Week 10:
The 1920s and the 1930s
1. Normalcy and the Jazz Age:
2) Harding creates Bureau of the Budget: cuts wartime tax rates, federal budget and national debt, shipping returned to private ownership, higher tariffs and credit legislation for agriculture, immigration quotas established.
3) Washington Naval Conference limits construction of warships by world naval powers.
4) Teapot Dome: Harding’s death and disgrace; Coolidge defuses the scandal.
5) Coolidge endorses federal anti-lynching legislation and a federal commission to reduce racial conflict (proposed by Harding in 1921); resurgence of KKK and nativism; Marcus Garvey and black separatism.
6) Coolidge prosperity: tax cuts leave 93% of Americans paying no income taxes; high tariffs fuel agricultural depression; immigration quotas cut.
7) Advertising, credit and the consumer culture; proliferation of labor saving home appliances; cultural impact of Hollywood, automobile, flappers and the sexual revolution.
8) The “empire of the air”: over 12 million radios in American homes by 1929; Coolidge first president whose voice is recognized by American people.
9) Women continue post-suffrage struggle for equality and entry into professions; dominate low pay clerical positions and teaching.
10) Hoover routs Al Smith in 1928; campaign reveals deep divisions over Smith’s Catholicism, opposition to Prohibition and big city background.
2. The Coming of the Great Depression:
2) The Great Crash: stock market loses 50% of its value (26 billion) in a few weeks; farm and labor income down 60% by 1932; 7,000 banks fail; 9 million savings accounts lost.
3) Hoover rejects traditional hands-off business cycle approach: cuts budget and pressures labor and management to maintain production and jobs; doubles federal public works but resists deficit spending.
4) Hoover remains ambivalent about extending federal authority and undermining individual responsibility through dependence on government.
5) Reconstruction Finance Corporation enacted to prevent collapse of banks and corporations; RFC authorizes (but fails to spend) $300 million in direct aid to the states.
6) Private charities overwhelmed; most of Hoover’s plan for federal economic intervention dies in Congress.
7) The Bonus Army debacle; Hoover becomes a symbol of failure—Hoovervilles, Hoover-blankets, Hoover-flags, etc.
8) N.Y. governor Franklin Roosevelt breaks tradition by accepting nomination in person at Chicago Convention; pledges New Deal for the American people and condemns Hoover for failure to balance budget.
9) Depression deepens (“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”); Democrats capture White House and Congress in landslide.
2) The “100 days” of the first New Deal: Emergency Banking Act, Agricultural Adjustment Act, Federal Deposit Insurance, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Emergency Relief Administration, National Industrial Recovery Act, Civilian Conservation Corps.
3) Coalition of labor, farmers, urban ethics and blacks (90% vote for FDR in 1936 despite segregation in most New Deal programs) makes Democrats the majority party for first time since before the Civil War.
4) The second New Deal responds to attacks from Right and Left: Works Progress Administration, National Youth Administration, Social Security Act, the Wagner Act, Fair Labor Standards Act.
5) Legacy of the New Deal: presidential dominance over Congress, federal dominance over the states, a permanent federal presence in the private economy and an unprecedented federal role in daily lives of American people.
6) Conspiracy of silence with the press on FDR’s paralysis; live press conferences and the “news revolution” make Washington, D.C. a world news dateline.
7) Eleanor Roosevelt as FDR’s social conscience and advocate for youth, minorities and women.
8) Depression becomes a way of life; 25% of white women and 38% of black women in workforce by 1940; unemployment remains 15% in 1939. World War II economic boom ends the Depression.
9) FDR’s political dominance eroded by defeats on Supreme Court “packing” plan (1937) and “purge” of conservative Democratic senators (1938).
10) Executive Office of the President institutionalizes modern presidency (1939); FDR shatters two-term tradition (1940).