**The Great Depression / The New Deal** Flashcards
Hooverville
A shanty town built during the Great Depression by the homeless in the United States
Bonus Army
-World War I veterans, together with their families and affiliated groups – who gathered in Washington, D.C. in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service certificates
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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The New Deal
- Program designed to alleviate the problems of the Great Depression
- A phrase taken from a campaign speech in which Roosevelt had promised “a new deal for the American people”
- Policies focused on three general goals: relief for the needy, economic recovery, and financial reform
Alphabet Soup
New Deal agencies
Deficit spending
- FDR got money - taxes from the future
- Spending more money than the government receives in revenue
Relief
- Immediate action taken to halt economic deterioration, quick fix
- Bank holiday
- Emergency banking act
- Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
- Deficit spending
- Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA)
- Works Progress Administration (WPA)
Recovery
- Temporary programs to restart flow of consumer demand
- National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA)
- Tennessee Valley Authority
- Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)
- Home Owners Land Corp.
Reform
- Permanent programs to avoid another depression
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
- Soil Conservation Act (1933)
- Securities and Exchange Act (SEC)
- Social Security Administration (SSA)
WPA
- Provided long-term government jobs building or improve schools, roads, bridges, and participating in other public works project
- Employed over 8.5 million people across the nation, 10% to unemployed artist
Social security (administration)
- Provided a pension for retired workers and their spouses and aided people with disabilities
- Unemployment compensation
- Prevented the elderly from losing life savings
FDIC
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
- Provided federal insurance for individual bank accounts of up to $5,000 (today $250,000), reassuring millions of bank customers that their money was safe
- It also required banks to act cautiously with their customers’ money
Bank holiday
Forced all banks in America to close - no run on banks
FERA
- Federal Emergency Relief Act
- Funded with $500 million to provide direct relief for the needy
- Criticism - handouts
AAA
- Agricultural Adjustment Act
- Controlled supply of 7 basic crops by paying farmers not to produce
- Create more demand and raise prices, many farmers forced off
- Goal was to raise crop prices
How were the economic policies of FDR different than Hoover’s?
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Why did the stock market collapse have a negative effect on people who didn’t own any stocks?
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What was FDR’s plan to get us out of the Depression? What were the three different stages of this plan?
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What are some reasons that FDR’s plan was so popular? What were some criticisms?
Popular:
Criticisms:
- FDR making himself king
- FDR accused of promoting socialism
- Program wasted federal money for unneeded projects
- Led to laziness
- People too dependent on government
- Debt
- Did not really fix the depression
How did FDR change the size of the government and the power of the president?
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What did FDR want Americans to stop fearing?
Americans were afraid to spend money or to deposit money in the banks
How did FDR pay for hid New Deal?
Deficit spending
Why did many people fear FDR’s programs?
- They gave the president more power than ever before and some worried that he might become a dictator
- Tried to add more judges to the Supreme Court – if his plans passed he would be unstoppable
- Government giving out handouts
Welfare state
When a government uses tax dollars to help citizens in need, usually through programs like food stamps and unemployment checks
