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Great Depression
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Hoover tries to prevent Stock Market Crash from ravaging whole economy
Hoover decides to call a White House meeting with business and labor leaders. With this, he insists that they all jump onto the plan of recovery. Hoover's plan said that businesses would maintain their production speeds and try to keep workers on task during the job. But, this bargain falls apart a few months later. Businesses' product sales declined, wages were reduced, and workers were laid off. -
Herbert Hoover elected president
Hoover wins with an electoral vote of 444 to 87. Hoover has 21.5 million popular votes vs. Smith's 15 million popular votes. Smith was part of the Catholic religion and this a factor of his loss in the election. Hoover was known as "The Great Engineer" and was one of the most popular political figures in the US. -
The Stock Market Crash (aka. Black Tuesday)
The stock market, peaking five days before, crashed on October 29th, 1929 and was the event that kicked off the Great Depression. The crash was also known as "Black Tuesday". The value of stocks that were previously worth a lot are now worth close to nothing. -
The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was a period of drought and dust storms during the Great Depression. The dust storms during the dust bowl were known as "black blizzards" because visibility was reduced to 3 feet. "Dust pneumonia" was also a thing people started suffering from because of the constant amount of dust entering their lungs. -
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act
Signed by Herbert Hoover, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was meant to create the highest tariff rates in US History, and frighten the stock market, and then outrage foreign governments into retaliation. Then, create an open trade war in the middle of an economic downfall. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff ended up becoming a metaphor for underestimating importance of a nation's international trade policies. -
Bank of the United States fails
The fourth-largest bank in the nation fails. Hoover, worried, then returns the top income tax rate to 25%. The cause of the bank's downfall was believed to be because of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. Which increased tariffs to an all time high, and caused the US to dig into a deeper hole of economic depression. -
Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) is created
A government agency from the U.S.that provided financial aid to railroads, financial institutions, and business corporations. The RFC, acted as a federal bank, and contributed greatly to recovery efforts in the wake of the Great Depression. During this, the trickle-down economics theory was also a thing. It said that if you pump money into the economy at the top, in the end the people at the bottom would ultimately benefit. -
Gold Standard Act ditched
Before April of 1933, gold was the standard currency of the U.S. But then in the middle of the Great Depression, congress decided to ditch the act because the U.S. could no longer 100% guarantee the value of the dollar in gold. -
Hitler comes into power in Germany
During Germany's economic desperation, Hitler pushed his way to the top by improving Germany's economy overall. He was loved by everyone in Germany, and was the one that created the group called the Nazis and caused the holocaust during World War II. -
FDR's "New Deal"
Along with FDR's election as US president, he introduced his plan to show that the government could and would do something about the Great Depression. It closed all banks in the nation, and placed an embargo on the export of: gold, silver, and currency. -
Franklin D. Roosevelt elected president
The US's previous president loses against Roosevelt because he did close to nothing about the Great Depression. Roosevelt said that he would help the American economy recover. Roosevelt launches his "New Deal" to help the American economy recover. -
The Great Depression wraps up
The all-time low stock market prices, bank activity, and currency worthiness start returning to normal, as we lead in to World War II.
