The Great Depression in United States History (11 page)

1936
—Hitler invades neutral Rhineland and supports Fascist forces in bloody Spanish Civil War.

1936
—
August:
Jesse Owens wins four gold medals in Berlin Olympic games.

1936
—
November:
Roosevelt wins re-election in the greatest landslide in history, carrying every state except Maine and Vermont.

1936
—
December:
Workers at the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, begin a sit-down strike that leads to a union contract.

1937
—
January:
Ohio River floods drown nine hundred people and force half a million more from their homes.

1937
—
May:
Police shoot ten strikers and wound one hundred in Chicago’s “Memorial Day Massacre.”

1937
—Roosevelt announces a proposal to add six new justices to the Supreme Court, a move criticized by both Republicans and Democrats as “court packing.”

1937
—
August:
A recession costs 4 million workers their jobs.

1938
—
September:
Allies turn over the region in western Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland to Hitler.

1938
—
November:
Republicans post huge gains in off-year elections.

1939
—
September:
Hitler invades Poland, starting World War II.

1939
—John Steinbeck publishes
The Grapes of Wrath
, an epic novel about Depression-era migrant workers. The Civil War epic movie
Gone with the Wind
premieres.

1940
—
November:
Roosevelt wins an unprecedented third term as president.

1941
—
December:
The Japanese bomb the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, forcing the United States to enter into World War II. The military buildup from the war puts an end to the Depression.

CHAPTER NOTES

Chapter 1
. “Wall Street Lays an Egg”

1.
William K. Klingaman,
1929: The Year of the Great Crash
(New York: Harper and Row, 1989), p. 283.

2.
Thomas J. Fleming, “Good-bye to Everything,”
American Heritage
, vol. 16, no. 5, August 1965, p. 98.

3.
Ibid., p. 99.

4.
Klingaman, p. 287.

5.
Ibid., p. 282.

6.
Ibid., p. 285.

Chapter 2
. “The Business of America is Business”

1.
William K. Klingaman,
1929
:
The Year of the Great Crash
(New York: Harper and Row, 1989), p. 58.

2.
Robert McElvaine,
The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941
(New York: Times Books, 1993), p. 38.

3.
The Roaring Twenties: 1920–1930
(New York: Time-Life Books, 1970), p. 96.

4.
Klingaman, p. 9.

5.
McElvaine, p. 14.

6.
David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace,
The People’s
Almanac
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975), p. 276.

7.
James Patterson,
America in the Twentieth Century
(New York: Harcourt Brace Johanovich, 1976), p. 226.

8.
Paul F. Boller, Jr.,
Presidential Campaigns
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 227.

9.
Klingaman, p. 30.

10.
Milton Meltzer,
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?: The Great
Depression 1929–1933
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), p. 5.

11.
Barrington Boardman,
Flappers, Bootleggers, “Typhoid Mary,
”
and the Bomb: An Anecdotal History of the United States from 1923
–
1945
(New York: Harper and Row, 1989), p. 102.

12.
Ibid., p. 103.

13.
Klingaman, p. 262.

14.
Ibid., p. 266.

Chapter 3
. “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”

1.
Dan Mulvey, ed.,
We Had Everything but Money
(Glendale, Wis.: Country Books, 1992), p. 15.

2.
Studs Terkel,
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great
Depression
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), p. 369.

3.
Ibid., p. 5.

4.
Ibid., p. xiv.

5.
Interview with Carl Lundell, November 26, 1995.

6.
Interview with Alice Swanson, November 26, 1995.

7.
“Our Century,”
U.S. News & World Report
, August 28– September 4, 1995, p. 78.

8.
Charles R. Walker, “Relief and Revolution,” in
The New Deal: A Documentary History
, ed. William E. Leuchtenberg (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968), p. 10.

9.
Hard Times: 1930–1940
(New York: Time-Life Books, 1970), p. 25.

10.
William K. Klingaman,
1929: The Year of the Great Crash
(New York: Harper and Row, 1989), p. 313.

11.
Lloyd Robinson,
The Hopefuls: Ten Presidential Campaigns
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, 1966), p. 44.

12.
Frederick Lewis Allen,
Since Yesterday: The 1930s in
America
(New York: Harper and Row, 1988), p. 27.

13.
Ibid., p. 30.

14.
Ibid., p. 28.

15.
Klingaman, p. 340.

16.
Milton Meltzer,
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?: The Great
Depression 1929–1933
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), p. 160.

17.
Robinson, p. 51.

18.
Klingaman, p. 340.

19.
Clifton Daniel, ed.,
Chronicle of America
(Mt. Kisco, N.Y.: Chronicle Publications, 1989), p. 655.

20.
Terkel, p. 16.

21.
Allen, p. 102.

Chapter 4
. FDR

1.
Paul F. Boller, Jr.,
Presidential Campaigns
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 213.

2.
Robert S. McElvaine,
The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941
(New York: Times Books, 1993), p. 106.

3.
Barrington Boardman,
Flappers, Bootleggers, “Typhoid Mary,
”
and the Bomb: An Anecdotal History of the United States from 1923
–
1945
(New York: Harper and Row, 1989), p. 143.

4.
Boller, p. 231.

5.
David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace,
The People’s
Almanac
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975), p. 297.

6.
Alex Gottfried,
Boss Cermak of Chicago
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962), p. 325.

Chapter 5
. “Try Something”

1.
Robert S. McElvaine,
The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941
(New York: Times Books, 1973), p. 117.

2.
Barrington Boardman,
Flappers, Bootleggers, “Typhoid Mary,
”
and the Bomb: An Anecdotal History of the United States from 1923
–
1945
(New York: Harper and Row, 1989), p. 151.

3.
Ibid.

4.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Fireside Chats
(New York: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 3.

5.
Interview with Ray Cordwell, November 26, 1995.

6.
Interview with George Swanson, November 26, 1995.

7.
Studs Terkel,
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), p. 115.

8.
McElvaine, p. 265.

9.
Interview with Marjorie Blakemore, October 26, 1995.

10.
Roy Stryker and Nancy Wood, “In This Proud Land,”
American Heritage
, vol. 24, no. 5, August 1973, p. 55.

11.
Ibid.

12.
Hugh Johnson, “The Blue Eagle from Egg to Earth,” in
The New Deal: A Documentary History,
ed. William E. Leuchtenberg (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968), p. 47.

13.
James T. Patterson,
America in the Twentieth Century
(New York: Harcourt Brace Johanovich, 1993), p. 256.

14.
Ibid., p. 249.

15.
Robert S. McElvaine, ed.,
Down and Out in the Great
Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), p. 6.

16.
McElvaine,
The Great Depression
, p. 229.

17.
Patterson, p. 256.

18.
McElvaine,
The Great Depression
, p. 349.

19.
Terkel, p. 165.

Chapter 6
. Dust Bowl

1.
Dan Mulvey, ed.,
We Had Everything but Money
(Greendale, Wis.: Country Books, 1992), p. 42.

2.
Interview with Ray Cordwell, November 26, 1995.

3.
Ibid.

4.
Studs Terkel,
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great
Depression
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), p. 37.

5.
Kenneth Allsop,
Hard Travellin’: The Story of the Migrant Worker
(Middlesex, England: New American Library, 1967), p. 114.

6.
Nels Anderson,
Men on the Move
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), in Allsop, p. 180.

7.
Alan Lomax, compiler,
Hard-Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit
People
(New York: Oak Publications, 1967), p. 25.

8.
Allsop, p. 359.

9.
Ibid., p. 363.

10.
David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace,
The People’s
Almanac
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975), p. 869.

11.
David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace,
The People’s
Almanac #2
(New York: Bantam Books, 1978), p. 747.

Chapter 7
. “Share Our Wealth”

1.
David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace,
The People’s
Almanac
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975), p. 50.

2.
“We Have a Plan,”
The Great Depression
produced by Blackside, Inc., (Public Broadcasting Service, 1993).

3.
Studs Terkel,
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great
Depression
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), p. 316.

4.
Frederick Lewis Allen,
Since Yesterday: The 1930s in
America
(New York: Harper and Row, 1988), p. 189.

5.
Hard Times: 1930–1940
(New York: Time-Life Books, 1970), p. 162.

6.
Robert S. McElvaine,
The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941
(New York: Times Books, 1973), p. 228.

7.
Ibid., p. 294.

Chapter 8
. The Second New Deal

1.
Robert Houghwout Jackson,
The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy
, quoted in Bernard Schwartz,
A History of the Supreme Court
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 233.

2.
Frederick Lewis Allen,
Since Yesterday: The 1930s in
America
(New York: Harper and Row, 1988), p. 296.

3.
Ibid., p. 281.

4.
Clifton Daniel, ed.,
Chronicle of America
(Mt. Kisco, N.Y.: Chronicle Publications, 1989), p. 681.