Great Depression

By apushstudent

  • Stock Market Crash

  • Unemployment at 8.9%

  • Smoot-Hawley Tariff

    raises import duties in attempt to protect American manufacturers from foreign competition. Plunges Europe into crisis.

  • Unemployment at 16.3%

  • 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%

  • Roosevelt Elected

    Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt significantly beats Republican Herbert Hoover in presidential election.

  • Unemployment at 24.9%

  • Radio Priest

    Charles Coughlin's radio broadcast draws 30-45 million listeners a week.

  • Roosevelt Inauguration

  • 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%

  • 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

  • Unemployment at 20.1%

  • 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

  • Unemployment at 16.9%

  • Roosevelt Reeclected

    Roosevelt significantly beats Republican Alf Landon.

  • Unemployment at 14.3%

  • Unemployment at 19%

  • Unemployment at 17.2%

  • 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.