The Great Depression

1
The Great Depression

• Chapter 25

2
I. The Coming of the Great Depression

• The Great Crash
• Between May 1928 and September of 1929 the
  average price of stocks increased over 40 percent
• October 21 and October 23 alarming declines in
  stock prices

3
The Great Crash Continued

• October 29, 1929 Black Tuesday
• In the months that followed, the market would
  continue to decline

4
Causes of the Depression

• Most historically attributes of the Great
  Depression is that it was so severe and lasted so
  long question then remains, why was it such a
  bad one?
• Lack of diversification in the American economy

5
Causes of the Depression Continued

• Maldistribution of purchasing power and the
  weakness in consumer demand
• as industrial and agricultural production
  increased, the proportion of profits going to
  farmers, workers and other potential consumers
  was too small to create and adequate market for
  the goods the economy was producing this lead to
  demand not being able to keep up with supply aka
  a surplus!
• During the 1920s, as long as corporations had
  continued to expand their capital facilities, the
  economy had flourished

6
Causes of the Depression Continued

• Poor Credit Structure of the Economy
• farmers deeply in debt
• small banks in trouble
• big banks in trouble, too

7
Causes of the Depression Continued

• Decrease in International Trade
• International debt structure

8
Thus Black Tuesday was not the cause of the
Great Depression, but
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The Progress of the Great Depression

• Crisis would steadily worsen over the next three
  years
• Collapse of much of banking system would follow
  the stock market crash
• Role of the Federal Reserve if they acted more
  responsibly, a severe depression might have been
  avoided

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II. The American People in Hard Times

• Unemployment and Relief
• Midwest and Northeast rocked with unemployment
• Most Americans had been trained to believe that
  every individual was responsible for his or her
  own fate
• men wandered the streets

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Unemployment and Relief Continued

• Limited govt and private assistance most govt
  officials felt that any welfare system would
  undermine the moral fiber of the country
• Strange city scenery
• Farm income down 60 between 1929 1932

12
African Americans and the Depression

• 1930 Atlanta Black Shirts organization adopts the
  slogan No Jobs for Ns Until Every White
  Man Has a Job!
• Traditional patters of Segregation and
  disfranchisement survived the Depression largely
  unchallenged
• NAACP began to work diligently to win a position
  for blacks within the emerging labor movement

13
Mexican Americans in Depression America

• 1930s there were approximately 2 million Latinos
  in the United States
• similar to blacks in that whites soon demanded
  menial jobs previously held by Latinos

14
Asian Americans in Hard Times

• even in California, where the largest Japanese /
  Chinese American populations resided even well
  educated Asians had trouble moving into
  mainstream professions
• like Blacks and Hispanics
• Influx of whites from the Great Plains meant
  general bad news for all minorities in California

15
Women and the Workplace in the Great Depression

• Depression served to strengthen the widespread
  belief that a womans place was in the home

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Women and the Workplace in the Great Depression
Cont

• ½ of all black working women lost their jobs in
  the 1930s
• But, at the end of the 1930s 38 of all black
  women were employed compared with 24 of all
  white women

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Depression Families

• middle class families accustomed to steady growth
  during the 1920s saw that replaced with
  unemployment and uncertainty
• consumer patterns developed during the 1920s
  retreated
• Average household population grows
• although divorce rate decreased (because of
  cost)-

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III. The Depression and American Culture

• Depression Values
• BUT in the end, the Depression did very little to
  erode the success ethic

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Artists and Intellectuals in the Great Depression

• focus of a collective social response to social
  circumstances
• Photographers hired by Federal Farm Security
  Administration to take documentary photos
• Writers and playwrights attempted to capture
  social injustice taking place

20
Radio

• Most popular forms of mass entertainment were
  those that served as a distraction to the harsh
  reality taking place
• Soap Operas (sponsored by soap)

21
Radio Continued

• Radio programs broadcast live before audiences
  in theatres and studios
• Some of the most dramatic moments of the 1930s
  were a result of radio coverage of celebrated
  events
• Encouraged families and individuals to center
  their lives around the more around the home than
  they had in the past

22
The Movies

• one would think individuals would forgo spending
  money on movie tickets in the middle of a
  Depression, but by the mid 1930s Americans were
  still watching movies in large numbers
• Movies getting better

23
The Popular Front and Left

• Popular Front coalition of antifascist groups
  the most important of which was The American
  Communist Party
• claimed that the government was controlled by
  business interests
• Communism is twentieth-century Americanism
• helped mobilize writers, artists and
  intellectuals behind a pattern of social
  criticism (great majority of writers had no
  connection to Communist party)
• The Lincoln Brigade, consisting of 3,000
  volunteer soldiers goes to Spain to fight against
  Franco (Ernest Hemmingway, For Whom the Bell
  Tolls)
• Social Issues

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The Popular Front and Left

• ACP was not the open, patriotic organization it
  tried to appear as took its orders from
  Comintern in Russia
• New Deal would embrace policies that would
  challenge capitalist norms

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IV. The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover

• The Hoover Program
• When crisis first hit, Hoovers response was to
  attempt to restore confidence in the economy
• But mid 1931 economic conditions had deteriorated
  so much that the structure of voluntary
  cooperation had collapsed and Hoover could not
  stop them

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The Hoover Program Continued

• Hoover made weak attempts to use government
  spending as a tool for fighting the Depression
• Before the crash, Hoover had begun to construct a
  program to assist the troubled agricultural
  economy.
• 1929 Agricultural Marketing Act first time a
  govt bureaucracy would be established to help
  farmers maintain prices
• Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930
• Neither helped farmers sufficiently

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A Deepening Crisis

• 1930 Democrats win control of the House
• Many Americans feel the President is personally
  responsible for crisis
• Shantytowns
• May 1931 largest bank in Austria collapses and
  panic spreads throughout Europe and into the US
  when
• Hoover comes up with a sound proposal to allow
  countries having to pay reparations one year
  moratorium on payments

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A Deepening Crisis Continued

• January 1932 Reconstruction Finance Corporation
  (RFC)
• government agency whose purpose was to provide
  federal loans to troubled banks, railroads, and
  other businesses
• made funds available to local governments to
  support public works projects and assist in
  relief efforts

29
Popular Protest

• During the early years of the Depression, most
  Americans were too stunned or too confused to
  raise many effective protests but by mid 1932,
  radical and dissident voices were becoming loud
  and pervasive
• Farmers unrest

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Popular Protest Continued

• Most celebrated protest came from American
  Veterans
• Clearing the Bonus Marchers
• Hoover now confirmed as aloof and out of touch
  with American public

31
The Election of 1932

• Republicans dutifully renominate Hoover to head
  of Republican Party
• Democrats nominate the governor of New York,
  Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• Winning the election
• Differences in candidates
• Roosevelt wins in a Landslide receives 57 of
  the popular vote and won every state but five
• Democrats also take control

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The Interregnum

• In February, just a month before the
  inauguration a new crisis developed when the
  American banking system began to collapse
• Harding continued to try to extract a promise
  from Hoover to maintain current budget system
• March 4, 1933 the Day Roosevelt took office
  Hoover was convinced the country was heading to
  ruin, Roosevelt was beaming and buoyant