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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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In 1841, a young and depressed Abraham Lincoln confided to a friend that he would just as soon die except he had yet to accomplish anything to make people "remember he had lived." Two decades later, the man who became the nation's 16th president kept the country from fracturing in the Civil War and helped to end slavery with his historic Emancipation Proclamation. The document, issued on Jan. 1, 1863, declared, "All persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

Staff Writer Colleen Walsh of the Harvard Gazette asked scholars from across Harvard to reflect on the proclamation's 150th anniversary, and how the document resonates today. Here are their thoughtful responses.
Freedom and military service
is the president of Harvard University and Lincoln Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and a scholar on the Civil War period.
Attention to the Emancipation Proclamation rarely focuses on a portion of the document that I have thought about often in recent years. Not only does the proclamation offer a promise of freedom to the slaves, Lincoln also includes a sentence very near the conclusion providing that "such persons ... will be received into the armed services of the United States." Freedom is in this revolutionary document linked integrally with the right of military service. African-Americans of the Civil War era understood that link very clearly and eagerly embraced the affirmation of their personhood and their place in national life that the opportunity to fight for freedom represented. Southern defenders of slavery likewise understood the threat it posed to the very foundations of their system. As Confederate Horace Cobb observed, "If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong."

The link between military service and full citizenship and inclusion is one that has had powerful resonance in our own time. The end of "Don't ask, Don't Tell" and the full participation of gays and lesbians in our armed forces represent, as Lincoln described the Emancipation Proclamation itself, a profound "act of justice," a carrying forward in our time of the ideals that he and his words inspired.
Civil rights, and freeing themselves
Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History The political present, and personal reflections
Howard Gardner is John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. at Harvard Law School, and professor of history in FAS.
Among the vast holdings at Houghton Library is a signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation once owned by Charles Sumner, Abraham Lincoln's confidante and Secretary of State during the Civil War. Read more.
is Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in FAS, professor of religion and society at Harvard Divinity School, and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church.
I'm not sure what resonance the Emancipation Proclamation has for the generations who came of age after the Civil Rights movement. I wrote a book with Vernon Jordan about his youth and early career, and he talks about going to "Emancipation Proclamation Day" ceremonies every Jan. 1 when he was growing up in Atlanta. It was a big deal, linking the end of slavery to the drive for civil rights in the 20th century.

Actually, it was not totally ignored. I grew up in Texas, and we celebrated Juneteenth, which commemorates the date that Union troops were finally able to take control of the state and enforce the proclamation. That Texas holiday has now moved beyond, across the country. The ritual of remembering the document that brought black men into the battle to fight for their freedom and for the Union and encouraged thousands of enslaved people to flee the plantations - freeing themselves - should always be a vital part of the story of black Americans' journey through American history.

By no means an expert on the Emancipation Proclamation, your question prompted three thoughts:
Art and the proclamation
Diane Paulus is the artistic director of the American Repertory Theater and professor of the practice of theater in FAS.
1. In 1863, virtually no one could have conceived of a two-term president who is black.

2. [Southern author William] Faulkner is right: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." If we look at the current House of Representatives, or the controversy over guns, parts of the country are still fighting the Civil War.

3. As German Jews seeking to escape the Nazis, my parents were fortunate enough to make it to the United States, arriving on Kristallnacht, 75 years after the proclamation. For them, America was the country of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. And these two presidents remain my heroes as well.

The Emancipation Proclamation was the result of a multiracial, concerted effort of men and women who bore witness to the truth about slavery. Abolitionists like Angelina and Sarah Grimke, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Sojourner Truth held a coherent moral framework that condemned the sin of slavery while affirming the equality of humanity.

Unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln, though full of political courage, lacked the moral animating impulse of these abolitionists. The politically expedient themes of black emigration undercut a vision of a multiracial democracy. And while Lincoln's perspective was evolving at the time of his death, full citizenship for the formerly enslaved and their descendants remained an elusive dream.

Thus the Emancipation Proclamation, despite its significance, lacked the moral foci of its abolitionist forebears. Slavery so polluted the air of this nation with the noxious gases of race, gender, and class hierarchies that we continue to ingest its harmful social toxins 150 years later. Only a sincere and sustained moral defense of the equality of all people can help to purify our nation and provide this wonderful document with the ethical imperative of which its name signifies. This document is a powerful statement, but by no means the last word on the quest for human freedom.

The Emancipation Proclamation is a symbol of this country's commitment to freedom and, while it was was penned by Lincoln 150 years ago, it stillinspires us today. As part of our multiyear initiative around the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the A.R.T. is facilitating a writing immersion program in the summer of 2013 that will challenge a group of local high schoolers to respond creatively to the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Proclamation Project will prompt students to make connections between the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights movement over the ensuing 100 years, the concepts of slavery and freedom, and the nature of civil war in today's society (as it pertains to our families, our city, and our world). This project will culminate in a unique performance piece drawn from the words and writings of our teen ensemble. The Proclamation Project will enable us as a theater to explore this moment of history, and to investigate what it means for us today.

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Marking the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Harvard Gazette asked scholars from across the University to reflect on the historic order's ongoing impact today.

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In late 1863, President Abraham Lincoln and the Congress began to consider the question of how the Union would be reunited if the North won the Civil War. In December President Lincoln proposed a reconstruction program that would allow Confederate states to establish new state governments after 10 percent of their male population took loyalty oaths and the states recognized the "permanent freedom of slaves."

Several congressional Republicans thought Lincoln's 10 Percent Plan was too mild. A more stringent plan was proposed by Senator Benjamin F. Wade and Representative Henry Winter Davis in February 1864. The Wade-Davis Bill required that 50 percent of a state's white males take a loyalty oath to be readmitted to the Union. In addition, states were required to give blacks the right to vote.

Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill, but President Lincoln chose not to sign it, killing the bill with a pocket veto. Lincoln continued to advocate tolerance and speed in plans for the reconstruction of the Union in opposition to the Congress. After Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, however, the Congress had the upper hand in shaping Federal policy toward the defeated South and imposed the harsher reconstruction requirements first advocated in the Wade-Davis Bill.

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Lincoln Attempts Reconstruction with the Ten Percent Plan

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Lincoln Attempts Reconstruction with the Ten Percent Plan

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OurDocuments.gov. Featuring 100 milestone documents of American history from the National Archives. Includes images of original primary source documents, lesson plans, teacher and student competitions, and educational resources.

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Reconstructed ended when national attention turned away from the integration of former slaves as equal citizens enabling white Democrats to recapture southern politics. Between 1868 and 1877, and accelerating after the Depression of 1873, national interest in Reconstruction dwindled as economic issues moved to the foreground. The biggest threat to Republican power in the South was violence and intimidation by white conservatives, staved off by the presence of federal troops in key southern cities. Reconstruction ended with the contested Presidential election of 1876, which put Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in office in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.

Republicans and Democrats responded to the economic declines by shifting attention from Reconstruction to economic recovery. War weary from nearly a decade of bloody military and political strife, so-called Stalwart Republicans turned from idealism, focusing their efforts on economics and party politics. They grew to particular influence during Ulysses S. Grant's first term (1868-1872). After the death of Thaddeus Stevens in 1868 and the political alienation of Charles Sumner by 1870, Stalwart Republicans assumed primacy in Republican Party politics, putting Reconstruction on the defensive within the very party leading it.

Meanwhile, New Departure Democrats gained strength by distancing themselves from pro-slavery Democrats and Copperheads. They focused on business, economics, political corruption, and trade, instead of Reconstruction. In the South, New Departure Democrats were called Redeemers, and were initially opposed by southerners who clung tightly to white supremacy and the Confederacy. But between 1869 and 1871, their home rule platform, asserting that good government was run by locals-meaning white Democrats, rather than black or white Republicans-helped end Reconstruction in three important states: Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia.

In September 1873, Jay Cooke and Company declared bankruptcy, resulting in a bank run that spiraled into a six-year depression. The Depression of 1873 destroyed the nation's fledgling labor movement, and helped quell northerners remaining idealism about Reconstruction. In the South, many farms were capitalized entirely through loans. After 1873, most sources of credit vanished, forcing many landowners to default, driving them into an over-saturated labor market. Wages plummeted, contributing to the growing system of debt peonage in the South that trapped workers in endless cycles of poverty. Democrats responded nationally in 1874, running on sound economics and fiscal policy, which allowed them to take control of the House of Representatives.

On the eve of the 1876 Presidential election, the nation still reeling from depression, the Grant administration found itself no longer able to intervene in the South due to growing national hostility to interference in southern affairs. Scandalous corruption in the Grant Administration had sapped the national trust. By 1875, when armed conflict broke out in Mississippi and the state's Republican governor urged federal involvement, national Republicans felt they had no choice but to ignore the plea. Meanwhile, the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes, won big without mentioning Reconstruction, focusing instead on honest government, economic recovery, and temperance. His success entered him into the running as a potential Presidential candidate. The stage was set for an election that would end Reconstruction as a national issue.

Republicans chose Rutherford B. Hayes as their nominee while Democrats chose Samuel J. Tilden, who ran on honest politics and home rule in the South. Allegations of voter fraud and intimidation emerged in the three states in which Reconstruction held strong and whose outcome would decide the result: Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Indeed, those elections were fraught with violence and fraud because of the impunity with which white conservatives felt they could operate in their efforts to deter Republican voters. A special electoral commission voted along party lines-eight Republicans for, seven Democrats against-in favor of Hayes.

Democrats threatened to boycott Hayes' inauguration. Rival governments arose claiming to recognize Tilden as the rightfully elected President. Republicans, fearing another sectional crisis, reached out to Democrats. In the Compromise of 1877 Democrats conceded the presidency to Hayes on the promise that all remaining troops would be removed from the South. In March 1877, Hayes was inaugurated; in April, the remaining troops were ordered out of the South. The Compromise allowed southern Democrats to return to power, no longer fearing reprisal from federal troops or northern politicians for their flagrant violence and intimidation of black voters.

After 1877, Republicans no longer had the political capital to intervene in the South in cases of violence and electoral fraud, resulting in fewer chances for freedpeople to hold state office. In certain locations with large populations of African Americans like South Carolina, freedpeople continued to hold some local offices for several years. Yet, with its most revolutionary aims thwarted by 1868, and economic depression and political turmoil taking even its most modest promises off the table by the early 1870s, most of the promises of Reconstruction were unmet.
Table. This table shows the military districts of the seceded states of the South, the date the state was readmitted into the Union, and the date when conservatives recaptured the state house.

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Reconstructed ended when national attention turned away from the integration of former slaves as equal citizens enabling white Democrats to recapture southern politics. Between 1868 and 1877, and accelerating after the Depression of 1873, national interest in Reconstruction dwindled as economic issues moved to the foreground.

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The California Gold Rush | American Experience | PBS

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The discovery of gold in1848 unleashed the largest migration in United States history and drew people from a dozen countries to form a multi-ethnic society in California.

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Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act encouraged Western migration by providing settlers 160 acres of public land. In exchange, homesteaders paid a small filing fee and were required to complete five years of continuous residence before receiving ownership of the land. After six months of residency, homesteaders also had the option of purchasing the land from the government for $1.25 per acre. The Homestead Act led to the distribution of 80 million acres of public land by 1900.

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Research Guides: Homestead Act: Primary Documents in American History: Introduction

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Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act encouraged Western migration by providing settlers 160 acres of public land. In exchange, homesteaders paid a small filing fee and were required to complete five years of continuous residence before receiving ownership of the land.

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Land-Grant College Act of 1862 | United States legislation

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Land-Grant College Act of 1862: Land-Grant College Act of 1862, Act of the U.S. Congress (1862) that provided grants of land to states to finance the establishment of colleges specializing in "agriculture and the mechanic arts." Named for its sponsor, Vermont Congressman Justin Smith Morrill (1810-98), it granted each state

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https://worldhistoryproject.org/1863/12/8/lincoln-attempts-reconstruction-with-the-ten-percent-plan

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https://www.britannica.com/topic/Land-Grant-College-Act-of-1862

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https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/labor-movement-in-united-states
https://historyplex.com/important-inventions-of-second-industrial-revolution
https://youtu.be/iPLZyoVxUI4

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRhjqqe750A
https://www.apstudynotes.org/us-history/topics/gilded-age-scandal-and-corruption/

https://worldhistory.us/american-history/temperance-movement-produces-womens-suffrage-leaders.php
https://franceswillardhouse.org/frances-willard/social-reform-agenda/

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In the half century preceding World War I, heavy industry, telecommunications, and transportation were revolutionized. The Second Industrial Revolution was part of the greater Industrial Revolution and it is considered to have been sparked off by the widespread use of the Bessemer process and ended with mass production. The revolution began in the US and spread to European countries such as Germany, France, UK, Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands to Japan and eventually across the world. The revolution was fueled by the technological process and stretched from 1870 to 1914.

Background

In the United States, the second industrial revolution took place at a time of rapid territorial expansion. Armed with vast stretches of land, the need for the massive industry was felt, and infrastructure in transport and communication was expanding rapidly. The abundance of natural resources including ore, coal, and iron facilitated large-scale extraction, transportation, and provided the raw materials for industries.

The second industrial revolution took place in the midst of a wave immigration, as masses of people moved to the United States, primarily in search of employment in the country's burgeoning industries. The political landscape also took a front seat during the revolution with strong government economic reforms. Transportation was revolutionized by the use of railroads which enabled low-cost and mass transportation.

Changes in Industrial Processes

The second industrial revolution was marked by new and more efficient industrial processes, such as the Bessemer process which enabled the mass production of steel. The steel industry was further revolutionized by the adoption of the open-hearth process. The invention of the internal combustion engine, which used gas for propulsion was made and laid the foundation for modern engines. The internal combustion engine made the invention of the first airplane flight by the Wright brothers in 1903 possible.

The construction of railroad networks in the United States also led to the development of infrastructure for the telegraph, which improved long distance communication. The subsequent invention of the telephone in 1876 by Graham Bell made real time communication possible and readily available. The typewriter was also invented as was the light bulb which enabled people to work at night.

In the 1890s, the electric generators which are used in modern day household machinery such as refrigerators were invented. The invention of electricity and petroleum is considered to be a milestone in revolutionizing industries. Electricity translated to mass and inexpensive production of electro-chemicals such as magnesium and aluminum. Petroleum production and refining gave rise to products such as kerosene and gasoline. In industries, human labor was replaced by the use of machinery for efficiency. The invention of the internal combustion tractor replaced horses and mules and increased agricultural production. The new industrial processes translated into mass production, distribution and shipment, and fueled the growth of international trade.

Quality of Life Measures

Before the industrial revolution, most of the American people were rural dwellers. This situation changed dramatically as more and more Americans moved into the rapidly growing cities. To counter problems associated with urbanization, efficient sewage systems were put in place, and new approaches to water quality reduced the number of infections from many water-borne diseases. Improved technology in agricultural processes and efficient distribution of agricultural produce led to food security. The living standards of people increased as purchasing power also increased due to the availability of cheap commodities. A growing well-educated middle class emerged as more and more people settled in cities. The numbers of skilled and unskilled workers rose as specialization in various industrial processes was encouraged. Specialization translated into increased employee productivity and the growth of skilled supervisors and engineers who directed the workforce.

The second industrial revolution, however, led to various socioeconomic problems of its own. As machines replaced people, unemployment rates rose. Two depressions rocked the world's economy during the industrial revolution, in 1873 and 1897 which displaced laborers. The revolution created both extremes of wealth and poverty in capitalist fashion. Industrial working conditions during the second industrial revolution were dangerous. Long hours, lack of adequate protection when working with machinery, inadequate compensation and insurance and constant exposure to air pollutants were everyday realities for the industrial workers.

New and Revolutionized Products

Mass paper-making rendered paper more readily available and affordable to the masses. The industry fueled the growth of the printing press, fiction, and nonfiction books, schoolbooks, and letter writing created job opportunities. The revolution also facilitated the growth of the chemical industry. Other products invented include the zipper, toaster, air conditioner, flashlight, and traffic lights. The invention of the motorcycle and the automobile, coupled with the construction of hard-surfaced roads revolutionized transport on a global scale.

Warfare Technology

Warfare technology was redefined with the invention of the Maxim machine gun in 1885. Modern battleships were also built during the revolution, aided by the perfection of the oscillating engine which became popular for its efficiency.

Lasting Significance and Legacy

The revolution established a new employment structure still in use today, wherein workers are employed by their skills. The revolution created the basis for modern technology with inventions such as planes, automobiles, electricity, the telephone, and engines. Rapid urbanization spread from the United States to other parts of the world with the efficiency in transport and telecommunication. Availability of cheap commodities led to the consumer culture in place of the subsistence way of life that had characterized most parts of the world before the revolution. The industrial revolution also fueled the growth of capitalism and improvements in warfare that led to territorial disputes as countries could now protect their territories. The revolution also established the United States as the world's leading economic super power.

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What Was The Second Industrial Revolution?

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In the half century preceding World War I, heavy industry, telecommunications, and transportation were revolutionized. The Second Industrial Revolution was part of the greater Industrial Revolution and it is considered to have been sparked off by the widespread use of the Bessemer process and ended with mass production.

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Some of the inventions and changes during the late 19th century and early 20th century were never within any stretch of imagination of people at that time. Fecund imaginations and useful knowledge represented the industrial revolution. New scientific and technical knowledge was applied in the industrial sector and the scientist unleashed the practical applications and conjured up tricks that were hidden in science. It can be said that the technological revolution (second industrial revolution) fulfilled the limitations of the first revolution. Before the technological revolution, people used to manufacture things using basic hand tools in their houses. But after that, they shifted to advanced powered machinery, and mass productions. This revolution brought up variety of goods in big volumes and increased the industry's growth to unprecedented levels. Germany and the United States captured the markets and occupied superior ranks in the world economy. By the end of the 19th century, they were challenging Great Britain in the world market for industrial goods.
Significant Inventions During the Technological Revolution
Transportation Revolution
It was one of the significant revolutions that took place during this time. It transformed the way people lived, traveled and worked. Invention of steam engine and internal combustion engine in the 19th century radically modified the transfer of goods and passengers. Adding to it, the advent of automobile and airplanes in the 20th century caused exponential growth in transportation and further revolutionized it.

Automobile: In 1885, Karl Benz's Motorwagen, powered by internal combustion engine was the first automobile that was invented. It was improvised by Henry Ford and with his marketing skills, the automobile was not far from the reach of people. The automobile's effect was huge among the people and everybody started to buy it. Also, the automobile industry contributed significant amount to the country's economic growth.

Transcontinental Railroads: During 1869, transcontinental railroad was built in the United States of America by the Central Pacific Railroad of California and the Union Pacific Railroad. It links the United States from east to west.

Model T Ford: Model T is an automobile built in 1908, by Ford motor company. The car was very popular during those times and it was affordable to middle class people also. The assembly line innovation of the Ford company made the car very popular among Americans.

Airplane: Humankind has always dreamed of taking to the sky with inspirations from Leonardo da Vinci's flying machine and mythical wax wings of Daedalus and Icarus. In 1903, two American brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright converted the dreams into reality by building the first real flying machine called 'Airplane'. Their attempt zapped the people and the 20th century witnessed the most influential growth in transportation.

Communication Revolution
During the 19th century, a series of technological innovations dramatically altered the way of communication, trade, business and exchanging ideas in the world.

Telephone: In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell, invented a device called Telephone. His experiments with sound, in order to make the deaf communicate, lead to the invention of telephone. Telephone plays an indispensable role in our lives. Even though, cell phones try to replace telephone these days, the revolutionist Alexander Graham Bell of the 19th century was the pioneer and the revolution he made, took the world to an unimaginable phase.

Transatlantic Signal: In 1901, Marconi demonstrated the first transatlantic signal using Morse Code and Wireless Telegraphy. Wireless telegraphy was invented and widely used in ships for communication, by sending and receiving signals. During 1912, Titanic ship sent distress calls for its rescue to the nearby ships using transatlantic signals from the sea. In 1906, the first human voice signal was transmitted through radio transmissions using the airwaves by Marconi.

Phonograph: In 1877, Thomas Alva Edison invented Phonograph. It is a machine in which rotating records cause a stylus to vibrate and the vibrations are amplified acoustically and electronically.
Military Revolution
Gatling Gun: Richard Gatling, an American inventor invented the Gatling Gun in 1862. This was the first automated machine gun. It spawned a new range of automatic weapons that would go on to become one of the most important in several battles, including the American Civil War and the World Wars.

Torpedo: In 1866, Robert Whitehead, an English engineer, produced the first self-propelled underwater missile. Since then, torpedoes haven't deviated much from the original design made by Whitehead.

Steel Revolution
In 1850s, a process called 'Bessemer process' was developed for the production of steel. The key principle of this process is, removal of impurities from iron by oxidation, in a furnace. The process was widely used in industries and the cost of steel decreased to lower numbers. Mostly iron was used to construct buildings, ships and bridges. But after the revolution, manufacturers and constructors moved to steel.

Electric Power Revolution
In 1870, carbon filament lamp was developed by Sir Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison. This bulb is similar to the electric bulb which we use today. These two scientists combined together and formed a joint company called Swan and Edison. This company produced the first electric bulb. Using Faraday's principle, electric motor was constructed in 1870. From then, electric motor was accepted as a driving force in transportation industries. Later in 1888, induction electric motor was invented by Nikola Tesla.

The innovations and inventions of the technological revolution are the contributory factors for the modern life that we live today. The scientists and people who made those revolutions are well-thought-of even now, for their altruistic dispositions and intelligence. The technological revolution has increased the standard of our living and still continues to drive our economy.

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Very Important Inventions of the Second Industrial Revolution

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The radical and profound changes in political structure, economic relations and technical developments can be termed as 'Revolution'. Many machines were devised, and significant advances were made in production sectors during second industrial revolution. Let's know about the inventions that caused the revolution through this article.

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Economic Growth in the Gilded Age — US Economic History 5

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American Imperialism & the Spanish American War

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American Imperialism & the Spanish American War

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The Spanish-American War was an 1898 conflict between the United States and Spain that ended Spanish colonial rule in the Americas and resulted in U.S. acquisition of territories in the western Pacific and Latin America.

Causes: Remember the Maine!

The war originated in the Cuban struggle for independence from Spain, which began in February 1895.

Spain's brutally repressive measures to halt the rebellion were graphically portrayed for the U.S. public by several sensational newspapers engaging in yellow journalism, and American sympathy for the Cuban rebels rose.

Did you know? The term yellow journalism was coined in the 19th century to describe journalism that relies on eye-catching headlines, exaggeration and sensationalism to increase sales.

The growing popular demand for U.S. intervention became an insistent chorus after the still-unexplained sinking in Havana harbor of the American battleship USS Maine, which had been sent to protect U.S. citizens and property after anti-Spanish rioting in Havana.

War Is Declared

Spain announced an armistice on April 9 and speeded up its new program to grant Cuba limited powers of self-government.

But the U.S. Congress soon afterward issued resolutions that declared Cuba's right to independence, demanded the withdrawal of Spain's armed forces from the island, and authorized the use of force by President William McKinley to secure that withdrawal while renouncing any U.S. design for annexing Cuba.

Spain declared war on the United States on April 24, followed by a U.S. declaration of war on the 25th, which was made retroactive to April 21.

Spanish American War Begins

The ensuing war was pathetically one-sided, since Spain had readied neither its army nor its navy for a distant war with the formidable power of the United States.

In the early morning hours of May 1, 1898, Commodore George Dewey led a U.S. naval squadron into Manila Bay in the Philippines. He destroyed the anchored Spanish fleet in two hours before pausing the Battle of Manila Bay to order his crew a second breakfast. In total, fewer than 10 American seamen were lost, while Spanish losses were estimated at over 370. Manila itself was occupied by U.S. troops by August.

The elusive Spanish Caribbean fleet under Adm. Pascual Cervera was located in Santiago harbor in Cuba by U.S. reconnaissance. An army of regular troops and volunteers under Gen. William Shafter (including then-former assistant secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt and his 1st Volunteer Cavalry, the "Rough Riders") landed on the coast east of Santiago and slowly advanced on the city in an effort to force Cervera's fleet out of the harbor.

Cervera led his squadron out of Santiago on July 3 and tried to escape westward along the coast. In the ensuing battle all of his ships came under heavy fire from U.S. guns and were beached in a burning or sinking condition.

Santiago surrendered to Shafter on July 17, thus effectively ending the brief but momentous war.

Treaty of Paris

The Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish American War was signed on December 10, 1898. In it, Spain renounced all claim to Cuba, ceded Guam and Puerto Rico to the United States and transferred sovereignty over the Philippines to the United States for $20 million.

Philippine insurgents who had fought against Spanish rule soon turned their guns against their new occupiers. The Philippine-American War began in February of 1899 and lasted until 1902. Ten times more U.S. troops died suppressing revolts in the Philippines than in defeating Spain.

Impact of the Spanish-American War

The Spanish American War was an important turning point in the history of both antagonists. Spain's defeat decisively turned the nation's attention away from its overseas colonial adventures and inward upon its domestic needs, a process that led to both a cultural and a literary renaissance and two decades of much-needed economic development in Spain.

The victorious United States, on the other hand, emerged from the war a world power with far-flung overseas possessions and a new stake in international politics that would soon lead it to play a determining role in the affairs of Europe and the rest of the globe.

Fact Check

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Spanish-American War: Causes, Battles & Timeline | HISTORY

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The Spanish-American War was an 1898 conflict between the United States and Spain that ended Spanish colonial rule in the Americas.

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Growth, Cities, and Immigration: Crash Course US History #25

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Political Corruption and Progressive Age Reforms

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Political Corruption and Progressive Age Reforms

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Gilded Age Scandal and Corruption - AP U.S. History Topic Outlines - Study Notes

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The planning and conduct of war in 1914 were crucially influenced by the invention of new weapons and the improvement of existing types since the Franco-German War of 1870-71. The chief developments of the intervening period had been the machine gun and the rapid-fire field artillery gun. The modern machine gun, which had been developed in the 1880s and '90s, was a reliable belt-fed gun capable of sustained rates of extremely rapid fire; it could fire 600 bullets per minute with a range of more than 1,000 yards (900 metres). In the realm of field artillery, the period leading up to the war saw the introduction of improved breech-loading mechanisms and brakes. Without a brake or recoil mechanism, a gun lurched out of position during firing and had to be re-aimed after each round. The new improvements were epitomized in the French 75-millimetre field gun; it remained motionless during firing, and it was not necessary to readjust the aim in order to bring sustained fire on a target.

See how No Man's Land between World War I trenches led to the use of chemical weapons, tanks, and warplanes

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Machine guns and rapid-firing artillery, when used in combination with trenches and barbed-wire emplacements, gave a decided advantage to the defense, since these weapons' rapid and sustained firepower could decimate a frontal assault by either infantry or cavalry.

There was a considerable disparity in 1914 between the deadly effectiveness of modern armaments and the doctrinal teachings of some armies. The South African War and the Russo-Japanese War had revealed the futility of frontal infantry or cavalry attacks on prepared positions when unaccompanied by surprise, but few military leaders foresaw that the machine gun and the rapid-firing field gun would force armies into trenches in order to survive. Instead, war was looked upon by many leaders in 1914 as a contest of national wills, spirit, and courage. A prime example of this attitude was the French army, which was dominated by the doctrine of the offensive. French military doctrine called for headlong bayonet charges of French infantrymen against the German rifles, machine guns, and artillery. German military thinking, under the influence of Alfred, Graf von Schlieffen, sought, unlike the French, to avoid frontal assaults but rather to achieve an early decision by deep flanking attacks; and at the same time to make use of reserve divisions alongside regular formations from the outset of war. The Germans paid greater attention to training their officers in defensive tactics using machine guns, barbed wire, and fortifications.

The initial stages of the war

Initial strategies

Years before 1914, successive chiefs of the German general staff had been foreseeing Germany's having to fight a war on two fronts at the same time, against Russia in the east and France in the west, whose combined strength was numerically superior to the Central Powers'. The elder Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the German general staff from 1858 to 1888, decided that Germany should stay at first on the defensive in the west and deal a crippling blow to Russia's advanced forces before turning to counterattack the French advance. His immediate successor, Alfred von Waldersee, also believed in staying on the defensive in the west. Alfred, Graf von Schlieffen, who served as chief of the German general staff from 1891 to 1905, took a contrary view, and it was the plan he developed that was to guide Germany's initial wartime strategy. Schlieffen realized that on the outbreak of war Russia would need six full weeks to mobilize and assemble its vast armies, given the immense Russian countryside and population, the sparsity of the rail network, and the inefficiency of the government bureaucracy. Taking advantage of this fact, Schlieffen planned to initially adopt a purely defensive posture on the Eastern Front with a minimal number of troops facing Russia's slowly gathering armies. Germany would instead concentrate almost all of its troops in the west against France and would seek to bypass France's frontier fortifications by an offensive through neutral Belgium to the north. This offensive would sweep westward and then southward through the heart of northern France, capturing the capital and knocking that country out of the war within a few weeks. Having gained security in the west, Germany would then shift its troops to the east and destroy the Russian menace with a similar concentration of forces.

By the time of his retirement in 1905, Schlieffen had elaborated a plan for a great wheeling movement of the right (northern) wing of the German armies not only through central Belgium but also, in order to bypass the Belgian fortresses of Liège and Namur in the Meuse valley, through the southernmost part of the Netherlands. With their right wing entering France near Lille, the Germans would continue to wheel westward until they were near the English Channel; they would then turn southward so as to sever the French armies' line of retreat from France's eastern frontier to the south; and the outermost arc of the wheel would sweep southward west of Paris, in order to avoid exposing the German right flank to a counterstroke launched from the city's outskirts. If the Schlieffen Plan succeeded, Germany's armies would simultaneously encircle the French army from the north, overrun all of northeastern France, and capture Paris, thus forcing France into a humiliating surrender. The large wheeling movement that the plan envisaged required correspondingly large forces for its execution, in view of the need to keep up the numerical strength of the long-stretched marching line and the need to leave adequate detachments on guard over the Belgian fortresses that had been bypassed. Accordingly, Schlieffen allocated nearly seven-eighths of Germany's available troop strength to the execution of the wheeling movement by the right and centre wings, leaving only one-eighth to face a possible French offensive on Germany's western frontier. Thus, the maximum of strength was allocated to the wheel's edge-that is, to the right. Schlieffen's plan was observed by the younger Helmuth von Moltke, who became chief of the general staff in 1906. Moltke was still in office when war broke out in 1914.

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World War I - Military technology and initial strategies

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The modern machine gun and the rapid-fire field artillery gun changed how warfare was conducted, and existing military plans did not always reflect this fact. Initially Germany followed the Schlieffen Plan, which called for a defensive posture on the Eastern Front and launching a massive offensive attack on France.

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US Involvement in WWI | Drawing America To Victory

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How, when and why did the United States get involved in World War I?

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https://history.delaware.gov/exhibits/online/WWI/US-involvement-ww1.shtml
https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I/Technology-of-war-in-1914
http://bit.ly/treatyofversaillesphoto
http://bit.ly/franzferdinandphoto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL_lStk8q9c
https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-xviii

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History Brief: The Rise of the Automobile

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National Constitution Center - The 18th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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Section 1

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Keep Reading

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The 18th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Keep Reading

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http://bit.ly/stockmarketcrashphoto12
https://www.thebalance.com/fdr-and-the-new-deal-programs-timeline-did-it-work-3305598
https://fee.org/articles/what-caused-the-great-depression/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJEdMZR2H8Y
http://bit.ly/dustbowlphoto
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/america-goes-war-take-closer-look

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Business Cycles/ Causes of the Depression

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Business Cycles/ Causes of the Depression

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Few areas of historical research have provoked such intensive study as the causes of America's Great Depression-and for good reason. Tens of millions of humans suffered intense misery and despair.

How bad was the Great Depression? The dimensions of the economic catastrophe in America and the rest of the world cannot be captured fully by quantitative data alone, but here are some figures that might help put this economic nightmare into perspective:

From 1929-1933, production at the nation's factories, mines, and utilities fell by more than half.

People's real disposable incomes dropped 28%.

Stock prices collapsed to one-tenth of their pre-crash height.

The number of unemployed Americans rose from 1.6 million in 1929 to 12.8 million in 1933.

At the height of the Depression, one of every four workers was out of a job.

Because of these unspeakable traumas, the Great Depression and its causes have remained at the forefront of economic study and debate. The Great Depression was a complex event, and understanding what happened is no small challenge. In this guide, we aim to give you a clear picture of the key historical figures, policies, and events that caused and extended America's Great Depression.

We'll start by breaking down the timeline of how exactly the Depression unfolded, which we'll break up into into four distinct phases.

The Four Phases of the Great Depression

When you think of the Great Depression, probably the first thing that comes to mind is the massive stock market crash of 1929, when stock prices plummeted spectacularly and investors dumped their stocks as fast as they could. The ensuing panic was memorable indeed, but it was only one aspect of the Depression. In fact, the Depression had four distinct phases:

1. The government's "easy money" policies caused an artificial economic boom and a subsequent crash.

2. President Herbert Hoover's interventionist policies after the crash suppressed the self-adjusting aspect of the market, thus preventing recovery and prolonging the recession.

3. After Hoover left office, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal" expanded Hoover's interventionism into nearly every aspect of the American economy, thus deepening the Depression and extending it ever longer.

4. Labor laws such as the Wagner Act struck the final blow to the remaining healthy sectors of the economy, dragging the last remaining bulwarks of productivity to their knees.

Each of these phases are marked by distinct events, and each had their own specific causes. Together they produced one common result: business stagnation and unemployment on a scale never before seen in the United States. Let's examine each phase and its causes in turn.

1. Easy Money: A Series of False Signals

The first phase of the Great Depression was a massive boom during the "Roaring 20's," which inevitably burst in 1929. In order to understand this crash, we first have to understand the boom and how it happened.

For various reasons, the government in the 1920's created monetary policies that ballooned the quantity of money and credit in the economy. A great boom resulted, followed soon after by a painful day of reckoning. None of America's depressions prior to 1929, however, lasted more than four years and most of them were over in two. The Great Depression lasted for a dozen years because the government compounded its monetary errors with a series of harmful interventions. But how exactly did the government inflate the economy, and how did that cause the boom and inevitable bust?

Monetary Policy, Interest Rates, and the Business Cycle

The key to understanding how the government's policies caused the initial boom and bust of the Great Depression lies in understanding how businessmen and investors use interest rates to decide how and when to spend their money.

Investors rely on interest rates to gauge the level of risk for various investments. In simplistic terms, a relatively low interest rate for a given loan signals to potential investors that taking out the loan is probably a safe bet; a high interest rate, on the other hand, signals to investors that money can bet better invested elsewhere. The government's expansion of the money supply artificially reduces and thus falsifies the interest rates, and thereby misguides businessmen in their investment decisions.

The government's expansion of the money supply artificially reduces and thus falsifies interest rates. In the belief that declining rates indicate growing supplies of capital savings, investors embark upon new production projects. The creation of money gives rise to an economic boom. It causes prices to rise, especially prices of capital goods used for business expansion.

The costs of capital goods used for business expansion soar ever higher until business is no longer profitable. It is at this point that the decline begins. In order to prolong the boom, the monetary authorities may continue to inject new money until finally, frightened by the prospects of a run-away inflation, they being to contract the money supply. The boom that was built on the quicksand of inflation then comes to a sudden end.

The ensuing recession is a period of repair and readjustment. Prices and costs adjust anew to consumer choices and preferences.

Most importantly, interest rates readjust to reflect once more the actual supply of and demand deposits in savings. The malinvestments are abandoned or written down. Business costs are reduced through through various means until business can once more be profitably conducted, capital investments earn interest, and the market economy functions smoothly again.

Changes in the supply of money in the economy do have an effect on economic activity. This effect works through the fluctuations of interest rates, which in turn cause fluctuations in business activity.

When money is provided to the market in the form of credit expansion through the banking system, business firms erroneously view this as an increase in the supply of capital. Due to the decreased interest rate in the loan market brought about by the fictitious "increase" in capital, businesses increase their investments in long-range projects that appear profitable.

In addition, other factors as well can cause a discrepancy between the natural rate of interest and the rate which is paid in the loan market. Government policies with regard to debt creation, monetization, bank deposit guarantees, and taxation, can effectively externalize the risk associated with running budget deficits, thus artificially lowering loan rates in the market.

Either of these two influences on interest rates, or a combination of the two, can and do influence economic activity by inducing businesses to make investments that would otherwise not be made. Since real savings in the economy, however, do not increase due to these interventionist measures, there is no real money for businesses to finance the supplies and workers needed for production and growth. And thus the business boom must ultimately give way to a bust.

The Artificial Boom of the Roaring 20's

Now that you can see how manipulations of interest rates and money supply can affect the economy, we can take a look at the boom and bust business cycle leading up to the Great Depression.

The spectacular crash of 1929 followed five years of significant credit expansion by the Federal Reserve System under the Coolidge Administration. In 1924, after a sharp decline in business, the Reserve banks suddenly created some $500 million in new credit, which led to a bank credit expansion of over $4 billion in less than one year.

While the immediate effects of this new powerful expansion of the nation's money and credit were seemingly beneficial, initiating a new economic boom and effacing a 1924 decline, the ultimate outcome was most disastrous. It was the beginning of a monetary policy that led to the stock market crash in 1929 and the following depression.

Signifiant credit expansion under the Coolidge Administration was the beginning of a monetary policy that led to the crash in 1929.

The Federal Reserve System launched a further burst of inflation in 1927, the result being that total currency outside banks plus demand and time deposits in the United States increased from $44.51 billion at the end of June, 1924, to $55.17 billion in 1929. The volume of farm and urban mortgages expanded from $16.8 billion in 1921 to $27.1 billion in 1929.

Similar increases occurred in industrial, financial, and state and local government indebtedness. This expansion of money and credit was accompanied by rapidly rising real estate and stock prices. Prices for industrial securities, according to Standard & Poor's common stock index, rose from 59.4 in June of 1922 to 195.2 in September of 1929. Railroad stock climbed from 189.2 to 446.0, while public utilities rose from 82.0 to 375.

The flood of easy money drove interest rates down, pushed the stock market to dizzy heights, and thus gave birth to the "Roaring Twenties."

The Inevitable Bust

As the boom matured, business costs rose, interest rates began to readjust upward, and profits began to fall. The easy-money effects of the expansion wore off, and the monetary authorities, fearing price inflation, slowed the growth of the money supply. The manipulation was enough to knock out the shaky supports from underneath the economic house of cards.

After a failed attempt at stabilization in 1928, the Federal Reserve System finally abandoned its easy money policy at the beginning of 1929. It sold government securities and thereby halted the bank credit expansion. It raised its discount rate to 6% in August, 1929. Time-money rates rose to 8%, commercial paper rates to 6%, and call rates to the panic figures of 15% and 20%. The American economy was beginning to readjust to fair value levels. In June, 1929, business activity began to recede. Commodity prices began their retreat in July.

The security market reached its high on September 19 and then, under the pressure of early selling, slowly began to decline. For five more weeks the public nevertheless bought heavily on the way down. More than 100 million shares were traded at the New York Stock Exchange in September. Finally it dawned upon more and more stockholders that the trend had changed.

The deflation following the inflation wrenched the economy from tremendous boom to colossal bust.

By early 1929, the Federal Reserve was taking the punch away from the party. It choked off the money supply, raised interest rates, and for the next three years presided over a money supply that shrank by 30%. This deflation following the inflation wrenched the economy from tremendous boom to colossal bust.

Only the sharpest financers saw that the party was coming to an end before most other Americans did. Some even began selling stocks and buying bonds and gold as early as 1928. As Joseph Kennedy said, "only a fool holds out for the top dollar."

When the masses of investors caught up with forward-looking financers like Kennedy, they sensed the change in Fed policy, and the stampede was underway. The stock market, after nearly two months of moderate decline, plunged on "Black Thursday"-October 24, 1929-as the pessimistic view of large and knowledgeable investors spread.

After the crash in 29, the masses rushed on the banks to withdraw their money. The pressure on banks was great and tended not to decrease with the passage of time. In 1929, 659 banks failed; in 1930, 1,352; in 1931, 2,294, and in 1932, 1,456.

2. Hoover's Anti-Adjustment Policies

We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and the Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counter attack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. -Herbert Hoover

If this crash had been like previous ones, the subsequent hard times might have ended in a year or two. But unprecedented political bungling, starting with the policies of President Herbert Hoover, prolonged the misery for twelve long years.

Unemployment in 1930 averaged a mildly recessionary 8.9%, up from 3.2% in 1929. It shot up rapidly until peaking out at more than 25% in 1933. Until March 1933, these were the years of President Herbert Hoover.

Hoover's interventionist policies prevented the natural readjustment of the market.

But, as we'll see, Hoover's interventionist policies prevented the natural readjustment of the market. He not only signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which we'll cover in the next section, but also encouraged businessmen to artificially prop up wages, expanded government spending, set up all manner of government lending facilities, and increased the budget deficit. Along with the Federal Reserve System's failure to do its job, resulting in a 30% drop in the money supply, Hoover's interventions were responsible for turning what might have been a severe but swift recession into the Great Depression.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act

The Hoover administration passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in June 1930. The most protectionist legislation in U.S. history, Smoot-Hawley aimed to prop up prices in the American economy by keeping foreign products out.

The Act raised American tariffs to unprecedented levels, which practically closed our borders to foreign goods. According to most economic historians, this was the crowning folly of the whole period from 1920 to 1933 and the beginning of the real depression.

"Once we raised our tariffs," wrote Benjamin Anderson,

an irresistible movement all over the world to raise tariffs and to erect other trade barriers, including quotas, began. Protectionism ran wild over the world. Markets were cut off. Trade lines were narrowed. Unemployment in the export industries all over the world grew with great rapidity. Farm prices in the United States dropped sharply through the whole of 1930, but the most rapid rate of decline came following the passage of the tariff bill.

Officials in the administration and in Congress believed that raising trade barriers would force Americans to buy more goods made at home, which would solve the nagging unemployment problem. They ignored an important principle of international commerce: trade is ultimately a two-way street; if foreigners cannot sell their goods here, then they cannot earn the dollars they need to buy here.

Foreign companies and their workers were flattened by Smoot-Hawley's steep tariff rates.

Foreign companies and their workers were flattened by Smoot-Hawley's steep tariff rates, and foreign governments soon retaliated with trade barriers of their own. With their ability to sell in the American market severely hampered, they curtailed their purchases of American goods.

American agriculture was particularly hard hit. With a stroke of the presidential pen, farmers in this country lost nearly a third of their markets. Farm prices plummeted and tens of thousands of farmers went bankrupt. With the collapse of agriculture, rural banks failed in record numbers, dragging down hundreds of thousands of their customers.

Agricultural commodity prices, which had been well above the 1926 base before the crisis, dropped to a low of 47 in the summer of 1932. Crashing prices plunged hundreds of thousands of farmers into bankruptcy. Farm mortgages were foreclosed until various states passed moratoria laws, thus shifting the bankruptcy to countless creditors.

American exports fell from $5.5 billion in 1929 to $1.7 billion in 1932. American agriculture customarily had exported over 20% of its wheat, 55% of its cotton, 40% of its tobacco and lard, and many other products. When international trade and commerce were disrupted, American farming collapsed. In fact, the rapidly growing trade restrictions, including tariffs, quotas, foreign exchange controls, and other devices were generating a world-wide depression.

Hoover's Taxes, Subsidies, and Relief Schemes

Hoover dramatically increased government spending for subsidy and relief schemes. In the space of one year alone, from 1930 to 1931, the federal government's share of GNP increased by about one-third.

President Hoover called together the nation's industrial leaders and pledged them to adopt his program to maintain wage rates and expand construction. He sent a telegram to all the governors, urging cooperative expansion of all public works programs. He expanded Federal public works and granted subsidies to ship construction.

And for the benefit of the suffering farmers, a host of Federal agencies embarked upon price stabilization policies that generated ever larger crops and surpluses which in turn depressed product prices even further. Economic conditions went from bad to worse and unemployment in 1932 averaged 12.4 million.

In this dark hour of human want and suffering, the Federal government struck a final blow. The Revenue Act of 1932 doubled the income tax, the sharpest increase in the Federal tax burden in American history. Under the new Revenue Act:

Tax exemptions were lowered.

"Earned income credit" was eliminated.

Normal tax rates were raised from a range of 1.5% to 5% to a range of 4% to 8%.

Surtax rates were raised from 20% to a maximum of 55%.

Corporation tax rates were boosted from 12% to 13.75 and 14.5%.

Estate taxes were raised.

Gift taxes were imposed with rates from .75 to 33.5%.

On top of all these, a 10% gasoline tax was imposed, a 3% automobile tax, a telegraph and telephone tax, a 2¢ check tax, and many other excise taxes. And, finally, postal rates were increased substantially.

When state and local governments faced shrinking revenues, they, too, joined the Federal government in imposing new levies. The rate schedules of existing taxes on income and business were increased and new taxes imposed on business income, property, sales, tobacco, liquor, and other products.

Murray Rothbard, in his authoritative work on America's Great Depression (Van Nostrand, 1963), estimates that the fiscal burden of Federal, state, and local governments nearly doubled during the period, rising from 16% of net private product to 29%. This blow alone would bring any economy to its knees.

3. The New Deal: FDR's Interventionism

Soon after Herbert Hoover assumed the presidency in 1929, the economy began to decline, and between 1930 and 1933 the contraction assumed catastrophic proportions never experienced before or since in the United States. Disgusted by Hoover's inability to stem the collapse, in 1932 the voters elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, along with a heavily Democratic Congress, and set in motion the radical restructuring of government's role in the economy known as the New Deal.

Roosevelt was undeterred by the failure of the Hoover programs to achieve their object. So far as they considered them in that light at all, the New Dealers thought the Hoover effort was too timid and much too piecemeal. In any case, they were much more convinced of the healing powers of monetary inflation than Hoover had been.

The most prominent of the New Deal programs were supposed to deal with economic problems arising from the Great Depression. Most of them were put forward as remedies for depression-related conditions, many of them in an emergency atmosphere. But rather than cure the depression, they plunged it to new depths.

The New Deal's Central Planning: NRA and AAA

One of the great attributes of the private-property market system is its inherent ability to overcome almost any obstacle. Through price and cost readjustment, managerial efficiency and labor productivity, new savings and investments, the market economy tends to regain its equilibrium and resume its service to consumers. It doubtless would have recovered in short order from the Hoover interventions had there been no further tampering.

However, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed the Presidency, he, too, fought the economy all the way. Instead of clearing away the prosperity barriers erected by his predecessor, he built new ones of his own. He struck in every known way at the integrity of the U.S. dollar through monetary expansion schemes. He seized the people's gold holdings and subsequently devalued the dollar by 40%.

With some third of industrial workers unemployed, President Roosevelt embarked upon sweeping industrial reorganization. He persuaded Congress to pass the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which set up the National Recovery Administration (NRA).

Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which set up the National Recovery Administration (NRA).

The professed purpose of the NRA was to get business to regulate itself, ignoring the antitrust laws and developing fair codes of prices, wages, hours, and working conditions. The President's Re-employment Agreement called for a minimum wage of 400 an hour ($12 to $15 a week in smaller communities), a 35-hour work week for industrial workers and 40 hours for white collar workers, and a ban on all youth labor.

This was a naive attempt at "increasing purchasing power" by increasing payrolls. But, the immense increase in business costs through shorter hours and higher wage rates worked naturally as an anti revival measure. After passage of the Act, unemployment rose to nearly 13 million. The South, especially, suffered severely from the minimum wage provisions: the Act forced 500,000 Blacks out of work.

These National Recovery Administration codes were typically concerned with restricting competition within an industry, reducing hours of labor, and raising prices and wages. Employers were usually forbidden to employ children under 16 years old. A minimum wage throughout the industry and a work week of 40 hours were ordinarily specified. Further, the Cotton Textile Code, for example, forbade employers to use "productive machinery in the cotton textile industry for more than two shifts of 40 hours per week." Planning was supposed to be accomplished by the companies and workers acting in concert with government.

Nor was it simply major industries that were governed by codes initially; any and every sort of undertaking was included.

Code 450 regulated the Dog Food Industry

Code 427regulated the Curled Hair Manufacturing Industry and Horse Hair Dressing Industry

Code 262 regulated the Shoulder Pad Manufacturing Industry.

In New York, I. 'Izzy' Herk, executive secretary of Code 348, brought order to the Burlesque Theatrical Industry by insisting that no production could feature more than four strips.

President Roosevelt also attempted to address the disaster that had befallen American agriculture. He attacked the problem by passage of the Farm Relief and Inflation Act, popularly known as the First Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA).

The objective was to raise farm income by cutting the acreages planted or destroying the crops in the field, paying the farmers not to plant anything, and organizing marketing agreements to improve distribution. The program soon covered not only cotton, but also all basic cereal and meat production as well as principal cash crops. The enormous costs of the program were to be covered by a new "processing tax" levied on an already depressed industry.

The AAA was expected to do for agriculture much the same sort of thing that NRA would for industry, only more. Farmers were reckoned to be in much worse condition than manufacturers and industrial workers. The first task with them, according to the planners, was to bring farm income up to a "parity" (as it was called) with industrial income.

The AAA was expected to do for agriculture much the same sort of thing that NRA would for industry, only more.

The years 1909-1914 were chosen as a base for most farm staple products, and the aim was to raise farm prices to a level that would give them an income equivalent to the ratio between farm and industry that prevailed in the base period.

The main device for accomplishing this was reduction of production of staples. So dramatic was the need for reduction, New Dealers thought, that a considerable portion of the 1933 cotton crop was plowed up and destroyed, and many small pigs put to death.

Thereafter, farmers were induced to plant less by government subsidies for those who "cooperated." Under the first AAA (1933-1936), the money to pay for the various benefits paid to farmers came from a tax on processors. Many farmers had long believed, of course, that the middlemen got the profits from their endeavors. The New Deal gave this spurious notion legal standing by levying the tax.

NRA codes and AAA processing taxes came in July and August of 1933. Again, economic production which had flurried briefly before the deadlines, sharply turned downward. The Federal Reserve index dropped from 100 in July to 72 in November of 1933.

The thrust of the NRA and AAA was in the opposite direction from what was needed. If people have material needs, are unemployed or underemployed, the solution for them is either to produce for themselves what they need or produce for sale in the market enough of what is wanted to be able to buy what they need. These things require more, not less, production and changes in production activities, not the freezing of them into patterns of the past.

The thrust of the NRA and AAA was in the opposite direction from what was needed.

That is not to say that government would have had greater success in planning increased production. Some things were already being produced in greater quantities than could be profitably produced for the market. Any general effort to solve the problem was doomed to failure, for the problem was one of individuals, families, and other producing units. Only they could solve it.

The Supreme Court, by unanimous decision, outlawed NRA in 1935 and AAA in 1936. The Court maintained that the Federal legislative power had been unconstitutionally delegated and states' rights violated. These two decisions removed some fearful handicaps under which the economy was laboring.

The NRA in particular was a nightmare with continuously changing rules and regulations by a host of government bureaus. Above all, voidance of the act immediately reduced labor costs and raised productivity as it permitted labor markets to adjust. The death of AAA reduced the tax burden of agriculture and halted the shocking destruction of crops. Unemployment began to decline. In 1935 it dropped to 9.5 million, or 18.4% of the labor force, and in 1936 to only 7.6 million, or 14.5%.

Inflation and Pump-Priming Measures

When the economic planners saw their plans go wrong, they simply prescribed additional doses of Federal pump priming. In his January 1934 Budget Message, Mr. Roosevelt promised expenditures of $10 billion while revenues were at $3 billion. Yet, the economy failed to revive; the business index rose to 86 in May of 1934, and then turned down again to 71 by September. Furthermore, the spending program caused a panic in the bond market which cast new doubts on American money and banking.

The New Dealers held generally that the depression was caused by a shortage of purchasing power, or, at the least, a shortage in the hands of those who would spend it. In the most obvious sense, there was some sort of shortage of purchasing power by those who had great difficulty in providing for their most direct wants.

That is, there was food, clothing, shoes, and other goods available in stores. Yet, many people had to resort to charitable aid to get the wherewithal to live. Surely, they lacked the purchasing power to buy the goods.

They did not lack money-money, per se, is not purchasing power. Money is a medium of exchange. It is, then, a medium through which purchasing power is exercised.

A shortage of purchasing power is not a shortage of money-it's a shortage of goods.

The idea that pumping new money stimulates the economy stems from the idea that money itself is what gives people purchasing power. The problem is that purchasing power is not merely money; it is, in fact, real goods or services. Ultimately, all exchanges are of goods for goods. In a money economy, goods are exchanged for money, and money is then exchanged for other goods. A shortage of purchasing power, then, is in fact a shortage of goods.

Operating on the idea that purchasing power is money, the New Dealers simply printed more money in the hopes of restoring purchasing power to the underemployed masses. But this policy amounts to a trade in which money is exchanged not for goods, but for nothing at all.

The problem is that trading with a shortage of goods is not a normal market phenomenon at all. It occurs only as a result of a large scale intervention in the market through credit expansion fueled by debt; this process is known as inflation. Monetized debt, or inflation, is based not on trading goods for goods, but on trading goods for the promise of goods that don't exist yet, but will be produced in the future. It is nothing other than a promise of future production.

Flooding the economy with money that has not been traded for real goods introduces a whole set of temporary imbalances in the economy. There is a trade imbalance because the goods to be traded for other goods have not yet been produced. There is a price imbalance because prices are no longer in proportion to the money supply. There is a shortfall of real purchasing power (i.e., goods and services). In the wake of the credit expansion there will be an imbalance of production, for many producers will be induced to increase their production, and even their facilities for production, for there are many willing buyers with the money, it seems, to pay for their wares.

The imbalances resulting from any single monetary expansion, however large, will be only temporary. The market tends always toward balance, and if people are free to operate the market, balance will be restored. Prices will rise to compensate for the increase in the money supply. People will generally pay their debts out of production, if they can, and the trade imbalance will be restored.

However, at this stage the shortage of purchasing which was there at the outset will become obvious. Much of production must go into repaying debts. Moreover, even when the debts are repaid, there may need to be a further interval for savings to be made before many new purchases can be made. Many plants may lie idle, and there will be a depression. The adjustments that must be made to restore the balance are often difficult and unpleasant.

The impact of all these multitudinous measures - industrial, agricultural, financial, monetary, and other - upon a bewildered industrial and financial community was extraordinarily heavy. We must add the effect of continuing disquieting utterances by the President. He had castigated the bankers in his inaugural speech. He had made a slurring comparison of British and American bankers in a speech in the summer of 1934... That private enterprise could survive and rally in the midst of so great a disorder is an amazing demonstration of the vitality of private enterprise. -Benjamin Anderson

4. The Wagner Act and Labor Laws

The third phase of the Great Depression was thus drawing to a close. But there was little time to rejoice, for the scene was being set for another collapse in 1937 and a lingering depression that lasted until the day of Pearl Harbor. More than 10 million Americans were unemployed in 1938, and more than 9 million in 1939.

The Wagner Act of July 5, 1935, radically changed American employment and business. It took legal employer-employee disputes over labor contracts out of the courts of law and brought them under a newly created Federal agency, the National Labor Relations Board, which became prosecutor, judge, and jury, all in one. Labor union sympathizers on the Board further perverted the law that already afforded legal immunities and privileges to labor unions. The U. S. thereby abandoned a great achievement of Western civilization, equality under the law.

The Wagner Act, or National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), was passed in reaction to the Supreme Court's voidance of NRA and its labor codes. It aimed at crushing all employer resistance to labor unions. Any legal defense from an employer became an "unfair labor practice" punishable by the Board. The law not only obliged employers to deal and bargain with the unions designated as the employees' representative; later Board decisions also made it unlawful to resist the demands of labor union leaders.

The NLRA enabled unions to extort higher wages from employers than they could have received in the market.

The NRLA placed the power of government behind the organization of labor unions, mainly by way of the National Labor Relations Board, weighted the legal scales in favor of unions, and signaled a determination by the federal government that unions should prevail. Thereby, unions were able to extort higher wages from employers than they could have received in the market. The differential is a redistribution of wealth from employers to employees.

Following the election of 1936, the labor unions began to make ample use of their new powers. Through threats, boycotts, strikes, seizures of plants, and outright violence committed in legal sanctity, they forced millions of workers into membership. Consequently, labor productivity declined and yet wages were forced upward. Labor strife and disturbance ran wild. Ugly sit down strikes idled hundreds of plants. In the ensuing months economic activity began to decline and unemployment again rose above the ten million mark.

From the White House on the heels of the Wagner Act came a thunderous barrage of insults against business. Businessmen, Roosevelt fumed, were obstacles on the road to recovery. New strictures on the stock market were imposed. A tax on corporate retained earnings, called the "undistributed profits tax," was levied.

The relentless assaults of the Roosevelt administration against business, property, and free enterprise guaranteed that the capital needed to jumpstart the economy was either taxed away or forced into hiding. When Roosevelt took America to war in 1941, he eased up on his anti-business agenda, but a great deal of the nation's capital was diverted into the war effort instead of into plant expansion or consumer goods.

Not until both Roosevelt and the war were gone did investors feel confident enough to "set in motion the postwar investment boom that powered the economy's return to sustained prosperity."

Conclusion

On the eve of America's entry into World War II and twelve years after the stock market crash of Black Thursday, ten million Americans were jobless. Roosevelt had pledged in 1932 to end the crisis, but it persisted two presidential terms and countless interventions later.

Along with the horror of World War II came a revival of trade with America's allies. The war's destruction of people and resources did not help the U.S. economy, but this renewed trade did. More important, the Truman administration that followed Roosevelt was decidedly less eager to berate and bludgeon private investors, and as a result, those investors came back into the economy to fuel a powerful postwar boom.

In the final analysis, the genesis of the Great Depression lay in the inflationary monetary policies of the U.S. government in the 1920s. It was prolonged and exacerbated by a litany of political missteps: trade-crushing tariffs, incentive-sapping taxes, mind-numbing controls on production and competition, senseless destruction of crops and cattle, and coercive labor laws. It was not the free market that produced twelve years of agony; rather, it was political bungling on a scale as grand as there ever was.

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Few areas of historical research have provoked such intensive study as the causes of America's Great Depression-and for good reason. Tens of millions of humans suffered intense misery and despair. How bad was the Great Depression?

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The New Deal is an economic policy Franklin D. Roosevelt launched to end the Great Depression. Americans, battered by 25% unemployment, Dust Bowl droughts, and four waves of bank failures, welcomed the government's rescue.

FDR proposed the New Deal to reverse the downward economic spiral.﻿﻿ The goal was relief, recovery, and reform for those who were hardest hit.

FDR launched the New Deal in three waves from 1933 to 1939. Congress passed dozens of programs to stabilize the U.S. financial system. They provided relief to farmers and jobs to the unemployed. They also built private-public partnerships to boost manufacturing.

FDR's New Deal policies introduced Keynesian economic theory. It said government spending could end the Depression by stimulating consumer demand. The New Deal was a far cry from President Herbert Hoover's "...hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government," derided by FDR in his 1936 campaign speech.﻿﻿

Hoover believed a free market economy would self-correct. As the Depression wore on, government revenue fell, so Hoover cut spending. He signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff to protect U.S. industries.﻿﻿ He believed business prosperity would trickle down to the average person. Instead, the Depression worsened.

First New Deal and Its Programs

Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933. In his first 100 days in office, FDR pushed Congress to pass 15 new agencies and laws. Together, they created "capitalism with safety nets and subsidies," according to historian Lawrence Davidson.﻿﻿

Emergency Banking Act - March 9: FDR closed all banks as soon as he was inaugurated to stop bank runs. It was enacted at great speed. A special session of Congress passed the bill in seven-and-a-half hours. This Act allowed banks to reopen once examiners found them to be financially secure. Five thousand banks reopened in the next three days.﻿﻿

Government Economy Act - March 20: The Act cut the pay of government and military employees by 15%. It cut government spending by 25%.﻿﻿ The $1 billion saved went to finance New Deal programs.

Beer-Wine Revenue Act - March 22: It legalized the sale of beer and wine and taxed alcohol sales, raising federal revenue. The Beer-Wine Revenue Act was followed by the passage of the 21st Amendment, which effectively ended Prohibition.

Civilian Conservation Corps - April 5: The program hired 3 million workers over nine years to conserve public land.﻿﻿ They planted forests, built flood barriers, and maintained roads and trails.

Abandonment of Gold Standard - April 20: FDR stopped a run on the precious metal. He ordered everyone to exchange all gold for dollars.

Federal Emergency Relief Act - May 12: This program funded a wide variety of jobs in agriculture, the arts, construction, and education.﻿﻿

Agricultural Adjustment Act - May 12: This legislation subsidized farmers to reduce crops. It doubled crop prices by 1937. It was overturned by Supreme Court in 1936 because it taxed processors but gave funds to farmers. That was remedied in 1938.

Emergency Farm Mortgage Act - May 12: The act provided loans to save farms from foreclosure.﻿﻿

Tennessee Valley Authority Act - May 18: The program established a federal corporation that built power stations in the Tennessee Valley, the poorest area in the nation.

Securities Act - May 27: It required corporations to provide information to investors before issuing stock.﻿﻿

Abrogation of Gold Payment Clause - June 5: The government no longer had to repay dollars with gold.﻿﻿

Home Owners Refinancing Act - June 13: The act established the Home Owners Loan Corporation that refinanced mortgages to prevent foreclosures.﻿﻿ It also provided additional capital to mortgage lenders. When it closed in 1935, it had refinanced 1 million homes, which was the equivalent of 20% of all urban mortgages.

Glass-Steagall Banking Act - June 16: This law separated investment banking from retail banking. It prevented retail banks from using depositors' funds for risky investments. It gave the regulation of retail banks to the Federal Reserve, prohibited bank sales of securities, and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The act was repealed in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

National Industrial Recovery Act - June 16: This labor and consumer law set up the Public Works Administration to create public works jobs, like San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and New York City's Triborough Bridge. This law also created the National Recovery Administration. It outlawed child labor, established a minimum wage of $1.25, and limited the workday to eight hours. It gave trade unions the legal right to bargain with employers. It was declared unconstitutional in 1935.

Emergency Railroad Transportation Act - June 16: This piece of legislation attempted to coordinate the national railway systems.﻿﻿

Civil Works Administration - Nov. 9: Created thousands of construction jobs to put people to work.﻿﻿ Congress ended it on March 31, 1934.

In 1934, conservative businessmen criticized the New Deal for being too socialistic. Others, like Louisiana politician Huey Long, said it didn't do enough for the poor. Despite their criticisms, FDR pushed for these additional programs:

Gold Reserve Act - January 30: FDR prohibited private gold ownership.﻿﻿ He increased the price of gold to $35 per ounce, up from $20.67 per ounce where it had been for 100 years. That almost doubled the value of the gold held in Fort Knox from $4.033 billion to $7.348 billion, making the United States the world's largest owner of gold.

National Housing Act - June 27: This law established the Federal Housing Administration, which provides federal insurance for mortgages.﻿﻿

Securities Exchange Act - The law created the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates stocks and the stock market.﻿﻿

Federal Communications Act - The Act consolidated all federal regulation of telephone, telegraph, and radio communications under the Federal Communications Commission.﻿﻿

Second New Deal Programs

In 1935, the Supreme Court struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act. Concerned that other programs would also be eliminated, FDR launched the second round of New Deal programs. These focused on providing more services for the poor, the unemployed, and farmers. FDR spoke about helping the "...millions who never had a chance -- men at starvation wages, women in sweatshops, children at looms."

Soil Conservation & Domestic Allotment Act - February 29: This program paid farmers to plant soil-building crops, like beans and grasses, to counteract the Dust Bowl.﻿﻿

Emergency Relief Appropriation - April 8: The program replaced FERA and funded the new Works Progress Administration with $5 million.﻿﻿ It employed 8.5 million people to build bridges, roads, public buildings, public parks, and airports. It paid artists to create 2,566 murals and 17,744 pieces of sculpture to decorate the public works.

Rural Electrification Act - May 20: The law provided loans to farming cooperatives to generate electricity for their rural areas.﻿﻿

National Labor Relations Act /Wagner Act - July: This law protected the rights of employees to organize and address working conditions, with or without a union, and created the National Labor Relations Board.﻿﻿

Resettlement Act - May: It created the Resettlement Administration that trained farmers and administered farm debt adjustment activities. It bought 10 million acres of submarginal farmland and paid farmers to convert it to pasture, preserves, or parks. It resettled farmers onto better land and taught them modern conservation and farming techniques.

Social Security Act - August: This law created the Social Security Trust Fund and Administration to provide income to the elderly, the blind, the disabled, and children in low-income households.

Third New Deal Programs

In 1937, FDR rolled out the Third New Deal. Concerned about budget deficits, he did not fund it as much as the previous two.

United States Housing Act: Also called the Wagner-Steagall Act, it funded state-run public housing projects.﻿﻿

Bonneville Power Administration: Congress created a federal agency that delivered and sold power from the Bonneville Dam, which had been built by the PWA, near Portland Oregon.

Farm Tenancy Act: Called the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act, it created Farmers' Home Corporation to provide loans for tenant farmers to buy their farms.﻿﻿

Farm Security Administration: This replaced the Resettlement Administration to provide loans and training for farmers.﻿﻿

The cutback in New Deal spending pushed the economy back into the Depression.﻿﻿ FDR urged Congress to enact a $5 billion relief program, which consisted of:﻿﻿

Federal National Mortgage Association: This organization resells mortgages on the secondary market to provide more funds for banks to lend.

New Agricultural Adjustment Act: The law remedied the 1933 AAA.

Fair Labor Standards Act: This labor law established U.S. minimum wage, overtime pay, record-keeping, and youth employment standards.﻿﻿

In 1938, FDR abolished mark to market accounting.﻿﻿ Some experts believed it forced many banks out of business. The rule forced banks to write down their real estate as values fell. FDR's new rule allowed them to keep these assets on their books at historical prices.﻿﻿

In 1939, FDR launched the Federal Security Agency. It administered Social Security, federal education funding, and food and drug safety. Congress abolished it in 1953.

Why the New Deal Was a Success

The New Deal worked. After FDR had launched the first New Deal, the economy grew 10.8% in 1934.﻿﻿ When the second New Deal rolled out, the economy increased by 8.9% in 1935 and 12.9% in 1936. After FDR cut government spending in 1937, the economy contracted 3.3%.

From 1932, the year before the New Deal, to 1941, when the United States entered the war, the debt only grew by around $3 billion a year.﻿﻿ In 1942, defense spending added $23 billion to the debt. The amount added tripled to $64 billion in 1943. If that much had been spent in the first year of the New Deal, it would have ended the Depression right there and then.

Some say the New Deal didn't work because the Depression lasted for 10 years. They point out that defense spending on World War II was the only thing that ended the Depression. But if FDR had spent the same amount on the New Deal as he did on war, it would have ended the Depression.﻿﻿

New Deal programs softened the extremes of the business cycle. Before the New Deal (1797-1932), there were 33 major economic downturns, 22 recessions, four depressions, and seven bank runs and panics.﻿﻿ They impacted 60 of the 132 years covered. Recessions were more severe than they are today because there weren't the New Deal federal agencies to control corruption, fraud, and exploitation.

Since WWII, there have been 11 recessions that impacted just 10 out of 60 years.﻿﻿ They were milder than those before, thanks to the safety nets of the New Deal.

How the New Deal Could Have Prevented World War II

Consider this. FDR spent thirty times more in 1943 on the war than he did in 1933 on the New Deal. There was no resistance to war spending as there was to domestic spending. No one was concerned about the budget deficit when the world was worried about Hitler's military dominance.

But concerns about the budget deficit sabotaged the New Deal from ending the Depression's global economic catastrophe. Why do military threats engender so much more public support than economic ones?

If FDR had spent as much on the New Deal in 1933 as he did in the war in 1943, it would have ended the Depression by creating jobs, demand, and economic growth. The Depression's misery helped propel the German people to put the Nazis and Hitler in power.

If FDR and the New Deal had ended the Depression in the early 1930s, the United States could have turned its resources sooner to helping its allies, Great Britain, and France. It would have at least shortened, if not prevented, World War II.

New Deal Timeline

1929. Hoover became president. The stock market crash in October kicked off the Depression. There was a $1 billion surplus.﻿﻿ Unemployment was at 3.2%.﻿﻿

1930. Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff to protect jobs. Trading partners retaliated, driving world trade down 66%.﻿﻿ The economy contracted 8.5%, and unemployment rose to 8.7%.﻿﻿ Another $1 billion surplus.

1931. Fed raised rates to defend the gold standard, worsening the depression.﻿﻿ The economy contracted 6.4%, unemployment rose to 15.9%, and debt increased by $1 billion.

1932. FDR campaigned on New Deal promises. The economy contracted 12.9%, and unemployment rose to 23.6%. Lower revenues added $3 billion to debt.

1933. FDR took office. He immediately launched 15 programs under the First New Deal. This added $3 billion to debt. Depression started to lift, as the economy only contracted 1.3%. Unemployment rose to 24.9%.

1934. The economy grew by 10.8%, and unemployment fell to 21.7%. Five billion dollars was added to the debt.

1935. FDR launched the Second New Deal, adding $2 billion to debt. The economy grew 8.9%, and unemployment fell to 20.1%.

1936. The economy grew 12.9%, reducing unemployment to 16.9%. Five billion dollars was added to the debt.

1937. FDR started his second term. Fearing a budget deficit, he cut spending, only adding $3 billion to debt, despite rolling out the Third New Deal. The economy grew 5.1%, and unemployment fell to 14.3%.

1938. No more New Deal legislation was passed. Spending was cut, so only $1 billion was added to the debt. Unemployment rose to 19%. The economy shrank 3.3%.

1939. Dust Bowl drought ended. The United States spent to build up the military as Europe entered WWII. The expenditures added $3 billion to debt. The economy grew 8%, and unemployment fell to 17.2%.

1940. The unemployment rate fell to 14.6% as the United States started the draft. FDR won reelection. America assisted Great Britain by sending weapons. This added $3 billion to debt. The economy grew by 8.8%.

1941. FDR began his third term. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December. The United States entered WWII. Spending eliminated the Depression and added $6 billion to debt. The economy grew 17.7%, and unemployment fell to 9.9%.

1942. Unemployment fell to 4.7% while the economy grew 18.9%. War spending added $23 billion to debt.

1943. War added $64 billion to debt. Gross domestic product growth was 17%, and unemployment fell to 1.9%. Italy surrendered.

1944. GDP growth was 8%, while unemployment was 1.2%. The Bretton-Woods Agreement made the dollar, the global currency.

1945. FDR died in April. Truman became president. He added $58 billion to debt. Germany surrendered in May. Truman dropped a nuclear bomb in August. Japan surrendered in September, ending WWII. The economy contracted 1%. Unemployment edged up to 1.9% as soldiers returned home.

Four Ways the New Deal Affects You Today

Many of the New Deal's programs are still safeguarding your finances today. The four most significant are Social Security, the minimum wage, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the FDIC.

Social Security

The Social Security program provides a guaranteed income for workers who have paid into the system. Most people are familiar with the retirement benefits which can also be extended to the retiree's spouse.﻿﻿ ﻿﻿

Social Security also pays disability benefits to eligible beneficiaries who become disabled before reaching retirement age. It pays children, surviving spouses, and dependent parents of eligible beneficiaries who die or become disabled.﻿﻿ ﻿﻿ In some cases, it will even pay benefits to divorced spouses.﻿﻿

There is also a Supplemental Security Income program that pays benefits to disabled children and adults with limited income.﻿﻿ There's also a Special Benefits program for qualified World War II veterans.﻿﻿

Minimum Wage

The minimum wage is the lowest legal wage companies can pay workers. As of 2019, the U.S. current national minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. The purpose of minimum wage laws is to stop employers from exploiting desperate workers.

The minimum wage should provide enough income to afford a living wage. That is the amount needed to provide enough food, clothing, and shelter.

In fact, at 40 hours per week for 52 weeks, the minimum wage translates to $15,080 a year. That is more than the federal poverty level for a single person but is lower than the poverty level for a couple.﻿﻿ In other words, if someone were trying to support a family by making minimum wage, they would qualify for federal poverty assistance.

The SEC regulates stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, making investing safer. The SEC also provides information to help you invest through Investor.gov.﻿﻿ It provides basic education, such as how the markets work, asset allocation, and a review of the different retirement plans. It has a section on How to Select a Broker.﻿﻿ It provides financial planning tools, such as how much you need to retire.﻿﻿

The FDIC insures savings, checking, and other deposit accounts up to $250,000 per account at each bank. For some joint accounts, the FDIC insures $250,000 per owner.﻿﻿ The FDIC also examines and supervises about 5,250 banks, more than half of the total system.

When a bank fails, the FDIC steps in. It sells the bank to another one and transfers the depositors to the purchasing bank. The transition is seamless from the customer's point of view.

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4 Surprising Ways the New Deal Affects You Today

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The New Deal is an economic policy Franklin D. Roosevelt launched to end the Great Depression. Americans, battered by 25% unemployment, Dust Bowl droughts, and four waves of bank failures, welcomed the government's rescue. FDR proposed the New Deal to reverse the downward economic spiral.﻿﻿ The goal was relief, recovery, and reform for those who were hardest hit.

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December 7, 1941: A Day That Will Live in Infamy
America's isolation from war ended on December 7, 1941, when Japan staged a surprise attack on American military installations in the Pacific. The most devastating strike came at Pearl Harbor, the Hawaiian naval base where much of the US Pacific Fleet was moored. In a two-hour attack, Japanese warplanes sank or damaged 18 warships and destroyed 164 aircraft. Over 2,400 servicemen and civilians lost their lives.
America's Reaction
"No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory."
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 8, 1941

Though stunned by the events of December 7, Americans were also resolute. On December 8, President Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war against Japan. The declaration passed with just one dissenting vote. Three days later, Germany and Italy, allied with Japan, declared war on the United States. America was now drawn into a global war. It had allies in this fight--most importantly Great Britain and the Soviet Union. But the job the nation faced in December 1941 was formidable.

Joining the Military

The United States faced a mammoth job in December 1941. Ill-equipped and wounded, the nation was at war with three formidable adversaries. It had to prepare to fight on two distant and very different fronts, Europe and the Pacific.

America needed to quickly raise, train, and outfit a vast military force. At the same time, it had to find a way to provide material aid to its hard-pressed allies in Great Britain and the Soviet Union.

Meeting these challenges would require massive government spending, conversion of existing industries to wartime production, construction of huge new factories, changes in consumption, and restrictions on many aspects of American life. Government, industry, and labor would need to cooperate. Contributions from all Americans, young and old, men and women, would be necessary to build up what President Roosevelt called the "Arsenal of Democracy."

In the months after Pearl Harbor, the nation swiftly mobilized its human and material resources for war. The opportunities and sacrifices of wartime would change America in profound, and sometimes unexpected, ways.
Recruitment
The primary task facing America in 1941 was raising and training a credible military force. Concern over the threat of war had spurred President Roosevelt and Congress to approve the nation's first peacetime military draft in September 1940. By December 1941 America's military had grown to nearly 2.2 million soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.

America's armed forces consisted largely of "citizen soldiers",men and women drawn from civilian life. They came from every state in the nation and all economic and social strata. Many were volunteers, but the majority,roughly 10 million,entered the military through the draft. Most draftees were assigned to the army. The other services attracted enough volunteers at first, but eventually their ranks also included draftees.
Barracks Life
Upon their arrival at the training camps, inductees were stripped of the freedom and individuality they had enjoyed as civilians. They had to adapt to an entirely new way of living, one that involved routine inspections and strict military conduct, as well as rigorous physical and combat training. They were given identical haircuts, uniforms, and equipment, and were assigned to spartan barracks that afforded no privacy and little room for personal possessions.
The Draft
By late 1942 all men aged 18 to 64 were required to register for the draft, though in practice the system concentrated on men under 38. Eventually 36 million men registered. Individuals were selected from this manpower pool for examination by one of over 6,000 local draft boards. These boards, comprised of citizens from individual communities, determined if a man was fit to enter the military. They considered factors like the importance of a man's occupation to the war effort, his health, and his family situation. Many men volunteered rather than wait to be drafted. That way, they could choose their branch of service.

Potential servicemen reported to military induction centers to undergo physical and psychiatric examinations. If a man passed these exams, he was fingerprinted and asked which type of service he preferred, though his assignment would be based on the military's needs. After signing his induction papers, he was issued a serial number. The final step was the administration of the oath. He was now in the military. After a short furlough, he reported to a reception center before being shipped to a training camp. New recruits faced more medical examinations, inoculations, and aptitude tests.
Training
The training camp was the forge in which civilians began to become military men and women. In the training camps new servicemen and women underwent rigorous physical conditioning. They were drilled in the basic elements of military life and trained to work as part of a team. They learned to operate and maintain weapons. They took tests to determine their talents and were taught more specialized skills. Paratroopers, antiaircraft teams, desert troops, and other unique units received additional instruction at special training centers.

The Home Front

"I need not repeat the figures. The facts speak for themselves.... These men could not have been armed and equipped as they are had it not been for the miracle of production here at home. The production which has flowed from the country to all the battlefronts of the world has been due to the efforts of American business, American labor, and American farmers, working together as a patriotic team."
--President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Navy Day speech, October 27, 1944

Raising an armed force was just part of America's war effort. That force had to be supplied with the uniforms, guns, tanks, ships, warplanes, and other weapons and equipment needed to fight. With its vast human and material resources, the United States had the potential to supply both itself and its allies. But first the American economy had to be converted to war production.

The war production effort brought immense changes to American life. As millions of men and women entered the service and production boomed, unemployment virtually disappeared. The need for labor opened up new opportunities for women and African Americans and other minorities. Millions of Americans left home to take jobs in war plants that sprang up around the nation. Economic output skyrocketed.

The war effort on the "Home Front" required sacrifices and cooperation. "Don't you know there's a war on?" was a common expression. Rationing became part of everyday life. Americans learned to conserve vital resources. They lived with price controls, dealt with shortages of everything from nylons to housing, and volunteered for jobs ranging from air raid warden to Red Cross worker.

Rationing and Recycling

"Food for Victory"
To conserve and produce more food, a "Food for Victory" campaign was launched. Eating leftovers became a patriotic duty and civilians were urged to grow their own vegetables and fruits. Millions of "Victory gardens," planted and maintained by ordinary citizens, appeared in backyards, vacant lots, and public parks. They produced over 1 billion tons of food. Americans canned food at home and consulted "Victory cookbooks" for recipes and tips to make the most of rationed goods.

"Make It Do or Do Without"
War production created shortages of critical supplies. To overcome these shortages, war planners searched for substitutes. One key metal in limited supply was copper. It was used in many war-related products, including assault wire. The military needed millions of miles of this wire to communicate on battlefields.

To satisfy the military's demands, copper substitutes had to be found to use in products less important to the nation's defense. The US Mint helped solve the copper shortage. During 1943 it made pennies out of steel. The Mint also conserved nickel, another important metal, by removing it from 5-cent coins. Substitutions like these helped win the production battle.

"Do With Less, So They'll Have More"
The military needed more than guns and ammunition to do its job. It had to be fed. The Army's standard K ration included chocolate bars, which were produced in huge numbers. Cocoa production was increased to make this possible.

Sugar was another ingredient in chocolate. It was also used in chewing gum, another part of the K ration. Sugar cane was needed to produce gunpowder, dynamite, and other chemical products.

To satisfy the military's needs, sugar was rationed to civilians. The government also rationed other foods, including meat and coffee. Local rationing boards issued coupons to consumers that entitled them to a limited supply of rationed items.

"Save Waste Fat for Explosives"
Ammunition for rifles, artillery, mortars, and other weapons was one of the most important manufacturing priorities of World War II. A key ingredient needed to make the explosives in much ammunition was glycerine.

To help produce more ammunition, Americans were encouraged to save household waste fat, which was used to make glycerine. Other household goods,including rags, paper, silk, and string,were also recycled. This was a home front project that all Americans could join.

Salvage for Victory

Canteens are a standard part of military equipment. Millions were produced during the war. Most were made of steel or aluminum, metals which were also used to make everything from ammunition to ships. At times, both metals were in short supply.

To meet America's metal needs, scrap was salvaged from basements, backyards, and attics. Old cars, bed frames, radiators, pots, and pipes were just some of the items gathered at metal "scrap drives" around the nation. Americans also collected rubber, tin, nylon, and paper at salvage drives.

"Share Your Cars and Spare Your Tires"
America's military needed millions of tires for jeeps, trucks, and other vehicles. Tires required rubber. Rubber was also used to produce tanks and planes. But when Japan invaded Southeast Asia, the United States was cut off from one of its chief sources of this critical raw product.

America overcame its rubber shortage in several ways. Speed limits and gas rationing forced people to limit their driving. This reduced wear and tear on tires. A synthetic rubber industry was created. The public also carpooled and contributed rubber scrap for recycling.

Dollars for Defense
To help pay for the war, the government increased corporate and personal income taxes. The federal income tax entered the lives of many Americans. In 1939 fewer than 8 million people filed individual income tax returns. In 1945 nearly 50 million filed. The withholding system of payroll deductions was another wartime development. The government also borrowed money by selling "war bonds" to the public. With consumer goods in short supply, Americans put much of their money into bonds and savings accounts.

Mobilizing the Economy

America's economy performed astonishing feats during World War II. Manufacturers retooled their plants to produce war goods. But this alone was not enough. Soon huge new factories, built with government and private funds, appeared around the nation. Millions of new jobs were created and millions of Americans moved to new communities to fill them. Annual economic production, as measured by the Gross National Product (GNP), more than doubled, rising from $99.7 billion in 1940 to nearly $212 billion in 1945.

Production Miracles In industry after industry Americans performed production miracles. One story helps capture the scale of the defense effort. In 1940 President Roosevelt shocked Congress when he proposed building 50,000 aircraft a year. In 1944 the nation made almost double that number. Ford's massive Willow Run bomber factory alone produced nearly one plane an hour by March 1944.

To achieve increases like this, defense spending jumped from $1.5 billion in 1940 to $81.5 billion in 1945. By 1944 America led the world in arms production, making more than enough to fill its military needs. At the same time, the United States was providing its allies in Great Britain and the Soviet Union with critically needed supplies.

Civilian Defense
Many Americans volunteered to defend the nation from enemy bombing or invasion. They trained in first aid, aircraft spotting, bomb removal, and fire fighting. Air raid wardens led practice drills, including blackouts. By mid-1942 over 10 million Americans were civil defense volunteers.

Though America's mainland was never invaded, there were dangers offshore. Several Japanese submarines were spotted near the Pacific coast, and German U-boats patrolled the Atlantic coast, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea. At least 10 US naval vessels were sunk or damaged by U-boats operating in American waters.

A Workforce Changed by War: Unemployment Disappears
The war virtually ended unemployment in America. The need for workers led manufacturers to hire women, teenagers, the aged, and minorities previously excluded by discrimination from sectors of the economy. Plentiful overtime work contributed to rising wages and increased savings.

Military and economic expansion created labor shortages. To fill the gap, government and industry encouraged women to enter the workforce. Though most working women continued to labor in more traditional employment like waitressing and teaching, millions took better-paid jobs in defense factories.

African Americans and other minorities also took high-paying industrial jobs previously reserved for whites. In 1941, black labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a protest march on Washington, D.C. if the government didn't bar racial discrimination in defense plants with government contracts. Faced with this threat, President Roosevelt banned such discrimination and created the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to investigate bias charges.

Millions of women, including many mothers, entered the industrial workforce during the war. They found jobs in especially large numbers in the shipbuilding and aircraft industries. "Rosie the Riveter" became a popular symbol of patriotic womanhood. Though defense jobs paid far more than traditional "female" occupations, women were still often paid less than men performing comparable work. Moreover, at war's end, women were expected to leave the factories to make way for returning male veterans.

Higgins Boats

Higgins Industries designed and built two basic classes of military craft.

The first was landing craft, constructed of wood and steel and used to transport fully armed troops, light tanks, field artillery, and other mechanized equipment and supplies to shore. These boats helped make the amphibious landings of World War II possible.

Higgins also designed and manufactured supply vessels and specialized patrol craft, including high-speed PT boats, antisubmarine boats, and dispatch boats.

LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel)
The LCVP was the most famous landing craft designed and produced by Higgins Industries. It could land soldiers, and even jeeps, on a beach. LCVPs were used in North Africa, Europe, and the Pacific during the war.

From the Eureka...
The LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel), the best-known landing craft designed by Andrew Higgins, evolved from a boat he created before the war for use in the swamps and marshes of Louisiana. Trappers and oil companies needed a rugged, shallow-bottomed craft that could navigate these waters, run aground, and retract itself without damaging its hull. Higgins developed a boat that could perform all these tasks: a spoonbill-bowed craft he called the Eureka. Over time he modified and improved his craft and found markets for it in the United States and abroad.

...to the LCP(L)
During the 1930s Higgins tried to interest the U.S. Navy in adapting his shallow-draft Eureka for use as an amphibious landing craft. The navy showed little interest, but Higgins persisted. After a long struggle, he finally secured a government contract to build modified Eurekas for military use. The new boat was called the LCP (Landing Craft, Personnel) and, later, the LCP(L) (Landing Craft, Personnel, Large). In its most advanced form the LCP(L) measured 36 feet in length. It could transport men from ships offshore directly onto a beach, then retract itself, turn, and head back to sea.

The LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) was developed because the U.S. Marines needed a boat capable of transporting vehicles to shore. Higgins adapted the LCP(L) to meet this requirement. He replaced the LCP(L)'s rounded bow with a retractable ramp. The new craft was tested for the first time on May 26, 1941, on Lake Pontchartrain. It carried a truck and 36 Higgins employees safely to shore. The LCVP became the military's standard vehicle and personnel landing craft. Thousands were in service during the war.

New Orleans" Home of the Higgins Boats
"If Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs, we never could have landed over an open beach. The whole strategy of the war would have been different."
--General Dwight D. Eisenhower

The city of New Orleans made a unique and crucial contribution to America's war effort. This was the home of Higgins Industries, a small boat company owned by a flamboyant entrepreneur named Andrew Jackson Higgins. The story of Higgins' role in the war is little known today, but his contribution to the Allied victory was immeasurable.

World War II presented Allied war planners with a tactical dilemma--how to make large amphibious landings of armies against defended coasts. For America this was a particularly thorny problem, since its armed forces had to mount amphibious invasions at sites ranging from Pacific atolls to North Africa to the coast of France.

Higgins' contribution was to design and mass-produce boats that could ferry soldiers, jeeps, and even tanks from a ship at sea directly onto beaches. Such craft gave Allied planners greater flexibility. They no longer needed to attack heavily defended ports before landing an assault force. Higgins' boats were used in every major American amphibious operation of World War II. His achievements earned him many accolades. The greatest came from General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who called Higgins "the man who won the war for us."

From the Bayou to the Battlefront
Before World War II Andrew Higgins operated a small boatyard, building workboats designed to operate in the shallow waters of Louisiana's bayous. During the 1920s and 1930s America's military began exploring ways to make amphibious landings. Higgins became involved in this effort, adapting designs for shallow-draft boats he had developed for peacetime uses. His company created amphibious assault craft capable of shuttling men and equipment quickly and safely from ship to shore. When the war came, business boomed. Higgins built new factories with mass production lines and employed thousands of workers. He even opened a training school for boat operators.

New Orleans Naval Giant During World War II Higgins Industries grew from a small business operating a single boatyard into the largest private employer in Louisiana. The company turned out astounding numbers of boats and ships. In September 1943 the US Navy had 14,072 vessels. Of these, 8,865 had been designed and built by Higgins Industries.

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Take A Closer Look: America Goes to War | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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America's isolation from war ended on December 7, 1941, when Japan staged a surprise attack on American military installations in the Pacific.