The Great Depression and New Deal

Documents Decoded

Mario R. DiNunzio

• Publisher: ABC-CLIO
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781610695343
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9798216091806
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

The political ideas that resulted from confronting the crisis of the Great Depression and the New Deal of the early 20th century reshaped America. This documentary history collects a range of primary sources to illuminate this critical period in U.S. history.

This accessibly written work provides a wide range of primary documents, offering American history students and teachers alike a handy reference volume that examines all important aspects of the Great Depression and New Deal—a core curriculum topic. By modeling how an expert scholar interacts with primary sources, the book enables readers to pick apart and critically evaluate firsthand the key documents chronicling this major American movement.

The book leads with an introductory essay that outlines the scope of the volume, explains how the primary documents were selected, and identifies thematic trends and controversies. Annotations by scholars translate difficult passages into language that is easily comprehensible to modern readers and compare key passages throughout, encouraging the reader to cross-reference documents within the volume and connect the dots between them. Readers will be able to interpret the flow of events during the Great Depression, assess the legislative and executive actions that attempted to deal with the economic crisis, and perceive the differences between the fiscal ideas of Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Titles in ABC-CLIO’s Documents Decoded series
• The ABC-CLIO series Documents Decoded
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• halftitle1
• 1 Rugged Individualism
• 2 Veto of the Bonus Bill
• 3 Muscle Shoals Veto Message
• 4 Protest at the Bank of the United States
• 5 The Government Takes an Active Role in Banks
• 6 “What Ten Million Women Want”
• 7 “Bold, Persistent Experimentation”
• 8 War against the Depression
• 9 The End of Prohibition: “A Proper and Needed Revenue”
• 10 The Bonus Army
• 11 Creation of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration
• 12 Help for Home Owners and Buyers
• 13 The Philosophy of Government
• 14 “The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”
• 15 Declaration of a Banking Holiday
• 16 The Banking Crisis
• 17 Launching the Civilian Conservation Corps
• 18 Abandoning the Gold Standard
• 19 Helping the American Farmer
• 20 Muscle Shoals Revisited
• 21 Regulating Industry
• 22 Creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
• 23 “With the Civilian Conservation Corps”
• 24 “The Teacher Faces the Depression”
• 25 “The Necessity of Profound Change”
• 26 Regulating the Stock Market
• 27 The Defeat of the National Recovery Administration
• 28 Protecting Workers by Supporting Unions
• 29 “The New Deal and the Negro: A Look at the Facts”
• 30 Legacy of the New Deal
• 31 Rejecting the Agricultural Adjustment Act
• 32 Attack on the New Deal
• 33 Migrant Mother
• 34 WPA Workers in Alabama
• 35 “America Is in Peril”
• 36 “Roosevelt and Ruin”
• 37 “On the Road to Restored Prosperity”
• 38 Judicial Branch Reorganization Plan
• 39 Criticism of Roosevelt’s Supreme Court Reform Plan
• 40 Constitutional Validity of Minimum Wage Laws
• 41 In Support of Improved Housing
• 42 Creating the Forty-Hour Work Week and Regulating Child Labor
• 43 Moving toward Racial Equality
• 44 Economic Bill of Rights
• Timeline
• Further Reading
• Index
• About the Author