Hoover urges voluntary help for the crisis

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Hoover urges voluntary help for the crisis

• The Presidents Emergency Commission for
  Employment (PECE)
• The Presidents Organization for Unemployment
  Relief (POUR)
• PECE and POUR helped coordinate voluntary
  unemployment relief
• National Credit Corporation gets healthy banks to
  give advice to banks in trouble.

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1932 The Reconstruction Finance Corporation

• A government fund to help banks and other
  financial institutions in trouble
• 2 billion dollars to spend

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The Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930

• Set trade tariffs to historically high levels
• Set off a wave of retaliatory measures in Europe
• U.S. lost considerable access to foreign measures
  and the Depression intensified as a result

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The New Deal, 1932-1938

• Safety net
• Direct government emergency support to people in
  trouble. Works Progress Administration Civilian
  Conservation Corps
• Stability
• Regulatory institutions that protect the
  capitalist system from its own worst impulses
• Emergency Banking Act Security and Exchange
  Commission
• Security
• Long term programs that provide economic security
  to working and middle-class people
• Social Security The National Labor Relations Act

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Private Sector supporters of the New Deal

• Consumer products sector
• Western developers
• Henry Kaiser

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The Emergency Banking Act, 1933
FDR
Hoover

• Vastly increases the Reconstruction Finance
  Corporations pot of money
• Federal Government issues fiscal conservators
  for banks to make sure theyre running
  competently
• Creates Security and Exchange Commission to
  oversee the stock exchange
• Creates rules that separate savings banks from
  brokerage houses

Nervous bankers in 1933 standing on Wall Street
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The Glass-Steagal Act of 1933

• Banks cant affiliate with brokerage firms.
• Banks cant pack their boards with stockbrokers.

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The Federal Emergency Relief Administration
(FERA), 1933

• Millions of dollars for direct emergency relief
  to the poor
• matching grants for state poor relief
• power to take over state relief systems if
  theyre corrupt or stingy

Harry Hopkins, FERA administrator
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The Civil Works Administration, 1933

• Half a million state highways upgraded
• Hundreds of bridges laid
• schools, courthouses, city halls, libraries,
  zoos, sewage plants, heating plants, police
  stations, hospitals, jails, state capitol
  buildings went up
• Almost 500 new airports built
• 250,000 outdoor bathrooms constructed along the
  nations roads

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The Public Works Administration, 1933

• 583 municipal water systems
• 368 street and highway projects
• 622 sewage systems
• 263 hospitals
• 522 schools
• including replacements for the great Long Beach
  earthquake of 1933
• Youre welcome

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The Dawes Act, 1887Kill the Indian to save the
man.

• Privatization of reservation land
• 1881 Indians held 155,000,000 acres
• 1890 they held 104,000,000
• 1900 they held 77,000,000

Indian Reorganization Act1934

• Repealed the Dawes Act
• Allowed communal landholdings
• Organized self governing tribes with power of
  self-incorporation
• Gave tribes right to ignore the act.

John Collier
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The National IndustrialRecovery Act, 1933

• Created the National Recovery Administration
  (NRA)
• Established production codes for each industry
  to eliminate wasteful competition and to
  establish labor standards
• Created boards consisting of businesspeople,
  labor leaders and consumers
• Section 7(a) gave workers the right to organize

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Agricultural Adjustment Act

• Subsection of the Farm Relief Act of 1933
• Paid farmers not to produce crops, meat, and
  dairy products
• Hoped that this would stabilize (increase) prices
• Put thousands of farm hands out of work

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The Oklahoma migration,1934-1940

• Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas farmers fleeing the
  dust bowl
• Displaced by the Agricultural Adjustment Act
• Headed west because a smaller migration had gone
  west in the 1920s
• 3.5 million migrants came west

Dorthea Lange photograph of Oklahoma migrant
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FDR to the NAACPs Walter White
"I did not choose the tools with which I must
work. Had I been permitted to choose them I would
have selected quite different ones. But I've got
to get legislation passed by Congress to save
America. The Southerners by reason of the
seniority rule in Congress are chairmen or occupy
strategic places on most of the Senate and House
committees. If I come out for the anti-lynching
bill now, they will block every bill I ask
Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing.
I just can't take that risk. FDR to Walter White
Walter White
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The Popular Front, 1934

• Rise of fascism requires all Communist Parties to
  engage in strategic alliances with capitalist
  democracies

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Huey Long says Share the Wealth, 1934

• 5,000 dollars to every American family
• Limit personal fortunes to 1 million dollars
• Old age pensions of 30 a month to persons over
  sixty.

Governor/Senator/would-be-dictator, Huey Long
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Upton Sinclair End Poverty In California (EPIC),
1934

• Tax unused land at 10 percent or more
• Unused land would be sold and widely distributed
• Revenues used to finance cooperatives

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Ham and Eggs!

• Thirty every Thursday 30 dollars to seniors
  every Thursday
• In 1938 the measure was put on the California
  ballot
• It lost by ten percent of the vote

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The Roosevelt Coalition

• Organized labor
• Progressive women
• African-Americans
• The Urban-ethnic vote

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The Works Progress Administration of 1935

• Funded artists, writers, musicians and theater
  companies
• Hell, theyve got to eat too. Harry Hopkins

Bernard Zakheim, Coit Tower Mural
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Federal Theatre Project

• 1,000 plays produced
• 50,000 performances
• . . . reaching 25 million Americans
• via 12,000 FTP actors

Hattie Flannigan, Director of the Federal Theater
Project
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The Wagner Labor Relations Act, 1935

• Sets up a board to arbitrate labor disputes and
  hold union elections
• Sets up an independent legal code that prohibits
  the unlawful labor practice, which includes . .
  .
• Firing a worker for trying to organize a union
• Firing a worker for trying to enforce a contract
• Encourages unions to sign no strike pledges (no
  strike during the life of a contract)
• But it excluded domestic and agricultural
  workers.

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The Townsend Plan

• 200 dollars a month to everybody over 60
• . . . Provided that they spend it in 30 days

Dr. Francis Townsend
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Social Security, 1934

• Establish a dedicated payroll tax for retirement
• "one of the major turning points of American
  history. No longer could 'rugged individualism'
  convincingly insist that government, though
  obliged to provide a climate favorable for the
  growth of business profits, had no responsibility
  whatever for the welfare of the human beings who
  did the work from which profit was reaped.
• But it excluded domestic and agricultural workers.

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The Congress of Industrial Organizations
founded in 1935 . . . included the United Mine
Workers, the Mill and Smelter Workers, and the
Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union.
John Lewis and Sidney Hillman
John L. Lewis and Bishop Sheil, 1939