1. Chapter 25 The Great Depression Vocabulary

2. Overproduction
Excess of supply over demand of products being offered to the market. This leads to lower prices and/or unsold goods along with the possibility of unemployment.

3. Buying on Margin
Using stock as collateral to purchase more stock

4. Black Tuesday
October 29, 1929 investors sold over $16 million worth of stock for prices lower than their worth which caused the Stock Market to crash.

5. Rugged Individualism
President Hoover’s belief that each individual is responsible for helping themselves, not the government

6. Hoovervilles
Shantytowns patched together out of crates, cardboard and tarps where newly homeless people lived

7. Dust Bowl
A period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American prairie lands in the 1930s, particularly in 1934 and The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation.

8. Okies
Farmers (many form Oklahoma) who moved to California for better living conditions and jobs during the Dustbowl

9. Reconstruction Finance Corporation
(RFC)- One of Hoover’s responses to the Depression, it loaned money to financially troubled businesses to keep them afloat to help prevent further declines in the business cycle

10. Bonus March
May 1932-WWI veterans camped out and demanded bonus payment due in 1945 to be paid early

11. Brain Trust
experts from every field used by FDR to problem solve and help develop solutions to the Depression Era problems

12. Fireside Chat
Radio talks given by FDR to explain what was going on in the nation and get support for his programs

13. Hundred Days
March-June 1933—session of Congress that created many of the New Deal laws/programs

14. Bank Holiday
Period when FDR closed all the banks in the U.S. in order to inspect their functionality, only financially sound banks were allowed to reopen.

15. New Deal
Roosevelt’s program to end the Great Depression. It focused on relief (ease individual suffering) recovery (get the economy growing) and reform (prevent future crisis).

16. Direct Relief
Immediate aid to prevent starvation and revolt

17. Indirect Relief
Work relief—create jobs to cut unemployment

18. Your job only pays $20 a week
Deficit Spending
Using borrowed money to fund government programs, which allows the government to spend more money than it takes in
Already owe me $25
Borrow $200 more
Now you owe $225
Your job only pays $20 a week