Term | Definition |
1. speculation | practice of making high-risk investments in hope of obtaining large profits |
2. Black Tuesday | October 29,1929, when stock prices fell sharply in the Great Crash |
3. business cycle | explained the periodic growth and contraction of the economy |
4. Great Depression | a period lasting from 1929 to 1941 in which the economy faltered and unemployment soared |
5. Hawley-Smoot Tariff | raised prices on foreign imports to such level that they could not compete in the American market |
6. bread line | where people lined up for handouts from charities or public agencies |
7. Hoovervilles | makeshift shankytowns of tents and shakes built on public land or vacant lot |
8. tenant farmers | working for bigger landowners rather than for themselves |
9. Dust Bowl | term used for the central and southern Great Plains during the 1930s when the region suffered from drought and dust storms |
10. Okies | general term used to describe Dust Bowl refugees |
11. repatriation | process by which Mexican Americans were encouraged, or forced, by local, state, and federal officials to return to Mexico during the 1930s |
12. localism | the policy whereby problems could best be solved at local and state levels |
13. Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) | gave more than a billion dollars of government loans to railroads and large businesses |
14. trickle-down economics | held that money poured into the top of the economic pyramid will trickle down to the base |
15. Hoover Dam | dam on the Colorado River that was built during the Great Depression |
16. Bonus Army | group of World War I veterans who marched on Washington, D.C., in 1932 to demand early payment of a bonus promised them by Congress |