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Unemployment averages 3.2% for the year.
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The American stock market collapses, signaling the onset of the Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average peaks in September 1929 at 381.17—a level that it will not reach again until 1954. The Dow will bottom out at a Depression-era low of just 41.22 in 1932.
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Unemployment averages 8.9% for the year.
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Congress passes the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, steeply raising import duties in an attempt to protect American manufactures from foreign competition. The tariff increase has little impact on the American economy, but plunges Europe farther into crisis.
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Unemployment averages 16.3% for the year.
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New York's Bank of the United States collapses in the largest bank failure to date in American history. $200 million in deposits disappear, and the bank's customers are left holding the bag.
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Unemployment averages 24.1% for the year.
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Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt elected for president.
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Unemployment averages 24.9% for the year.
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Upton Sinclair publishes I, Governor of California and How I Ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future, a fictionalized political treatise that lays out the agenda of a communitarian movement Sinclair calls EPIC—End Poverty in California.
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Roosevelt is Inaugurated into office
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Dr. Francis Townsend sends a letter to the Long Beach Press-Telegram proposing state-funded pensions for the elderly to boost consumption and employment.
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Unemployment averages 21.7% for the year.
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Dr. Francis Townsend formally incorporates Old Age Revolving Pensions, Ltd., to lead the Townsend Plan movement.
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Huey Long founds the Share Our Wealth society, advocating outright seizure of the "excess fortunes" of the rich to redistribute to the poor.
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A West Coast longshoremen's strike, conducted with significant aid from the Communist Party, paralyzes shipping and trade in California, Oregon, and Washington. The strike ends with a victory for the longshoremen's union. Cooperation between the longshoremen and West Coast communists represent a first successful venture of the so-called "Popular Front" between communists and liberals, which won't officially be authorized by the Comintern in Moscow until 1935.
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A surprising groundswell of support for Upton Sinclair's EPIC movement gives Sinclair a runaway victory in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in California.
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Father Charles Coughlin, "The Radio Priest," establishes the National Union for Social Justice.
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Following a two-month campaign in which EPIC is subjected to ferocious attack by both Republicans and Democrats terrified by its radical communitarian agenda, Upton Sinclair is soundly defeated by conservative Republican Frank Merriam for governor of California. Sinclair writes of the experience in I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked.
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Unemployment averages 20.1% for the year.
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More than 5,000 Townsend Clubs nationwide together represent more than 2 million members. An estimated 25 million Americans have signed petitions asking their representatives to back the Townsend Plan in Washington.
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Huey Long's Share Our Wealth society has expanded to 27,000 clubs nationwide, with a mailing list of 7.5 million Americans.
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Huey Long is assassinated inside the Louisiana Capitol Building.
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Unemployment averages 16.9% for the year.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected to a second term as president, winning in a landslide over Republican Alf Landon. Roosevelt wins every state but Maine and Vermont.
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Unemployment averages 14.3% for the year.
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Unemployment averages 19.0% for the year.
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Unemployment averages 17.2% for the year.