Unit I

UNIT STUDY GUIDES

Unit I

PROSPERITY END, DEPRESSION BEGINS

Behavioral Objectives (Test Items)

Here are the specific tasks you will be called upon to perform on the Unit I Exam. The information required for mastery of the reading objectives is contained in Chapters 1-4 of The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941 . The information required for mastery of the lecture objectives is contained in the lectures for this unit - "Cycles of American History", "The Crash and Early Depression", and "Herbert Hooverís Tragic Presidency".

READING OBJECTIVES

"Historical Currents and the Great Depression"

Describe the cycles of "standpatism" and "reform sentiment" being sure to identify when and why they both begin and end.
Be familiar with the Great Depression era as it fits in this cycle between standing pat and support for reform.
Identify and describe the ways that World War I created the environment of the 1920s "in which the seeds of the Great Depression and New Deal would germinate".
Describe the social and political influence of businessmen in the 1920s.
Describe the use of advertising in the Twenties in producing acquisitive consumerism.
Describe the Twenties as a decade marked by the conflict between rural and urban values.
Identify and describe agricultural problems in the Twenties.
Describe the situation of the American laborer during the 1920s being sure to deal with unemployment, person-hours worked, and increased productivity which resulted from automated, assembly-line manufacturing.
Identify steps taken by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon to reduce the tax burden of the wealthy during the Twenties.

"Who Was Roaring in the Twenties? - Origins of the Great Depression"

Be familiar with those criteria that divide the causes/explanations of the Great Depression into different categories.
Compare and contrast in detail each of the following explanations of the Great Depression: (a.) the law of "compensation", (b.) Milton Friedmanís "monetarist" explanation, (c.) Jude Wanniskiís explanation blaming the Smoot-Hawley Tariff.
Describe in detail the authorís explanation for the Crash and the Great Depression being sure to fully cover each of the following areas: (a.) tariffs, (b.) weaknesses in agriculture, (c.) the structure of American business and industry, (d.) speculative margin buying of stocks.
Be familiar with the "crash" of the New York Stock Exchange which occurred in October, 1929 being sure to understand the psychological panic which ensued, how margin speculators reacted, and the effect of the crash on the national economy.

"In The Right Place at the Wrong Time? - Herbert Hoover"

Identify and describe the reasons why Herbert Hoover, in the countryís mythological view, has been blamed by many for causing the Great Depression and bungling the governmentís response to the economic disaster.
Describe Hooverís background - both personal and political - prior to his election to the presidency.
Describe in detail Hooverís governmental philosophy and his refusal to abandon his principles once the Great Depression began.
Describe in detail President Hooverís response to the Great Depression being sure to cover all of the following: (a.) the effort to get businessmen to maintain wages in order that workers would not cut back on purchases, (b.) increases in government spending for public works to inject funds into the economy, (c.) efforts to preserve or restore businessmenís confidence in the economy and the reasons for the failure of this campaign.
Be familiar with the process by which Hoover became more and more conservative in 1931-32 that McElvaine deals with and the reasons for Hooverís "turn to the right".
Describe Hooverís role as a "transitional" president between the new and the old order as characterized by McElvaine.

"Nature Takes Its Course: The First Years of the Depression"

Explain why Hooverís program of wage maintenance failed to produce economic recovery.
Describe in detail why declining consumption and investment were "the keys to the worsening depression" and how each fed off the other in an ever-deepening spiral.
Be familiar with the magnitude of the economic collapse being sure to cover each of the following: (a.) decline in Gross National Product, (b.) decline in consumption expenditures, (c.) decline in construction, (d.) decline in investment, (e.) rising unemployment.
Describe in detail Hooverís position about government providing unemployment relief to the jobless, identifying the problems with his approach, and evaluating the economic and political impacts of his policies in this area.
Explain how the Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 reflected an "every man for himself" attitude by the United States to the global depression and, by worsening the situation in Europe, helped deepen and spread the economic decline.
Explain how the defeat of a national sales tax to solve budgetary needs and the passage by Congress of the Emergency Relief and Construction Act, despite the misgivings of Hoover, demonstrated that the American electorate was becoming more liberal in its political attitude.
Identify the goals and method of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and evaluate its effectiveness in limiting and/or reversing the Depression.
Be familiar with farm protests, the battle between workers and police at Dearborn, Michigan, and the treatment of the Bonus Army of 1932 and evaluate how they reflected a deepening despair over the Great Depression.

LECTURE OBJECTIVES

"The Cycles of American History" (HIS2613.HUP.22638x)

Identify Arthur Schlesinger, Sr.ís model of cycles of American history in domestic affairs being sure to define exactly what he means by "liberalism" and "conservatism".
Identify the specific times and political eras he classifies as "liberal" and "conservative".
Explain why Schlesinger, Sr. states that the image of a rising spiral is a more appropriate visualization of these cycles of history rather than a pendulum.
Correlate the terms "public purpose" and "private interest" Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. prefers to the terms used by his father.
Identify and describe in detail those factors Schlesinger, Jr. purports are responsible for the shift back and forth between periods of "public purpose" and those of "private interest".

"The Crash and Early Depression" (HIS2613.HUP.22639x)

Identify and describe in detail the reasons for the coming of the stock market crash in October, 1929 and the Great Depression according to John Kenneth Galbraith.
Identify and describe in detail the effects of the Great Depression in each of the following areas: (a.) speculative investments and margin buyers, (b.) stock prices, (c.) bank solvency and the security of bank deposits, (d.) production levels of American industry, (e.) unemployment and underemployment, (f.) wages, (g.) prices, (h.) home and farm mortgage foreclosures, (i.) tax revenue for various levels of government.

"Herbert Hooverís Tragic Presidency" (HIS2613.HUP.22640x)

Describe in detail Herbert Hooverís reputation or public image upon entering the White House in 1929.
Identify and describe in detail Hooverís attempts to end the Great Depression being sure to cover each of the following: (a.) his initial belief that the Depression was but a temporary phenomenon, (b.) efforts to engineer recovery through voluntary cooperative efforts and thereby minimize government coercion, (c.) his conservative business-oriented approach to ending Depression - maintaining a balanced federal budget, refusal to inflate the currency system, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, resistance to federal relief payments, employment programs, RFC.
Be familiar with Hooverís refusal to abandon his ideological beliefs and his penchant for denial and delusion as the Depression worsened.
Describe Hooverís deepening "image problem" as the situation worsened.
Identify the reasons for Hooverís popular reputation as an "uncaring do-nothing president" that while inaccurate survives to this very day.

Herbert Hoover

Campaign Speech

1928

Herbert Hoover

Inaugural Address

March, 1929