America's Great Depression by Murry N. Rothbard (introduction only)1975 updated in 2000 5/3/21
This undermined the confidance in the Capitalist System and helped explain why the inefficient and murderous Soviet communism survived so long. The consequences were finally erased with the collapse of the Soviets.
Two thirds of the trade on the Exchange were on a margin. This was a boom based entirely on capital gains a form of pyramid selling.
The 1920 recession had adjusted itself within a year and they though 1929 would do the same.
France only got back to her pre 1929 production level in the mid 1950.
1937 Britian started to rearm and so her unemployment fell gradually.
The government kept on pumping in inflationary credit, thus interfrearing too much. The Great Depression was not a failure of Capitalism but of hyperactive State.
Jews and Booze becoming American in the age of prohibition by Marni Davis 2012 202 reading pages 28/2/21 **
Part of the Goldstein -Goren series in American Jewish History. Only read the introduction the book was too detailed on specific people.
Jews were always fierce critics of temperance and prohibition activists since the 1870s.
The Eighteenth Amendment set up a Bureau of Prohibition. Jews drank but knew when to stop and remained sober.
Henry Ford declared that Jews are on the side of liquor and always have been. Critics objected to Jews selling liquor in impoverished neighbourhoods. American Jews wanted to unite their ethnic and American identities. Supporters of prohibition claimed it undermined morality , debased the political system, impoverished workers and their families, endangered public health, and impeded immigrant culturalization and endangered national security.
Women and middle class African Americans saw temperance as a force of economic and social uplift. Others were keen to reestablish the rural and small town WASP dominance. Prohibition wove both liberal and conservative strands of paternalism and outright bigotry.
Wine by Jews has a ritual use and has to be produced by Jews., but wine might lead to Jews mixing and dancing with non Jews. In history Jewish vintners produce beer, wine and liquor from buying surpluses of Christian farmer
Alcohol was the nation's 5th largest industry cerca 1900 and a third of federal tax revenue.
1890 71,385 individuals engaged in saloon keeping 54% were foreign born from 1) Germany2) Ireland 3)Scandinavia 4) Italy 5) Russia in that order.
1920 Jan Start of Prohibition
1933 Dec End of Prohibition
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Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930 by Donald Worster 1979 free sample only 8/2/21
Had the writer been a Wallace Stegner he would have written this in a novel form, instead he had long conversations with farmers , agronomists, store keepers. The southern plains include Kansas Colorado, New Mexico , Oklahoma and Texas which have become our cultural boneyard. They show man's failure at adaptation in this region, like the worst ecological blunders like in 3000 BC deforestation in China's upland which produced centuries of flooding and silting. The destruction of the Mediterranean vegetation by livestock which left the fertile lands eroded and impoverished. Later in Russia under Khrushchev.
The Dust Bowl took 50 years to accomplish and cannot be blamed on illiteracy and overpopulation. This was a false achievement of excessive dominating and exploiting nature, on volatile and marginal land. This was a fundamental weakness of traditional American culture- Private property laissez faire, profit motive , free enterprise.
1 Nature is seen as capital, trees, wildlife, minerals and water and no other value to nature.
2Man has a right and obligation to use nature to self advancement.
3 The community exists to help individuals get ahead and absorb environmental costs.
4 Capitalist society is eager to take risks.
Farm families had not fully benefited from the burst of wealth, and then drought brought them to their knees. 17 million people affected.
At least 15% less precipitation and clouds of grasshoppers
1934 drought cost the US half of what they put into fighting WW1. Rains only returns fully in 1941. This was the work of man not nature. 350 tons of soil lifted up in the air.
People suffered from "dust pneumonia, silicosis of the lungs and measles broke out in the black blizzard from the north. Accompanied by thunder and lightening.
Chronic asthma bronchitis or tuberculosis were reasons that people had moved to the high plains to breath easier.
1935 was the worst year
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The History of the United States in 5 crashes: Stock market meltdowns that defined the Nation by Scott Nations. 300pg 2017 free sample
1907, 1929 1987, 2008,2010
We invest in stock markets to fund our retirement and this creates new jobs. A loss of confidence and refusal to invest in the early 1970s that led to the contractions. Crashes don't have single causes. Governments often choose the worst moments to intervene.
1882 John D Rockefeller - New Jersey began allowing one corporation to own stock in another - start of the holding company.
1882 JP Morgan's home was the first American home wired with electrification resulting in an explosive demand for copper wire. Butte, Montana Consolidated Copper and Silver was the centre of US copper.
1890 the Western Frontiers ceased to exist
1901Theodore Roosevelt became President when Mc Kinley was assassinated by an anarchist. The problem of Urbanization had to be addressed and the arrival of vast interstate trade. Roosevelt changed the name Executive Mansion to White House.
1904 Liberty of contract did not involve a right to deprive the public of the advantages of lower prices
1909 NAACP set up
1913 President Windrow Wilson Desire of free competition in trade and commerce.
1906 The Francisco Earthquake it took months to pay the claims as gold had to be sent from the insurance companies mostly in London. Paying claims today can be done instantaneously. This deprived the UK of 14% of her gold and interest rates were raised slightly. This was the main cause of he 1907 crash.
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Freedom from Fear The American People in Depression and War 1929 -1945 by David Kennedy 2001 989pg 15/1/21 This had a big free sample with plenty of the causes of the depression.
During the depression Southern sharecropper white and black had emaciated children who had never tasted milk, shoeless in winter and too poorly clad to go to school, mulch cows dried up for lack of food and starving horses dropping in streets.
Prosperity was considered merit for striving and poverty due to lack of that. A sense of shame and lack of self respect. New social programs came out every year till 1938 FDR wanted to make a country in which nobody was left out but his program did not end the depression.
1909 Hoover book Principles of Mining became the standard textbook spreading his reputation. He accompanied Wilson to Paris and understood the disaster of the Peace of Paris.
1914 WW1 claimed the lives of 10 million soldiers and wounded 20 million others devouring $300 billion of world assets. Herbert Hoover organized food relief for occupied Belgium. This war was a primary cause of the Great Depression.
1918 November 4 men Stalin struggling to get control over the revolution. Hitler humiliated by Germany's defeat.
Roosevelt witnessed the demolition of the liberal settlement that Wilson championed, a peace that should have been magnanimous to Germany so that world commerce could be unshaken from political restraint.
1921 Hoover organized a Presidents conference on Unemployment.
1922 Industrial Ruhr The peace gave France the coal , iron and steel properties from Germany. Victors and vanquished were bowed beneath this crushing ballast in the interwar decades. This settlement refused to accept the principle of racial equality and so Prince Fumimaro Konoya of Japan realized that Japan was relegated to 2nd class. So it later signed the Tripartite pack with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
1923 Hoover shamed the steel industry to cut the 12 hour day and managed to get business cooperation to stabilize prices.
1933 Jan FDR inaugurated President 5 weeks after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.
1929 was the end of an era of long industrial expansion that started with the civil war.
Hoover was a man who had never known failure. New economic forces were changing the situation and Hoover set up a committee who in the end wrote "Recent Social Changes" It documented the time showing an inventory of mineral resources, crime and punishment , health, status of women ethnics minorities, new technologies, productivities and leisure.
Ellis Island opened in 1892 bringing 4 million Italians Half a million Greeks, Hungarians, one and a half million Poles, and more than 2 million Jews all non Wasp. In 1930 1 in 10 American was foreign born. 1 in 6 New Yorkers belonged to a Protestant Church. Nearly a third of Poles, Croats and Slovaks returned, while half the Italians and more than half the Greeks, Russians, Rumanians and Bulgarians returned.
1923 the 12 hour working day was now abandoned, machine power could provide work for masses of unskilled but robbed workers of craft pride and some skilled jobs disappeared and there was no job security at all.
1924 Immigration closed.
1890 the "frontier" was officially closed and by1920 majority of American were Urban dwellers.
With tractors some 9 million work animals were destroyed bringing far more pastureland to be planted and agricultural prices plummeted. In 1930 farmers brought more than 50% more product to the market than they had in 1900. There was a shrinking export market with a slowing population growth at home.
1929 Agricultural Marketing Act created government sponsored agencies to stabilize the value of farm products by buying up some surplus. The south was the most rural with abundant labour and scarce capital at a period that more than 4 out of 5 US blacks lived there. In 1940 less than 5% of blacks there were registered to vote. While the cities were electrified and had industry rural areas were still in the dark and left out of other conveniences like radios.
A car could now be bought for an average of 3 months earnings and with 26 million cars around the market was saturated.
Ethnic divisions were exploited , with strikes 30000 southern blacks were brought in to take jobs that they had be previously kept out of . Some jobs had "yellow dog contract " workers who agreed not to join unions .
"Welfare capitalism" companies unions offered benefits, like stock bonuses, life insurance , recreation facilities but when they crash came the companies transient generosity was revealed.
1921 American birth control league founded by Margaret Sanger. Most women never worked once they married.
In 1890 1 in 5 children under 15 was working but 1930 only 1 in 20 was so more children were at school.
So negligent was the role of the Federal Government that few bothered to vote.
Republicans were always far more homogeneous than the Democrats. The laissez-faire was enshrined in their policy and most presidents were republican till Wilson except for Cleveland.
Coolidge quashed Hoover's proposal for federal finance of river control projects of the west, for farm relief. He also resisted a restructuring of the $10 billion Allied War Debt owed to the US Treasury
1925 car and residential construction was down and by 1928 inventories were piling up in warehouses and stock prices began vaulting up. Investment was diverted from production investment in plant and machinery to the stock market, with heavy purchases of government securities.
1925 Britain returned to the Gold Standard at an old exchange rate of $4.86 a Pound that gave her an import boom and threatened to drain the Bank of England of her gold reserves.
With low interest rates banks lent money for stock purchases. Brockers enabled purchases to buy stock on margin for as little as 10% But slippage of only a few points in stock prices compelled margin loans to be called in.
1928 Roosevelt was elected Governor of New York. He had campaigned with Wilson in 1912 and was appointed secretary of the navy.
1929 Admiral Byrd's expedition to the South Pole was the other important thing that happened that year. Stock prices had doubled since 1928.
Germany and Italy under dictators and Bolshevik Russia refused to pay the US war debts confirmed the wisdom of US isolation.
Hoover `` The problem with capitalism is that Capitalists are too greedy"
Federal Farm Act with capital to promote co-ops to stabilize prices.
1929 Federal expenditure was about 3% of GDP while State and local government was 5 times that by 2000 they would be equal.
1930 Hawley Smoot Tariff raised import duties to the highest level ever, leading to an autarkic , beggar thy neighbour. The number of unemployed never fell below 14% for the decade, census takers only started trying to get true figures. The federal budget for construction was $2 million while the state construction budget was about $2 billion. Under Hoover this doubled.
The issue of prohibition was a more important aspect in the election than depression.
1930 People panicked and there was a run on the banks who threw their bonds and real estate portfolios on the already depressed market.
1930Dec The Bank of the United States collapsed , this was a small Jewish bank known as the Pantspressers bank of thousands of Jewish immigrants employed in the garment trades. The House of Morgan did not heed the Federal Reserve's Systems call to come to the rescue. This name misled people at home and abroad thinking an official institution had failed.
1931 We see a 1)decade of stagnation in agriculture2) drop in automobile sales and housing market,3) piratical abuse on Wall Street with evaporation of assets 4) anarchic banking system.
The major forces of the depression lay outside the US basically caused by WW1 The hobbling of Germany's economy with reparation payments weakened the whole of Europe's economy.
1931 March Germany and Austria form a customs union considered a step towards Germany's annexation of Austria which was explicitly forbidden in 1919. Panic that France may squeeze Austrian banks led to a panic and sthe largest Austrian bank Louis Rosthchilds Kreditanstalt closed it s doors causing German banks to do the same.
Hoovervilles , Hoover flags.
1932 Relief and Reconstruction Act authorized spending $1.5 billion on public works and to loan $300 million to states for this.
1932 Bonus Army marched on Washington by Douglas Mc Arthur cleared them out of the building but then exceeded his orders and destroyed the Anacostia camp. They wanted bonuses due to them in only 1945.
1932 Japan installs a puppet government in Korea.
While Hoover subscribed to the depression having international causes . Roosevelt saw structural deficiencies and institutional inadequacies. Hoover worried that Roosevelt would release inflation The Hyperinflation of Germany in 1923 or the doubling of prices in America between 1914 and 1920.
March 1933 Franklin Roosevelt inaugurated. Majority of the press was politically conservative so he used the radio which was new technology direct to the public.` He was unwilling to deal with disagreement face to face and appeared to agree with everyone! He was considered an aristocrat and a traitor to his class.
The Brains Trust set up, a group of academics to advise Roosevelt including Ramond Morely , Harry Hopkins, Rexford Tugwell, Louis Brandeis, James Warburg, later Felix Frankfurter
There had been 5000 bank failures in 3 year
The Emergency Banking Act gave him discretionary powers over gold and foreign exchange, the banks were closed and when they opened it was under strict governmental supervision.
1950 till then men outnumbered women in the US but declining immigration and rising maternal survival rates made women more numerous.
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Dancing in the Dark: A cultural history of the great depression by Morris Dickstein 2009 17/1/21
Read only the free sample The introduction covers most of the story the book goes into detail.
You got jazz inflected popular music that may be the best America ever produced Warner Brothers, Frank Capra comedies, Astaire - Rogers films
House of Mirth , The Jungle Grapes of Wrath , The Great Gadsby- how the arts responded to a society in upheaval. Writers like Sherwood .Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald , Willa Catcher , Faulkner and poets TS Eliot Wallace Stevens Robert Frost, William Carlos Willims are all still read today.
Composers included Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson and Duke Ellington.
Transition from vaudeville to radio and silent movies to talkies. The movies Wizard of Oz , and Gone with the Wind displaced worries.
Later you go writers like Henry Roth Nathanael West, James Agee, and Zora Neale Hurston
No one who grew up in the depression ever recovered from it. Even people with good jobs were worried they may be laid off, thus giving them lifelong habits of caution. His father watched the stock market but never invested a cent in it after pulling out in 1928. Some were utterly wiped out while others bought business, property and stocks at bargain rates.
This was a national trauma and the government for the first time sent out writers, photographers and filmmakers to document the land.
Agriculture was in depression all through the 20s, 3 million lost their jobs by Dec29 and 10 million by early Dec1932. When FDR took over a quarter of American were out of work, and companies cut wages as well as jobs. He immediately called a bank holiday.
1932 17000 Unemployed WW1 Veterans demonstrated in the Capitol and camped at Anacostia Flats to press for promised bonuses and were driven away by General Mc Authur. The Bonus Army had certificates for the difference between what they earned and would have earned if they had not been in the army. These were only due in 1945.
The system had failed , unbridled individualism and self-reliance worked in a frontier in the large open continent but now the individual could not go it alone, each had obligation to others.
Cultural history is seen as the soft history of feelings, dreams and relationships. The images of apple selles by their pushcarts, tenant farmers in shacks, dust clouds and parched earth.
Woody Allen looked back on the 30 in The Purple Rose of Cairo and the later movie ater Radio Days. Fiorello La Guardia read comic strips over the radio on Sundays and FDRs fireside chats.- depression escapism Economic problems were complicated by emotional ones. Hoover chose the word Depression as it sounded less frightening than panic or crises, the word previously was economic down turn. The public saw that the economy was not fundamentally sound and that prosperity was not just around the corner, but his policies actually paved the way for the New Deal. He was incapable of doing what was needed to boost public morale.
Charles Seeger ( father of Pete Seeger) and Alan Lomax travelled with a rudimentary tape recorder and created a treasure trove of folk music. Movie audiences peaked in 1946.
Life photographic magazine and movie newsreels were important vehicles of information
1934 King Vidor's fable Our Daily Bread.
1936 Dorothea Lange's Migrant mother a very famous photo. Astaire Rogers musicals like Top Hat, Swing Time and Shall we Dance
1940 John Ford's adaptation of Grapes of Wrath in Steinbeck's book, fixed the iconography of the 30s also documented in 1976 Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory.
Every town had its Hooverville's. The Soviets of Stalin and Trotsky were more concerned with doctrinal purity than with social change.
1890 How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis. Life of the immigrant, the slums the ghettos, the failure of the American dream.
1893 Financial panic created a new generation of American writers like Stephen Crane ,Theodore Dreiser Hamland Garland, and Frank Norris.
1929 the Depression was far more severe and centered on the quarter of American unemployed, tenant evictions, farm foreclosures, the hunger and fear and sense of insecurity, the dry summer of 1934. Mike Gold and John dos Passos were radical before the depression.
Henry Roth's Call it Sleep of the Lower East Side his publisher went bankrupt only really became known in 1960 when it was published and sold over a million copies while Faulkner's As I lay Dying and Light of August portrayed the rural south. Mike Gold fought back to Dreisner criticism of Jews and said Jews are a race of paupers
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The forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes: A new history of the Great Depression 2008 Read only sample but hope to read the whole book 14/01/21
1896 Dow Jones index began.
1920 was a period of false growth on low morals, the crash was an honest acknowledgement of the breakdown of capitalism. Americans learned that government spending was important for recoverys. Without the New Deal the country would have followed Huey Long or worse Father Couglin.
The crash did not cause the depression it resulted in deflation which Hoover did not understand and Roosevelt understood incompletely.
Hoover prefered Germany as a negotiating partner over Soviet Russia.
Roosevelt allowed Cordell Hull to make trade treaties that in the end helped the US economy enormously. The problem was the challenge of transition to industrialization. The freakish weather, the floods and the dust bowl.
Hoover allowed wages to go up when they wanted to go down, and the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariff became law.
CCC workers planted 3billion trees across the country. Roosevelt's policy of taxes resulted in strikes. The Wagner Act of higher wages, prevented companies from hiring more workers. "The depression was not so bad if you had a job" but workers never knew if they would be fired leading to insecurity.
1929 till 1940 both Hoover and Roosevelt helped to make the depression Great.Roosevelt unike the Republicans understood the danger of Germany.
Federal spending outpaces the total spending of states and towns for election year 1936. Washington neglected the producer and frightened business into terrified inaction. Unemployment rate did not return to precash levels until the war. 7 of the biggest up days of the Dow Jones of the century were in the 30s. The Dow never returned to the 1929 level till 10 years after Roosevelt's death.
"The forgotten man" is the man trying to get along without public relief. This occurred through the decade.
"Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis- The US was spared Stalin's communism of Mussolini's fascism, something worse.
1927 the waters fhe Missippi.in spring caused an enormous disaster. Hoover Secretary of Commerce got the railway to carry victims away for free and freight at a discount. Hoover asked each state to appoint a "dictator "of resources. They dealt with dysanty , searching for missing . He and the Red Cross got camps organized at Vicksburg Delta and Natchez and the army sent blankets to the refugees.
Ford was producing a record number of cars not paying out dividends but plowing the profits back.
Edison changed the way people lived and "helped bring a new social order. Wendell Wilkie was a utilities executive and half the population was on the power grid. Mellon Bank bought 50% of shares in companies with good ideas and left the company to be run by the inventor. Mellon worked to cut taxes
1923 Supreme court rejected the minimum wage in the district of Columbia
Aug.Harding died Hoover was vice President and took over.
Stanford Hoover had studied geology and engineering> European universities never recognized engineering professions till long after America did. He made a name for himself in Western Australia, the US , Tientsin China and they have been living in London for 10 years.
1901 was the era of commodities, he became a consultant and worked in Belgium, Germany, France, China , Japan, Burma, the Ural Mountains near Ekaterinburg. In Kyshtym Hoover with experts set up a copper project giving livelihood to 100 000. 1917 The Bolshevics took over and packed the American off via Vladivostok brutalized or killed he Russian experts and the furnaces broke down destroying the industry.
Hoover grasped that the reparations of WW1 would damage the future of Germany.
He encouraged economies of scale at the time that America was a commodity country,wealth mined or grains planted. Model T Ford cost $600before the war by the mid 20s it only cost $240.
American began travelling in the county in cars , the telephone came about. Everyone traded in stocks but experts knew little about the companies traded.
Irvin Fisher created indexes to measure commodity prices, and believed the gold standard slowed growth and kept grain prices low
Investors bought shares borrowing on margin ths was so widespread that it became 18% of the GDP.
1934 to 1945 La Guardia New York mayor
1910s philanthropist Jacob Schiff said Jews would do anything but not apply to non- Jesish sources for welfare.
The Bank of the United States was to provide part of the American Dream, was trustworth and provided loans to over 400 000 Jewish immigrants in the rag trade.
Black were moving from the South and the children could now go to school their illiteracy decreased form 45% in 1900 to 16.4 % in 1930
1924 Congress authorized the construction of the Dam on the Gila River later called Hoover Dam.
Hoover was a westerner, engineer believed in laissez- faire and his success in dealing with the flood gave him a wider mandate with the citizens.
1927 July average unemployment 3.3%
Rexford Guy Tugwell, John Bebner, Stuart Chase and othersCarlos Israels, George Counts a disciple of the educator Dewey visited Belgium and Germany but ended up seeing the Soviet Union.
Since Yesterday Started reading
The 1930s in America September 1929 to September 1939 by Frederick Lewis Allen began reading 9/9/2020
WW2 started 10 years to the day afer the Wall street crash The Old Waldorf was torn down to make space for the Empire State . The Chrysler building erected.
Al Jolson, Joan Crawford, Rondald Colman were the big names and All quiet on the Western Front was the movie.
Eddie Cantor
Radios cost $135 and 12 million families had them.
1929 PM Ramsey Mc Donald at League of Nations
Maintenance of prosperity was not regarded as a presidential responsibility, This belonged to the financial chiefs and not Herbert Hoover. Prohibition was a government problem.
Past President William Taft was Chief Justice of the supreme court.
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The Crash of 29 by Kenneth Galbriath 1955 187pg 30/7/20
This was not a book sold at airports-ha ha
2004 The FBI warned on an epidemic of morgage fraud, but the government refused to regulate morgages leading to the Crash of 2008. We must realize that 1929 was also caused by illigal dealing.
Ther is now mor money flowing into the stock market than intelligence to guide it.
1637 Dutch Tulip speculators
1720 John Law brought the presumption of gold to Paris from Louisana.
1720 The South Sea Bubble. This company had a monopoly on slave trade,so got investment but there was the was of Spanish succession and Spain controlled this are so no trade took place and investors lost their money.
Revolutionaries were paid in continental notes with out any backing "not worth a continental"
1873 the railroad boom that started after the civil war collapsed.
Barings bank had to be rescued by the Bank of England for it s bad loans to Argentina and later in the 1990 it dissapeared all togerher for its bad operations in Singapore.
Be wary when they say "The fundamentals are good"
1929 over 5.3 million cars produced compaired to 1953 when 5.7 million cars were licenced.
1926 Mr Ponzi developed land in Florida that sold on a margin to speculator untill 2 hurricanes killed 400 people and put an end to it.
1925 Winston Churchill as Chancelor of the Exchecquer returned Britian to the gold standard.
End
1937 the volume of production returns to that of 1929
1938 one in 5 was still out of work.
The accepted explanation that easy credit impelled to borrow and buy common stocks is nonsense. Money was tight in the late twenties. Speculation on a large scale requires confidence "conviction that the ordinary people were meant to be rich. Speculation is most likely afte a long period of prosperity. The South Sea Bubble of 1720 England had enjoyed a long period of prosperity. It is easier to account for a boom and crash than the depression that followed. The high productionof the 20 had not outrun the wants of the people. The desire for cars , cloths, recreation or even food was not sated.
Explanation
Economic activity reached its peak in 1929 June and had weakened well before the crash. Production had outrun consumer investment. Increased demand caused companies to aquire greater inventories than needed and curtailed buying.output per worker increased by 43%, cost fell with prices the same and profits increased, this sustained spending by the well to do and nourished some of the expectations on the stock market boom. There had always been recession periods but the 29 one continued to get violently worse.
The caused of this were
1 Bad distribution of income Investment and luxury spending of the rich is subject to fluctuation unlike outlaying for rent and bread.
2 Bad corporate structure. This was open to promotors, grafters, swindlers, imposter frauds. The holding companies controlled large segments of utilities railways. The temptation to give dividend could curtail investment in factories.
3 Bad banking structure. Bankers yielded to the immoral optimistic mood of the time. A bank failed and all the assets of others were frozen., a failure led to other failures, destroying the weak and the strong.
4 Dubious State of Foreign Balance, Surplus exports over imports and heavy tariffs on imports.
5 Poor state of economic intelligence. November 1929 Hoover announced a cut in taxes. The concept of balancing the budget. Disavawing all steps to check deflation "A truimph of dogma over thought"
Operating companies were forced to retrench as the ability to borrow or willingness to invest were destroyed.
The Federal Reserve did not have the moral authority to resist Washington's policy.
Today prevention of unemployment is a big voting issue. Today we have Federal insurance of Bank Deposits.
The tax system has become a servant of stability. Social Reform is consistent with smooth operation of the system.
Today you can't borrow on your own stock and bonds.
Both communism and capitalism have in commen - they know that things are going wrong but say they are fundamentally sound.
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Crash:The Great Depression and the fall and rise of America by Marc Favreau 2018 178pgYoung Adult book 20/7/20
Who would ever think of selling when the value of stocks and the price someone else was willing to pay kept going up?
Before the crash American banks were shaky institutions. "bank runs" 9000 banks failed in the country. In 32 states governors declared "bank holidays" to protect banks. Scrip started being printed or IOUs as there was so little money in circulation.
Herbert Hoover, Republican leader came from an austere Quaker community in Iowa.As a mine engineer he could retire at the age of 38 was a self made millionaire. He had cretaed an organization the relief oin Belgium which kept 4 million people from starving during WW1 "the greatest humanitarion undertaking the world had seen"
All he did was ask charities to help more. He beleived in self reliance combined with privaate charity was the key. American freedom from government interference. Doing notheing was official policy.
The veteran of 1917-1918 WW1. Camped in Anacostia Flats DC. General Douglas Mac Author personally cammanded the destruction of this. A veteran killed and 60 wounded.
Military veterans led by Walter W Waters formed the Bonus army they were only meant to get their war bonus in 1945 so that the treasury could accrue the funds. Each soldier had a Adjusted Service Certificate and wanted it paid out.
Hoovervilles (homeless camps, Hoover flats (empty pockets) Hoover blankets (newspapers by homeless tocover themselves) Hoover wagons a truck pulled by horses.
Franklin Delano Rooseveld the Democratic nominee, said help must be extended not as a matter of charity but as a social duty. He won all but 6 States in the election. On the way to his inaugaration he and Hoover never exchanged a word.
Will Rogers was the leading comedian at the time.
Eleanor Roosevelt set a new pace and goal of what was possible for a women to achieve. First American women to enter politics President Teddy Roosevelt gave her away at her wedding to FDR.She set up League of Women Voters and championed the 48 hour work week. She held a press conference every week limited to women reporters. She was one of the top radio professionals and took $3000 for each appearance. 1933 she met up with the veterans at Fort Hood and promised them help.
FDR served as assistent secretary of the navy underWidrow Wilson. FDR was the only President with a major ability.
New New Deal a mural by the artist Conrad Albrizio.
As president he immidiatly declared a national bank holiday, with Emergency Baking Relief Act resulting in people depositing money back in the banks. A "Brain Trust" was set up to get a group of expert to find soluitons to the problem. The first 100 days was considered the third great revolution in American history.
In the CCC young people were paid $30 a month and food, clothes of which the sent $25 home to family lived in camps and barracks on planted forests, built roads with 2 and a half million people working in it.
Public Works Administration PWA FERA CWA AAA, WPA and the Tennesee Valley AuthorityTVA
AAA paid farmer cash for reducing the amount of crops produced.
A third of all American befor the crash barely earned enough after the crash it was half. Many pensioners died in Almshouses.
Between 1935 and 1943 the Works Progress Administrtion employed 9 million people and build bridges,dams, schools and parks all over the US.
"How the Other Half lives" by Jacob Riis documaentary photos book
Jane Addams led to building 500 settlement houses nationwide.
The Social Safty Act did not cover domestic workers and farm laboureres so left out 65% of Blacks this was only corrected in 1950
Harry Hopkins was FDRs New Deal advisor.
Some of the worst paid were the miners and they formed the United Mine Workers under John Lewis a Welshman.
The dust bowl affected Kansas , Oklahoma , Texas was the US worst ecological disaster with 300000 moving to California where they picked lettuce peas grapes cotton pears peaches plums celery in tent camps and suffered from typhoid malaria and tuberculosis
1936 John Steinbeck wrote article on the Resetlement Administration camps. Weedpatch Camp inspired The Grapes of Wrath bestseller of 1939. The movie of this copied images from Dorethy Lange.
More than twice as many blacks lost their jobs during the depression compaired to whites, lynching increased. In 1929 Walter White became head of the NAACP and as he looked white could act as reporter in the south. The Scotboro Boys. Harper Lees To Kill a Cocking Bird may have been based on this. There was now a great migration of blacks to the north and were able to now register to vote.
Mary McLoad Bethune set up the Division of Negro Affairs - National Youth Administration.
Eleonor wanted to make lynching a Federal crime but FDR backed out as southern Democrats would object.
In California 1931 there were deportation raids against Mexicans forcing 15 train loads and 13000 people over the border even those born in the US. Philipinos were also offered money to leave , by the Philipino Repatriation act of 1935
Father Charles Coughlin because he was not offered a role in goverment broadcast that the New Deal was a Communist conspiracy controlled by Jews and serialized the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. When war broke out the Catholic chrch forced him to cancel his broadcasts.
The St. Louis Indident of Jews escaping Germany
A too war to defeat the depression. The US government became the biggest shopper and by 1943 almost 40% the entire economy was government purchased. Between 1942 and 1945 industry produced 310000 aircraft,10 battleships 110000tanks 211 submarines 12.5 million rifles, 806703 two and a half ton trucks,250 million pants.
16million served in the military as the first regular job the held.
Manhatten Project employed 130000people
6.5 million women worked in mens jobs in production and Eleanor Roosevelt equal treatment and pay for women.
1.2 million blacks migrated northward to get jobs
By
1862 Homestead Act made during the civil war
1881 Chester Author R
1885Grover Cleveland D
1889 Benjamin Harrison R
1890s The word Hoboes origenated in California as "homeless boy" or "homeward bound"
1893 Grover Cleveland D
End of US frontier last Freehold land settled in the West.
1897 Willian Mc Kinley R
1901 President Theodore Roosevelt R
1906 The San Francisco Earthquake, one cause of the Crash of 1907
1909 NAACP set up
1913 President Woodrow Wilson D
1914 August. Begining of WW1
1917 to 1934 Civil War in Mexico called the Cristero War.
1019 President William Howard Taft R
1919 June Treaty of Versailes at end of WW1
1920 Women vote for first time due to 19th Amendment
1920 Prohibition started
1921President Warren G Harding R
1923 President Calvin Coolridge R
1924 World War Adjustment Compensation Act
Johnson- Reed Act cut immigration to the US
1925 Winston Churchill as Chancelor of the Exchecquer returned Britian to the gold standard.
1929 March President Herbert Hoover. R 31st US president.
Oct 29 Wall Street Crash, Black Tuesday
1930The National Bank of Kentucky in Louisville was the first bank to collapse.
Bank of the United States in NY know as the Pantspressers bank leaving 40000 without savings.
1931 "Brother can you spare a dime" by sonwriter Yip Harberg and composer Jay Gorney
1932 a quarter of all American workers unemployed.
1933 March President Roosevelt D inaugeration speech " the only thing you have to fear is fear itself"
Emergency Baking Relief Act
National Recovery Act giving workers the right to bargain collectively
The Civilian Consevation Corps CCC
End of Prohibition
1934 Frances Perkins appointed by FDR to for a social safety net -
1935 Social Security Act is signed
National Labour Relations Act1935
Dust Bowl disasters worst year
1938 Fair Labor Standards Act established federal minimum wage adn 48hour week and overtime pay.
1939 "The Grapes of Wrath" bestseller by John Steinbeck.
Sept 1st Start of WW2
1941 Dec 7th Pearl Harbour attack "day of infamy"
1942 Bracero Program admitted Mexican men to work legally in agriculture.
1945 President Harry Truman D till 1953
1945 15 million had joined Unions. The US emerged from WW2 stronger , more stable and more unified than when it began.
1948 Truman integrated the US Army by Presidential decree.
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