Ch. 2 Great Depression

Question 1

Broker

Answer 1

A person who buys and sells stocks and shares

Question 2

Ticker

Answer 2

Ticker tape on which stocks and shares transactions were recorded. Could not keep pace when Wall Street crashed.

Question 3

Bankrupt

Answer 3

When firms or people have insufficient funds to pay their debts. Relatively few brokers went bankrupt after Wall Street Crashed.

Question 4

Wall Street Journal

Answer 4

A daily financial newspaper

Question 5

Dow Jones Industrial Average

Answer 5

An index showing how shares in the top 30 largest companies are trading on Wall Street.

Question 6

Assimilate

Answer 6

The idea that Native Americans should adopt American lifestyle and values; their traditional way of life should disappear. Dawes Severalty Act.

Question 7

Allotment

Answer 7

Each Native American family was given an allotment of 160 acres of land to farm, which went against the traditional idea of common land ownership. Dawes Severalty Act.

Question 8

Per capita income

Answer 8

Income per head of the population, highest in NE and far West.

Question 9

Short term wages

Answer 9

Where hours of work are reduced. This happened when employment was unstable.

Question 10

Lynchings

Answer 10

Illegal hangings, often used by the KKK as a means of terror. Lynchings became less common in the 1920s.

Question 11

Census

Answer 11

Survey taken every 10 years to enumerate everyone in the country. 1920 Census showed that the US had become an urban nation.

Question 12

Farm lobby

Answer 12

Politicians and interest groups who put forward the farmers’ case to the government. Had very powerful government influence but felt threatened by urbanization

Question 13

Prohibition

Answer 13

Banning the sale, transportation, and manufacture of alcohol for consumption, negatively impacting grain prices and therefore farmers.

Question 14

Yellow dog clauses

Answer 14

Where employees had to agree not to join a labor union.

Question 15

The “Fed”

Answer 15

Federal Reserve Board, a group of banks

Question 16

Reparations

Answer 16

Under post-war settlements, Germany had to pay $33 billion for war damage

Question 17

Dawes Plan 1924

Answer 17

Offered scaled down reparations for Germany and gave it $250 million loan to help it pay its debt

Question 18

Young Plan

Answer 18

Offered further scaled down reparation to 37 billion marks w/ annual payments for 59 years

Question 19

Consumer durables

Answer 19

Goods that last a long time like motor cars and appliances. Much of 1920s prosperity was based on these, but they were not often repurchased.

Question 20

Credit squeeze

Answer 20

When it is difficult to obtain credit. There was a credit squeeze after Wall St fell.

Question 21

Bull pools

Answer 21

When brokers buy and sell among each other to keep prices up.

Question 22

Blue Chips

Answer 22

Most reliable, safe bet companies to invest in.

Question 23

What events contributed to the Crash?

Answer 23

Stampede to sell, lost confidence in stocks, no one was willing to take a risk. Economy crashed because of cycle of international debt, economic slowdown, uneven wealth distribution, rural poverty, get-rich-quick schemes, and banking system problems.

Question 24

How prosperous was the economy in the 1920s?

Answer 24

Prosperous on paper but with underlying problems that contributed to the crash. Much debate.

Question 25

Choose two historians at the end of the chapter– who are they and what do they say about the Crash?

Answer 25

Paul Johnson=British historian who believed that the 1920s economy was sound and prosperity was real because wealth was distributed more evenly than before, and that Wall Street Crash would have righted itself.

Liaquat Ahamed argued that the Crash was the result of too much reliance on the Gold Standard because there simply was not enough gold to finance international trade. Argued that the Great Depression was the result of economic mismanagement.