Skip to main content

Home/ US History/ Group items tagged depression

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Kay Bradley

Digital History The Great Depression in Global Perspective - 0 views

www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm

Great Depression depression economics history

shared by Kay Bradley on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • International trade fell 30 percent
  • "Beggar-thy-neighbor" trade policies were a major reason why the Depression persisted as long as it did.
  • 30 million people were unemploye
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • One response to the depression was military dictatorship
  • collapse in raw material and agricultural commodity prices led to social unrest,
  • fascism and militarism
  • Hitler outlawed labor unions
  • restructured German
  • industry into a series of cartels
  • massive program of military rearmament
  • totalitarian communism.
  • Stalin's
  • welfare capitalism
  • Canada
  • Great Britain
  • France
  • Under welfare capitalism, government assumed ultimate responsibility for promoting a reasonably fair distribution of wealth and power and for providing security against the risks of bankruptcy, unemployment, and destitution.
  • the economic decline brought on by the Depression was steeper and more protracted in the United States.
  • European countries significantly reduced unemployment by 1936. However, the American jobless rate still exceeded 17 percent as late as 1939, when World War II began in Europe. It did not drop below 14 percent until 1941.
  • It produced a major political realignment
  • committed, to varying degrees, to interventionist government.
  • he Depression strengthened the federal presence in American life, producing such innovations as national old age pensions, unemployment compensation, aid to dependent children, public housing, federally subsidized school lunches, insured bank deposits, the minimum wage, and stock market regulation.
  • fundamentally altered labor relations
  • national labor policy protective of collective bargaining.
  • transformed the farm economy by introducing federal price supports and rural electrification
  • fundamental transformation in public attitudes.
  • t led Americans to view the federal government as the ultimate protector of public well-being.
Kay Bradley

DH Great Depression Causes + Why it lasted so long - 0 views

www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm

Great Depression depression economics history

shared by Kay Bradley on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • prosperity of the 1920s was a cruel illusion
  • most families lived belo
  • poverty line.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • 60 percent of the nation's families earned less than $2,000 a year
  • Prosperity bypassed specific groups of Americans entirely.
  • The farm sector had been mired in depression since 1921
  • The decline in farm income reverberated throughout the economy.
  • Between 1920 and 1929, more than 5,000 of the country's 30,000 banks failed.
  • small businesspeople failed because they could not secure loans.
  • consumer debt also weakened the economy
  • poor distribution of income
  • During the 1920s, there was a pronounced shift in wealth and income toward the very rich
  • poorest 93 percent of the non-farm population actually saw its disposable income fall.
  • Because the rich tend to spend a high proportion of their income on luxuries, such as large cars, entertainment, and tourism, and save a disproportionately large share of their income,
  • business investment had begun to decline.
  • housing starts
  • 1924 immigration law
  • Soaring inventories
  • reduce investment and production
  • stock market speculation
  • The Federal Reserve, the nation's central bank, played a critical, if inadvertent, role in weakening the economy.
  • allowed the money supply to fall dramatically
  • "liquidity crisis."
  • the Federal Reserve allowed the country's money supply to decline by 27 percent between 1929 and 1933.
  • Instead of actively stimulating the economy by cutting interest rates and expanding the money supply-
  • tariff policies damaged the economy by depressing foreign trade
  • Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922
  • Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930
  • By 1933, international trade had plunged 30 percent.
  • Unlike most of Western Europe
  • the United States had no federal system of unemployment insurance.
  • Community Ches
  • Red Cross
Kay Bradley

United States presidential election, 1896 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...es_presidential_election,_1896

united states election Bryan Populist farmer

shared by Kay Bradley on 13 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • One month after McKinley's nomination, the silverites took control of the Democratic convention held in Chicago on July 7–11. Most of the Southern and Western delegates were committed to implementing the free silver ideas of the Populist Party.
  • An attorney, former congressman, and unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate named William Jennings Bryan filled the void
  • Bryan hailed from Nebraska and spoke for the farmers who were suffering from the economic depression following the Panic of 1893.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Bryan delivered one of the greatest political speeches in American history, the "Cross of Gold" Speech
  • Bryan presented a passionate defense of farmers and factory workers struggling to survive the economic depression, and he attacked big-city business owners and leaders as the cause of much of the economic suffering.
  • He called for reform of the monetary system and an end to the gold standard, and promised government relief efforts for farmers and others hurt by the economic depression.
  • Several third parties were active in 1896. By far the most prominent was the Populist Party
  • Formed in 1892, the Populists represented agrarian interests in the South, West, and rural Midwest.
  • In the 1892 presidential election Populist candidate James B. Weaver had carried four states, and in 1894 the Populists had scored victories in congressional and state legislature races in a number of Southern and Western states.
  • By 1896 some Populists believed that they could replace the Democrats as the main opposition party to the Republicans.
  • At their national convention in 1896, the Populists chose Bryan as their presidential nominee.
  • With this election, the Populists began to be absorbed into the Democratic Party; within a few elections the party would disappear completely
Kay Bradley

great Depression, human toll, - 0 views

www.csun.edu/...depression.pdf

Great Depression depression economics US History

shared by Kay Bradley on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Kay Bradley on 29 Jan 14
     
    includes description of [sewer] pipe city in Oakland Ca
Kay Bradley

Digital History: 1930s The Human Toll - 0 views

www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm

Great Depression depression economics history

shared by Kay Bradley on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • images of the Great Depression remain firmly etched in the American psyche: breadlines, soup kitchens, tin-can shanties and tar-paper shacks known as "Hoovervilles," penniless men and women selling apples on street corners, and gray battalions of Arkies and Okies packed into Model A Fords heading to California.
  • 12 1/2 million in 1932.
  • a quarter of the nation's families did not have a single employed wage earner.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • in 1932, three-quarters of all workers were on part-time schedules, averaging just 60 percent of the normal work week.
  • average family income had tumbled 40 percent,
  • In Oakland, California, whole families lived in sewer pipes.
  • Vagrancy
  • many families did without milk or meat.
  • Herbert Hoover declared, "Nobody is actually starving. The hoboes are better fed than they have ever been." But in New York City in 1931, there were 20 known cases of starvation; in 1934, there were 110 deaths caused by hunger.
  • heavy psychological toll on jobless men
  • Large numbers of men lost self-respect
  • many women saw their status rise
  • drew some families closer together
Kay Bradley

Digital History The Dispossessed 1930s - 0 views

www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm

US History economy economics Great Depression depression

shared by Kay Bradley on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • 70 percent of Charleston's black population was unemployed
  • salt pork, hominy grits, corn bread, and molasses. Income averaged less than a dollar a day.
  • In Chicago, 70 percent of all black families earned less than a $1,000
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • assuring landlords a windfall of an extra $142 a month. Buildings that previously held 60 families now contained 300
  • Mexican Americans faced serious opposition from organized labor
  • repatriated
  • Kay Bradley on 29 Jan 14
     
    "70 percent of Charleston's black population was unemployed"
Kay Bradley

The 13 Worst Recessions, Depressions, and Panics In American History - 24/7 Wall St. - 0 views

247wallst.com/...and-panics-in-american-history

shared by Kay Bradley on 18 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Kay Bradley on 18 Nov 15
     
    "Most of the early US recessions - those in the late 1700s and early in the 19th Century - were based on speculation in land or commodities such as cotton. Oddly enough, the latest recession also came about as a result of unchecked land speculation. In this case, however, that land was residential real estate - already under homes and not valuable for crops or mining."
Kay Bradley

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - 0 views

www.amphigory.com/oz.htm

Wizard of Oz Baum Gilded Age literature WizardOfOz

shared by Kay Bradley on 13 Feb 13 - Cached
  • publication in 1900
  • The Wizard of Oz is an entity unto itself, however, and was not originally written with a sequel in mind
  • Born near Syracuse in 1856, Baum was brought up in a wealthy home and early became interested in the theater. He wrote some plays which enjoyed brief success and then, with his wife and two sons, journeyed to Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1887. Aberdeen was a little prairie town and there Baum edited the local weekly until it failed in 1891
  • ...62 more annotations...
  • For many years Western farmers had been in a state of loud, though unsuccessful, revolt. While Baum was living in South Dakota not only was the frontier a thing of the past, but the Romantic view of benign nature had disappeared we well. The stark reality of the dry, open plains and the acceptance of man's Darwinian subservience to his environment served to crush Romantic idealism
  • prices
  • grasshoppers
  • drought
  • blizzards
  • juggling of freight rates
  • Baum's stay in South Dakota also covered the period of the formation of the Populist party, which Professor Nye likens to a fanatic "crusade".
  • Western farmers had for a long time sought governmental aid in the form of economic panaceas, but to no avail. The Populist movement symbolized a desperate attempt to use the power of the ballot[8].
  • Moreover, he took part in the pivotal election of 1896, marching in "torch-light parades for William Jennings Bryan"
  • could have been unaffected by Bryan's campaign. Putting all the farmers' hopes in a basket labeled "free coinage of silver," Bryan's platform rested mainly on the issue of adding silver to the nation's gold standard. Though he lost, he did at least bring the plight of the little man into national focus[11].
  • Nevertheless, Professor Nye quotes Baum as having a desire to write stories that would "bear the stamp of our times and depict the progressive fairies of today.
  • Yet the original Oz book conceals an unsuspected depth
  • children's story with a symbolic allegory implicit within its story line and characterizations
  • subtle parable, Baum delineated a Midwesterner's vibrant and ironic portrait of this country as it entered the twentieth century.
  • orothy, who was an orphan
  • Dorothy's house has come down on the Wicked Witch of the East, killing her
  • Notice that evil ruled in both the East and the West; after Dorothy's coming it rules only in the West.
  • The Wicked Witch of the East had kept the little Munchkin people "in bondage for many years, making them slave for her night and day.
  • In this way Eastern witchcraft dehumanized a simple laborer so that the faster and better he worked the more quickly he became a kind of machine. Here is a Populist view of evil Eastern influences on honest labor which could hardly be more pointed.
  • There is one thing seriously wrong with being made of tin; when it rains rust sets in.
  • Tin Woodman had been standing in the same position for a year without moving before Dorothy came along and oiled his joints
  • he Tin Woodman's situation has an obvious parallel in the condition of many Eastern workers after the depression of 1893
  • While Tin Woodman is standing still, rusted solid, he deludes himself into thinking he is no longer capable of that most human of sentiments, love
  • the country is divided in a very orderly fashion. In the North and South the people are ruled by good witches, who are not quite as powerful as the wicked ones of the East and West
  • Emerald City ruled by the Wizard of Oz
  • Dorothy is Baum's Miss Everyman
  • Dorothy sets out on the Yellow Brick Road wearing the Witch of the East's magic Silver Shoes
  • Silver shoes walking on a golden road
  • orothy becomes the innocent agent of Baum's ironic view of the Silver issue.
  • neither Dorothy, nor the good Witch of the North, nor the Munchkins understand the power of these shoes. The allegory is abundantly clear
  • William Allen White wrote an article in 1896 entitled "What's the Matter With Kansas?". In it he accused Kansas farmers of ignorance, irrationality and general muddle-headedness.
  • the Scarecrow displays a terrible sense of inferiority and self doubt, for he has determined that he needs real brains to replace the common straw in his head
  • the Cowardly Lion
  • As King of Beasts he explains, "I learned that if I roared very loudly every living thing was frightened and got out of my way."
  • Born a coward, he sobs, "Whenever there is danger my heart begins to beat fast
  • The Lion represents Bryan himself
  • In the election of 1896 Bryan lost the vote of Eastern Labor, though he tried hard to gain their support.
  • "struck at the Tin Woodman with his sharp claws." But, to his surprise, "he could make no impression on the tin, although the Woodman fell over in the road and lay still.
  • Baum here refers to the fact that in 1896 workers were often pressured into voting for McKinley and gold by their employers.
  • The magic Silver Shoes belong to Dorothy
  • ilver's potent charm, which had come to mean so much to so many in the Midwest, could not be entrusted to a political symbol
  • All together now the small party moves toward the Emerald City. Coxey's Army of tramps and indigents, marching to ask President Cleveland for work in 1894, appears no more naively innocent than this group of four characters going to see a humbug Wizard, to request favors that only the little girl among them deserves.
  • Those who enter the Emerald City must wear green glasses
  • The Wizard, a little bumbling old man, hiding behind a facade of paper mache and noise, might be any president from Grant to McKinley
  • he symbolizes the American criterion for leadership -- he is able to be everything to everybody.
  • the Wizard assumes different shapes, representing different views toward national leadership. To Dorothy he appears as an enormous head, "bigger than the head of the biggest giant
  • The Wizard has asked them all to kill the Witch of the West
  • he golden road does not go in that direction and so they must follow the sun, as have many pioneers in the past
  • The Witch of the West uses natural forces to achieve her ends; she is Baum's version of sentient and malign nature.
  • Baum makes these Winged Monkeys into an Oz substitute for the plains Indians.
  • Baum's monkeys are not inherently bad; their actions depend wholly upon the bidding of others. Under the control of an evil influence, they do evil. Under the control of goodness and innocence, as personified by Dorothy, the monkeys are helpful and kind, although unable to take her to Kansas. Says the Monkey King, "We belong to this country alone, and cannot leave it" (p. 213). The same could be said with equal truth of the first Americans.
  • The Witch assumes that proportions of a kind of western Mark Hanna or Banker Boss, who, through natural malevolence, manipulates the people and holds them prisoner by cynically taking advantage of their innate innocence.
  • Dorothy destroys the evil Witch by angrily dousing her with a bucket of water. Water, that precious commodity which the drought-ridden farmers on the great plains needed so badly, and which if correctly used could create an agricultural paradise, or at least dissolve a wicked witch.
  • What a wonderful lesson for youngsters of the decade when Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland and William McKinley were hiding in the White House.
  • Formerly the Wizard was a mimic, a ventriloquist and a circus balloonist
  • our little Wizard comes from Omaha, Nebraska, a center of Populist agitation
  • Current historiography tends to criticize the Populist movement for its "delusions, myths and foibles
  • Their desires, as well as the Wizard's cleverness in answering them, are all self-delusion. Each of these characters carries within him the solution to his own problem, were he only to view himself objectively.
  • Like any good politician he gives the people what they want
  • hroughout the story Baum poses a central thought; the American desire for symbols of fulfillment is illusory. Real needs lie elsewhere.
  • In this way Baum tells us that the Silver crusade at least brought back Dorothy's lovely spirit to the disconsolate plains farmer. Her laughter, love and good will are no small addition to that gray land, although the magic of Silver has been lost forever as a result.
  • Thereby farm interests achieve national importance, industrialism moves West and Bryan commands only a forest full of lesser politicians.
Kay Bradley

Digital History: 1932 Bonus Army - 0 views

www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm

US History Great Depression

shared by Kay Bradley on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • 20,000 World War I veterans and their families marched on Washington
  • The proposal was to pay veterans $1 for each day served in the United States and $1.25 for every day overseas.
  • resident Hoover called on the Army to "put an end to rioting and defiance of authority."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The Third Cavalry advanced on the veterans, followed by infantry with fixed bayonets, a machine gun detachment, troops with tear gas canisters, and six midget tanks. The camps were burned.
  • hief of Staff Douglas MacArthur
Kay Bradley

Digital History: FDR 1930s - 0 views

www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm

US History Great Depression FDR

shared by Kay Bradley on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • No fewer than 16 of his ancestors had come over on the Mayflower
  • assistant secretary of the Navy in 1913
  • "If you had spent two years in bed trying to wiggle your toe," he later declared, "after that anything would seem easy."
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Roosevelt won the governorship of New York in 1928--one of the few Democrats to survive the Republican landslide. Surrounding himself with able advisors, Roosevelt labored to convert New York into a laboratory for reform, involving conservation, old-age pensions, public works projects, and unemployment insurance.
  • a New Deal for the American people
  • policy of experimentation
  • Kay Bradley on 29 Jan 14
     
    "No fewer than 16 of his ancestors had come over on the Mayflower"
Kay Bradley

Digital History: Herbert Hoover 1930s - 0 views

www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm

US History Great Depression Hoover

shared by Kay Bradley on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • When President Herbert Hoover took office, the unemployment rate was 4.4 percent. When he left office, it was 23.6 percent.
  • Hoover’s efforts in providing relief during and after World War I saved millions of Europeans, including Germans and Russians, from starvation and made him an international hero
  • Hoover was a proponent of "rugged individualism."
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The trouble with capitalism is capitalists; they're too damn greedy."
  • Quaker
  • He was worth $4 million by the age of 40, and then devoted himself to public service.
  • y April 1, 1933, U.S. Steel did not have a single full-time employee.
  • Smoot-Hawley tariff
  • provoked retaliation from Britain
  • Hoover persuaded local and state governments to sharply increase public works spending
  • Hoover quickly developed a reputation as uncaring
  • Hoover was a stubborn man
  • "Either we shall have a society based upon ordered liberty and the initiative of the individual, or we shall have a planned society that means dictation no matter what you call it.... There is no half-way ground.
  • In 1932, he created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
  • to help save the banking and railroad systems.
Kay Bradley

US History Films--Line 'em up on Netflix and have fun! - 6 views

U.S. History Films List: a collection of suggestions from other people-I have bold faced my top ten . . . The First List is from John Nesbit, of Phoenix, AZ. http://www.epinions.com/content_19656...

US History

started by Kay Bradley on 14 Feb 11 no follow-up yet
Alex Sommer

New Deal Findings: First New Deal Programs (1933-1936) - 2 views

-Summarized with the 3R's of FDR's program: relief, recovery, reform -FDR led the Democratic party and voiced liberal, pro-union policies -Republicans mostly opposed legislation passed during the N...

started by Kay Bradley on 24 Mar 11 1 follow-up, last by Alex Sommer on 29 Mar 11
Rory Chipman

New Deal Findings: Women - 5 views

http://www.gilderlehrman.org/historynow/03_2009/historian4.php this is a really good essay on the role of women during the great depression

started by Kay Bradley on 24 Mar 11 2 follow-ups, last by Rory Chipman on 28 Mar 11
Kay Bradley

New Deal Findings: People of Color - 0 views

How did African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos fare during the Great Depression? Was their experience similar to or different from that of caucasian Americans? Were there any special progra...

started by Kay Bradley on 24 Mar 11 no follow-up yet
1 - 20 of 20
Showing 20▼ items per page