The Great Depression and the New Deal, 1929-1939
CHAPTER 24
“Mellon pulled the whistle,
Hoover rang the bell,
Wall Street gave the signal,
And the country went to hell.”
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
AP US History
THE NATION’S SICK ECONOMY
A NEW DEAL FIGHTS THE DEPRESSION

Main Idea – As the
prosperity of the 1920s
ended, severe economic
problems gripped the nation
and led to the Great
Depression. After becoming
president, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt used government
programs as part of his New
Deal to combat the
Depression.
THE BUSINESS CYCLE OF THE 20’S
PROSPERITY
HOOVER
1919
1929
1930
FDR
1933
RECESSION
DEPRESSION
THE WALL STREET CRASH
1929
Sept. 24
Sept. 29
Stocks 
400% in value
Oct. 24
Oct. 29
Black Thursday
“Margin Calls”
Black Tuesday
“Sell at Any Price”
Buying on
Margin
THE RECESSION GETS WORSE
 DEMAND
 (INVENTORIES)
 INCOME
ECONOMIC
PROBLEMS
WORKERS
LAID OFF
MANUFACTURING
CUT-BACKS
GLOBAL DEPRESSION
Smoot-Hawley Tariff (1930)
• Second highest tariff in US history
1929
1932
Imports
$1,334 million
$390 million
Exports
$2,341 million
$784 million
World Trade decline 66%
between 1929 and 1943
German Reichsmark
HOOVER & THE DEPRESSION
Hoover’s Philosophy


“Rugged Individualism”
Private Charities



YMCA, Salvation Army
No Direct Aid to the
Unemployed
Some Public Works


Hoover Dam
Reconstruction Finance
Corporation


Loans to Banks
TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS
REACTION TO HOOVER

Poverty & Discontent
Communist Threat
(Scottsboro Boys)
 Bonus Army (1932)

HARD TIMES

City Life
 Shantytowns
“Hoovervilles”

Farms
 Dust

Bowl & “Okies”
Family Life
 Women

as Breadwinners
Culture
 Hollywood
 The
Grapes of Wrath
(Steinbeck)
Margaret Bourke-White
Bread Line during the Louisville flood, Kentucky
1937
Dorothea Lange
Ditched, Stalled, and Stranded
San Joaquin Valley, California
1935
“…I saw and approached the
hungry and desperate mother, as
if drawn by a magnet. I do not
remember how I explained my
presence or my camera to her, but
I do remember she asked me no
questions. I did not ask her name
or her history. She told me her
age, that she was thirty-two. She
said that they had been living on
frozen vegetables from the
surrounding fields, and birds that
the children killed. She had just
sold the tires from her car to buy
food. There she sat in that lean- to
tent with her children huddled
around her, and seemed to know
that my pictures might help her,
and so she helped me. There was
a sort of equality about it…”
Grant Woods
American Gothic
Jacob Lawrence
Tombstones
Edward Hopper
Nighthawks
Diego Garcia
Charles Sheeler
Classic Landscape
ECONOMIC TROUBLES ON THE HORIZON

Background: The prosperity
of the 1920s was largely
based on the use of credit –
def. – consumers agreed to
buy now and pay later for
purchases
 Installment buying
 Buying on margin
 Over speculation
INSTALLMENT BUYING

def. - form of credit with
monthly payments with
interest
BUYING ON MARGIN

def. – buying too many
stocks hoping to sell at a
higher price in a short
period of time,
regardless of risk
involved
OVER SPECULATION
•
def.- paying only a small
percentage of a stock’s
price as a down payment
and borrowing the rest to
make a stock purchase
CAUSES OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION


Black Tuesday
Hawley-Smoot Act
BLACK TUESDAY

October 29, 1929– the
stock market crashed with
16.4 million shares of stock
sold in one day, causing
prices to collapse

Prices of stocks fell 
speculators left with huge
debts that couldn’t be repaid
to banks banks failed
people lost their savings
BANKS FAILING

The Federal Reserve
failed to prevent
widespread collapse of
the nation’s banking
system as banks
continued to fail through
the early 1930s
HAWLEY-SMOOT ACT

Hawley-Smoot Act (1930)
- High protective tariff
resulted in retaliatory
tariffs in other countries,
which strangled
international trade
FINANCIAL COLLAPSE



Great Depression
“Hoovervilles”
Farm foreclosures
UNEMPLOYMENT GRAPH
When was
unemployment
the highest?
Answer:
1933
GREAT DEPRESSION

Great Depression– def. –
period from 1929 to 1940 in
which the economy plummeted
and unemployment skyrocketed,
causing widespread hardship



Business failures – 90,000
businesses went bankrupt
Collapse of the financial system over 11,000 bank closings
Unemployment – 25% of
American workers were
unemployed by 1932
“HOOVERVILLES”
•

“Hoovervilles”– def. shacks and shantytowns of
homeless people, named for
President Hoover
President Hoover
thought that private
companies and
volunteers should take
care of the economy

Did not act in the
beginning to try to
counter act the
depression
President Hoover
FARM FORECLOSURES

Farm Foreclosures–
farmers lost their
homes and lands and
were forced to migrate
across the country
looking for work


Dust Bowl
“Okies”
DUST BOWL

Parts of Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New
Mexico, and Colorado
that were hardest hit by
draught and dust
storms
DUST BOWL



Lasted 8 years
Caused by poor agricultural practices and years of
sustained drought
The winds of the Great Plains stirred up the dust
from the fields and blew it across the plains



In 1932, 14 dust storms were recorded on the Plains.
In 1933, there were 38 storms.
By 1934, it was estimated that 100 million acres of
farmland had lost all or most of the topsoil to the winds.
DUST BOWL

The Dust Bowl got its name after Black Sunday, April 14, 1935.

The cloud that appeared on the horizon that Sunday was the worst.
Winds were clocked at 60 mph. Then it hit.

The simplest acts of life — breathing, eating a meal, taking a
walk — were no longer simple.

Children wore dust masks to and from school, women hung wet
sheets over windows in a futile attempt to stop the dirt, farmers
watched helplessly as their crops blew away.


http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/dustbowl.htm
Life during the Dust Bowl
“OKIES”

Okies: those who
moved west to
California from
Oklahoma

These migrant
workers/families lived
in tents or out of their
automobiles
UNDERSTANDING IMAGES

What feelings does this
image give you?

What do you think to woman
is feeling? How about the
kids?

Describe the way they are
dressed?

Migrant Stories

Migrant Mother Photo
Video Clip
STEINBECK AND THE DUST BOWL

As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes
of Wrath:

"And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas,
families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads,
caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty
thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred
thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and
restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to
lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to
bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live.
Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for
land."
AMERICANS GET A NEW DEAL

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(FDR) won the presidential
election of 1932

Inaugural address – rallied a
frightened nation


“The only thing we have to
fear is fear itself.”
Fireside Chats – FDR’s radio
addresses aimed at restoring
American confidence
NEW DEAL



Relief
Recovery
Reform
RELIEF
 Relief:
measures that
provided direct payment
to people for immediate
help
 CCC
(Civilian Conservation
Corps)
 TVA (Tennessee Valley
Authority)
 WPA (Works Progress
Administration)
CCC

Civilian Conservation
Corps – provided jobs for
young single males on
conservation projects
TVA

Tennessee Valley
Authority – provided jobs
building dams to bring
running water and
electricity to poor
regions in the South
WPA

Works Progress
Administration –
created as many jobs as
quickly as possible in
construction of airports,
highways, and public
buildings as well as
professions such as art,
music, and theater
RECOVERY
 Recovery:
programs
designed to bring the
nation out of the
Depression over time
 AAA
(Agricultural
Adjustment Act)

NRA (National Recovery
Administration)
AAA AND NRA

AAA (Agricultural
Adjustment Act) – aided
farmers by regulating
crop production so
prices would rise

NRA (National Recovery
Administration) –
reformed banking
practices and
established fair codes of
competition for
businesses
REFORM



FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation)
Wagner Act
SSA (Social Security Act)
FDIC

Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation – protected
bank deposits up to
$5,000

What does it protect up to
today?
WAGNER ACT

Wagner Act– defined
unfair labor practices
and established the
National Labor
Relations Board to
settle disputes
between employers
and employees
SSA

Social Security Act –
provided a pension
for retired workers
and their spouses
and helped people
with disabilities
INTERPRETING CARTOONS

Who are they main
figures in the cartoon?

What are they pouring
down the pump?

What is occurring as it is
being pumped into the
economy?
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NEW DEAL

The New Deal changed
the role of government
to a more active
participant in solving
problems
 Public
believed in the
responsibility of the
federal government to:
1.
deliver public
services
2.
intervene in the
economy
3.
act in ways to
promote the general
welfare