary help for the crisis. The President’s Emergency Commission for Employment (PECE) The President’s Organization for Unemployment Relief (POUR) PECE and POUR helped coordinate voluntary unemployment relief - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
The United States from 1914 to 1945
Hoover urges voluntary help for the crisis
• The President’s Emergency Commission for Employment
(PECE)• The President’s Organization
for Unemployment Relief (POUR)
• PECE and POUR helped coordinate voluntary unemployment relief
• National Credit Corporation gets healthy banks to give advice to banks in trouble.
The United States from 1914 to 1945
1932: The Reconstruction Finance Corporation
• A government fund to help banks and other financial institutions in trouble
• 2 billion dollars to spend
The United States from 1914 to 1945
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930
• Set trade tariffs to historically high levels
• Set off a wave of retaliatory measures in Europe
• U.S. lost considerable access to foreign measures and the Depression intensified as a result
The United States from 1914 to 1945
The New Deal, 1932-1938• Safety net:
Direct government emergency support to people in trouble.
Works Progress Administration; Civilian Conservation Corps
• Stability: Regulatory institutions that protect the capitalist
system from its own worst impulsesEmergency Banking Act; Security and Exchange Commission
• Security: Long term programs that provide economic security
to working and middle-class peopleSocial Security; The National Labor Relations Act
The United States from 1914 to 1945
Private Sector supporters of the New Deal
• Consumer products sector• Western developers
Henry Kaiser
The United States from 1914 to 1945
The Emergency Banking Act, 1933
• Vastly increases the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation’s pot of money
• Federal Government issues “fiscal conservators” for
banks to make sure they’re running competently
• Creates Security and Exchange Commission to
oversee the stock exchange
• Creates rules that separate savings banks from
brokerage houses Nervous bankers in 1933 standing on Wall Street
FDR Hoover
The United States from 1914 to 1945
The Glass-Steagal Act of 1933
• Banks can’t affiliate with brokerage firms.
• Banks can’t pack their boards with stockbrokers.
The United States from 1914 to 1945
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), 1933
• Millions of dollars for direct emergency relief to the poor
• matching grants for state poor relief
• power to take over state relief systems if
they’re corrupt or stingy Harry Hopkins,
FERA administrator
The United States from 1914 to 1945
The Civil Works Administration, 1933
• Half a million state highways upgraded• Hundreds of bridges laid • schools, courthouses, city halls, libraries,
zoos, sewage plants, heating plants, police stations, hospitals, jails, state capitol buildings went up
• Almost 500 new airports built• 250,000 outdoor bathrooms constructed
along the nation’s roads
The United States from 1914 to 1945
The Public Works Administration, 1933
• 583 municipal water systems• 368 street and highway projects • 622 sewage systems• 263 hospitals• 522 schools• including replacements for the great Long
Beach earthquake of 1933• You’re welcome
The United States from 1914 to 1945
The Dawes Act, 1887“Kill the Indian to save the man.”• Privatization of
reservation land 1881 Indians held
155,000,000 acres 1890 they held 104,000,000 1900 they held 77,000,000
Indian Reorganization Act1934 • Repealed the Dawes Act
Allowed communal landholdings Organized self governing tribes with
power of self-incorporation Gave tribes right to ignore the act.
John Collier
The United States from 1914 to 1945
The National IndustrialRecovery Act, 1933
• Created the National Recovery Administration
(NRA)
• Established production codes for each industry
to eliminate wasteful competition and to
establish labor standards
• Created boards consisting of
businesspeople, labor leaders and consumers
•Section 7(a) gave workers the right to
organize
The United States from 1914 to 1945
Agricultural Adjustment Act
• Subsection of the Farm Relief Act of 1933
• Paid farmers not to produce crops, meat, and dairy products
• Hoped that this would stabilize (increase) prices
• Put thousands of farm hands out of work
The United States from 1914 to 1945
The Oklahoma migration,1934-1940
•Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas farmers fleeing the
dust bowl
•Displaced by the Agricultural Adjustment
Act
•Headed west because a smaller migration had
gone west in the 1920s
•3.5 million migrants came west
Dorthea Lange photograph of Oklahoma migrant
The United States from 1914 to 1945
FDR to the NAACP’s Walter White
"I did not choose the tools with which I must work. Had I been permitted to choose them I would have selected quite different ones. But I've got to get legislation passed by Congress to save America. The Southerners by reason of the seniority rule in Congress are chairmen or occupy strategic places on most of the Senate and House committees. If I come out for the anti-lynching bill now, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing. I just can't take that risk.“
FDR to Walter White
Walter White
The United States from 1914 to 1945
“The Popular Front,” 1934
• Rise of fascism requires all Communist Parties to engage in strategic alliances with capitalist democracies
The United States from 1914 to 1945
Huey Long says “Share the Wealth,” 1934
• 5,000 dollars to every American family
• Limit personal fortunes to 1 million dollars
• Old age pensions of 30 a month to persons over sixty.
Governor/Senator/would-be-dictator, Huey Long
The United States from 1914 to 1945Upton Sinclair: End Poverty In
California (EPIC), 1934• Tax unused land at
10 percent or more• Unused land would
be sold and widely distributed
• Revenues used to finance
cooperatives
The United States from 1914 to 1945
Ham and Eggs!
• “Thirty every Thursday” – 30 dollars to seniors every Thursday
• In 1938 the measure was put on the California ballot
• It lost by ten percent of the vote
The United States from 1914 to 1945
The Roosevelt Coalition• Organized labor
• Progressive women
• African-Americans• The Urban-ethnic
vote
The United States from 1914 to 1945
The Works Progress Administration of 1935
• Funded artists,
writers, musicians
and theater companies
• “Hell, they’ve got
to eat too.” –Harry
Hopkins
Bernard Zakheim, Coit Tower Mural
The United States from 1914 to 1945
Federal Theatre Project• 1,000 plays
produced • 50,000
performances• . . . reaching 25
million Americans• via 12,000 FTP
actors
Hattie Flannigan, Director of the Federal Theater Project
The United States from 1914 to 1945
The Wagner Labor Relations Act, 1935
• Sets up a board to arbitrate labor disputes and hold
union elections• Sets up an independent legal
code that prohibits the “unlawful labor practice,”
which includes . . . Firing a worker for trying
to organize a union Firing a worker for trying
to enforce a contract• Encourages unions to sign “no strike pledges” (no strike during the life of a contract)
• But it excluded domestic and agricultural workers.
The United States from 1914 to 1945The
Townsend Plan
• 200 dollars a month to everybody over 60
• . . . Provided that they spend it in 30 days
Dr. Francis Townsend
The United States from 1914 to 1945
Social Security, 1934• Establish a dedicated payroll tax for retirement• "one of the major turning points of American
history. No longer could 'rugged individualism' convincingly insist that government, though obliged to provide a climate favorable for the growth of business profits, had no responsibility whatever for the welfare of the human beings who did the work from which profit was reaped.“
• But it excluded domestic and agricultural workers.