15: Self-help in Hard Times Flashcards
The General Strike in 1919 Seattle was particularly threatening because it was what?
Peaceful
What did women get in 1920?
The right to vote
Who primarily gained from the increasing prosperity in the 1920s?
The richest
True or False: Unemployment decreased from 4,270,000 in 1921 to 2 million in 1927
True
The great textile strike in the Carolinas and Tennessee (Spring 1929) was the beginning of what?
Textile mill unionism in the south
This activity brought the stock market crash of 1929
Wild speculation
What fraction of the labour force was out of work by 1933?
1/4 to 1/3 (around 15,000,000)
What did WWI veterans do in the spring and summer of ‘32, leading to their forceful dispersal?
Occupy Washington
Which President defeated Herbert Hoover in the 1932 Depression election?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The unorganized public, along with members of the fledgling trade-union movement, had virtually nothing to say about the initial organization” of what Depression era government plan? (hint: early FDR legislation)
The National Recovery Administration
What what the goal of the NRA (not national rifle association)
Take control of the economy through a series of codes agreed on by management, labour, and the government, fixing prices and wages, limiting competition.
What did unemployed coal miner do in Pennsylvania during the Great Depression?
Dug small mines on company property, mined coal, trucked it into cities, and sold it below the commercial rate. 5 million tons of bootleg coal were produced by 20,000 men and 4,000 vehicles by 1934. Juries refused to convict.
True or False: 421,000 textile workers were on strike throughout the country in September 1934, and that year saw 1.5 million workers strike in all
True
What new form of strike took off in 1936-37?
The sit-down strike
What made sit-down strikes especially dangerous to the system?
They were not controlled by regular union leadership
According to Zinn, why was a National Labor Relations Board set up (Wagner Act of 1935)?
To stabilize the system in the face of labour unrest
Name the two “sophisticated” ways of controlling direct labour action that developed in the mid-thirties
NLRB would give unions legal status and negotiate with them; the union would channel workers’ insurrectionary energy into contracts, negotiations, union meetings, and try to minimize strikes
What is Frances Piven’s argument about Labour Victories in his book Poor People’s Movements?
That labour won more concessions before it was organized into bureaucratized unions
The New Deal reduced unemployment from 13 million to what?
9 million
What economic event brought jobs back after the Great Depression?
WWII
The minimum wage act (25c/hr in year one) which also installed 40hr work week and banned child labour, was instituted in which year?
1938
Which groups did the social security act exclude?
Farmers. domestic workers, elderly
FDR did not push a bill against this southern practice?
Lynching
