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Congress of Industrial Organization Created
The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), proposed by John L. Lewis in 1928, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not Communists. Many CIO leaders refused to obey that requirement, later found unconstitutional. The CIO merged with the American Federation of Labor to form the AFL-CIO in 1955. -
Stock Market Crash (Black Tuesday)
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as Black Tuesday or the Stock Market Crash of 1929, began in late October 1929 and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout. The crash signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries. -
Bonus Army Gassed
The Bonus Army was the popular name of an assemblage of some 43,000 marchers—17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups—who gathered in Washington, D.C., in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand cash-payment redemption of their service certificates. Its organizers called it the Bonus Expeditionary Force to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Force, while the media called it the Bonus March. It was led by Walter W. Waters, a former Army sergeant. -
Wagner Act
The National Labor Relations Act of the Wagner Act of 1935 was created by Congress to protect workers' right to unionization. The National Labor Relations Board was created to enforce the National Labor Relations Act. The NLRB conducts secret-ballot elections to determine whether employees want union representation and also investigates unfair labor practices by employers and unions (Smith, 1998). The act guarantees un-supervised employees the right to self-organize, choose their own represe -
Court-Packing Plan
The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937[1] (frequently called the "court-packing plan")[2] was a legislative initiative proposed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. Roosevelt's purpose was to obtain favorable rulings regarding New Deal legislation that the court had ruled unconstitutional. -
Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act
The Tariff Act of 1930, otherwise known as the Smoot–Hawley Tariff or Hawley–Smoot Tariff, was an act sponsored by Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley and signed into law on June 17, 1930, that raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels. -
Reconstruction Finance Corperation
The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was an independent agency of the United States government, established and chartered by the US Congress in 1932, Act of January 22, 1932, c. 8, 47 Stat. 5, during the administration of President Herbert Hoover. It was modeled after the War Finance Corporation of World War I. The agency gave $2 billion in aid to state and local governments and made loans to banks, railroads, mortgage associations and other businesses. The loans were nearly all repaid. -
Federal Loan Home Bank Act
The Federal Home Loan Bank Act, enacted July 22, 1932, is a United States federal law passed under President Herbert Hoover in order to lower the cost of home ownership. It established the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to charter and supervise federal savings and loan institutions. It also created the Federal Home Loan Banks which lend to S&Ls in order to finance home mortgages.
The act was not effective in reaching its goals, since it could basically only loan money -
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Elected
With the bouncy popular song "Happy Days Are Here Again" as his campaign theme, FDR defeated incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover in November 1932, at the depth of the Great Depression. Energized by his personal victory over polio, FDR's persistent optimism and activism contributed to a renewal of the national spirit. Assisted by key aide Harry Hopkins, he worked closely with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in leading the Allies against Nazi Germany and -
First Fireside Chat
I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking—with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking but more particularly with the overwhelming majority who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks. I want to tell you what has been done in the last few days, why it was done, and what the next steps are going to be. -
Glass-Steagall Act
The term Glass–Steagall Act usually refers to four provisions of the U.S. Banking Act of 1933 that limited commercial bank securities activities and affiliations within commercial banks and securities firms. Congressional efforts to “repeal the Glass–Steagall Act” referred to those four provisions (and then usually to only the two provisions that restricted affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms). Those efforts culminated in the 1999 Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA), which -
The Hundred Days Began
SUBSEQUENT TO HIS inauguration ceremony and parade, President Roosevelt chose to forego the traditional celebratory balls and begin work directly, an indication of the severity of the national economic crisis. FDR Inaugural
Listen | Text "This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper." That afternoon, in unprecedented fashion, his cabinet was sworn in, unceremoniously, at the White House and the Roosevelt Administration was underway. Almost immediately there wa -
John Collier Became Commissioner of the Indian Affairs
John Collier’s appointment as Commissioner of Indian Affairs by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 marked a radical reversal—in intention if not always in effect—in U.S. government policies toward American Indians that dated back to the 1887 Dawes Act. An idealistic social worker, Collier first encountered Indian culture when he visited Taos, New Mexico, in 1920, and found among the Pueblos there what he called a “Red Atlantis”—a model of living that integrated the needs of the individual with the group -
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the US and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion (the Aeolian processes) caused the phenomenon. Extensive deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains during the previous decade had displaced the native, deep-rooted grasses that normally trapped soil and moisture eve -
Boulder Dam (Hoover Dam) Built
Hoover Dam, once known as Boulder Dam, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the US states of Arizona and Nevada. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives. The dam was controversially named after President Herbert Hoover. -
NLRB v. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corperation
National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, 301 U.S. 1 (1937), was a United States Supreme Court case that declared that the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (commonly known as the Wagner Act) was constitutional. It effectively spelled the end to the Court's striking down of New Deal economic legislation, and greatly increased Congress's power under the Commerce Clause. -
Grapes of Wrath Published
Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they were trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with thousands of other "Okies", they sought jobs, land, dignity, and a future. -
Frances Perkins Became First Female Cabinet Member
Frances Perkins (born Fannie Coralie Perkins; April 10, 1880[1][2] – May 14, 1965) was the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. As a loyal supporter of her friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt, she helped pull the labor movement into the New Deal coalition. She and Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes were the only original members of the Roosevelt cabinet to remain in office for his entire presidency. -
Mary Bethune Made Head of the Division of Negro Affairs and the Nation Youth Administration
Mary Jane McLeod Bethune (July 10, 1875 – May 18, 1955) was an American educator and civil rights leader best known for starting a school for African-American students in Daytona Beach, Florida, that eventually became Bethune-Cookman University and for being an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She was known as "The First Lady of The Struggle” because of her commitment to bettering African Americans.
