The Great Depression & New
Deal, 1929-1941
Origins and Causes
Extreme wealth inequalities
Ballooning stock market
Over reliance on unprotected loans
Too much speculation & borrowing
Overproduction and uneven distribution capabilities
Stock Market crash was a symptom
Banks lacked money, people lost savings, debts were
called in, no cash
Production stopped, workers fired, no $,
consumption declined, no profits, more workers fired
President Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Progressive
War Reconstruction
Opposed direct federal aid
Self-help & volunteerism
Self-help cooperatives
“Hoover’s America”
Anti-tax views & opposition to gov’t
support deepened depression
Texas legislature vetoed a bond measure
for relief
Oklahoma governor William Murray called
out the national guard to enforce
segregation in OK City
Colorado Senator Ed Costigan wanted
federal government to help states in relief
efforts
Hoovervilles
Seattle, 1931
The Bonus Army/March
World War One veterans
Gov’t denied their pensions
Marched on Washington, 1932
Congregated around White House
Gen. Douglas MacArthur
Military evicted them from D.C.
Deep anger at gov’t
Deep class divisions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqev
dBZCbcQ
Roosevelt and the New Deal
Frederick Delano
Roosevelt (FDR)
Programs to address
the Depression
“Relief, Recovery,
Reform”
Debt spending
Consume our way
out of the depression
Role of government
Immediate Responses, 1933
Federal Emergency Relief Act
Federal funds for relief
National Industrial Recovery Act
Fair work and competition codes
Administration to enforce codes
Guaranteed labor’s right to organize
New Deal Programs
Civilian Conservation
Corps
Soil Conservation Service
Soil Erosion
Planting trees
Irrigation and range
management
http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=qolPqXNGW3I
Tennessee Valley Authority
Flood control, Electricity, Irrigation, work
Works Progress Administration
WPA
Biggest agency
1935 employed 8 million and
$2 billion fund
Bridges, reservoirs, irrigation, sewage,
schools, playgrounds, education, training
Work Programs paid minimum wages,
pulled them off charity and soup lines
“We Work Again”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk0Sp
TOi9Aw
1935 Social Security Act
Safety net for all Americans
Percentage of paycheck
Based on shorter life-span
Intended to supplement (not
replace) income
Less inclined to “retire”
Financial System
Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation (FDIC)
Insured individual bank deposits
Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC)
Regulated trading practices in stocks
and bonds
Problems with New Deal
Relief based on race: Tucson
scaled payments based on race
Favored large industries and
business
Hurt some small farmers
Local agencies administered relief
and ran programs
Propaganda/Education
Government Promotional Film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq5UiGdje8U
Water and the West
Bureau of Reclamation
Hoover Dam
Water for L.A., Imperial Valley, Phoenix,
and power for region
Central Valley Project harnessed the
Sacramento River
Water storage, irrigation, hydro-electricity
Federal-corporate alliance
$2.5 billion by 1935
Hoover Dam
Grand Coulee Dam
Columbia River, 1941
Largest concrete structure in the
world
Created a 150 mile lake
Too much power
Bonneville Power Administration
Powered 70% of Northwest
The Dust Bowl
Economic and environmental disaster
Overproduction, monocrops
Plowed up grasses for farms to meet the
needs of a booming wheat market
Soil exhaustion, soil erosion
Drought and winds
1935: Blew winds from CO and NE,
blackened the sky across the plains, into
the East and Atlantic Ocean
Responses
Killed millions of
animals, burned
millions of tons of
food
Taylor Grazing Act
Federal control of
grazing
Migrants: Okies
Poor whites and
sharecroppers
Evicted from OK,
TX, MI, ARK
Going to CAL
L.A. Police Chief
“bum blockade”
Mexican and Okie Farmworkers
Mexican Repatriation
Mexican & Mexican
Americans sent to
Mexico
Nearly 1 million
L.A. County
deported 12,000
Colorado deported
20,000
The Indian New Deal
John Collier
Progressive
Pueblos
Preserve cultures
The Indian New Deal
Multi-faceted
legislation
Education
Politics
Religion
Land
Culture
Language
Indian Reorganization Act
IRA, 1934
Economic & political
assistance
Business Councils
Tribal Constitutions
BIA, Interior
Over half rejected it
Women
Eleanor Roosevelt
Work & aid
Patriotic home
economics conserve,
recycle, help America
“as a woman”
African Americans
Jobs in gov’t
Sharecropping
100,000 blacks evicted
by AAA
No loans from FHA
Mary McCloud Bethune
http://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=Gk0SpT
Oi9Aw
“Share the Wealth”
Huey Long
Populist Gov. in LA
Use of radio and sensational claims
Rhetoric of poverty / class tensions
Senator
Share the Wealth
Social Justice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdzAbxsjPRA&NR=1
Public Art and Culture
Federal Writers Project
Theater
Oral histories of slavery, folk lore, Indian
stories, Mexican Revolution, cowboys,
frontier life, etc
National cultural resources and heritage
Federal Arts Program
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKsm3Sm
BBKU&feature=related
Federal Theatre Project
Writer’s & Theater Project
WPA Posters
Travel through the West
New Deal Work Mural
End of the Depression
Federal spending on an unprecedented
level failed to stop it
The largest entrance of the federal
government into the American economy
Made the federal government into a
“broker state” between labor and capital
Social programs and “safety net”
Brought fed gov’t into the lives of nearly
all Westerners
WWII ended the Depression
Comparisons with the Present?
Wealth inequalities
Deregulation
Bad Home mortgages
Massive individual debt
Inflated costs & uncontrolled speculative
investments in commodities
Collapse of investment-debt-loan system
A Vicious Cycle:
Retraction of loans, increase in job losses, fall in
investments, layoffs, decline in consumption,
reduced production, layoffs, no consumption…
