The United States from 1914 to 1945

Hoover urges voluntary help for the crisis

• The President’s Emergency Commission for Employment

(PECE)• The President’s 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.

The United States from 1914 to 1945

1932: The Reconstruction Finance Corporation

• A government fund to help banks and other financial institutions in trouble

• 2 billion dollars to spend

The United States from 1914 to 1945

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

The United States from 1914 to 1945

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 impulsesEmergency Banking Act; Security and Exchange Commission

• Security: Long term programs that provide economic security

to working and middle-class peopleSocial Security; The National Labor Relations Act

The United States from 1914 to 1945

Private Sector supporters of the New Deal

• Consumer products sector• Western developers

Henry Kaiser

The United States from 1914 to 1945

The Emergency Banking Act, 1933

• Vastly increases the Reconstruction Finance

Corporation’s pot of money

• Federal Government issues “fiscal conservators” for

banks to make sure they’re 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

FDR Hoover

The United States from 1914 to 1945

The Glass-Steagal Act of 1933

• Banks can’t affiliate with brokerage firms.

• Banks can’t pack their boards with stockbrokers.

The United States from 1914 to 1945

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

they’re corrupt or stingy Harry Hopkins,

FERA administrator

The United States from 1914 to 1945

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 nation’s roads

The United States from 1914 to 1945

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• You’re welcome

The United States from 1914 to 1945

The Dawes Act, 1887“Kill 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

The United States from 1914 to 1945

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

The United States from 1914 to 1945

The United States from 1914 to 1945

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

The United States from 1914 to 1945

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

The United States from 1914 to 1945

FDR to the NAACP’s 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

The United States from 1914 to 1945

“The Popular Front,” 1934

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

The United States from 1914 to 1945

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

The United States from 1914 to 1945Upton 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

The United States from 1914 to 1945

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

The United States from 1914 to 1945

The Roosevelt Coalition• Organized labor

• Progressive women

• African-Americans• The Urban-ethnic

vote

The United States from 1914 to 1945

The Works Progress Administration of 1935

• Funded artists,

writers, musicians

and theater companies

• “Hell, they’ve got

to eat too.” –Harry

Hopkins

Bernard Zakheim, Coit Tower Mural

The United States from 1914 to 1945

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

The United States from 1914 to 1945

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.

The United States from 1914 to 1945The

Townsend Plan

• 200 dollars a month to everybody over 60

• . . . Provided that they spend it in 30 days

Dr. Francis Townsend

The United States from 1914 to 1945

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.

The United States from 1914 to 1945The 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 L. Lewis and Bishop Sheil, 1939

John Lewis and Sidney Hillman