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Wall Street Crash
On Black Thursday (October 24), there was an unprecedented volume of selling on Wall Street, and the stock prices plunged. A group of bankers bought millions of dollars of stocks, but it only worked for one day because on October 29 the bottom fell out, as millions of investors ordered their brokers to sell but no buyers could be found. Prices continued going down and the Dow Jones index would finally hit bottom at 41 three years later. -
Hawley-Smoot Tariff
In June 1930, Congress set tax increases ranging from from 31 percent to 49 percent on foreign imports. European countries enacted their own high tariffs against the U.S. which only led to both national and international economies sink into further depression. This was one of the worst mistakes of Herbert Hoover's presidency. -
Debt Moratorium
The Dawes Plan for collecting war debts could no longer continue because the conditions in the economic U.S. and Europe. Hoover proposed a suspension of the plan. Britain and Germany readily accepted, but France balked. Banks across the globe scrambled to meet the demands of many depositors withdrawing their money. -
The Federal Farm Board
Hoover signed into law programs that offered assistance to indebted farmers and struggling businesses. The Federal Farm Board was created in 1929 to help farmers stabilize prices temporarily holding surplus grain and cotton in storage. It still could not handle the overproduction of farm goods. -
Despair and Protest
Midwest farmers formed the Farm Holiday Association which attempted to reverse the drop in prices by stopping the entire crop of grain harvested in 1932 from reaching the market. The effort collapsed after violence. In the summer of 1932, thousand of war veterans and families marched to Washington to demand the payment of bonuses promised to them at a later date. Hoover ordered the army to break up the encampment using tanks and tear gas. This negatively affected the public opinion of Hoover. -
The Inauguration of Roosevelt
After the election of 1932, the Democrat candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt beat Hoover winning all but six states. People were desperate for change. He pledged a "new deal" for the American people, the repeal of Prohibition, aid for the unemployed, and cuts in government spending. The Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment. -
Congressional Elections of 1934
Democratic victories gave FDR the popular mandate he needed to seek another round of laws and programs. Some of these included the Civil Works Administration and other programs for creating jobs, the Securities and Exchange Commission for regulating the stock market and placing strict limits on the kind of speculative practices that led to the Crash to protect investors from fraud, and the Federal Housing Administration for insuring bank loans for building new houses and repairing old ones. -
The NRA and AAA are declared unconstitutional
The National Recovery Administration was a measure to combine immediate relief and long-term reform. It was an attempt to guarantee reasonable profits for business and fair wages and hours for labor in each industry while antitrust laws were temporarily suspended. It had limited success. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration encouraged farmers to reduce production by offering to pay gov. subsidies for every acre they plowed under. The NRA and AAA were both declared unconstitutional in 1935. -
The Second New Deal
In the summer of 1935, FDR focused on relief and reform. The creation of new agencies and programs such as the Works Progress Administration, Resettlement Act, National Labor Relations Act, Rural Electrification Administration, the Revenue act of 1935, and the Social Security Act was to give desperately needed government help to industrial workers, farmers, the unemployed, and retirees. -
The Election of 1936
Democrats nominated FDR for a second term because he was widely popular among workers and small farmers but businesses generally disliked him for his regulatory programs and prounion measures. Alf Landon was the Republican nominee who was progressive-minded and criticized the Democrats for spending too much money. FDR won every state except Maine and Vermont. This Democratic victories demonstrated the new coalition of popular support. -
Court Reorganization Plan
FDR proposed a judicial-reorganization bill to remove the Court as an obstacle to the New Deal. It proposed that the president be authorized to appoint the Supreme Court an additional justice for each current justice who was older than 70 1/2 years. This would've given FDR six more justice. Republicans and Democrats were outraged by "Court-packing" seeing it as an attack on the checks and balances system. The bill was declined by Congress. -
Fair Labor Standards Act
A final political victory for organized labor in the 1930s also represented the last major reform of the New Deal. The Fair Labor Standards Act established a minimum wage, a maximum standard workweek of 40 hours with extra pay for overtime, and child-labor restrictions on hiring people under 16 years old which was upheld in the case of U.S. v. Darby Lumber Co. -
America Amends Neutrality Act
After World War II began in September, the President Roosevelt pushed for another Neutrality Act that would expand the cash-and-carry policy that had been in place since 1937. The cash-and-carry provision had expired and President Roosevelt wanted to expand it to include the sale of arms in lieu of the outbreak of war. After resistance from isolationists in Congress the Neutrality Act was finally passed on November 3rd .
