The Politics of Boom
and Bust
Chapter 33 In American Pageant
C. E. Hughes
President Harding
Albert Fall
Harry Daugherty
C. Coolidge
A. Mellon
Unraveling the Debt Knot
Wall
Street
Bankers
US
Investors
US
Treasury
Germany
England
and
France
Political Scandals
• 1921 – Teapot Dome Scandal
• 1923 – Forbes / Veterans Bureau
• 1924 – Attorney General Daugherty /
Pardons and Liquor Licenses
Coolidge Overview
•
•
•
•
“Silent Cal” – quiet, uninspired public speaker, very shy
Worked to lower national debt and tariffs
Believed in unregulated big business
Was very morally centered and his admin was transparent – good after Ohio
Gang corruption scandals
Farmers Struggle
Problems for the Democrats in 1924
•
•
•
•
•
“wets”
Urbanites
Fundamentalists
Northern liberals
immigrants
•
•
•
•
•
“drys”
Farmers
Moderates
Southern conservatives
“native” Americans
They couldn’t agree on anything – couldn’t even pass a resolution condemning the KKK. They nominate
conservative John Davis and 69 year old “Fighting Bob” La Follette” runs a progressive 3rd party.
Election of 1924
Causes of The Great Depression
Essential Question
• Why did the Great Depression occur?
5 Causes of the Great Depression
•
•
•
•
•
5. The stock market crash of October 1929
4. Drought conditions in the Midwest (farms)
3. Economic relationship with Europe after WWI
2. Bank Failures
1. Superficial prosperity followed by a reduction in purchasing consumer
goods
Preconditions of the
Great Depression
Economics during the 1920s
Economic Troubles on the Horizon
1920’s: Some Americans became wealthy,
others went deeper into debt
o
Farmers struggled because they grew more crops and raised more
livestock than they could sell
Industries in Trouble
• Major industries were failing (Railroads,
Steel, and textiles)
• Mining and lumbering were not as needed
in the 1920’s as they were during WWI
New Energies Replace Coal
• 1930’s: Hydroelectric, oil, and natural gas supplied
more than half the energy coal had before
West
Virginia
Coal
Miners,
1938
Farmers Need a Lift
• WWI – demand and prices on food went up
Farmers took out loans for new equipment so
they could produce more
• 1920s: prices and demand greatly dropped
o Many farmers lost their land when they couldn’t
pay back their loans
• McNary Haugen Bill: called for federal pricesupports; gov’t would buy extra crops at a fixed
price and sell them on the world market
o
Consumers Have Less Money to Spend
• Lower wages, higher prices, too much debt
to pay back
General
Store,
Tennessee
(1936)
Living on Credit
• People seemed to have more than they
really could afford (superficial
prosperity)
• Credit: buying something now, paying
for it later with interest
o
Installment plans: people would pay monthly for
big items
Risky Stock Market Investing
Speculation: buying stock with the assumption its value will go
up
Buying on the Margin: purchasing stock with only 10% of its
value as a down payment
Dow Jones Industrial Average: gives a general measure of
the stock market's health based on certain firm's values
Hoover Takes the Nation
• Election of 1928: Republican Herbert
Hoover vs. Democrat Alfred Smith
VS.
Election of 1928
Stock Market Crashes
• The stock market had been generally
strong in the 1920s
• October 29, 1929: Black Tuesday
The Stock Market Crashed
o As it got worse, more people sold stocks
o
The Great Depression
America After Black Tuesday
Relief from the Depression
Breadlines: Long lines of people
waiting for food handouts
Soup Kitchens: Places that offered
free soup to the poor
The Dust Bowl
Dust Bowl Mini Unit
1) Describe what you see in this picture.
2) When and where do you think this picture was taken?
Explain your answer.
Displacement and Migration
Migrant family in San
Francisco, 1935
Farmer leveling dust hills in
Texas, 1938
Accounts from the Dust Bowl
"I can't really tell you about all of the difficulties that farmers and farmers' wives faced
trying to keep houses clean. People hung up sheets over their windows to try to keep
the dust out. But, of course, houses were not very tight, and stuff sifted in. The road
ditches drifted full of dust and dirt and silt, just like snow. And then, of course, it
didn't rain and we didn't raise hardly any crops. And then the grasshoppers came in
and ate what was there. They were very difficult, difficult years.
"And it was so hot. The temperatures were up over a hundred degrees for days at a
time, also. It was very – And of course, we didn't have air conditioning. I remember
sleeping outside. We made little tents and slept outside. And slept on the
porch." ~Stan Jensen
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_02.html
"We went down, I think it was Great Bend, Kansas, and the man says, 'I'll sell you
a four wheel Go-Dig, but it's out in that field out there.' And he said, 'About all you
can see is the top of it.' He says, 'The rest is drifted under dirt.' We had to dig that
out. He sold it to us for almost nothing, but we had to dig that thing out of the dirt
because it had drifted in around it. And he said, 'We don't use it anymore, we can't
raise corn. It's too dry.'
"But, the man told us about him coming home from town one day and he said,
'The dust blew so bad I couldn't see my own driveway and all at once I heard
something under the car. I got out to see what it was and I'd run over my own
mailbox.' He says, 'You just couldn't see a thing.' Well, those that stayed, many of
them left the country of course. From here, seems like a lot of people from here
went to Oregon. But those that stayed, why they done pretty well, some of them.
"I remember I was out working the field one day, and we had these
tumbleweeds that you'd call them. You probably know what those are. Well, they
were rolled up against my north fence. And I was working, and all at once – the
posts evidently were rotten and it had woven wire up against it – and here that
whole fence just come turning over, over, over, over, winding up. It blew that
fence a quarter of a mile with those weeds against it. It was an awful job to pick it
up. All you could do was put it in a dump some place because it was not usable any
more." ~Harvey Pickrel
Anti-Hoover
Sentiment
Many Americans did not support Hoover's limited response:
Anti-Hoover Sentiment
Hoovervilles:
Hoover Blankets
Anti-Hoover Sentiment
Hoover Flags