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Stock Market Crash
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Unemployment at 8.9%
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Smoot-Hawley Tariff
raises import duties in attempt to protect American manufacturers from foreign competition. Plunges Europe into crisis. -
Unemployment at 16.3%
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Major Bank Collapse
New York's Bank of the United States collapses in largest bank failure to date in American history. $200 million in deposits disappear. -
Unemployment at 24.1%
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Roosevelt Elected
Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt significantly beats Republican Herbert Hoover in presidential election. -
Unemployment at 24.9%
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Radio Priest
Charles Coughlin's radio broadcast draws 30-45 million listeners a week. -
Roosevelt Inauguration
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Townsend Proposes a Pension Plan
Dr. Francis Townsend sends a letter to the Long Beach Press Telegram proposing state-funded pensions for the elderly. -
Upton Sinclair Publishes Treatise
publishes I, Governor of California and How I Ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future, a fictionalized political treatise that lays out the agenda of a communitarian movement called EPIC- End Poverty in California. -
Unemployment at 21.7%
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Townsend Plan Incorporated
Dr. Francis Townsend formally incorporates Old Age Revolving Pensions -
Share Our Wealth Society Founded
Huey Long founds the Share Our Wealth society. It advocated for the seize of the excess fortunes of the rich and redistribution to the poor. -
Longshoremen Strike
aided by the Communist Party, stopped shipping and trade in California, Oregon, and Washington. The longshoremen's union won. -
Charles Coughlin Establishes the National Union for Social Justice
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Unemployment at 20.1%
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Townsend Support Grows
More than 5000 Townsend Clubs nationwide represent more than 2 million members. 25 million Americans sign petitions asking their representatives to back the Townsend Plan in Washington -
Huey Long Assassinated
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Unemployment at 16.9%
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Roosevelt Reeclected
Roosevelt significantly beats Republican Alf Landon. -
Unemployment at 14.3%
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Unemployment at 19%
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Unemployment at 17.2%
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Nazi Rally in NYC
The German-American Bund stages a rally of fascist sympathizers supporting "True Americanism" in Madison Square Garden in NY. Anti-Semitic Hitler admirer and Bund leader Fritz Kuhn calls Franklin Roosevelt "Frank Rosenfeld" the New Deal "The Jew Deal' -
Mobilization Lifts Economy
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor draws US into WWII. Mobilization for war finally lifts the American economy out of Great Depression.