Agenda for 2/11

The Great Depression and the New Deal

1. "The Century - America's Time" pt. 1 "Stormy Weather" (beginning to 4:20)

2. Modern American Financial History - Timeline 

3. From the Concept Outline:

Key Concept 7.1

Growth expanded opportunity, while economic instability led to new efforts to reform U.S. society and its economic system.

III.               During the 1930s, policymakers responded to the mass unemployment and social upheavals of the Great Depression by transforming the U.S. into a limited welfare state, redefining the goals and ideas of modern American liberalism.  

A.              Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal attempted to end the Great Depression by using government power to provide relief to the poor, stimulate recovery, and reform the American economy. 

Examples:  “Three Rs”, FDR’s “First Hundred Days” (1933), “bank holiday” (1933), Agricultural Adjustment Administration (1933), National Industrial Recovery Act (1933), Tennessee Valley Authority (1933), Civilian Conservation Corps (1933), Works Progress Administration (1935), Federal Writers’ Project of the WPA, Wagner Act and the National Labor Relations Board (1935), Social Security Act (1935), Resettlement Administration (1935), Keynesian deficit spending to “prime the pump” (1937-1939), Fair Labor Standards Act (1938)

            

B.              Radical, union, and populist movements pushed Roosevelt toward more extensive efforts to change the American economic system, while conservatives in Congress and the Supreme Court sought to limit the New Deal’s scope.

Examples:  Huey Long’s “Share Our Wealth” program (1934), Father Coughlin (“Radio Priest”) and the National Union for Social Justice (1934), Schechter Poultry v. US (1935) overturned NIRA, US v. Butler (1936) overturned AAA, FDR’s failed Supreme Court-packing plan (1937)

C.             Although the New Deal did not end the Depression, it left a legacy of reforms and regulatory agencies and fostered a long-term political realignment in which many ethnic groups, African Americans, and working- class communities identified with the Democratic Party.

Examples:  Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) of 1933, Securities Exchange Commission (1934), Federal Housing Administration (1934), Social Security Act (1935), “Roosevelt coalition” in the Election of 1936

4. 1920s Politics and Causes of the Depression - slideshow

5. FDR's First Inaugural Address. Video of the speech.

• In what way did FDR address the psychological causes/effects of the Great Depression?
• What analogy did FDR make for how he wanted to tackle the economic crisis? How did he justify the expansion of federal power that would be necessary to fight the depression?

6. "Give a man a job!"

• Based on the video what was the goal of many of FDR's "first 100 days" New Deal programs? 

7. The Fed. Government's Response - The New Deal - slideshow

8. The New Deal on Trial (Criticisms of the New Deal) 

• The American Liberty League - Background on the ALL 
• Huey Long 
• Father Coughlin 
• Francis Townsend
• Supreme Court

9. Was the New Deal an Effective Answer to the Great Depression?