Chapter 23: Vocabulary Flashcards
Smoot-Hawley Tariff
A high Tariff enacted in 1930 during the Great Depression. By taxing imported goods, Congress hoped to stimulate American manufacturing, but the tariff triggered retaliatory tariffs in other countries, which further hindered global trade and led to greater economic contraction.
Bonus Army
A group of 15,000 unemployed World War I veterans who set up camps near the Capitol building in 1932 to demand immediate payment of pension awards due to be paid in 1945.
Fireside Chats
A series of informal radio addresses Franklin Roosevelt made to the nation in which he explained New Deal initiatives.
Hundred Days
A legendary session during the first few months of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration in which Congress enacted fifteen major bills that focused primarily on four problems: banking failures, agricultural overproduction, the business slump, and soaring unemployment.
Glass-Steagall Act
A 1933 law that created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insured deposits up to $2,500 (and now up to $250,000). The act also prohibited banks from making risky, unsecured investments with customers’ deposits.
Agricultural Adjustment Act
New Deal legislation passed in May 1933 that aimed at cutting agricultural production to raise crop prices and thus farmers’ income.
National Recovery Administration
Federal agency established in June 1933 to promote industrial recovery during the Great Depression. It encouraged industrialists to voluntarily adopt codes that defined fair working conditions, set prices, and minimized competition.
Public Works Administration
A New Deal construction program established by Congress in 1933. Designed to put people back to work, the PWA built the Boulder Dam (renamed Hoover Dam) and Grand Coulee Dam, among other large public works projects.
Civilian Conservation Corps
Federal relief program that provided jobs to millions to millions of unemployed young men who built thousands of bridges, roads, trails, and other structures in state and national parks, bolstering the national infrastructure.
Federal Housing Administration
An agency established by the Federal Housing Act of 1934 that refinanced home mortgages for mortgage holders facing possible foreclosure.
Liberty League
A group of Republican business leaders and conservative Democrats who banded together to fight what they called the “reckless spending” and “socialist” reforms of the New Deal.
National Association of Manufacturers
An association of industrialists and business leaders opposed to government regulation. In the era of the New Deal, the group promoted free enterprise and capitalism through a publicity campaign of radio programs, motion pictures, billboards, and direct mail.
Welfare State
A term applied to industrial democracies that adopt various government-guaranteed social-welfare programs. The creation of Social Security and other measures of the Second New Deal fundamentally changed American society and established a national welfare state for the first time.
Wagner Act
A 1935 act that upheld the right of industrial workers to join unions and established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a federal agency with the authority to protect workers from employer coercion and to guarantee collective bargaining.
Social Security Act
A 1935 act with three main provisions: old-age pensions for workers; a joint federal-state system of compensation for unemployed workers; and a program of payments to widowed mothers and the blind, deaf, and disabled.
