Chapter 24 Flashcards
Herbert Hoover
The greatly admired former mining engineer and Food
Administration leader Herbert Hoover to be secretary of commerce; Herbert Hoover, a distinguished engineer, took charge of the Food Administration, which encouraged American households to eat less meat and bread so that more food could be shipped abroad for the French and British troops. The conservation drive paid off; in two years, U.S. overseas shipment of food tripled.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt was the only child of a wealthy New York family. He personally admired cousin Theodore and followed in his footsteps as a New York state legislator and then as U.S. assistant secretary of the navy. Unlike Republican Theodore, however, Franklin was a Democrat. In 1920 he was the Democratic nominee for vice president. He and James Cox, the presidential candidate, lost badly in Warren G. Harding’s landslide victory. President Franklin Roosevelt’s reform program, the New Deal, in the 1930S.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, emerged as a leader in her own right. She became the most active first lady in history, writing a newspaper column, giving speeches, and traveling the country. Though their personal relationship was strained, Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt had a strong mutual respect. She served as the president’s social conscience and influenced him to support minorities and the less fortunate.
Francis Perkin
Settlement workers were civic-minded volunteers who created the foundation for the later job of social worker. They were also political activists who crusaded for child-labor laws, housing reform, and women’s rights. Two settlement workers, Frances Perkins and Harry Hopkins, went on to leadership roles in President Franklin Roosevelt’s reform program, the New Deal, in the 1930s. The people that Roosevelt appointed to high administrative positions were the most diverse in U.S. history, with a record number of African Americans, Catholics, Jews, and women. For example, his secretary of labor was Frances Perkins, the first woman ever to serve in a president’s cabinet.
Harold Ickes
The Public Works Administration (PWA), directed by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, allotted money to state and local governments for building roads, bridges, dams, and other public work Blacks also received moral support from Eleanor Roosevelt and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes in a famous incident in
1939. The distinguished African American singer Marian Anderson had been refused the use of Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., by the all-white Daughters of the American Revolution. Eleanor Roosevelt and Ickes promptly arranged for Anderson to give a special concert at the Lincoln Memorial
Harry Hopkins
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) offered outright grants of federal money to states and local governments that were operating soup kitchens and other forms of relief for the jobless and homeless. The director of FERA was Harry Hopkins, one of the president’s closest friends and advisers.
Huey Long
From Roosevelt’s point of view, the most dangerous of the depression demagogues was the “Kingfish “ from Louisiana, Senator Huey Long. Immensely popular in his own state, Long became a prominent national figure by proposing a “Share Our Wealth” program that promised a minimum annual income of $5,000 for every American family, to be paid for by taxing the wealthy. In 1935, Huey Long challenged Roosevelt’s leadership of the Democratic party by announcing his candidacy for president. Both his candidacy and his populist appeal were abruptly ended when he was killed by an assassin.
John L. Lewis
In an era that so strongly favored business, union efforts at strikes usually failed. The United Mine Workers, led by John L. Lewis, suffered setbacks in a series of violent and ultimately unsuccessful strikes in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Conservative courts routinely issued injunctions against strikes and nullified labor laws aimed at protecting workers’ welfare. Industrial Organizations (C.1.o.). Their leader was John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers union. In 1936, the A.F. of L. suspended the C.1.o. unions.
Marian Anderson
The distinguished African American singer Marian Anderson had been refused the use of Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., by the all-white Daughters of the American Revolution. Eleanor Roosevelt and Ickes promptly arranged for Anderson to give a special concert at the Lincoln Memorial.
A Philip Randolph
An executive order in 1941 set up a committee to assist minorities in gaining jobs in defense industries. President Roosevelt took this action only after A.Philip Randolph, head of the Railroad Porters Union, threatened a march on Washington to demand equal job opportunities for African Americans.
Black Tuesday
Although stock prices had fluctuated greatly for several weeks preceding the crash, the true panic did not begin until a Thursday in late October. On this Black Thursday-October 24, 1929-there was an unprecedented volume of selling on Wall Street, and stock prices plunged. The next day, hoping to stave off disaster by stabilizing prices, a group of bankers bought millions of dollars of stocks. The strategy worked for only one business day, Friday. The selling frenzy resumed on Monday. On Black Tuesday, October 29, the bottom fell out, as millions of panicky investors ordered their brokers to sell -but almost no buyers could be found. From that day on, prices on Wall Street kept going down and down. By late November, the Dow Jones index had fallen from its September high of 381 to 198. Three years later, stock prices would finally hit bottom at 41, less than one ninth of their peak value
Buying Margin
People were no longer investing their money in order to share in the profits of a company-they were speculating that the price of a stock would go up and that they could sell it for a quick profit. Buying on margin allowed people to borrow most of the cost of the stock, making down payments as low as 10 percent. Investors depended on the price of the stock increasing so that they could repay the loan. When stock prices dropped, the market collapsed, and many lost everything they had borrowed and invested
Overproduction
Business growth, aided by increased productivity and use of credit, had produced a volume of goods that workers with stagnant wages could not continue to purchase.
Hawley-Smoot Tariff
In June 1930, the president signed into law a schedule of tariff rates that was the highest in history. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff passed by the Republican Congress set tax increases ranging from 31 percent to 49 percent on foreign imports. In retaliation for the U.S. tariff, however, European countries enacted higher tariffs of their own against U.S. goods. The effect was to reduce trade for all nations, meaning that both the national and international economies sank further into depression.
Farm Board
The Farm Board was actually created in 1929, before the stock market crash, but its powers were later enlarged to meet the economic crisis. The board was authorized to help farmers stabilize prices by temporarily holding surplus grain and cotton in storage. The program, however, was far too modest to handle the continued overproduction of farm goods.
Bonus March
Also in the desperate summer of 1932, a thousand unemployed World Wat I veterans marched to Washington, D.C., to demand immediate payment of the bonuses promised them at a later date (1945). They were eventually joined by thousands of other veretans who brought their wives and children and camped in improvised shacks near the Capitol. Congress failed to pass the bonus bill they sought. When two veterans were killed in a clash with police, Hoover ordered the army to break up the encampment. General Douglas MacArthur, the army’s chief of staff, used tanks and tear gas to destroy the shantytown and drive the veterans from Washington The incident caused many Americans to regard Hoover as heartless and uncaring.
