Good neighbor policy: Roosevelt? policy toward South American countries
Hawley-Smoot Tariff: aka Tariff Act of 1930, accelerated economic decline abroad and in US, put higher tariffs on agricultural and manufactured products. Angry foreign governments retaliated by raising their own tariff rates to keep out American goods.
Hoovervilles: towns of hundreds of thousands of Americans who built makeshift shelters out of cardboard, scrap metal.
Reconstruction Finance Corporation: created in 1932, made $2 billion available in loans to ailing banks and corporations willing to build low-cost housing, bridges, and other public works. Biggest federal peacetime intervention in the economy up to that point. Created largest peacetime deficit, leading to Hoover trying to balance the budget.
Herbert Hoover: best qualified man for president ever, but he failed epically.
Douglas MacArthur: Army Chief of Staff under Hoover, attacked the veteran's bonus army encampment, set the tents ablaze, dispersed protestors. Hella bad PR.
Bonus Army: spring 1932, a group of army veterans mounted emotional challenge to Hoover's policies, demanding the $1,000 bonus promised to them by congress after WWI, in 1924 to be received in 1945.
“on margin:” putting up only part of a stock price, and borrowing the rest from brokers or banks.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: president of the United States, understood need to carve out a middle ground, "liberalist," interventionist in economic matters, libertarian on questions of personal behavior.
Fireside chats: Roosevelt used the radio to reach out to ordinary Americans, in a series of addresses, speaking in a plain, friendly, and direct voice to the forlorn and discouraged. Explained banking crisis in simple terms and without condescension. An estimated 20 million people listened.
Elanor Rosevelt: FDR's wife, advocate of racial equality, outspoken.
Glass-Stegall Act:
Bank holiday: Roosevelt immediately ordered, after taking office, all of the nation's banks closed, though I'm not sure why
Civilian Conservation Corps: put more than 2 million single young men to work planting trees, halting erosion, and otherwise improving the environment.
Federal Deposit Insurance Coorporation: asured depositors that the government would protect up to $5,000 of their savings.
Agricultural Adjustment Act: legislation which set up the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, an organization which began paying farmers to keep a portion of their land out of cultivation and to reduce the size of their herds.
“share the wealth:” mantra of Huey Long and other populists, that the New Deal concentrated money in hands of a few elite, and should be redistributed, created Share the Wealth clubs, with middle-class or skilled worker members, worried big business orientation of New Deal would undermine their social and economic status.
Dust Bowl: the areas in six states-- Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, and a bit of Nebraska-- in which agricultural production was affected by drought, foreign grasses, excessive plowing.
National Industry Recovery Act: authorized creation of the National Recovery Administration, which worked to rectify problems in the industrial sector.
Public Works Administration: launched by the National iNdustrial Recovery Act, had a $3.3 billion budget to sponsor internal improvements that would strengthen the nation's infrastructure of roads, bridges, sewage systems, hospitals, airports and schools.
Soil Conservation service: government's 1935 response to Dust Bowl, recognizing that soil problems of Great Plains could not be solved simply by taking gland out of production, urged farmers to plant soil-conserving grasses and legumes, in place of wheat. Taught farmers how to plow along contour lines, and how to build terraces.
Huey Long: populist opposition to FDR, attacked New Deal, that it wasn't going to the populus, offered alternative: to redistribute the wealth, gauranteeing each american a $5,000 estate.
Tenessee Valley Authority: created by the Tenessee Valley Auhority Act (1933) to control flooding on the Tenessee River, harness its water power to generate electricity, improve river naivigability, and ease the poverty and isolation of the area's inhabitants.
Francis E. Townsend: popular California doctor who claimed that the way to end the depression was to give every senior citizen $200 per month with the stipulation that seniors would spend the money, this putting more money in circulation and reviving economic demand. Eventually adapted to form the Social Security System.
Father Charles Coughlin: "radio priest," delivered stinging critique of New Deal to a weekly radio audience between 30 and 40 million. Appealed to anxious middle-class americans, and to privileged groups of workers. Charged New Deal was run by bankers and big business, that it did not spread wealth to the everyman.
Wisconsin Progressive Party: Philip La Follette governor of Wisconsin in 1934 and 1936 election wins was a member. Part of the radical third parties offering alternative to New Deal, and were influential in politics.
John L. Lewis: president of the United Mine workers, seceded (with other labour union leaders) from the AFL, and made a new organization, Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO-- later renamed the Congress of INdustrial Organizations).
Social Security Act: passed in May 1935, set up welfare funds from which money would be disbursed to the elderly poor, the unemployed, unmarried mothers with dependent children, and the disabled.
Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party: discontented agrarians and urban workers formed the MFL Party and elected their candidate to the governorship in 1930, 32, 34, and 36.
Underconsumptionism: adopted into the second New Deal plan by Roosevelt in an effort to become more populistic, advocates held that a chronic weakness in consumer demand had caused the Great Depression. The path therefore lay in the restriction of production.
Second New Deal: a program to limit the power and privelege of the wealthy few and to increase the security and welfare of ordinary citizens. 1935-37, had underconsumptionist philosophical underpinnings, based on restricting agricultural and industrial output, so there would be less competition, legislation passed.
National Labor Relations (wagner) Act: (NRLA) proimsed the right of every worker to join a union of his or her own choosing and the obligation of employers to bargain with that union in good faith, set up National Labor Relations Board to supervise union elections and to investigate claims of unfair labor practices.
Works Progress Administration: under the direction of Harry Hopkins, known as the "minister of relief," WPA built or improved thousands of schools, playgrounds, airports and hospitals, crews raked leaves, cleaned streets, and landscaped cities. Provided jobs to 30% of nation's jobless.
Hoover Dam:
Frances Perkins: Secretary of Labor, more visible than women in previous administrations, though not representative of the majority of female new dealers.
Woman of the Year: movie in which Spencer Tracy persuades the ambitious Katherine Hepburn to exchange her successful newspaper career for the bliss of motherhood and home making. Exemplified gender relations of the 30s.
Superman: new comic-strip hero of 1938, reflected spirit of the times: depicted as a working-class hero who, on several occasions, saved workers from coal mine explosions and other disasters caused by the greed and negligence of employers. Vulnerable to kryptonite, and the working woman.
Labor’s Non-Partisan League: 1936 Lewis and Hamilton created the LNPL to develop a labor strategy for the 1936 elections. Intent was to channel labor's money, energy, and talent into Roosevelt's reelection caompaign.
Committee of Industrial Organizations: Committee for Industrial Organization (renamed) more into unskilled laborers working together and stuff.
The Grapes of Wrath: John Steinbeck, best-selling novel of 1939, told epic story of an Oklahoma family's fortitude in surviving eviction from their land, migrating westward, and suffering exploitation in the "promised land," of California.
John Collier: writer best known for his short stories, many of which appeared in The New Yorker from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Marian Anderson: African American opera singer denied by the Daughters of the American Revolution to sing at an event, so Elanor Roosevelt had her sing on the steps of the Washington Monument. BAD A.
Indian Reorganization Act:
Cultural pluralism:
Court-packing fiasco:
No comments:
Post a Comment