Chapter 34-The Great Depression
CHAPTER SUMMARY
Confident, aristocratic Roosevelt swept into office with an urgent mandate to cope with the depression
emergency. His bank holiday and frantic Hundred Days lifted spirits and created a host of new agencies to
provide for relief to the unemployed, economic recovery, and permanent reform of the system.
Roosevelt’s programs put millions of the unemployed back on the job through federal action. As popular
demagogues like Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin increased their appeal to the suffering population,
Roosevelt developed sweeping programs to reorganize and reform American history, labor, and agriculture.
The TVA, Social Security, and the Wagner Act brought far-reaching changes that especially benefited the
economically disadvantaged.
Conservatives furiously denounced the New Deal, but Roosevelt formed a powerful coalition of
urbanites, labor, “new immigrants,” blacks, and the South that swept him to victory in 1936.
Roosevelt’s Court-packing plan failed, but the Court finally began approving New Deal legislation. The
later New Deal encountered mounting conservative opposition and the stubborn persistence of unemployment.
Although the New Deal was highly controversial, it saved America from extreme right-wing or left-wing
dictatorship.
CAN YOU ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS THOROUGHLY?
1. Which of Roosevelt’s measures were most effective in fighting the depression? Why?
2. How did Roosevelt alter the role of the federal government in American life?
3. How did ordinary workers and farmers effect social change in the 1930s?
4. What were the positive and negative effects of the New Deal’s use of the federal government
as an agency of social reform?
TERMS FOR CHAPTER
1.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
2.
Eleanor Roosevelt
4.
Frances Perkins
5.
Father Coughlin
6.
Huey Long
7.
Francis Townsend
10.
John L. Lewis
12.
boondoggling
14.
New Deal
15.
Brain Trust
16.
Hundred Days
17.
the “three Rs”
18.
Glass-Steagall Act
19.
Civilian Conservation Corps
20.
Works Progress Administration
21.
National Recovery Act
22.
Schechter case
24.
Agricultural Adjustment Act
25.
Dust Bowl
26.
Securities and Exchange Commission
27.
Tennessee Valley Authority
28.
Federal Housing Authority
29.
Social Security Act
30.
Wagner Act
31.
National Labor Relations Board
32.
Congress of Industrial Organizations
33.
Liberty League
35.
Twentieth and Twenty-first amendments
36.
Court-packing scheme
HW for this chapter:
Read Zinn's chapter titled "Self-help in Hard Times". Answer the following questions in
your notebook (to be graded when I check notebooks).
Zinn: Self Help In Hard Times
Chapter 15
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnselhel15.html
1. Why does Zinn (and J.K. Galbraith) say the stock market crashed in 1929?
2. How would a mainstream economist differ in explaining the Great Crash of 1929
from a socialist critic?
3. Why, when there was enough food, housing, clothing, and work for all did so many
go without these necessities in the early years of the Depression?
4. What were factors influencing the election of 1932? What were Roosevelt's two
main objectives with the New Deal, and what are examples of implementing each?
5. What kinds of self help did people organize apart from government aid?
6. Why did the Wagner-Connery Act pass, and what were some results?
7. How did the NRA try to stabilize the system?
8. What are examples of Roosevelt's efforts to balance the needs of workers with the
demands of businesses?
9. What kinds of tensions were there between European-Americans and AfricanAmericans, rank and file unionists and union leadership during the Depression?
10. How did the government work to control direct labor actions in the 1930?
11. How did the New Deal affect capitalism? Affect African-Americans?