Term | Definition |
business cycle | periodic growth and contraction of the economy |
Herbert Hoover | His administration's response to the Great Depression was widely criticized for its ineffectiveness. |
speculation | practice of making high-risk investments in hopes of obtaining large profits |
Black Tuesday | October 29, 1929, when stock prices fell sharply in the Great Crash |
Great Depression | period lasting from 1929 to 1941 in which the U.S. economy faltered and unemployment soared |
Hawley-Smoot Tariff | protective tax on imports enacted by Congress in 1930 in an effort to counter the nation's slide into the Great Depression |
bread line | queue of people waiting for food handouts from charities or public agencies |
Hooverville | term used to describe makeshift shantytowns set up by homeless people during the Great Depression |
tenant farmer | person who pays rent to a landowner for the use of the land |
Dust Bowl | term used for the central and southern Great Plains during the 1930s, when the region suffered from drought and wind storms that blew away much of the topsoil |
Okie | general term used to describe a Dust Bowl refugee |
repatriation | process by which government officials return persons to their country of origin |
localism | policy relied on by President Hoover in the early years of the Great Depression, whereby city and state governments act as primary agents of economic relief |
Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) | federal agency set up by Congress in 1932 to provide emergency government credit to banks, railroads, and other large businesses |
trickle-down economics | theory that holds that financial benefits given to banks and large businesses will find their way down to smaller businesses and consumers |
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 |
Douglas MacArthur | He ignored the president’s instructions to stop an assault on the Bonus Army and ordered a fresh attack which evicted the marchers and burned their shelters and belongins |
Franklin D. Roosevelt | led the nation through the Great Depression and World War II before dying in office in 1945 |
Eleanor Roosevelt | In 1932, this woman became a public figure in her own right, traveling the country promoting the causes of helping women, children, and the poor. |
Francis Perkins | She was the first female to serve in a president’s cabinet when she became FDR’s Secretary of Labor |
New Deal | This would hopefully provide immediate relief to Americans in greatest need, help the nation’s recovery, and reform institutions to make future depressions less likely. |
fireside chats | Through these radio addresses to the nation FDR explained some of his plans to the people. |
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) | This would insure bank deposits up to $5000. |
Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act of 1933 | This act created the FDIC to administer a deposit insurance program and also prohibited commercial banks from investment banking activities. |
Federal Securities Act (1933) | The act required that all sales of stocks and bonds be registered with the government unless there was a specific exemption to the contrary. |
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) | This program built a series of dams in the Tennessee River valley to control floods and to generate electric power. |
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) | New Deal program that provided young men with relief jobs on environmental conservation projects, including reforestation and flood control |
National Recovery Act (NRA) | This New Deal law was designed to promote recovery and reform, encourage collective bargaining for unions, set up maximum work hours (and sometimes prices) and minimum wages, and forbid child labor in industry. |
Public Works Administration (PWA) | This New Deal program funded the construction of more than 34,000 projects, including airports, electricity-generating dams, and aircraft carriers; and seventy percent of the new schools and one third of the hospitals built during that time. |
Charles Coughlin | This radio priest frequently and vigorously attacked capitalism, communism, socialism, and dictatorship with praise for the fascist leaders Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler. |
Huey Long | In 1934 this man organized his own, alternative political organization, the “Share-Our-Wealth” Society, which would redistribute wealth through sharply graduated income and inheritance taxes. |
second New Deal | Legislation passed during this period addressed the problems of the elderly, the poor, and the unemployed, created new public works programs, and protected workers’ rights. |
Works Progress Administration (WPA) | Part of this program consisted of the Federal Art Project (FAP), Federal Music Project (FMP), Federal Theatre Project (FTP), the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), and the Historical Records Survey (HRS). |
John Maynard Keynes | This man argued that deficit spending was needed to end the depression. |
pump priming | This is the putting people to work on public projects which puts money into the hands of consumers who would then buy more goods thus stimulating the economy. |
Social Security Act | This legislation established unemployment insurance for workers who lost jobs and victims of work related accidents. |
Wagner Act | This legislation recognized the right of employees to join labor unions and gave workers the right to collective bargaining. |
collective bargaining | process in which employers negotiate with labor unions about hours, wages, and other working conditions |
Fair Labor Standards Act | 1938 law that set a minimum wage, a maximum work week of 44 hours, and outlawed child labor |
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) | labor organization founded in the 1930s that was composed of industrial unions which represented all workers in an industry regardless of their job or skill |
sit-down strike | In this type of action workers refuse to leave the workplace until some type of settlement of grievances is reached. |
court packing | President Franklin D. Roosevelt's plan to add six new justices to the nine-member Supreme Court after the Court had ruled some New Deal laws to be unconstitutional |
Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States | In this Supreme Court case the court ruled that the NRA gave Congress excessive power to regulate interstate commerce and "invades the power reserved exclusively to the States." |
United States v. Butler | This decision declared that the AAA violated the Tenth Amendment by attempting to use the taxing power to regulate agricultural production—a matter that the Court determined was the sole jurisdiction of the states. |
Black Cabinet | group of African-American leaders who served as unofficial advisers to Franklin D. Roosevelt |
Mary McLeod Bethune | This person was a member of the Black Cabinet and a powerful champion of racial equality. This person founded Bethune Cookman College. |
Indian New Deal | This program gave Native Americans economic assistance and greater control over their own affairs. |
New Deal Coalition | This was a grouping of southern whites, northern blue-collar workers, poor Midwestern farmers, and African Americans in the Democratic Party giving it a sizable majority in Congress. |
welfare state | This refers to a country in which the government assumes responsibility for providing for children, the poor, the elderly, the sick, the disabled, and the unemployed. |
Frank Capra | This man was one of the leading movie directors of the 1930s who made the characters in his films everyday people struggling with the hardships of the time. |
Federal Art Project | division of the Works Progress Administration that hired unemployed artists to create artworks for public buildings and sponsored art-education programs and exhibitions |
murals | These paintings on the sides of buildings celebrated the accomplishments of the workers who helped build the nation. |
Dorothea Lange | American documentary photographer known for her portraits of displaced farmers and others suffering economic hardship during the Great Depression |
John Steinbeck | This man authored probably the most famous novel of the 1930s. His book The Grapes of Wrath chronicled the travails of a migrant Okie family the Joads. |
Lillian Hellman | This New Orleans playwright wrote several plays featuring strong roles for women. The Children’s Hour and The Littler Foxes are two of her plays. |