APUSH-chapter33_terms – Flashcards

was a series of economic programs enacted in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They involved presidential executive orders or laws passed by Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were in response to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call the "3 Rs": Relief, Recovery, and Reform. That is, Relief for the unemployed and poor; Recovery of the economy to normal levels; and Reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression. The New Deal produced a political realignment, making the Democratic Party the majority (as well as the party that held the White House for seven out of nine Presidential terms from 1933 to 1969), with its base in liberal ideas, the white South, traditional Democrats, big city machines, and the newly empowered labor unions and ethnic minorities. The Republicans were split, with conservatives opposing the entire New Deal as an enemy of business and growth, and liberals accepting some of it and promising to make it more efficient. The realignment crystallized into the New Deal Coalition that dominated most presidential elections into the 1960s, while the opposition Conservative Coalition largely controlled Congress from 1937 to 1963. By 1936 the term "liberal" typically was used for supporters of the New Deal, and "conservative" for its opponents. From 1934 to 1938, Roosevelt was assisted in his endeavours by a "pro-spender" majority in Congress (drawn from two-party, competitive, non-machine, Progressive, and Left party districts). The "First New Deal" (1933-34) dealt with diverse groups, from banking and railroads to industry and farming, all of which demanded help for economic survival. The "Second New Deal" in 1935-38 included the Wagner Act to promote labor unions, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief program (which made the federal government by far the largest single employer in the nation), the Social Security Act, and new programs to aid tenant farmers and migrant workers. The final major items of New Deal legislation were the creation of the United States Housing Authority and Farm Security Administration, both in 1937, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which set maximum hours and minimum wages for most categories of workers. Many New Deal programs remain active, with some still operating under the original names, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The largest programs still in existence today are the Social Security System and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). At first the New Deal created programs primarily for men. It was assumed that the husband was the "breadwinner" (the provider) and if they had jobs, whole families would benefit. It was the social norm for women to give up jobs when they married; in many states there were laws that prevented both husband and wife holding regular jobs with the government. So too in the relief world, it was rare for both husband and wife to have a relief job on FERA or the WPA. This prevailing social norm of the breadwinner failed to take into account the numerous households headed by women, but it soon became clear that the government needed to help women as well. Many women were employed on FERA projects run by the states with federal funds. The first New Deal program to directly assist women was the Works Progress Administration (WPA), begun in 1935. It hired single women, widows, or women with disabled or absent husbands. While men were given unskilled manual labor jobs, usually on construction projects, women were assigned mostly to sewing projects. They made clothing and bedding to be given away to charities and hospitals. Women also were hired for the WPA's school lunch program. Many historians argue that Roosevelt restored hope and self-respect to tens of millions of desperate people, built labor unions, upgraded the national infrastructure and saved capitalism in his first term when he could have destroyed it and easily nationalized the banks and the railroads. Some critics from the left, however, have denounced Roosevelt for rescuing capitalism when the opportunity was at hand to nationalize banking, railroads and other industries.[146] Still others have complained that he enlarged the powers of the federal government, built up labor unions and weakened the business community.

began as a term for a group of close advisors to a political candidate or incumbent, prized for their expertise in particular fields. The term is most associated with the group of advisors to Franklin Roosevelt during his presidential administration. More recently the use of the term has expanded to encompass any group of advisers to a decision maker, whether or not in politics. In 1932, New York Times writer James Kieran first used the term Brains Trust (shortened to Brain Trust later) when he applied it to the close group of experts that surrounded United States presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt. According to Roosevelt Brain Trust member Raymond Moley, Kieran coined the term, however Rosenman contended that Louis Howe, a close advisor to the President, first used the term but used it derisively in a conversation with Roosevelt. The core of the first Roosevelt brain trust consisted of a group of Columbia law professors (Moley, Tugwell, and Berle). These men played a key role in shaping the policies of the First New Deal (1933). Although they never met together as a group, they each had Roosevelt's ear. Many newspaper editorials and editorial cartoons ridiculed them as impractical idealists. The core of the second Roosevelt brain trust sprang from men associated with the Harvard law school (Cohen, Corcoran, and Frankfurter). These men played a key role in shaping the policies of the Second New Deal (1935-1936).

is a sample of the first 100 days of a first term presidency of a president of the United States. It is used to measure the successes and accomplishments of a president during the time that their power and influence is at its greatest. The term was coined in a July 24, 1933, radio address by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, although he was referring to the 100 day session of the 73rd United States Congress between March 9 and June 17, rather than the first 100 days of his administration. Americans of all political persuasions were demanding immediate action, and Roosevelt responded with a remarkable series of new programs in the "first hundred days" of the administration, in which he met with Congress for 100 days. During those 100 days of lawmaking, Congress granted every request Roosevelt asked, and passed a few programs (such as the FDIC to insure bank accounts) that he opposed. Ever since, presidents have been judged against FDR for what they accomplished in their first 100 days. FDR quickly won congressional passage for a series of social, economic, and job-creating bills that greatly increased the authority of the federal government—the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which supplied states and localities with federal money to help the jobless; the Civil Works Administration to create jobs during the first winter of his administration; and the Works Progress Administration, which replaced FERA, pumped money into circulation, and concentrated on longer-term projects. The Public Works Administration focused on creating jobs through heavy construction in such areas as water systems, power plants, and hospitals. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. protected bank accounts. The Civilian Conservation Corps provided jobs for unemployed young men. The Tennessee Valley Authority boosted regional development. Also approved were the Emergency Banking Act, the Farm Credit Act, and the National Industrial Recovery Act. In all, Roosevelt got 15 major bills through Congress in his first 100 days. "Congress doesn't pass legislation anymore—they just wave at the bills as they go by," said humorist Will Rogers.

Roosevelt was elected and upon taking office would launch a large legislative agenda to help the economy and the people of the United States. He had three overarching goals for these programs: Relief, Recovery, Reform; Relief programs were intended to make things more tolerable but often did not offer long-term solutions. •So you've broken your arm and gotten some temporary relief...With the diagnosis, treatment, and time you should have a full recovery. True reform finds the cause of the problem and aims to alter it to prevent the same issue in the future. for example: Relief - government would provide jobs. Recovery - government paid farmers to stop overproducing crops. Reform - FDIC - bank insurance so people would lose money.

is a term often applied to the entire Banking Act of 1933, after its Congressional sponsors, Senator Carter Glass (D) of Virginia, and Representative Henry B. Steagall (D) of Alabama. The term Glass-Steagall Act, however, is most often used to refer to four provisions of the Banking Act of 1933 that limited commercial bank securities activities and affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms. This article deals with that limited meaning of the Glass-Steagall Act. A separate article describes the entire Banking Act of 1933. The article on the 1933 Banking Act describes the legislative history of that Act, including the Glass-Steagall provisions separating commercial and investment banking. As described in that article, between 1930 and 1932 Senator Carter Glass (D-VA) introduced several versions of a bill (known in each version as the Glass bill) to regulate or prohibit the combination of commercial and investment banking and to establish other reforms (except deposit insurance) similar to the final provisions of the 1933 Banking Act.

was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1943 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families, ages 18-25. James McEntee was the head of the agency. A part of the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments. The CCC was designed to provide jobs for young men in relief families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression in the United States while at the same time implementing a general natural resource conservation program in every state and territory. Maximum enrollment at any one time was 300,000; in nine years 2.5 million young men participated in the CCC, which provided them with shelter, clothing, and food, together with a small wage of $30 a month ($25 of which had to be sent home to their families). The American public made the CCC the most popular of all the New Deal programs. Principal benefits of an individual's enrollment in the CCC included improved physical condition, heightened morale, and increased employability. Of their pay of $30 a month, $25 went to their parents. Implicitly, the CCC also led to a greater public awareness and appreciation of the outdoors and the nation's natural resources; and the continued need for a carefully planned, comprehensive national program for the protection and development of natural resources. During the time of the CCC, volunteers planted nearly 3 billion trees to help reforest America, constructed more than 800 parks nationwide and upgraded most state parks, updated forest fire fighting methods, and built a network of service buildings and public roadways in remote areas. Despite its popular support, the CCC was never a permanent agency. It depended on emergency and temporary Congressional legislation for its existence. By 1942, with World War II and the draft in operation, need declined and Congress voted to close the program.

was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unemployed people (mostly unskilled men) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. In much smaller but more famous projects the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. Almost every community in the United States had a new park, bridge or school constructed by the agency. The WPA's initial appropriation in 1935 was for $4.9 billion (about 6.7 percent of the 1935 GDP), and in total it spent $13.4 billion. At its peak in 1938, it provided paid jobs for three million unemployed men (and some women), as well as youth in a separate division, the National Youth Administration. Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA provided jobs and income to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States. Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA provided almost eight million jobs. Full employment, which emerged as a national goal around 1944, was not the WPA goal. It tried to provide one paid job for all families in which the breadwinner suffered long-term unemployment. The WPA was a national program that operated its own projects in cooperation with state and local governments, which provided 10%-30% of the costs. WPA sometimes took over state and local relief programs that had originated in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) or Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) programs. Liquidated on June 30, 1943, as a result of low unemployment due to the worker shortage of World War II, the WPA provided millions of Americans with jobs for 8 years. Most people who needed a job were eligible for at least some of its positions. Hourly wages were typically set to the prevailing wages in each area. But, workers could not be paid for more than 30 hours a week. Before 1940, to meet the objections of the labor unions, the programs provided very little training to teach new skills to workers.

was an American statute which purposed to authorize the President of the United States to regulate industry and permit cartels and monopolies in an attempt to stimulate economic recovery, and established a national public works program. The legislation was enacted in June 1933 during the Great Depression as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislative program. Section 7(a) of the bill, which protected collective bargaining rights for unions, proved contentious (especially in the Senate), but both chambers eventually passed the legislation and President Roosevelt signed the bill into law on June 16, 1933. The Act had two main sections (or "titles"). Title I was devoted to industrial recovery, and authorized the promulgation of industrial codes of fair competition, guaranteed trade union rights, permitted the regulation of working standards, and regulated the price of certain refined petroleum products and their transportation. Title II established the Public Works Administration, outlined the projects and funding opportunities it could engage in, and funded the Act. The Act was implemented by the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the Public Works Administration (PWA). Very large numbers of regulations were generated under the authority granted to the NRA by the Act, which led to a significant loss of political support for Roosevelt and the New Deal. The NIRA was set to expire in June 1935, but in a major constitutional ruling the U.S. Supreme Court held Title I of the Act unconstitutional on May 27, 1935, in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935). The National Industrial Recovery Act is widely considered a policy failure, both in the 1930s and by historians today. Disputes over the reasons for this failure continue, however. Among the suggested causes are that the Act promoted economically harmful monopolies, that the Act lacked critical support from the business community, and that the Act was poorly administered. The Act encouraged union organizing, which led to significant labor unrest. The Act had no mechanisms for handling these problems, which led Congress to pass the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. The Act was also a major force behind a major modification of the law criminalizing making false statements.

was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that invalidated regulations of the poultry industry according to the nondelegation doctrine and as an invalid use of Congress's power under the commerce clause. This was a unanimous decision that rendered the National Industrial Recovery Act, a main component of President Roosevelt's New Deal, unconstitutional. The Court distinguished between direct effects on interstate commerce, which Congress could lawfully regulate, and indirect, which were purely matters of state law. Though the raising and sale of poultry was an interstate industry, the Court found that the "stream of interstate commerce" had stopped in this case—Schechter's slaughterhouses chickens were sold completely exclusively to intrastate buyers. Any interstate effect of Schechter was indirect, and therefore beyond federal reach. Though many considered the NIRA a "dead statute" at this point in the New Deal scheme, the Court used its invalidation as an opportunity to affirm constitutional limits on congressional power, for fear that it could otherwise reach virtually anything that could be said to "affect" interstate commerce and intrude on many areas of legitimate state power. Speaking to aides of Roosevelt, Justice Louis Brandeis remarked that, "This is the end of this business of centralization, and I want you to go back and tell the president that we're not going to let this government centralize everything."

part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression. It built large-scale public works such as dams, bridges, hospitals, and schools. Its goals were to spend $3.3 billion in the first year, and $6 billion in all, to provide employment, stabilize purchasing power, and help revive the economy. Most of the spending came in two waves in 1933-35, and again in 1938. Originally called the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, it was renamed the Public Works Administration in 1939 and shut down in 1943. The PWA spent over $6 billion in contracts to private construction firms that did the actual work. It created an infrastructure that generated national and local pride in the 1930s and remains vital seven decades later. The PWA was much less controversial than its rival agency with a confusingly similar name, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), headed by Harry Hopkins, which focused on smaller projects and hired unemployed unskilled workers. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved industry toward war production, the PWA was abolished and its functions were transferred to the Federal Works Agency in June 1943. The PWA should not be confused with its great rival the Works Progress Administration (WPA), though both were part of the New Deal. The WPA, headed by Harry Hopkins, engaged in smaller projects in close cooperation with local governments—such as building a city hall or sewers or sidewalks. The PWA projects were much larger in scope, such as giant dams. The WPA hired only people on relief who were paid directly by the federal government. The PWA gave contracts to private firms who did all the hiring on the private sector job market. The WPA also had youth programs (the NYA), projects for women, and arts projects that the PWA did not have.

was a United States federal law of the New Deal era which restricted agricultural production by paying farmers subsidies not to plant part of their land (that is, to let a portion of their fields lie fallow) and to kill off excess livestock. Its purpose was to reduce crop surplus and therefore effectively raise the value of crops. The money for these subsidies was generated through an exclusive tax on companies which processed farm products. The Act created a new agency, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, to oversee the distribution of the subsidies. The Agriculture Marketing Act, which established the Federal Farm Board in 1929, was seen as a strong precursor to this act. To accomplish its goal of parity (raising crop prices to where they were in the golden years of 1909-1914), the Act had to eliminate surplus production. It accomplished this by offering landowners acreage reduction contracts, by which they agreed not to grow cotton on a portion of their land. In return, the landowners received compensation for what they would have normally gotten from those acres. By law, they were required to pay the tenant farmers and sharecroppers on their land a portion of the money. This, however, was nearly impossible for the government to enforce. What's more, this requirement gave landlords an incentive to get rid of their tenant farmers and replace them with wage laborers. Over the remaining years of the Great Depression, the once-common practice of sharecropping and tenant farming became exceedingly rare, and vast amounts of tenant farmers were put out, without homes or means of income. Delta and Providence Cooperative Farms in Mississippi and the Southern Tenant Farmers Union were organized in the 1930s principally as a response to the hardships imposed on sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Although the Act stimulated American agriculture, it was not without its faults. For example, it disproportionately benefited large farmers and food processors, to the disadvantage of small farmers and sharecroppers. By the last half of the century sharecropping and tenant farming had become obsolete. In 1936, the Supreme Court decided in United States v. Butler that the act was unconstitutional for levying this tax on the processors only to have it paid back to the farmers. Regulation of agriculture was deemed a state power. However, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 remedied these issues.

In his speech, Long outlined his Share Our Wealth program to redistribute the wealth in America. He started by blaming the current economic crisis on the fact that 4% of the nation owned 85% to 95% of the wealth and that 75% of the nation owned nothing. His plan advocated limiting personal fortunes through progressive tax increases and using the money collected to fund education, pensions, and veterans benefits. He also proposed limiting the hours in the work week, giving everyone one month of vacation each year, and establishing a minimum wage. Legislation implementing these ideas had already been rejected as too radical a few years earlier by Congress, but Longs use of the radio gained him a national following. Many predicted his third-party candidacy for President would take a large chunk of votes away from President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1936 election. However, Longs political career came to an abrupt halt in 1935, when he was assassinated. Longs popularity is often cited as a factor in Roosevelts Second New Deal of 1935, which was more liberal than the First New Deal and included legislation creating the Social Security program and establishing the Works Progress Administration. Long's rhetoric was a distinctive blend of humor and invective, scripture and profanity, brutal fact and absurd analogy, couched in a populist vernacular that made the impoverished citizens of rural Louisiana feel that he was one of them. In the Senate, Long employed his flamboyant declamation, loud attire, and irreverent antics--which made good copy for reporters and filled the Senate galleries whenever the "Terror of the Bayous" took to the floor--to advocate a serious agenda. He had introduced legislation in the Senate in 1932 and 1933 to limit incomes and redistribute wealth, but even amid the widespread suffering of the Great Depression, his proposals died in committee because they were considered too radical to be taken seriously. President Franklin D. Roosevelt considered the Louisiana senator "one of the two most dangerous men in the country" and handled him with care. Long had helped FDR secure the 1932 Democratic nomination but broke with the administration in 1934. Convinced that the New Deal would not effect a redistribution of wealth, outraged at the president's use of patronage to undercut him in Louisiana, and determined to fulfill his own presidential ambitions, Long took his cause to the American people with his "Every Man a King" radio address. Long was one of the first politicians to appreciate the power of radio, and his broadcasts won him a national following. By the spring of 1935, over seven million Americans had accepted his invitation to form local "Share Our Wealth" societies, providing a formidable base for his anticipated presidential bid. President Roosevelt's supporters feared that with Long as a third party candidate, the Republicans would win the 1936 election. Long's proposals were never adopted, but the "Share Our Wealth" program did exert some measure of influence on an administration anxious to "steal Long's thunder." Roosevelt eventually conceded that the nation's tax laws had failed "to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and economic power" and proposed legislation to increase inheritance taxes and impose a surtax on wealthy Americans. Long remains a controversial figure; but, while modern scholars question his motives and methods, all concur in the assessment of Roosevelt campaign strategist James Farley that Huey Long "put on a great show wherever he went."

was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands in the 1930s, particularly in 1934 and 1936. The phenomenon was caused by severe drought combined with farming methods that did not include crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops, soil terracing and wind-breaking trees to prevent wind erosion. Extensive deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains in the preceding decade had displaced the natural deep-rooted grasses that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds. Rapid mechanization of farm implements, especially small gasoline tractors and widespread use of the combine harvester were significant in the decisions to convert grassland (much of which received no more than 10 inches (250 mm) of precipitation per year) to cultivated cropland. During the drought of the 1930s, without natural anchors to keep the soil in place, it dried, turned to dust, and blew away with the prevailing winds. At times, the clouds blackened the sky, reaching all the way to East Coast cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. Much of the soil ended up deposited in the Atlantic Ocean, carried by prevailing winds. These immense dust storms—given names such as "black blizzards" and "black rollers"—often reduced visibility to a few feet (a meter) or less. The Dust Bowl affected 100,000,000 acres (400,000 km2), centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. Millions of acres of farmland were damaged, and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes; many of these families (often known as "Okies", since so many came from Oklahoma) migrated to California and other states, where they found economic conditions little better than those they had left, due to the Great Depression. Owning no land, many became migrant workers who traveled from farm to farm to pick fruit and other crops at starvation wages. Author John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, for which he won a Pulitzer prize, and Of Mice and Men about such people. In many regions, over 75% of the topsoil was blown away by the end of the 1930s, but there was wide variation in the degree to which the land was degraded. The per-acre value of farmland declined by 28% in high-erosion counties and 17% in medium-erosion counties, relative to land value changes in low-erosion counties.[31] Even over the long-term, the full agricultural value of the land often failed to recover. In highly eroded areas, less than 25% of the original agricultural losses were recovered. The economy adjusted predominantly through large relative population declines in more-eroded counties, both during the 1930s and through the 1950s. The economic effects persisted, in part, because of farmers' failure to switch to more appropriate crops for highly eroded areas. Because the amount of topsoil had been reduced, it would have been more productive to shift from crops and wheat to animals and hay. During the Depression and through at least the 1950s, there was limited relative adjustment of farmland away from activities that became less productive in more-eroded counties. Some of the failure to shift to more productive agricultural products may be related to ignorance about the benefits of changing land use. A second explanation is a lack of availability of credit, caused by the high rate of failure of banks in the plains states. Because banks failed in the Dust Bowl region with a higher rate of frequency than in the rest of the country, it was harder for farmers to gain access to the credit they needed to buy capital to shift crop production.[32] Another reason is that profit margins to shift from a previously farmed crop to either animals or hay increased only slightly. Therefore, even if they knew about the benefits of changing land usage, the incentive to switch immediately was relatively small.

is a federal agency. It holds primary responsibility for enforcing the federal securities laws and regulating the securities industry, the nation's stock and options exchanges, and other electronic securities markets in the United States. The SEC was established by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 as an independent, quasi-judicial regulatory agency, during the Great Depression that followed the Crash of 1929. The main reason for the creation of the SEC was to regulate the stock market and prevent corporate abuses relating to the offering and sale of securities and corporate reporting. The SEC was given the power to license and regulate stock exchanges, the companies whose securities traded on them, and the brokers and dealers who conducted the trading. Currently, the SEC is responsible for administering seven major laws that govern the securities industry. They are: the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act of 2006. Prior to the enactment of the federal securities laws and the creation of the SEC, there existed so-called blue sky laws. They were enacted and enforced at the state level, and regulated the offering and sale of securities to protect the public from fraud. Though the specific provisions of these laws varied among states, they all required the registration of all securities offerings and sales, as well as of every U.S. stockbroker and brokerage firm. However, these blue sky laws were generally found to be ineffective. President Roosevelt appointed Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., father of President John F. Kennedy, to serve as the first Chairman of the SEC, along with James M. Landis (one of the architects of the 1934 Act and other New Deal legislation) and Ferdinand Pecora (Chief Counsel to the United States Senate Committee on Banking and Currency during its investigation of Wall Street banking and stock brokerage practices). Other prominent SEC commissioners and chairmen include William O. Douglas (who went on to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice), Jerome Frank (one of the leaders of the legal realism movement), and William J. Casey (who later headed the Central Intelligence Agency under President Ronald Reagan). The SEC investigated cases involving individuals attempting to manipulate the market by passing false rumors about certain financial institutions. The Commission has also investigated trading irregularities and abusive short-selling practices. Hedge fund managers, broker-dealers, and institutional investors were also asked to disclose under oath certain information pertaining to their positions in credit default swaps. The Commission also negotiated the largest settlements in the history of the SEC (approximately $51 billion in all) on behalf of investors who purchased auction rate securities from six different financial institutions.

is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected by the Great Depression. The enterprise was a result of the efforts of Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska. TVA was envisioned not only as a provider, but also as a regional economic development agency that would use federal experts and electricity to rapidly modernize the region's economy and society. Many believed privately owned power companies were charging too much for power, did not employ fair operating practices and were subject to abuse by their owners (utility holding companies), at the expense of consumers. During his presidential campaign, Roosevelt claimed that private utilities had "selfish purposes" and said, "Never shall the federal government part with its sovereignty or with its control of its power resources while I'm president of the United States." By forming utility holding companies, the private sector controlled 94 percent of generation by 1921, essentially unregulated. (This gave rise to Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA)). Many private companies in the Tennessee Valley were bought by the federal government. Others shut down, unable to compete with the TVA. Government regulations were also passed to prevent competition with TVA. On the other hand, there were economic libertarians who believed the government should not participate in the electricity generation business, fearing government ownership would lead to the misuse of hydroelectric sites. TVA was one of the first federal hydropower agencies, and today most of the nation's major hydropower systems are federally managed. Other attempts to create TVA-like regional agencies have failed, such as a proposed Columbia Valley Authority for the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled TVA to be constitutional in Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U.S. 288 (1936).[4] The Court noted that regulating commerce among the states includes regulation of streams and that controlling floods is required for keeping streams navigable. The war powers also authorized the project. The argument before the court was that electricity generation was a by-product of navigation and flood control and therefore could be considered constitutional. Even by Depression standards, the Tennessee Valley was in sad shape in 1933. Thirty percent of the population was affected by malaria, and the average income was only $639 per year, with some families surviving on as little as $100 per year.[citation needed] Much of the land had been farmed too hard for too long, eroding and depleting the soil. Crop yields had fallen along with farm incomes. The best timber had been cut, with another 10% of forests being burnt each year. TVA was designed to modernize the region, using experts and electricity to combat human and economic problems.[5] TVA developed fertilizers, taught farmers ways to improve crop yields and helped replant forests, control forest fires, and improve habitat for fish and wildlife. The most dramatic change in Valley life came from TVA-generated electricity. Electric lights and modern home appliances made life easier and farms more productive. Electricity also drew industries into the region, providing desperately needed jobs. The TVA revitalized a vast area of ruined rural America by building dams to provide cheap electricity.

is a United States government agency created as part of the National Housing Act of 1934. It insured loans made by banks and other private lenders for home building and home buying. The goals of this organization are to improve housing standards and conditions, provide an adequate home financing system through insurance of mortgage loans, and to stabilize the mortgage market.The Commissioner of the FHA is Carol Galante. During the Great Depression, the banking system failed, causing a drastic decrease in home loans and ownership. At this time, most home mortgages were short-term (three to five years), no amortization, balloon instruments at loan-to-value (LTV) ratios below fifty to sixty percent.[1] The banking crisis of the 1930s forced all lenders to retrieve due mortgages. Refinancing was not available, and many borrowers, now unemployed, were unable to make mortgage payments. Consequently, many homes were foreclosed, causing the housing market to plummet. Banks collected the loan collateral (foreclosed homes) but the low property values resulted in a relative lack of assets. Because there was little faith in the backing of the U.S. government, few loans were issued and few new homes were purchased. In 1934 the federal banking system was restructured. The National Housing Act of 1934 created the Federal Housing Administration. Its intent was to regulate the rate of interest and the terms of mortgages that it insured. These new lending practices increased the number of people who could afford a down payment on a house and monthly debt service payments on a mortgage, thereby also increasing the size of the market for single-family homes.The FHA-calculated appraisal value that is based on eight criteria and directed its agents to lend more for higher appraised projects, up to a maximum cap. The two most important were "Relative Economic Stability", which constituted 40% of appraisal value, and "protection from adverse influences", which made up another 20%. During World War II, the FHA financed a number of worker's housing projects including the Kensington Gardens Apartment Complex in Buffalo, New York.The creation of the Federal Housing Administration successfully increased the size of the housing market. By convincing banks to lend again, as well as changing and standardizing mortgage instruments and procedures, home ownership has increased from 40% in the 1930s to nearly 70% in 2001. By 1938 only four years after the beginning of the Federal Housing Association, a house could be purchased for a down payment of only ten percent of the purchase price. The remaining ninety percent was financed by a 25-year, self-amortizing, FHA-insured mortgage loan. After World War II, the FHA helped finance homes for returning veterans and families of soldiers. It has helped with purchases of both single family and multifamily homes. In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the FHA helped to spark the production of millions of units of privately owned apartments for elderly, handicapped, and lower-income Americans. When the soaring inflation and energy costs threatened the survival of thousands of private apartment buildings in the 1970s, FHA's emergency financing kept cash-strapped properties afloat. In the 1980s, when the economy did not support an increase in homeowners, the FHA helped to steady falling prices, making it possible for potential homeowners to finance when private mortgage insurers pulled out of oil-producing states.

The Social Security Act was drafted during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first term by the President's Committee on Economic Security, under Frances Perkins, and passed by Congress as part of the Second New Deal. The act was an attempt to limit what were seen as dangers in the modern American life, including old age, poverty, unemployment, and the burdens of widows and fatherless children. By signing this act on August 14, 1935, President Roosevelt became the first president to advocate federal assistance for the elderly. The Act provided benefits to retirees and the unemployed, and a lump-sum benefit at death. Payments to current retirees are financed by a payroll tax on current workers' wages, half directly as a payroll tax and half paid by the employer. The act also gave money to states to provide assistance to aged individuals (Title I), for unemployment insurance (Title III), Aid to Families with Dependent Children (Title IV), Maternal and Child Welfare (Title V), public health services (Title VI), and the blind (Title X). In the 1930s, the Supreme Court struck down many pieces of Roosevelt's New Deal legislation, including the Railroad Retirement Act. The Court threw out a centerpiece of the New Deal, the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and New York State's minimum-wage law. President Roosevelt responded with an attempt to pack the court via the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937. On February 5, 1937, he sent a special message to Congress proposing legislation granting the President new powers to add additional judges to all federal courts whenever there were sitting judges age 70 or older who refused to retire. The practical effect of this proposal was that the President would get to appoint six new Justices to the Supreme Court (and 44 judges to lower federal courts), thus instantly tipping the political balance on the Court dramatically in his favor. The debate on this proposal lasted over six months. Beginning with a set of decisions in March, April, and May, 1937 (including the Social Security Act cases), the Court would sustain a series of New Deal legislation.... Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes played a leading role in defeating the court-packing by rushing these pieces of New Deal legislation through and ensuring that the court's majority would uphold it. Two Supreme Court rulings affirmed the constitutionality of the Social Security Act.

is a 1935 United States federal law that protects the rights of employees in the private sector to discuss organizing and workplace issues with coworkers, engage in collective bargaining, and take part in strikes and other forms of protected concerted activity in support of their demands. The act also created the National Labor Relations Board which conducts elections which, if voted in favor of representation, awards labor unions (also known as trade unions) with a requirement for the employer to engage in collective bargaining with this union. The Act does not apply to workers who are covered by the Railway Labor Act, agricultural employees, domestic employees, supervisors, federal, state or local government workers, independent contractors and some close relatives of individual employers. Under section 9(a) of the NLRA, federal courts have held that wildcat strikes are illegal, and that workers must formally request that the National Labor Relations Board end their exclusive bargaining association with their labor union if they feel that the union is not sufficiently supportive of them before they can legally go on strike. The National Labor Relations Board has two basic functions: overseeing the process by which employees decide whether to be represented by a labor organization and prosecuting violations. Those processes are initiated in the regional offices of the NLRB. The act was immediately controversial. Some changes were later achieved in the 1947 amendments.

an independent agency of the United States government charged with conducting elections for labor union representation and with investigating and remedying unfair labor practices. Unfair labor practices may involve union-related situations or instances of protected concerted activity. The NLRB is governed by a five-person board and a General Counsel, all of whom are appointed by the President with the consent of the Senate. Board members are appointed to five-year terms and the General Counsel is appointed to a four-year term. The General Counsel acts as a prosecutor and the Board acts as an appellate judicial body from decisions of administrative law judges. The history of the NLRB can be traced to enactment of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933. Section 7(a) of the act protected collective bargaining rights for unions,[1] but implementation proved immensely problematic as a massive wave of union organizing punctuated by employer and union violence, general strikes, and recognition strikes occurred.[2] The National Industrial Recovery Act was administered by the National Recovery Administration (NRA). At the outset, NRA Administrator Hugh Johnson naïvely believed that Section 7(a) would be self-enforcing, but the tremendous labor unrest proved him wrong. On August 5, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the establishment of the National Labor Board under the auspices of the NRA to implement the collective bargaining provisions of Section 7(a). The National Labor Board (NLB) established a system of 20 regional boards to handle the immense caseload. There were 20 regional boards. Each had a representative designated by local labor unions, local employers, and a "public" representative. All were unpaid. The public representative acted as the chair. The regional boards could hold hearings and propose settlements to disputes. Initially, they lacked authority to order representation elections, but this changed after Roosevelt issued additional executive orders on February 1 and February 23, 1934. The NLB, too, proved ineffective. Congress passed Public Resolution No. 44 on June 19, 1934, which empowered the president to appoint a new labor board with authority to issue subpoenas, the power to hold elections, and the ability to mediate in labor disputes.[4] On June 29, President Roosevelt abolished the NLB and in Executive Order 6763 established a new, three-member National Labor Relations Board. Lloyd K. Garrison was the first chair of the National Labor Relations Board (often referred to by scholars the "First NLRB" or "Old NLRB"). Within a year, however, most of the jurisdiction of the "First NLRB" was stripped away. Its decisions in the automobile, newspaper, textile, and steel industry proved so volatile that Roosevelt himself often removed these cases from the board's jurisdiction. Several federal court decisions further limited the board's power. Senator Robert F. Wagner (D- NY) subsequently pushed legislation through Congress to give a statutory basis to federal labor policy that would survive court scrutiny. On July 5, 1935, a new law—the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA, also known as the Wagner Act)—superseded the NIRA and established a new, long-lasting federal labor policy. The NLRA designated the National Labor Relations Board as the implementing agency. The second chair of the NLRB, Harry A. Millis, led the board in a much more moderate direction. A major turning point in the history of the NLRB came in 1947 with passage of the Taft-Hartley Act. The Taft-Hartley Act fundamentally changed the nature of federal labor law, but it also seriously hindered the NLRB's ability to enforce the law. The loss of the mediation function left the NLRB unable to become involved in labor disputes, a function it had engaged in since its inception as the National Labor Board in 1933. This hindered the agency's efforts to study, analyze, and create bulwarks against bad-faith collective bargaining; reduced its ability to formulate national labor policy in this area; and left the agency making labor law on an ineffective, time-consuming case-by-case basis. The separation of the General Counsel from supervision by the national board also had significant impact on the agency. This separation was enacted against the advice of the Justice Department, contradicted the policy Congress had enacted in the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, and ignored Millis' extensive internal reforms. The change left the NLRB as the only federal agency unable to coordinate its decision-making and legal activities, and the only agency exempted in this manner under the Administrative Procedure Act. Interestingly, the separation of the General Counsel was not discussed by the committee or by any witnesses during the legislation's mark-up. Indeed, there was no basis for it at all in the public record.] It was, in the words of sociologist Robin Stryker, "little-noted" and "unprecedented".

proposed by John L. Lewis in 1938, 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. The CIO supported Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal Coalition, and was open to African Americans. Both federations grew rapidly during the Great Depression. The rivalry for dominance was bitter and sometimes violent. The CIO (Committee for Industrial Organization) was founded on November 9, 1935, by eight international unions belonging to the American Federation of Labor. In its statement of purpose, the CIO said it had formed to encourage the AFL to organize workers in mass production industries along industrial union lines. The CIO failed to change AFL policy from within. On September 10, 1936, the AFL suspended all 10 CIO unions (two more had joined in the previous year). In 1938, these unions formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations as a rival labor federation. In 1955, the CIO rejoined the AFL, forming the new entity known as the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). The CIO was born out of a fundamental dispute within the U.S. labor movement over whether and how to organize industrial workers. Those who favored craft unionism believed that the most effective way to represent workers was to defend the advantages they had secured through their skills. They focused on the hiring of skilled workers, such as carpenters, lithographers, and railroad engineers, in an attempt to maintain as much control as possible over the work their members did through enforcement of work rules, zealous defense of their jurisdiction to certain types of work, control over apprenticeship programs, and exclusion of less skilled workers from membership. Victorious industrial unions with militant leaderships were the catalyst that brought about the rise of the CIO.

is a form of civil disobedience in which an organized group of workers, usually employed at a factory or other centralized location, take possession of the workplace by "sitting down" at their stations, effectively preventing their employers from replacing them with strikebreakers or, in some cases, moving production to other locations. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were the first American union to use the sit-down strike. On December 10, 1906, at the General Electric Works in Schenectady, New York, 3,000 workers sat down on the job and stopped production to protest the dismissal of three fellow IWW members. The United Auto Workers staged successful sit-down strikes in the 1930s, most famously in the Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936-1937. In Flint, Michigan, strikers occupied several General Motors plants for more than forty days, and repelled the efforts of the police and National Guard to retake them. A wave of sit-down strikes followed, but diminished by the end of the decade as the courts and the National Labor Relations Board held that sit-down strikes were illegal and sit-down strikers could be fired. While some sit-down strikes still occur in the United States, they tend to be spontaneous and short-lived. The sit-down strike was the inspiration for the sit-in, where an organized group of protesters would occupy an area in which they are not wanted by sitting and refuse to leave until their demands are met.

of June 18, 1934, sometimes known as the Indian New Deal, was U.S. federal legislation that secured certain rights to Native Americans (known in law as American Indians or Indians), including Alaska Natives. These include actions that contributed to the reversal of the Dawes Act's privatization of communal holdings of American Indian tribes and a return to local self-government on a tribal basis. The Act also restored to Indians the management of their assets (being mainly land) and included provisions intended to create a sound economic foundation for the inhabitants of Indian reservations. The IRA was perhaps the most significant initiative of John Collier Sr., Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) from 1933 to 1945. He had worked on Indian issues for ten years prior to his appointment, particularly with the Indian Defense Fund. He had intended to reverse some of the worst government policies and provide ways for American Indians to re-establish sovereignty and self-government, to reduce the losses of reservation lands, and establish ways for Indians to build economic self-sufficiency. Various other interests effected changes to the legislation that reduced protections for Indians and preserved oversight by the BIA. The act slowed the practice of allotting communal tribal lands to individual tribal members. It did not restore to Indians land that had already been patented to individuals, but much land at the time was still unallotted or was allotted to an individual but still held in trust for that individual by the U.S. government. Because the Act did not disturb existing private ownership of Indian reservation lands, it left reservations a checkerboard of tribal and free land, which remains the case today. However, the Act also provided for the U.S. to purchase some of the free land and restore it to tribal status. Due to the Act and other actions of federal courts and the government, over two million acres (8,000 km²) of land were returned to various tribes in the first 20 years after passage. The act has helped conserve the communal tribal land bases. But, because Congress altered the legislation proposed by Collier, reducing elements of tribal self-government and preserving BIA oversight, leasing authority and other interventions, the act has not been considered as successful in terms of tribal self-governing. On many reservations, its provisions have exacerbated longstanding differences between traditionals and those who had adopted more European-American ways. Many Native Americans believe their traditional systems of government were better for their culture.

was an American political organization formed in 1934 by conservative Democrats to oppose the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was active for just two years. Following the landslide re-election of Roosevelt in 1936, it sharply reduced its activities and disbanded in 1940. The creation of the League was announced in Washington, D.C., on August 22, 1934, by a group of Democrats and a smaller number of Republicans. Jouett Shouse, who had been prominent in Democratic politics and the anti-Prohibition movement, became the group's first chairman. The makeup of the League's executive committee was designed to demonstrate its bipartisan nature. It included: John W. Davis and Al Smith, former Democratic candidates for president; wealthy businessman Irénée du Pont, who left the Republicans to support Al Smith in 1928 and Roosevelt in 1932; and two New York Republicans, Nathan L. Miller, the state's former governor, and Representative James W. Wadsworth. The moving spirit behind the launch of the organization was John Jacob Raskob, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the foremost opponent of prohibition, former director of General Motors and a board member of the DuPont. Reaction to the League formation was generally skeptical of its non-partisan nature. The League proceeded to name a National Executive Committee of 25 and a National Advisory Council of about 200. Those named constituted a geographically diverse group, almost all drawn from the upper echelons of American industry. Among the notable exceptions were Hollywood movie producer Hal Roach and naval hero Richmond Pearson Hobson. More typical were Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. of General Motors and J. Howard Pew of Sun Oil Company. It proposed to educate the public and legislators on legislative issues. In particular, it proposed to help the Roosevelt administration with its research and denied it was anti-Roosevelt either at present or with regard to the 1936 presidential election.

included the Democratic state party organizations, city machines, labor unions and blue collar workers, minorities (racial, ethnic and religious), farmers, white Southerners, people on relief, and intellectuals. The coalition fell apart around the bitter factionalism during the 1968 election, but it remains the model that party activists seek to replicate. The coalition was never formally organized, and the constituent members often disagreed. The coalition usually supported liberal proposals in domestic affairs, but was less united in terms of foreign policy and racial issues. The coalition fell apart in many ways. The first cause was lack of a leader of the stature of Roosevelt. The closest was perhaps Lyndon Johnson, who deliberately tried to reinvigorate the old coalition, but in fact drove its constituents apart. During the 1960s, new issues such as civil rights, the Vietnam War, affirmative action, and large-scale urban riots tended to split the coalition and drive many members away. Meanwhile, Republicans made major gains by promising lower taxes and control of crime. The big-city machines faded away in the 1940s, with a few exceptions, especially Albany and Chicago. Local Democrats in most cities were heavily dependent on the WPA for patronage; when it ended in 1943 there was full employment and no replacement job source was created. Furthermore, World War II brought such a surge of prosperity that the relief mechanism of the WPA, CCC, etc. was no longer needed.

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 had been previously ruled unconstitutional. The central and most controversial provision of the bill would have granted the President power to appoint an additional Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, up to a maximum of six, for every sitting member over the age of 70 years and 6 months. During Roosevelt's first term,[4] the Supreme Court had struck down several New Deal measures intended to bolster economic recovery during the Great Depression, leading to charges from New Deal supporters that a narrow majority of the court was obstructionist and political. Since the U.S. Constitution does not mandate any specific size of the Supreme Court, Roosevelt sought to counter this entrenched opposition to his political agenda by expanding the number of justices in order to create a pro-New Deal majority on the bench. Opponents viewed the legislation as an attempt to stack the court, leading them to call it the "court-packing plan". The legislation was unveiled on February 5, 1937 and was the subject, on March 9, 1937, of one of Roosevelt's Fireside chats.[5][6] Shortly after the radio address, on March 29, the Supreme Court published its opinion upholding a Washington state minimum wage law in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish[7] by a 5-4 ruling, after Associate Justice Owen Roberts had joined with the wing of the bench more sympathetic to the New Deal. Since Roberts had previously ruled against most New Deal legislation, his perceived about-face was widely interpreted by contemporaries as an effort to maintain the Court's judicial independence by alleviating the political pressure to create a court more friendly to the New Deal. His move came to be known as "the switch in time that saved nine." However, since Roberts's decision and vote in the Parrish case predated the introduction of the 1937 bill, this interpretation has been called into question. Roosevelt's initiative ultimately failed due to adverse public opinion, the retirement of one Supreme Court Justice, and the unexpected and sudden death of the legislation's U.S. Senate champion: Senate Majority Leader Joseph T. Robinson. It exposed the limits of Roosevelt's abilities to push forward legislation through direct public appeal and, in contrast to the tenor of his public presentations of his first-term, was seen as political maneuvering. Although circumstances ultimately allowed Roosevelt to prevail in establishing a majority on the court friendly to his New Deal agenda, some scholars have concluded that the President's victory was a pyrrhic one. A political fight which began as a conflict between the President and the Supreme Court turned into a battle between Roosevelt and the recalcitrant members of his own party in the Congress. The political consequences were wide-reaching, extending beyond the narrow question of judicial reform to implicate the political future of the New Deal itself. Not only was bipartisan support for Roosevelt's agenda largely dissipated by the struggle, the overall loss of political capital in the arena of public opinion was also significant.

the view that in the short run, especially during recessions, productive activity is strongly influenced by aggregate demand (total spending in the economy); and that aggregate demand does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy. Instead, aggregate demand is influenced by a host of factors and sometimes behaves erratically, affecting production, employment, and inflation. The theories forming the basis of Keynesian economics were first presented by the British economist John Maynard Keynes in his book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936, during the Great Depression. Keynes contrasted his approach to the 'classical' (more commonly 'neoclassical') economics that preceded his book. The interpretations of Keynes that followed are contentious and several schools of economic thought claim his legacy. Keynesian economists often argue that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes which require active policy responses by the public sector, in particular, monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government, in order to stabilize output over the business cycle. Keynesian economics advocates a mixed economy - predominantly private sector, but with a role for government intervention during recessions - and in the developed nations served as the standard economic model during the later part of the Great Depression, World War II, and the post-war economic expansion (1945-1973), though it lost some influence following the stagflation of the 1970s. The advent of the global financial crisis in 2008 has caused a resurgence in Keynesian thought. A central conclusion of Keynesian economics is that, in some situations, no strong automatic mechanism moves output and employment towards full employment levels. This conclusion conflicts with economic approaches that assume a strong general tendency towards equilibrium. In the 'neoclassical synthesis', which combines Keynesian macro concepts with a micro foundation, the conditions of general equilibrium allow for price adjustment to eventually achieve this goal. More broadly, Keynes saw his theory as a general theory, in which utilization of resources could be high or low, whereas previous economics focused on the particular case of full utilization. Keynes's work was part of a long-running debate within economics over the existence and nature of general gluts. While a number of the policies Keynes advocated (the notable one being government deficit spending at times of low private investment or consumption) and the theoretical ideas he proposed (effective demand, the multiplier, the paradox of thrift) were advanced by various authors in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Keynes's unique contribution was to provide a general theory of these, which proved acceptable to the political and economic establishments. Keynes's ideas became widely accepted after WWII, and until the early 1970s, Keynesian economics provided the main inspiration for economic policy makers in Western industrialized countries. Governments prepared high quality economic statistics on an ongoing basis and tried to base their policies on the Keynesian theory that had become the norm. In the early era of new liberalism and social democracy, most western capitalist countries enjoyed low, stable unemployment and modest inflation, an era called the Golden Age of Capitalism.