Chapter 31 - American Life in the Roaring ‘20s

I. Seeing Red

1. After World War I, America turned inward, away from the world, andstarted a policy of “isolationism.” Americans denounced“radical” foreign ideas and “un-American”lifestyles.

2. The “Red Scare” of 1919-20 resulted in Attorney GeneralA. Mitchell Palmer (“Fighting Quaker”) using a series ofraids to round up and arrest about 6,000 suspected Communists.

3. In December of 1919, 249 alleged alien radicals were deported on the Buford.

4. The Red Scare severely cut back free speech for a period, since thehysteria caused many people to want to eliminate any Communists andtheir ideas.

o Some states made it illegal to merely advocate the violent overthrow of government for social change.

o In 1921, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted ofmurdering a Massachusetts paymaster and his guard. The two accused wereItalians, atheists, anarchists, and draft dodgers, and the courts mayhave been prejudiced against them.

5. In this time period, anti-foreignism (or “nativism”) was high. 6. Liberals and radicals rallied around the two men, but they were

executed.

II. Hooded Hoodlums of the KKK

1. The new Ku Klux Klan was anti-foreign, anti-Catholic, anti-black,anti-Jewish, anti-pacifist, anti-Communist, anti-internationalist,anti-revolutionist, anti-bootlegger, anti-gambling, anti-adultery, andanti-birth control.

2. More simply, it was pro-White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) and anti-everything else.

3. At its peak in the 1920s, it claimed 5 million members, mostly from the South, but it also featured a reign of hooded horror.

o The KKK employed the same tactics of fear, lynchings, and intimidation.

o It was stopped not by the exposure of its horrible racism, but by its money fraud.

III. Stemming the Foreign Flood

1. In 1920-21, some 800,000 European “New Immigrants”(mostly from the southeastern Europe regions) came to the U.S. andCongress passed the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, in which newcomersfrom Europe were restricted at any year to a quota, which was set at 3%of the people of their nationality who lived in the U.S. in 1910.

*This policy still really favored the Slavs and the southeasternEuropeans in comparison to other groups. So, a new policy wassought…* A replacement law was found in the Immigration Act of 1924, which cutthe quota down to 2% and the origins base was shifted to that of 1890,when few southeastern Europeans lived in America.* This change clearly had racial undertones beneath it (New Immigrants out, Old Immigrants in).* This act also slammed the door against Japanese immigrants.* By 1931, for the first time in history, more people left America than came here.

1. The immigrant tide was now cut off, but those that were in America struggled to adapt.

o Labor unions in particular had difficulty in organizing because of the differences in race, culture, and nationality.

IV. The Prohibition “Experiment”

1. The 18th Amendment (and later, the Volstead Act) prohibited thesale of alcohol, but this law never was effectively enforced because somany people violated it.

2. Actually, most people thought that Prohibition was here to stay, and this was especially popular in the Midwest and the South.

3. Prohibition was particularly supported by women and theWomen’s Christian Temperance Union, but it also posed problemsfrom countries that produced alcohol and tried to ship it to the U.S.(illegally, of course).

4. In actuality, bank savings did increase, and absenteeism in industry did go down.

V. The Golden Age of Gangsterism

1. Prohibition led to the rise of gangs that competed to distribute liquor. 2. In the gang wars of Chicago in the 1920s, about 500 people were

murdered, but captured criminals were rare, and convictions even rarer,since gangsters often provided false alibis for each other.

o The most infamous of these gangsters was “Scarface” AlCapone, and his St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Capone was

finallycaught for tax evasion.

o Gangs moved into other activities as well: prostitution, gambling,and narcotics, and by 1930, their annual profit was a whopping $12– 18 billion.

o In 1932, gangsters kidnapped the baby son of Charles Lindbergh,shocking the nation, and this event led Congress to the so-calledLindbergh Law, which allowed the death penalty to certain cases ofinterstate abduction.

VI. Monkey Business in Tennessee

1. Education made strides behind the progressive ideas of John Dewey,a professor at Columbia University who set forth principles of“learning by doing” and believed that “education forlife” should be the primary goal of school.

o Now, schools were no longer prisons. o States also were increasingly placing minimum ages for teens to

stay in school. 2. A massive health care program launched by the Rockefeller Foundation

practically eliminated hookworm in the South. 3. Evolutionists were also clashing against creationists, and the

prime example of this was the Scopes “Monkey Trial,” whereJohn T. Scopes, a high school teacher of Dayton, Tennessee, was chargedwith teaching evolution.

o William Jennings Bryan was among those who were against him, butthe one-time “boy orator” was made to sound foolish andchildish by expert attorney Clarence Darrow, and five days after theend of the trial, Bryan died.

o The trial proved to be inconclusive but illustrated the rift between the new and old.

4. Increasing numbers of Christians were starting to reconcile theirdifferences between religion and the findings of modern science, asevidenced in the new Churches of Christ (est. 1906).

VII. The Mass-Consumption Economy

1. Prosperity took off in the “Roaring 20s,” despite therecession of 1920-21, and it was helped by the tax policies of Treasury

Secretary Andrew Mellons, which favored the rapid expansion of capitalinvestment.

2. Henry Ford perfected the assembly-line production to where hisfamous Rouge River Plant was producing a finished automobile every tenseconds.

3. The automobile now provided more freedom, more luxury, and more privacy.

4. A new medium arose as well: advertising, which used persuasion, ploy, seduction, and sex appeal to sell merchandise.

o In 1925, Bruce Barton’s bestseller The Man Nobody Knowsclaimed that Jesus Christ was the perfect salesman and that alladvertisers should study his techniques.

5. Folks followed new (and dangerous) buying techniques…theybought (1) on the installment plan and (2) on credit. Both ways werecapable of plunging an unexpecting consumer into debt.

6. Sports were buoyed by people like home-run hero Babe Ruth and boxers Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier.

VIII. Putting America on Rubber Tires

1. Americans adapted, rather than invented, the gasoline engine. 2. People like Henry Ford and Ransom E. Olds (famous for Oldsmobile)

developed the infant auto industry. 3. Early cars stalled and weren’t too reliable, but eventually, cars like the

Ford Model T became cheap and easy to own. o In 1929, when the bull market collapsed, 26 million motor

vehicleswere registered in the United States, or 1 car per 4.9 Americans.

IX. The Advent of the Gasoline Age

1. The automobile spurred 6 million people to new jobs and took over the railroad as king of transportation.

o New roads were constructed, the gasoline industry boomed, and America’s standard of living rose greatly.

o Cars were luxuries at first, but they rapidly became necessities. o The less-attractive states lost population at an alarming rate. o However, accidents killed lots of people, and by 1951, 1,000,000

people had died by the car—more than the total of Americans lostto all its previous wars combined.

o Cars brought adventure, excitement, and pleasure.

X. Humans Develop Wings

1. On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the firstairplane for 12 seconds over a distance of 120 feet at Kitty Hawk, N.C.

2. Aviation slowly got off the ground, and they were used a bit inWorld War I, but afterwards, it really took off when they became usedfor mail and other functions.

o The first transcontinental airmail route was established form New York to San Francisco in 1920.

o At first, there were many accidents and crashes, but later, safety improved.

3. Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly solo across theAtlantic Ocean when he did it in his Spirit of St. Louis, going fromNew York to Paris.

XI. The Radio Revolution

1. In the 1890s, Guglielmo Marconi had already invented wirelesstelegraphy and his invention was used for long distance communicationin the Great War.

2. Then, in November of 1920, the first voice-carrying radio stationbegan broadcasting when KDKA (in Pittsburgh) told of presidentialcandidate Warren G. Harding’s landslide victory.

3. While the automobile lured Americans away from home, the radiolured them back, as millions tuned in to hear favorites like Amos‘n’ Andy and listen to the Eveready Hour.

4. Sports were further stimulated while politicians had to adjusttheir speaking techniques to support the new medium, and music couldfinally be heard electronically.

XII. Hollywood’s Filmland Fantasies

1. Thomas Edison was one of those who invented the movie, but in 1903,the real birth of the movie came with The Great Train Robbery.

o A first full-length feature was D.W. Griffith’s The Birth ofa Nation, which stunned viewers visually, but seemed to glorify the KKKin the Reconstruction era.

o The first “talkie” or movie with sound was The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson.

o Hollywood, California, quickly became a hot spot for movie production, due to its favorable climate and landscape.

2. The first movies featured nudity and female vampires called“vamps” until shocked public forced codes of censorship tobe placed on them.

3. Propaganda movies of World War I boosted the popularity of movies. 4. Critics, though, did bemoan the vulgarization of popular tastes wrought

by radio and movies.

o These new mediums led to the loss of old family and oraltraditions. Radio shows and movies seemed to lessen interaction andheighten passivity.

XIII. The Dynamic Decade

1. For the first time, more Americans lived in urban areas, not the rural countryside.

2. The birth-control movement was led by fiery Margaret Sanger, andthe National Women’s Party began in 1923 to campaign for an EqualRights Amendment to the Constitution.

3. The Fundamentalists of old-time religion even lost ground to thenew Modernists, who liked to think that God was a “goodguy” and the universe was a nice place, as opposed to thetraditional view that man was a born sinner and in need of forgivenessthrough Christ.

4. A brash new group shocked many conservative older folk (who labeledthe new style as full of erotic suggestions and inappropriate). The“flaming youth” who lived this modern life were called“flappers.”

o They danced new dances like the risqué “Charleston” and dressed more provocatively.

o Sigmund Freud said that sexual repression was responsible for mostof society’s ills, and that pleasure and health demanded sexualgratification and liberation.

o Jazz was the music of flappers, and Blacks like W.C. Handy,“Jelly Roll” Morton, and Joseph King Oliver gave birth toits bee-bopping sounds.

o Black pride spawned such leaders as Langston Hughes of the HarlemRenaissance and famous for The Weary Blues, which appeared in 1926, andMarcus Garvey (founder of the United Negro Improvement Association andinspiration for the Nation of Islam).

XIV. Cultural Liberation

1. By the dawn of the 1920s, many of the old writers (Henry James,Henry Adams, and William Dean Howells) had died, and those thatsurvived, like Edith Wharton and Willa Cather were popular.

2. Many of the new writers, though, hailed from different backgrounds (not Protestant New Englanders).

o H.L. Mencken, the “Bad Boy of Baltimore,” found fault in much of America.

He wrote the monthly American Mercury. o F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote This Side of Paradise and The Great

Gatsby, both of which captured the society of the “Jazz Age,” including odd mix of glamour and the cruelty.

o Theodore Dreiser wrote as a Realist (not Romantic) in An American Tragedy about the murder of a pregnant working girl by her socially-conscious lover.

o Ernest Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises, and A Farewell to Arms,and became a voice for the “Lost Generation”—theyoung folks who’d been ruined by the disillusionment of WWI.

o Sherwood Anderson wrote Winesburg, Ohio describing small-town life in America.

o Sinclair Lewis disparaged small-town America in his Main Street and Babbitt.

o William Faulkner’s Soldier’s Pay, The Sound and the Fury, and As I Lay Dying all were famous and stunning with his use of the new, choppy “stream of consciousness” technique.

3. Poetry also was innovative, and Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot were two great poets.

4. Eugene O’Neill’s plays like Strange Interlude laid bare human emotions. 5. Other famous writers included Claude McKay and Zora Neale Hurston. 6. Architecture also made its marks with the designs of Frank Lloyd

Wright, Wright was an understudy of Louis Sullivan (of Chicagoskyscraper fame) and amazed people with his use of concrete, glass, andsteel and his unconventional theory that “form followsfunction.”

o Champion of skyscrapers, the Empire State Building debuted in 1931.

XV. Wall Street’s Big Bull Market

1. There was much over-speculation in the 1920s, especially on Floridahome properties (until a hurricane took care of that), and even duringtimes of prosperity, many, many banks failed each year.

o The whole system was built on fragile credit. o The stock market’s stellar rise made headline news (and

enticed investors to drop their savings into the market’svolatility).

2. Secretary of the Treasury Mellon reduced the amount of taxes thatrich people had to pay, thus conceivably thrusting the burden onto themiddle class.

o He reduced the national debt, though, but has since been accused of indirectly encouraging the Bull Market.

3. Whatever the case, the prosperities of the 1920s was setting up thecrash that would lead to the poverty and suffering of the 1930s.

Chapter 32 - The Politics of Boom and Bust

I. The Republican “Old Guard” Returns

1. Newly elected President Warren G. Harding was tall, handsome, andpopular, but he had a mediocre mind and he did not like to hurtpeople’s feelings.

o Nor could he detect the corruption within his adminstration.

2. His cabinet did have some good officials, though, such as Secretaryof State Charles Evans Hughes, who was masterful, imperious, incisive,and brilliant, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, and Secretary ofthe Treasury Andrew W. Mellon.

3. However, people like Senator Albert B. Fall of New Mexico, ascheming anti-conservationist, became secretary of the interior, andHarry M. Daugherty took over the reigns as attorney general.

o These two became the worst of the scandalous cabinet members.

II. GOP Reaction at the Throttle

1. A good man but a weak one, Harding was the perfect front forold-fashioned politicians to set up for the nation a McKinley-style oldorder.

o It hoped to further laissez-faire capitalism, and one of theexamples of this was the Supreme Court, where Harding appointed four ofthe nine justices, including William H. Taft, former president of theUnited States.

2. In the early 1920s, the Supreme Court killed a federal child-labor law. o In the case of Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, the court

reversed its ruling in the Muller v. Oregon case by invalidating aminimum wage law for women.

3. Under Harding, corporations could expand again, and anti-trust laws were not as enforced or downright ignored.

4. Men sympathetic to railroads headed the Interstate Commerce Commission.

III. The Aftermath of the War

1. Wartime government controls disappeared (i.e. the dismantling ofthe War Industries Board) and Washington returned control of railroadsto private hands by the Esch-Cummins Transportation Act of 1920.

2. The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 authorized the Shipping Board,which controlled about 1,500 vessels, to get rid of a lot of ships atbargain prices, thus reducing the size of the navy.

o Labor lost much of its power, as a strike was ruthlessly broken in1919, and the Railway Labor Board ordered a wage cut of 12% in 1922.

o Labor membership shrank by 30% from 1920 to 1930. 3. In 1921, the Veterans’ Bureau was created to operate hospitals and

provide vocational rehabilitation for the disabled. o Many veterans wanted the monetary compensation promised to

them for their services in the war.

o The Adjusted Compensation Act gave every former soldier a paid-upinsurance policy due in twenty years. It was passed by Congress twice(the second time to override president Calvin Coolidge’s veto).

IV. America Seeks Benefits Without Burdens

1. Since America had never ratified the Treaty of Versailles, it wasstill technically at war with Germany, so in July of 1921, it passed asimple joint resolution ending the war.

2. The U.S. did not cooperate much with the League of Nations, buteventually, “unofficial observers” did participate inconferences. The lack of real participation though from the U.S. provedto doom the League.

3. In the Middle East, Secretary Hughes secured for American oilcompanies the right to share in the exploitation of the oil richesthere.

4. Disarmament was another problem for Harding and he had to watch theactions of Japan and Britain for any possible hostile activities.

5. America also went on a “ship-scrapping” bonanza. o The Washington “Disarmament” Conference of 1921-22

resulted in a plan that kept a 5:5:3 ratio of ships that could be heldby the U.S., Britain, and Japan (in that order). This surprised manydelegates at the conference (notably, the Soviet Union, which was notrecognized by the U.S., was not invited and did not attend).

o The Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 embodied Hughes’s ideas on ship ratios, but only after Japanese received compensation.

o A Four-Power Treaty, which bound Britain, Japan, France, and theU.S. to preserve the status quo in the Pacific, replaced the20-year-old Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

o The Nine-Power Treaty of 1922 kept the open door open in China.

o However, despite all this apparent action, there were no limitsplaced on small ships, and Congress only approved the Four-Power Treatyon the condition that the U.S. was not bound, thus effectivelyrendering that treaty useless.

6. Frank B. Kellogg, Calvin Coolidge’s Secretary of State, wonthe Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Kellog-Briand Pact (Pact ofParis), which said that all nations that signed would no longer use waras offensive means.

V. Hiking the Tariff Higher

1. Businessmen did not want Europe flooding American markets withcheap goods after the war, so Congress passed the Fordney-McCumberTariff Law, which raised the tariff from 27% to 35%.

o Presidents Harding and Coolidge, granted with authority to reduceor increase duties, and always sympathetic towards big industry, weremuch more prone to increasing tariffs than decreasing them.

2. However, this presented a problem: Europe needed to sell goods tothe U.S. in order to get the money to pay back its debts, and when itcould not sell, it could not repay.

VI. The Stench of Scandal

1. However, scandal rocked the Harding administration in 1923 whenCharles R. Forbes was caught with his hand in the money bag andresigned as the head of the Veterans’ Bureau.

o He and his accomplices looted the government for over $200 million.

2. The Teapot Dome Scandal was the most shocking of all. o Albert B. Fall leased land in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk

Hills,California, to oilmen Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny, but notuntil Fall had received a “loan” (actually a bribe) of$100,000 from Doheny and about three times that amount from Sinclair.

3. There were reports as to the underhanded doings of Attorney GeneralHarry Daugherty, in which he was accused of the illegal sale of pardonsand liquor permits.

4. President Harding, however, died in San Francisco on August 2,1923, of pneumonia and thrombosis, and he didn’t have to livethrough much of the uproar of the scandal.

VII. “Silent Cal” Coolidge

1. New president Calvin Coolidge was serious, calm, and never spoke more than he needed to.

2. A very morally clean person, he was not touched by the Hardingscandals, and he proved to be a bright figure in the Republican Party.

o It was ironic that in the Twenties, the “Age ofBallyhoo” or the “Jazz Age,” the U.S. had a verytraditional, old-timey, and some would say boring president.

VIII. Frustrated Farmers

1. World War I had given the farmers prosperity, as they’d produced much food for the soldiers.

o New technology in farming, such as the gasoline-engine tractor, had increased farm production dramatically.

o However, after the war, these products weren’t needed, and the farmers fell into poverty.

2. Farmers looked for relief, and the Capper-Volstead Act, whichexempted farmers’ marketing cooperatives from antitrustprosecution, and the McNary-Haugen Bill, which sought to keepagricultural prices high by authorizing the government to buy upsurpluses and sell them abroad, helped a little.

o However, Coolidge vetoed the second bill, twice.

IX. A Three-Way Race for the White House in 1924

1. Coolidge was chosen by the Republicans again in 1924, whileDemocrats nominated John W. Davis after 102 ballots in Madison SquareGarden.

o The Democrats also voted by one vote NOT to condemn the Ku Klux Klan.

2. Senator Robert La Follette led the Progressive Party as the third party candidate.

o He gained the endorsement of the American Federation of Labor andthe shrinking Socialist Party, and he actually received 5 million votes.

o However, Calvin Coolidge easily won the election.

X. Foreign-Policy Flounderings

1. Isolationism continued to reign in the Coolidge era, as the Senatedid not allow America to adhere to the World Court, the judicial wingof the League of Nations.

2. In the Caribbean and Latin America, U.S. troops were withdrawn fromthe Dominican Republic in 1924, but remained in Haiti from 1914 to1934.

o Coolidge took out troops from Nicaragua in 1925, and then sent themback the next year, and in 1926, he defused a situation with Mexicowhere the Mexicans were claiming sovereignty over oil resources.

o However, Latin Americans began to resent the American dominance of them.

3. The European debt to America also proved tricky.

XI. Unraveling the Debt Knot

1. Because America demanded that Britain and France pay their debts,those two nations placed huge reparation payments on Germany, whichthen, to pay them, printed out loads of paper money that causedinflation to soar.

o At one point in October of 1923, a loaf of bread cost 480 million German marks.

2. Finally, in 1924, Charles Dawes engineered the Dawes Plan, whichrescheduled German reparations payments and gave the way for furtherAmerican private loans to Germany.

o Essentially, the payments were a huge circle from the U.S. toGermany to Britain/France and back to the U.S. All told, the Americansnever really gained any money or got repaid in genuine.

o Also, the U.S. gained bitter enemies in France and Britain who wereangry over America’s apparent greed and careless nature forothers.

XII. The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, 1928

1. In 1928, Calvin Coolidge said, “I do not choose torun,” and his logical successor immediately became economicsgenius Herbert Hoover. Hoover spoke of “RuggedIndividualism” which was his view that America was made great bystrong, self-sufficient individuals, like the pioneers of old daystrekking across the prairies, relying on no one else for help. This wasthe kind of folk America still needed, he said.

o Hoover was opposed by New York governor Alfred E. Smith, a man whowas blanketed by scandal (he drank during a Prohibitionist era and washindered politically by being a Roman Catholic).

2. Radio turned out to be an important factor in the campaign, andHoover’s personality sparkled on this new medium (compared toSmith, who sounded stupid and boyish).

3. Hoover had never been elected to public office before, but he hadmade his way up from poverty to prosperity, and believed that otherpeople could do so as well.

4. There was, once again, below-the-belt hitting on both sides, as thecampaign took an ugly turn, but Hoover triumphed in a landslide, with444 electoral votes to Smith’s 87.

XIII. President Hoover’s First Moves

1. Hoover’s Agricultural Marketing Act, passed in June of 1929,was designed to help the farmers help themselves, and it set up aFederal Farm Board to help the farmers.

o In 1930, the Farm Board created the Grain Stabilization Corporationand the Cotton Stabilization Corporation to bolster sagging prices bybuying surpluses.

2. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 raised the tariff to an unbelievable 60%!

o Foreigners hated this tariff that reversed a promising worldwidetrend toward reasonable tariffs and widened the yawning trade gaps.

XIV. The Great Crash Ends the Golden Twenties

1. Hoover confidently predicted an end to poverty very soon, but onOctober 29, 1929, a devastating stock market crash caused byover-speculation and overly high stock prices built only uponnon-existent credit struck the nation.

o Losses, even blue-chip securities, were unbelievable as by the endof 1929, stockholders had lost over $40 million in paper values (morethan the cost of World War I)!

o By the end of 1930, 4 million Americans were jobless, and two years later, that number shot up to 12 million.

o Over 5,000 banks collapsed in the first three years of the Great Depression.

o Lines formed at soup kitchens and at homeless shelters.

XV. Hooked on the Horn of Plenty

1. The Great Depression might have been caused by an overabundance offarm products and factory products. The nation’s capacity toproduce goods had clearly outrun its capacity to consume or pay forthem.

2. Also, an over-expansion of credit created unsound faith in money, which is never good for business.

3. Britain and France’s situations, which had never fully recovered from World War I, worsened.

4. In 1930, a terrible drought scorched the Mississippi Valley and thousands of farms were sold to pay for debts.

5. By 1930, the depression was a national crisis, and hard-workingworkers had nowhere to work, thus, people turned bitter and also turnedon Hoover.

*Villages of shanties and ragged shacks were called Hoovervilles andwere inhabited by the people who had lost their jobs. They popped upeverywhere.

XVI. Rugged Times for Rugged Individualists

1. Hoover unfairly received the brunt of the blame for the GreatDepression, but he also did not pass measures that could have made thedepression less severe than it could have been.

o Critics noted that he could feed millions in Belgium (after World War I) but not millions at home in America.

2. He did not believe in government tampering with the economicmachine and thus moving away from laissez faire, and he felt thatdepressions like this were simply parts of the natural economicprocess, known as the business cycle.

o However, by the end of his term, he had started to take steps for the government to help the people.

XVII. Hoover Battles the Great Depression

1. Finally, Hoover voted to withdraw $2.25 billion to start projects to alleviate the suffering of the depression.

o The Hoover Dam of the Colorado River was one such project. 2. The Muscle Shoals Bill, which was designed to dam the Tennessee

River and was ultimately embraced by the Tennessee Valley Authority,was vetoed by Hoover.

3. Early in 1932, Congress, responding to Hoover’s appeal,established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which becamea government lending bank. This was a large step for Hoover away fromlaissez faire policies and toward policies the Democrats (FDR) wouldlater employ.

o However, giant corporations were the ones that benefited most fromthis, and the RFC was another one of the targets of Hoover’scritics.

4. In 1932, Congress passed the Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injection Act,which outlawed anti-union contracts and forbade the federal courts toissue injunctions to restrain strikes, boycotts, and peaceful picketing(this was good for unions).

5. Remember, that in past depressions, the American public was oftenforced to “sweat it out,” not wait for government help. Thetrend was changing at this point, forced to do so by the Depression.

XVIII. Routing the Bonus Army in Washington

1. Many veterans, whom had not been paid their compensation for WWI, marched to Washington, D.C. to demand their entire bonus.

o The “Bonus Expeditionary Force” erected unsanitarycamps and shacks in vacant lots, creating health hazards and annoyance.

o Riots followed after troops came in to intervene (after Congress tried to pass a bonus bill but failed), and many people died.

o Hoover falsely charged that the force was led by riffraff and reds(communists), and the American opinion turned even more against him.

XIX. Japanese Militarists Attack China

1. In September 1931, Japan, alleging provocation, invaded Manchuria and shut the Open Door.

2. Peaceful peoples were stunned, as this was a flagrant violation ofthe League of Nations covenant, and a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland,was arranged.

3. An American actually attended, but instead of driving Japan out ofChina, the meeting drove Japan out of the League, thus weakening itfurther.

4. Secretary of State Henry Stimson did indicate that the U.S.probably would not interfere with a League of Nations embargo on Japan,but he was later restrained from taking action.

o Since the U.S. took no effective action, the Japanese bombedShanghai in 1932, and even then, outraged Americans didn’t domuch to change the Japanese minds.

o The U.S.’s lackluster actions support the notion that America’s isolationist policy was well entrenched.

XX. Hoover Pioneers the Good Neighbor Policy

1. Hoover was deeply interested in relations south of the border, andduring his term, U.S. relations with Latin America and the Caribbeanimproved greatly.

o Since the U.S. had less money to spend, it was unable to dominateLatin America as much, and later, Franklin D. Roosevelt would buildupon these policies.

Chapter 33 - The Great Depression and the New Deal

I. FDR: A Politician in a Wheelchair

1. In 1932, voters still had not seen any economic improvement, and they wanted a new president.

2. President Herbert Hoover was nominated again without much vigor andtrue enthusiasm, and he campaigned saying that his policies preventedthe Great Depression from being worse than it was.

3. The Democrats nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a tall, handsomeman who was the fifth cousin of famous Theodore Roosevelt and hadfollowed in his footsteps.

o FDR was suave and conciliatory while TR was pugnacious and confrontational.

o FDR had been stricken with polio in 1921, and during this time, his wife, Eleanor, became his political partner.

o Franklin also lost a friend in 1932 when he and Al Smith both sought the Democratic nomination.

4. Eleanor was to become the most active First Lady ever.

II. Presidential Hopefuls of 1932

1. In the campaign, Roosevelt seized the opportunity to prove that hewas not an invalid, and his campaign also featured an attack onHoover’s spending (ironically, he would spend even more duringhis term).

2. The Democrats found expression in the airy tune “Happy DaysAre Here Again,” and clearly, the Democrats had the advantage inthis race.

III. Hoover's Humiliation in 1932

1. Hoover had been swept into the presidential office in 1928, but in1932, he was swept out with equal force, as he was defeated 472 to 59.

2. Noteworthy was the transition of the Black vote from the Republican to the Democratic Party.

3. During the lame-duck period, Hoover tried to initiate some ofRoosevelt’s plans, but was met by stubbornness and resistance.

4. Hooverites would later accuse FDR of letting the depression worsen so that he could emerge as an even more shining savior.

IV. FDR and the Three R’s: Relief, Recovery, and Reform

1. On Inauguration Day, FDR asserted, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

2. He called for a nationwide bank holiday to eliminate paranoid bank withdrawals, and then he commenced with his Three R’s.

3. The Democratic-controlled Congress was willing to do as FDR said,and the first Hundred Days of FDR’s administration were filledwith more legislative activity than ever before.

o Many of the New Deal Reforms had been adopted by European nations a decade before.

V. Roosevelt Manages the Money

1. The Emergency Banking Relief Act of 1933 was passed first. FDRdeclared a one week “bank holiday” just so everyone wouldcalm down and stop running on the banks.

2. Then, Roosevelt settled down for the first of his thirty famous “Fireside Chats” with America.

3. The “Hundred Days Congress” passed the Glass-SteagallBanking Reform Act, that provided the Federal Deposit InsuranceCorporation (FDIC) which insured individual deposits up to $5000,thereby eliminating the epidemic of bank failure and restoring faith tobanks.

4. FDR then took the nation off of the gold standard and achievedcontrolled inflation by ordering Congress to buy gold at increasinglyhigher prices.

o In February 1934, he announced that the U.S. would pay foreign gold at a rate of one ounce of gold per every $35 due.

VI. Roosevelt Manages the Money

1. The Emergency Banking Relief Act gave FDR the authority to manage banks.

2. FDR then went on the radio and reassured people it was safer to put money in the bank than hidden in their houses.

o The Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act was passed. o This provided for the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) to

insure the money in the bank. 3. FDR wanted to stop people from hoarding gold.

o He urged people to turn in gold for paper money and took the U.S. off the gold standard.

o He wanted inflation, to make debt payment easier, and urged the Treasury to buy gold with paper money.

VII. A Day for Every Demagogue

1. Roosevelt had no qualms about using federal money to assist theunemployed, so he created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), whichprovided employment in fresh-air government camps for about 3 millionuniformed young men.

o They reforested areas, fought fires, drained swamps, controlled floods, etc.

o However, critics accused FDR of militarizing the youths and acting as dictator.

2. The Federal Emergency Relief Act looked for immediate relief ratherthan long-term alleviation, and its Federal Emergency ReliefAdministration (FERA) was headed by the zealous Harry L. Hopkins.

3. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) made available many millions of dollars to help farmers meet their mortgages.

4. The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) refinanced mortgageson non-farm homes and bolted down the loyalties of middle class,Democratic homeowners.

5. The Civil Works Administration (CWA) was established late in 1933,and it was designed to provide purely temporary jobs during the winteremergency.

o Many of its tasks were rather frivolous (called“boondoggling”) and were designed for the sole purpose ofmaking jobs.

6. The New Deal had its commentators. o One FDR spokesperson was Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic

priestin Michigan who at first was with FDR then disliked the New Deal andvoiced his opinions on radio.

o Senator Huey P. Long of Louisiana was popular for his “Sharethe Wealth” program. Proposing “every man a king,”each family was to receive $5000, allegedly from the rich. The math ofthe plan was ludicrous.

His chief lieutenant was former clergyman Gerald L. K. Smith.

He was later shot by a deranged medical doctor in 1935. o Dr. Francis E. Townsend of California attracted the trusting

support of perhaps 5 million “senior citizens” with hisfantastic plan of each senior receiving $200 month, provided that allof it would be spent within the month. Also, this was a mathematicallysilly plan.

7. Congress also authorized the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in1935, which put $11 million on thousands of public buildings, bridges,and hard-surfaced roads and gave 9 million people jobs in its eightyears of existence.

o It also found part-time jobs for needy high school and college students and for actors, musicians, and writers.

o John Steinbeck counted dogs (boondoggled) in his California home of Salinas county.

VIII. New Visibility for Women

1. Ballots newly in hand, women struck up new roles. 2. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was the most visible, but other ladies

shone as well: Sec. of Labor Frances Perkins was the first female

cabinet member and Mary McLeod Bethune headed the Office of MinorityAffairs in the NYA, the “Black Cabinet”, and founded aFlorida college.

3. Anthropologist Ruth Benedict helped develop the “culture andpersonality movement” and her student Margaret Mead reached evengreater heights with Coming of Age in Samoa.

4. Pearl S. Buck wrote a beautiful and timeless novel, The Good Earth,about a simple Chinese farmer which earned her the Nobel Prize forliterature in 1938.

IX. Helping Industry and Labor

1. The National Recovery Administration (NRA), by far the mostcomplicated of the programs, was designed to assist industry, labor,and the unemployed.

o There were maximum hours of labor, minimum wages, and more rightsfor labor union members, including the right to choose their ownrepresentatives in bargaining.

2. The Philadelphia Eagles were named after this act, which receivedmuch support and patriotism, but eventually, it was shot down by theSupreme Court.

o Besides too much was expected of labor, industry, and the public.

o The Public Works Administration (PWA) also intended both for industrial recovery and for unemployment relief.

Headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, it aimed atlong-range recovery by spending over $4 billion on some 34,000 projectsthat included public buildings, highways, and parkways (i.e. the GrandCoulee Dam of the Columbia River).

3. One of the Hundred Days Congress’s earliest acts was tolegalize light wine and beer with an alcoholic content of 3.2% or lessand also levied a $5 tax on every barrel manufactured.

o Prohibition was officially repealed with the 21st Amendment.

X. Paying Farmers Not to Farm

1. To help the farmers, which had been suffering ever since the end ofWorld War I, Congress established the Agricultural AdjustmentAdministration, which paid farmers to reduce their crop acreage andwould eliminate price-depressing surpluses.

o However, it got off to a rocky start when it killed lots of pigsfor no good reason, and paying farmers not to farm actually increasedunemployment.

o The Supreme Court killed it in 1936. 2. The New Deal Congress also passed the Soil Conservation and

Domestic Allotment Act of 1936, which paid farmers to plantsoil-conserving plants like soybeans or to let their land lie fallow.

3. The Second Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 was a morecomprehensive substitute that continued conservation payments but wasaccepted by the Supreme Court.

XI. Dust Bowls and Black Blizzards

1. After the drought of 1933, furious winds whipped up dust into theair, turning parts of Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, and Oklahomainto the Dust Bowl and forcing many farmers to migrate west toCalifornia and inspired Steinbeck’s classic The Grapes of Wrath.

o The dust was very hazardous to the health and to living, creating further misery.

2. The Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act, passed in 1934, madepossible a suspension of mortgage foreclosure for five years, but itwas voided in 1935 by the Supreme Court.

3. In 1935, FDR set up the Resettlement Administration, charged with the task of removing near-farmless farmers to better land.

4. Commissioner of Indian Affairs was headed by John Collier whosought to reverse the forced-assimilation policies in place since theDawes Act of 1887.

o He promoted the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (the Indian“New Deal”), which encouraged tribes to preserve theirculture and traditions.

o Not all Indians liked it though, saying if they followed this“back-to-the-blanket” plan, they’d just become museumexhibits. 77 tribes refused to organize under its provisions (200 did).

XII. Battling Bankers and Big Business

1. The Federal Securities Act (“Truth in Securities Act”)required promoters to transmit to the investor sworn informationregarding the soundness of their stocks and bonds.

2. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was designed as astock watchdog administrative agency, and stock markets henceforth wereto operate more as trading marts than as casinos.

3. In 1932, Chicagoan Samuel Insull’s multi-billion dollarfinancial empire had crashed, and such cases as his resulted in thePublic Utility Holding Company Act of 1935.

XIII. The TVA Harnesses the Tennessee River

1. The sprawling electric-power industry attracted the fire of New Deal reformers.

o New Dealers accused it of gouging the public with excessive rates.

2. Thus, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) (1933) sought todiscover exactly how much money it took to produce electricity and thenkeep rates reasonable.

o It constructed dams on the Tennessee River and helped the 2.5million extremely poor citizens of the area improve their lives andtheir conditions.

o Hydroelectric power of Tennessee would give rise to that of the West.

XIV. Housing Reform and Social Security

1. To speed recovery and better homes, FDR set up the Federal HousingAdministration (FHA) in 1934 to stimulate the building industry throughsmall loans to householders.

o It was one of the “alphabetical” agencies to outlast the age of Roosevelt.

2. Congress bolstered the program in 1937 by authorizing the U.S.Housing Authority (USHA), designed to lend money to states orcommunities for low-cost construction.

o This was the first time in American history that slum areas stopped growing.

3. The Social Security Act of 1935 was the greatest victory for NewDealers, since it created pension and insurance for the old-aged, theblind, the physically handicapped, delinquent children, and otherdependents by taxing employees and employers.

o Republicans attacked this bitterly, as such government-knows-bestprograms and policies that were communist leaning and penalized therich for their success. They also opposed the pioneer spirit of“rugged individualism.”

XV. A New Deal for Labor

1. A rash of walkouts occurred in the summer of 1934, and after theNRA was axed, the Wagner Act (AKA, National Labor Relations Act) of

1935 took its place. The Wagner Act guaranteed the right of unions toorganize and to collectively bargain with management.

o Under the encouragement of a highly sympathetic National LaborRelations Board, unskilled laborers began to organize themselves intoeffective unions, one of which was John L. Lewis, the boss of theUnited Mine Workers who also succeeded in forming the Committee forIndustrial Organization (CIO) within the ranks of the AF of L in 1935.

o The CIO later left the AF of L and won a victory against General Motors.

2. The CIO also won a victory against the United States Steel Company,but smaller steel companies struck back, resulting in such incidencesas the Memorial Day Massacre of 1937 at the plant of the Republic SteelCompany of South Chicago in which police fired upon workers, leavingscores killed or injured.

3. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act (AKA the “Wages andHours Bill”) was passed, setting up minimum wage and maximumhours standards and forbidding children under the age of sixteen fromworking.

4. Roosevelt enjoyed immense support from the labor unions. 5. In 1938, the CIO broke completely with the AF of L and renamed itself

the Congress of Industrial Organizations (the new CIO).

XVI. Landon Challenges “the Champ”

1. The Republicans nominated Kansas Governor Alfred M. Landon to run against FDR.

o Landon was weak on the radio and weaker in personal campaigning,and while he criticized FDR’s spending, he also favored enough ofFDR’s New Deal to be ridiculed by the Democrats as an unsureidiot.

2. In 1934, the American Liberty League had been formed byconservative Democrats and wealthy Republicans to fight“socialistic” New Deal schemes.

3. Roosevelt won in a huge landslide, getting 523 electoral votes to Landon’s 8.

4. FDR won primarily because he appealed to the “forgotten man,” whom he never forgot.

XVII. Nine Old Men on the Bench

1. The 20th Amendment had cut the lame-duck period down to six weeks,so FDR began his second term on January 20, 1937, instead of on March 4.

2. He controlled Congress, but the Supreme Court kept blocking hisprograms, so he proposed a shocking plan that would add a member to theSupreme Court for every existing member over the age of 70, for amaximum possible total of 15 total members.

o For once, Congress voted against him because it did not want to lose its power.

o Roosevelt was ripped for trying to become a dictator.

XVIII. The Court Changes Course

1. FDR’s “court-packing scheme” failed, but he didget some of the justices to start to vote his way, including Owen J.Roberts, formerly regarded as a conservative.

2. So, FDR did achieve his purpose of getting the Supreme Court to vote his way.

3. However, his failure of the court-packing scheme also showed howAmericans still did not wish to tamper with the sacred justice system.

XIX. Twilight of the New Deal

1. During Roosevelt’s first term, the depression did notdisappear, and unemployment, down from 25% in 1932, was still at 15%.

o In 1937, the economy took another brief downturn when the “Roosevelt Recession,” caused by government policies.

o Finally, FDR embraced the policies of British economist John Maynard Keynes.

In 1937, FDR announced a bold program to stimulate the economy by planned deficit spending.

In 1939, Congress relented to FDR’s pressure and passed theReorganization Act, which gave him limited powers for administrativereforms, including the key new Executive Office in the White House.

The Hatch Act of 1939 barred federal administrative officials,except the highest policy-making officers, from active politicalcampaigning and soliciting.

XX. New Deal or Raw Deal?

1. Foes of the New Deal condemned its waste, citing that nothing had been accomplished.

2. Critics were shocked by the “try anything” attitude ofFDR, who had increased the federal debt from $19.487 million in 1932 to$40.440 million in 1939.

3. It took World War II, though, to really lower unemployment. But, the war also created a heavier debt than before.

XXI. FDR’s Balance Sheet

1. New Dealers claimed that the New Deal had alleviated the worst of the Great Depression.

2. FDR also deflected popular resent against business and may havesaved the American system of free enterprise, yet business tycoonshated him.

3. He provided bold reform without revolution. 4. Later, he would guide the nation through a titanic war in which the

democracy of the world would be at stake.