AP U.S. History
 What were the causes and consequences of the Great
Depression?
Progressivism is dead.
The good times
are back!!
Wow, not cool.
That’s the first thing
we’ve agreed on in a
long time.
William McKinley
Warren Harding
As president, Warren G. Harding proved
to be weak-willed and tolerant of
corruption among his friends
Woodrow Wilson
Teddy Roosevelt
The general policy of the federal
government toward industry in the early
1920s was a weakening of federal regulation
and encouragement of trade associations
(trusts and monopolies).
The central scandal of Teapot
Dome involved members of
Harding’s cabinet who took
bribes for leasing federal oil
lands.
Isolationism rules!
Amen
brother
Calvin Coolidge
Two terms that describe the Harding
and Coolidge administrations’ approach
to foreign policy are isolationism and
disarmament
Angry
Japanese
baby
The proposed ratio of “5-5-3” in the Washington
Disarmament Conference of 1921-1922 referred to
the allowable ratio of battleships and carriers
among the United States, Britain, and Japan.
While Japan was not happy with the battleships and
carriers ratio, America and Europe promised to avoid
fortifying its colonies in the Pacific as compensation to
the Japanese. Japan took advantage of this by invading
Manchuria, which violated the Open Door Policy. The
League of Nations did nothing because the U.S. wasn’t a
part of it. It didn’t help that Europe and America were
in the midst of a Great Depression also.
Me likey the money.
You help big business, but
not us!
I would rather benefit
big business than
farmers.
Two can play
that game!
Angry
European
guy
The “farm bloc’s” favorite solution to the severe
drop in prices that caused farmers’ economic
suffering in the 1920s was for the federal
government to buy up agricultural surpluses at
higher prices and sell them abroad.
The very high tariff rates of the 1920s had the
economic effect of causing the Europeans to erect
their own tariff barriers and thus severely reduce
international trade (can you say Great
Depression?).
Save the railroads!
Two groups who suffered severe
political setbacks in the immediate
post-World War I environment
were organized labor and blacks.
Anti-trust laws were
ignored. Instead,
businesses were
encouraged to
regulate themselves
Women can vote, so they
don’t need special
protections anymore.
Government actively sought to
protect big business.
Where’s Teddy when
you need him?
Samuel
Gompers
Union membership
withered as they came
under attack from
business and the federal
government.
Four of the nine Justices on the
Supreme Court were appointed by
Harding. They ruled against
progressive reforms.
Adkins v. Childrens Hospital
Reversed
Muller v. Oregon.
I spank Al Smith.
Al Smith, the Democratic
candidate, ran against Herbert
Hoover in the election of 1924.
Besides deep divisions within the
Democratic party, the elections of 1924
revealed The weakness of profarmer and
prolabor Progressive reform.
Al Smith’s Roman Catholicism and
opposition to prohibition hurt him,
especially in the South.
The election of Hoover over Smith
in 1928 seemed to represent a
victory of big business and
efficiency over urban and Catholic
values.
England and France, who
had weak economies,
demanded more money
from Germany so that they
could pay back their loans
to America. The U.S. not
only demanded repayment
of war debt, but the U.S.
also instituted the sky-high
Hawley-Smoot Tariff of
1930, which had the
economic effect of
crippling international
trade and deepening the
depression.
Germany was blamed for the war and was forced to
pay war damages under the Treaty of Versailles. The
problem was that Germany had no money to pay war
damages. When Germany’s economy looked like it
was about to collapse private American bank loans to
Germany avoided a global depression (for a while
anyway).
One important cause of
the great stock market
crash of 1929 was
overexpansion of
production and credit
beyond the ability to
pay for them.
Attacking the Bonus
Army didn’t help me
one bit.
Herbert Hoover
President Hoover preferred limited
government and self-reliance. He
felt if government gave people handouts it would erode peoples’ work
ethic and independence.
Nonetheless, Hoover did try to help get
America out of the Great Depression. He
created a federal agency that provided
“pump-priming” loans to business; known
as the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation. He thought the money
would “trickle down” to the average person.
Hoover promoted the
construction of a dam, later
called Hoover dam, on the
border of Nevada and Arizona,
as a way to get people to work.
All of his efforts were too little,
too late.
What were the causes of the Great Depression?
2. What were some of the signs that another world war
was approaching?
3. How did Hoover attempt address the economic
depression?
1.