99 Fun Facts About Great Depression

What name is given to the burst of New Deal legislation passed in spring 1933?

The Hundred Days ran from 9 March to 16 June 1933, when Congress passed fifteen major laws, beginning with the Emergency Banking Act.

By what name is 29 October 1929, the most infamous day of the crash, remembered?

Black Tuesday, 29 October, saw a record 16.4 million shares traded; Black Thursday (24 October) and Black Monday (28 October) had preceded it.

At the depth of the Depression in 1933, roughly what share of the US workforce was unemployed?

Even in 1940, with war orders arriving, the rate was still around 15 percent.

The Dow Jones peaked at 381.17 in September 1929; where did it bottom out in July 1932?

The Dow closed at 41.22 on 8 July 1932, an 89 percent loss from its peak of 381.17 less than three years earlier.

How many years did it take the Dow Jones to climb back to its September 1929 peak?

The milestone finally came on 23 November 1954, in a very different America.

Which economist declared days before the crash that stocks had reached 'a permanently high plateau'?

Fisher, one of America's most respected economists, lost a fortune and much of his reputation.

On Black Thursday, Richard Whitney tried to calm the market by loudly bidding for which company's shares?

Whitney, the exchange's vice-president, bid $205 for 10,000 shares of U.S. Steel, well above the market; the rally lasted a day, and he was later jailed for embezzlement.

How many of America's roughly 25,000 banks had failed by 1933?

About 9,000 banks, more than a third of the total, failed between 1930 and 1933, freezing some $7 billion in deposits at a time when there was no deposit insurance.

Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by roughly what percentage?

World GDP fell by roughly 15 percent in the three years after the crash; the United States did much worse, with output down by over a quarter, while world trade fell by more than half in value.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 raised duties on roughly how many imported goods?

Smoot-Hawley raised duties on over 20,000 imported goods, lifting average tariffs to among the highest in US history; trading partners retaliated and US imports and exports both fell by more than half.

How many American economists signed the 1930 petition begging Hoover to veto the Smoot-Hawley tariff?

A petition signed by 1,028 economists urged a veto in May 1930; Hoover signed the act anyway, and US exports fell by roughly two-thirds over the next four years.

Which country was first to retaliate against Smoot-Hawley with tariffs of its own?

Canada, a leading US trading partner, struck back in May 1930 with new duties on sixteen American products; France, Italy and others followed, and world trade shrank to about a third of its pre-crash value by 1933.

Which country stopped exchanging its currency for gold in September 1931?

Countries that left gold early, like Britain, recovered sooner; the US did not follow until 1933.

Unemployment in which European country reached nearly 30%, helping the Nazi Party to power in 1933?

Germany had been living on American loans, which dried up after 1929.

What were the shanty towns of the homeless that sprang up across America nicknamed?

'Hoovervilles' was coined by Democratic publicist Charles Michelson to pin the shanty towns on President Hoover; St. Louis had the largest, with four separate sectors.

In Depression-era slang, what was a 'Hoover flag'?

A Hoover flag was an empty pocket turned inside out to show it held nothing; newspapers were Hoover blankets, cardboard soles Hoover leather, and a horse-drawn car a Hoover wagon.

In Canada, a horse-drawn car stripped of its engine was named after which prime minister?

Bennett buggies were common on the Prairies, where farmers who bought cars in the 1920s could no longer afford fuel.

The 'Bonus Army' that camped in Washington in 1932 was made up of veterans of which war?

They were World War I veterans seeking early payment of bonus certificates not due until 1945; Congress finally paid the bonus four years after the march, over a presidential veto.

Which general led the troops that cleared the Bonus Army's camp from Washington in July 1932?

Army chief of staff Douglas MacArthur led the eviction in person on 28 July 1932; his aide that day was Major Dwight Eisenhower, and Major George Patton led the cavalry.

The Bonus Army's main shantytown stood on which marshy patch of Washington, D.C.?

The main camp, Camp Marks on the Anacostia Flats, was built from junk-pile lumber, packing boxes and scrap tin, and was burned after the eviction.

What name was given to the Depression's long queues of the jobless outside soup kitchens?

Breadlines, the queues of the jobless outside soup kitchens and charity missions, became the defining image of the early Depression, before any federal relief existed.

How many electoral votes did Hoover manage in his 1932 landslide defeat?

Hoover won only 59 electoral votes from six states, against 472 for his Democratic challenger.

Which song became Roosevelt's 1932 campaign anthem and one of the most famous in US political history?

'Happy Days Are Here Again', by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen from the 1930 film Chasing Rainbows, was played at the 1932 Democratic convention and stayed the party's anthem for decades.

Where did Roosevelt first use the phrase 'New Deal'?

He first pledged 'a new deal for the American people' while accepting the 1932 Democratic nomination in person on 2 July 1932; the programme's three Rs were relief, recovery and reform.

Two days after taking office in March 1933, Roosevelt closed the financial system for four days by declaring what?

The proclamation of a national bank holiday came on 6 March 1933; when banks reopened on 13 March depositors queued to put cash back, and half the hoarded currency was redeposited within two weeks.

What were Roosevelt's evening radio talks to the nation nicknamed?

The name 'fireside chats' was coined by CBS executive Harry Butcher in 1933; the president gave about 30 of them between 1933 and 1944.

What did Roosevelt's first informal radio talk to the nation, on 12 March 1933, cover?

The 12 March 1933 talk explained the banking crisis in plain words on the eve of the banks reopening, and when they opened, deposits outran withdrawals.

Roughly how many young men served in the Civilian Conservation Corps between 1933 and 1942?

About 3 million young men passed through the CCC; they were paid $30 a month, most of which had to be sent home to their families.

The CCC earned the nickname 'Roosevelt's Tree Army' for planting roughly how many trees?

The CCC planted roughly 3 billion trees between 1933 and 1942, earning the nickname; a Gallup poll three years in found 82 percent of Americans approved of the camps.

Who headed the Works Progress Administration, created in 1935?

Harry Hopkins, the president's relief chief, ran the WPA from its creation; it built LaGuardia Airport and Oregon's Timberline Lodge and paid writers, actors and painters.

Roughly how many people did the WPA employ between 1935 and 1943?

The WPA gave work to about 8.5 million people in eight years; its Federal Project Number One paid writers, actors, musicians and painters, an unprecedented use of relief money.

The Tennessee Valley Authority was created mainly to bring what to a poor region of the South?

The TVA's dams generated cheap electricity for a region where few farms had power; they also controlled floods and drew industry into the Tennessee River basin.

The FDIC, created in 1933, initially insured bank deposits up to what amount?

Coverage began at $2,500 per depositor on 1 January 1934, rising to $5,000 within months; the FDIC came out of the same Banking Act of 1933 as the Glass-Steagall provisions.

The 1933 Glass-Steagall provisions walled off deposit-taking banks from which industry?

Glass-Steagall barred deposit-taking banks from investment banking, the underwriting and dealing of securities; the wall stood until President Clinton signed its repeal in 1999.

Which New Deal agency's Blue Eagle codes were struck down unanimously by the Supreme Court in 1935?

The Schechter 'sick chicken' case, decided 9-0 that May, killed the National Recovery Administration and its Blue Eagle codes, and set up the president's clash with the Court.

Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law in which year?

Signed on 14 August 1935, the Social Security Act created old-age pensions and unemployment insurance, plus Aid to Dependent Children for single mothers.

Frances Perkins, who chaired the committee that designed Social Security, was the first woman to do what?

Perkins became the first woman to serve in a US presidential cabinet, as Secretary of Labor from 1933, holding the post for all twelve of the president's years, the longest tenure in the job.

Roosevelt's 1937 proposal to add up to six new justices was mocked with what nickname?

The 'court-packing plan' would have added a justice for every sitting member over 70 who refused to retire, up to six; even his own party balked and the Senate buried it in July 1937.

Justice Owen Roberts's sudden 1937 shift to upholding New Deal laws was nicknamed what?

'The switch in time that saved nine' was Roberts's vote in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, decided in March 1937, which took the wind out of the plan to enlarge the Court, though historians dispute the cause.

The great dust storm of 14 April 1935 that blackened the Plains is remembered by what name?

Black Sunday, the afternoon of 14 April, sent a towering black wall of dust across the southern Plains, turning afternoon to night and stranding motorists; it is remembered as the worst storm of the Dust Bowl years.

Who coined the term 'Dust Bowl'?

Associated Press editor Edward Stanley wrote 'dust bowl' into a rewrite of reporter Robert Geiger's dispatch the day after the great Plains storm of 14 April, and the name stuck.

Roughly how many people left the Plains states during the 1930s?

About 3.5 million people left the Plains states between 1930 and 1940; many were called Okies whether or not they came from Oklahoma.

The Dust Bowl was centred on the panhandles of Oklahoma and which other state?

The Texas Panhandle and the Oklahoma Panhandle formed the core of the Dust Bowl, with adjacent corners of New Mexico and Colorado also stripped of topsoil.

Which folk singer's Dust Bowl Ballads earned him the nickname 'the Dust Bowl Troubadour'?

Woody Guthrie, an Oklahoman who rode the rails west, recorded Dust Bowl Ballads in 1940; his guitar carried the slogan 'This machine kills fascists'.

In The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family leaves Oklahoma for California along which highway?

Steinbeck called Route 66 'the mother road'; his 1939 novel won the Pulitzer Prize and was cited when he received the Nobel Prize in 1962.

The title The Grapes of Wrath comes from which patriotic song?

Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic has the line 'trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored'; the image itself comes from Revelation 14.

Who played Tom Joad in John Ford's 1940 film of The Grapes of Wrath?

Henry Fonda's Tom Joad earned him his first Oscar nomination; the film follows the book closely for an hour, then softens the ending considerably.

Who took the 1936 photograph known as 'Migrant Mother'?

Dorothea Lange took it for the Resettlement Administration at a pea-pickers' camp in Nipomo, California; her subject, Florence Owens Thompson, was 32 and had seven children.

Which crooner, along with Rudy Vallee, made 'Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?' a 1932 hit?

Bing Crosby's version and Rudy Vallee's were both best-sellers in late 1932; Yip Harburg and Jay Gorney wrote the song for the Broadway revue Americana.

Senator Huey Long promised every family a $5,000 grant under what programme?

Share Our Wealth, launched by the Kingfish in a February 1934 radio address, claimed 7.5 million club members before Long was shot dead in his state capitol the following year.

Huey Long's nickname 'The Kingfish' was borrowed from a character on which radio show?

The Kingfish was George Stevens, the scheming lodge leader in Amos 'n' Andy, the most popular radio show of the day; Long liked the name and used it himself.

Which skyscraper, opened in May 1931, did not turn a profit until the early 1950s?

The Empire State Building, nicknamed the 'Empty State Building' for its vacant floors, stayed the world's tallest building until the World Trade Center's north tower overtook it in 1970.

Which board game did Parker Brothers begin selling after buying it from Charles Darrow?

Parker Brothers bought Monopoly from Darrow, whose hand-made sets had sold well in Philadelphia, and had a runaway Christmas hit; it descends from Lizzie Magie's 1904 Landlord's Game, meant to teach the evils of monopolies.

From 1933 until 1947 the great dam on the Colorado River was officially known as what?

Interior Secretary Harold Ickes called it Boulder Dam from 1933, and Congress restored the name Hoover Dam in 1947; 112 deaths were linked to its construction.

Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed and killed in May 1934 in which state?

The ambush came on a rural road near Gibsland in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, on 23 May 1934; former Ranger Frank Hamer led the six-man posse.

The 1936 Jarrow March saw about 200 unemployed men walk from north-east England to where?

They walked nearly 300 miles to London after Palmer's shipyard closed; their petition was received by Parliament and never debated.

Which Labour MP for Jarrow marched with her constituents and declared the town had been 'murdered'?

Ellen Wilkinson, 'Red Ellen', marched part of the way and titled her 1939 book The Town That Was Murdered; she became Minister of Education in the 1945 Labour government.

US unemployment jumped from 14.3% to 19% in a downturn starting mid-1937; what did it follow?

Cuts in federal spending and tax rises, notably the new payroll taxes, plus tighter money, tipped the economy into the 'Roosevelt recession'; a $5 billion spending programme in spring 1938 restored recovery.

Before politics, Herbert Hoover made his fortune in which profession?

Hoover studied mining engineering at Stanford and made millions in Australian and Chinese mines before running Belgian food relief in the 1910s.

What event is generally said to have finally ended the Great Depression?

The outbreak of World War II brought rearmament orders and then full mobilisation; by 1943 unemployment was under 2 percent.

Roosevelt's Executive Order 6102 of April 1933 banned Americans from hoarding what?

The order required gold coin and bullion to be surrendered at $20.67 an ounce; issued under the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act, it threatened violators with up to ten years in prison or a $10,000 fine.

The 1934 Gold Reserve Act lifted the official price of gold from $20.67 to what per ounce?

Fixing gold at $35 an ounce devalued the dollar by about 40 percent; foreign holders rushed to sell gold to the Treasury at the new price, and US reserves swelled through the rest of the decade.

To lift prices, the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act paid farmers to do what?

The AAA paid farmers to plant less and sell off young pigs to the government, which slaughtered some six million piglets in 1933; the waste while families went hungry shocked the public.

Farm subsidies under the first AAA were funded by a tax struck down in 1936; who paid it?

The processing tax fell on food processors such as millers and meatpackers; in United States v. Butler Justice Owen Roberts held the scheme invaded powers reserved to the states, and a rewritten AAA followed in 1938.

The 'Send-a-Dime' chain-letter craze of 1935 began in which American city?

The 'Prosperity Club' letter started in Denver that spring and swamped its post office within weeks; recipients mailed a dime to the top name, added their own at the bottom and posted five copies.

Who directed the Federal Theatre Project, the WPA's 1935–39 stage programme?

Hallie Flanagan, a Vassar theatre professor who had studied state-funded theatre abroad, ran the project; it staged Orson Welles's all-black 'Voodoo' Macbeth in Harlem and briefly employed Arthur Miller.

The Federal Writers' Project's best-known output was a series of guides to what?

The American Guide Series covered each of the 48 states, plus Alaska, Puerto Rico and many cities; the project also recorded more than 2,300 first-person accounts from formerly enslaved people, now held by the Library of Congress.

Ferdinand Pecora, whose 1933 hearings exposed Wall Street abuses, held what role?

Pecora served as Senate committee chief counsel, running the Banking Committee's inquiry as the fourth lawyer to hold the job; his 1939 memoir of the investigation was titled Wall Street Under Oath.

Which Hoover-era agency, set up early in 1932, lent to struggling banks and railroads?

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was chartered in January 1932 with $500 million of capital; its first president, former Vice President Charles Dawes, resigned within months to rescue his own failing bank.

Creditanstalt, whose May 1931 collapse spread the crisis across Europe, was based where?

Creditanstalt was Austria's largest bank, founded by the Rothschilds in Vienna in 1855; its failure, announced on 11 May 1931, set off bank runs across central Europe within weeks.

'Radio priest' Father Charles Coughlin broadcast from his shrine in which Detroit suburb?

Coughlin's Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak drew millions of listeners; an early Roosevelt booster, he turned on the New Deal as too friendly to bankers and founded the National Union for Social Justice in 1934.

Dr Francis Townsend's 1933 pension plan promised every American over 60 how much a month?

The plan offered $200 a month to everyone over 60 who quit work and spent it within the month; within two years Townsend Clubs claimed about two million members.

Upton Sinclair ran for governor in 1934 under the banner EPIC; what did the P stand for?

EPIC stood for End Poverty in California; studio bosses, alarmed by Sinclair's plan to hand idle film lots to jobless movie workers, docked employee pay to fund his opponent Frank Merriam.

In his 1936 landslide, Roosevelt lost only two states: Vermont and which other?

Maine and Vermont gave Alf Landon just eight electoral votes, while Roosevelt's 60.8% of the popular vote was the largest share since 1820.

Which magazine's poll of ten million readers wrongly forecast a Landon win in 1936?

The Literary Digest had called the previous five elections correctly; after forecasting Landon at 57 percent it folded within 18 months.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set the federal minimum wage at what hourly rate?

The Fair Labor Standards Act set the minimum at 25 cents an hour and the workweek at 44 hours, rising to 40 cents and 40 hours within seven years.

The short-lived Civil Works Administration created four million jobs in which winter?

The CWA ran through the winter of 1933–34, from November to 31 March, putting four million people to work at a cost of nearly a billion dollars; social workers resented losing control of relief to engineers.

Ida May Fuller, the first monthly Social Security recipient, had paid how much in tax?

Fuller had paid $24.75 in Social Security taxes over three years before her first cheque of $22.54 arrived in January 1940; she lived to 100 and collected $22,888.92 in benefits.

Which German leader's austerity in 1930–32 earned him the nickname 'Hunger Chancellor'?

Heinrich Brüning, Chancellor from March 1930 to May 1932, cut wages and benefits by decree; lacking a Reichstag majority he relied on Hindenburg's emergency powers under Article 48.

The December 1930 run said to have begun US banking's collapse hit which New York borough?

The run began at the Bronx branch on Southern Boulevard on 10 December 1930; despite its grand name, Bank of United States was a private bank, and its failure the next day was then the largest in US history.

Which Swedish 'Match King' was found dead in his Paris flat in March 1932?

Ivar Kreuger, who controlled up to three-quarters of world match production, was found shot in his Paris flat on 12 March 1932; his accounts turned out to be riddled with forgeries, and his empire collapsed.

Who was fatally wounded in the February 1933 Miami attempt on President-elect Roosevelt?

Gunman Giuseppe Zangara, who blamed Hoover and then Roosevelt for his joblessness, went to the electric chair 33 days after the shooting.

Adopted in 1933, the 20th Amendment moved presidential inaugurations from March 4 to when?

The 'lame duck' amendment set 20 January for the presidency and 3 January for Congress; Roosevelt's 4 March 1933 swearing-in was the last under the old calendar.

The Cullen–Harrison Act of March 1933 legalised beer up to what strength by weight?

The act allowed beer of 3.2 percent alcohol by weight from 7 April 1933, a date later dubbed National Beer Day; signing it, Roosevelt reportedly said 'I think this would be a good time for a beer'.

Roosevelt's original 'Brain Trust' of Moley, Tugwell and Berle taught at which university?

Moley, Tugwell and Berle were all Columbia University professors recruited in spring 1932; New York Times reporter James Kieran coined the label 'brains trust' that year.

Why was 'Migrant Mother' Florence Owens Thompson stranded at a pea-pickers' camp in 1936?

A broken timing chain on the car stranded the family, so they pulled into the Nipomo camp while it was repaired; Thompson later said she never got a penny from the picture and wished it had never been taken.

Which Australian racehorse, a Depression-era hero, won the 1930 Melbourne Cup days after being shot at?

Phar Lap was fired at from a car on 1 November 1930 and won the Cup three days later; he took the 1932 Agua Caliente Handicap in Mexico, then died suddenly weeks later amid rumours of poisoning.

The September 1931 Invergordon Mutiny saw Royal Navy sailors refuse orders over what?

The pay cuts, imposed by the National Government's emergency budget, fell hardest on ratings on the old 1919 scale; the men first read of them in newspapers, and HMS Hood was among the ships at Invergordon.

The Stavisky affair behind the February 1934 Paris riots involved fake bonds from where?

The worthless bonds were issued by the municipal pawnshop of Bayonne; Stavisky was found shot dead in a Chamonix chalet that January, officially a suicide that much of the press refused to believe.

Milo Reno's Farmers' Holiday Association of 1932 urged Midwestern farmers to do what?

Members were to withhold produce from market until prices rose; pickets blockaded roads into Sioux City and dumped milk by the roadside under the slogan 'Stay at Home—Buy Nothing—Sell Nothing'.

Canada's 1935 On-to-Ottawa Trek of relief-camp strikers was broken up by police where?

The trekkers had ridden boxcars east from Vancouver and were halted at Regina, where the Dominion Day riot of 1 July left a policeman dead; only eight delegates had been allowed on to meet the prime minister.

The 1936–37 sit-down strike that forced GM to recognise the UAW happened in which city?

In Flint, strikers repelled a police assault on the Fisher Body 2 plant with hinges and bolts, a skirmish they mocked as the 'Battle of the Running Bulls'; GM signed on 11 February 1937.

Seabiscuit, the Depression's favourite underdog, beat which Triple Crown winner in their 1938 Pimlico match race?

Seabiscuit beat War Admiral, the 1937 Triple Crown winner, by four lengths on 1 November 1938; an estimated 40 million people listened on radio, and the underdog was voted Horse of the Year.

The 'Century of Progress' world's fair of 1933–34 was staged in which American city?

Chicago's fair on the lakefront drew nearly 49 million visitors over two seasons; fan dancer Sally Rand was a star attraction, and the Graf Zeppelin circled the city in October 1933.

Prohibition ended on 5 December 1933 when which state became the 36th to ratify repeal?

Utah's convention voted on the afternoon of 5 December 1933, completing the three-quarters of states needed; the 21st is the only amendment ratified by state conventions rather than legislatures.

Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was published in which year?

The General Theory appeared in February 1936, priced at a sensational five shillings to spread its ideas widely; Keynes drafted it in pencil from an armchair.

Alfred Butts devised Scrabble in the early 1930s after losing his job in which profession?

Butts, an out-of-work New York architect, first called the game Lexiko, then Criss-Crosswords; every maker he approached turned it down before James Brunot bought the rights in 1948.

Alf Landon, Roosevelt's Republican challenger in 1936, was governor of which state?

Landon, governor of Kansas since 1933, won the nomination at the Cleveland convention and took about 36.5% of the popular vote, carrying only two states.

How long did Congress take to pass Roosevelt's Emergency Banking Act on 9 March 1933?

Introduced on 9 March 1933, the bill passed the House by voice vote within 40 minutes and the Senate 73–7 before the evening was out, so Congress took a single evening; Hoover's holdover Treasury staff had largely drafted it.