the united states from 1877 to 1985 hoover urges voluntary help for the crisis the president’s...

The United States from 1877 to 1985

Hoover urges voluntary help for the crisis

• The President’s Emergency Commission for Employment

(PECE)• The President’s Organization

for Unemployment Relief (POUR)

• PECE and POUR helped coordinate voluntary unemployment relief

• National Credit Corporation gets healthy banks to give advice to banks in trouble.


1932: The Reconstruction Finance Corporation

• A government fund to help banks and other financial institutions in trouble

• 2 billion dollars to spend


FDR: Private and Public“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”


The New Deal, 1932-1938• Safety net:

Direct government emergency support to people in trouble.

Works Progress Administration; Civilian Conservation Corps

• Stability: Regulatory institutions that protect the capitalist

system from its own worst impulsesEmergency Banking Act; Security and Exchange Commission

• Security: Long term programs that provide economic security

to working and middle-class peopleSocial Security; The National Labor Relations Act


The Emergency Banking Act, 1933

• Vastly increases the Reconstruction Finance

Corporation’s pot of money

• Federal Government issues “fiscal conservators” for

banks to make sure they’re running competently

• Creates Security and Exchange Commission to

oversee the stock exchange

• Creates rules that separate savings banks from

brokerage houses Nervous bankers in 1933 standing on Wall Street


The Glass-Steagal Act of 1933

• Banks can’t affiliate with brokerage firms.

• Banks can’t pack their boards with stockbrokers.


The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), 1933

• Millions of dollars for direct emergency relief to the poor

• matching grants for state poor relief

• power to take over state relief systems if

they’re corrupt or stingy Harry Hopkins,

FERA administrator


The Civil Works Administration, 1933

• Half a million state highways upgraded• Hundreds of bridges laid • schools, courthouses, city halls, libraries,

zoos, sewage plants, heating plants, police stations, hospitals, jails, state capitol buildings went up

• Almost 500 new airports built• 250,000 outdoor bathrooms constructed

along the nation’s roads


The Public Works Administration, 1933

• 583 municipal water systems• 368 street and highway projects • 622 sewage systems• 263 hospitals• 522 schools• including replacements for the great Long

Beach earthquake of 1933• You’re welcome


The Dawes Act, 1887“Kill the Indian to save the man.”• Privatization of

reservation land 1881 Indians held

155,000,000 acres 1890 they held 104,000,000 1900 they held 77,000,000

Indian Reorganization Act1934 • Repealed the Dawes Act

Allowed communal landholdings Organized self governing tribes with

power of self-incorporation Gave tribes right to ignore the act.

John Collier


The National IndustrialRecovery Act, 1933

• Created the National Recovery Administration

(NRA)

• Established production codes for each industry

to eliminate wasteful competition and to

establish labor standards

• Created boards consisting of

businesspeople, labor leaders and consumers

•Section 7(a) gave workers the right to

organize


The Agricultural Adjustment Act, 1933

• Paid farmers not to grow crops

• Paid farmers not to produce dairy products

• Paid farmers not to raise pigs and lambs


The Oklahoma migration,1934-1940

•Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas farmers fleeing the

dust bowl

•Displaced by the Agricultural Adjustment

Act

•Headed west because a smaller migration had

gone west in the 1920s

•3.5 million migrants came west

Dorthea Lange photograph of Oklahoma migrant


The Wagner Labor Relations Act, 1935

• Set up a board to arbitrate labor disputes and hold

union elections• Set up an independent legal

code that prohibits the “unlawful labor practice,”

which included . . . Firing a worker for trying

to organize a union Firing a worker for trying

to enforce a contract• Encouraged unions to sign “no strike pledges” (no strike during the life of a contract)

• But it excluded domestic and agricultural workers.


Ham and Eggs!

• “Thirty every Thursday” – 30 dollars to seniors every Thursday

• In 1938 the measure was put on the California ballot

• It lost by ten percent of the vote


Social Security, 1934• Establish a payroll tax for retirement, to be put

into a dedicated fund • "one of the major turning points of American

history. No longer could 'rugged individualism' convincingly insist that government, though obliged to provide a climate favorable for the growth of business profits, had no responsibility whatever for the welfare of the human beings who did the work from which profit was reaped.“

• But it excluded domestic and agricultural workers.


The GI Bill, 1944-1955• 4,300,000 home loans to

veterans (worth 33 billion dollars)• 8 million veterans went back to

school with a GI bill scholarship• 14.5 billion dollars in federal

money going to the nation’s schools and colleges

• 50 billion in direct or indirect subsidies to the American people

• 1/3 of the population received some sort of benefit from the GI

Bill

the united states from 1877 to 1985 hoover urges voluntary help for the crisis the president’s...

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