1. Chapter Twenty-Four The Great Depression and the New Deal, 1929–1940

2. Chapter Focus Questions 1.What were the causes and consequences of the Great Depression? 2.What characterized the politics of hard times? 3.Who was Franklin D. Roosevelt and what were the two New Deals? 4.How did the federal sphere expand in the West? 5.What characterized American cultural life during the 1930s? 6.What were the legacies and limits of New Deal reform?

3. Sit-Down Strike at Flint: Automobile Workers Organize a New Union

4. Sit-Down Strike at Flint In 1937, the community of Flint, Michigan, went on strike at the General Motors plant. The depression hit this auto-producing town very hard. The United Auto Workers attempted to take advantage of the Wagner Act and organize a union, but GM resisted them. Strikers seized two GM plants and refused to leave. Supported by the governor, the strikers resisted efforts to eject them. The community rallied to support the strikers. GM gave in and recognized the UAW, a move that the other automakers soon followed.

5. 24.1: Hard Times

6. A. The Bull Market and the Crash 1.During the 1920s, stock prices rose rapidly. 2.Investors were lured by easy-credit policies like buying on margin. 3.The market peaked in early September 1929, drifted down until late October, and crashed on October 29. 4.By mid-November, the market had lost half of its value. 5.Buyers on margin faced paying hard cash to the cover the loans they received for purchasing stock that sold well below what they had originally paid. 6.Few people predicted that a depression would follow.

7. Stockbrokers, their customers, and employees of the New York Stock Exchange gather nervously on Wall Street during the stock market crash of 1929. October 29 was the worst single day in the 112-year history of the exchange, as panic selling caused many stocks to lose half their value. SOURCE:Brown Brothers.

8. B. Underlying Weakness 1.The crash did not cause the depression but revealed the underlying economic weakness. 2.Industrial growth during the 1920s had not been accompanied by comparable increases in wages or farm income. 3.The gap between rich and poor widened, as did that between production and consumption.

9. C. Mass Unemployment 1.The stock market crash led manufacturers to decrease spending and lay off workers. Weak consumer demand and bank runs turned the slump into a depression. 2.By 1933, nearly one-third of the labor force was out of work. 3.Unemployment took a tremendous personal toll and undermined the traditional authority of the male breadwinner. Chart: Unemployment, 1929–1945

10. Isaac Soyer’s Employment Agency, a 1937 oil painting, offered one of the decade’s most sensitive efforts at depicting the anxiety and sense of isolation felt by millions of depression-era job hunters. SOURCE:Isaac Soyer,Employment Agency,1937.Oil on canvas,(87 x114.3cm) 34 1/2” x 45”.Whitney Museum of American Art,New York.

11. Dorothea Lange captured the lonely despair of unemployment in White Angel Bread Line, San Francisco, 1933. During the 1920s, Lange had specialized in taking portraits of wealthy families, but by 1932, she could no longer stand the contradiction between her portrait business and “what was going on in the street.” She said of this photograph: “There are moments such as these when time stands still and all you can do is hold your breath and hope it will wait for you.” SOURCE:Copyright,the Dorothea Lange Collection,The Oakland Museum of California,City of Oakland.Gift of Paul S.Taylor.

12. D. Hoover’s Failure 1.The enormity of the depression overwhelmed traditional sources of relief. 2.President Hoover seemed unable to accept the facts of the depression. He vetoed measures to aid the unemployed. 3.His Reconstruction Finance Corporation failed to restore business confidence. 4.Efforts to make government credit available saved banks but did not encourage business growth.

13. E. Protest and the Election of 1932 1. In 1932, protests erupted throughout the country, including the Bonus Army of veterans in Washington. 2. The Democrats, led by Franklin D. Roosevelt, won a massive electoral victory.

14. MAP 24.1 The Election of 1932 Democrats owed their overwhelming victory in 1932 to the popular identification of the depression with the Hoover administration. Roosevelt’s popular vote was about the same as Hoover’s in 1928, and FDR’s Electoral College margin was even greater.