Responses to the Great Depression 1929-1939
1. Radical
- Bonus March by 22,000 in 1932
- Walter Waters, Patman Bill June 15, but not Senate June 17, only $100,000 to go home - 5160 did
- Chief Pelham Glassford provided tents on Anacostia Flats, but police killed 2 on July 28 during eviction of communists in Pa. Ave house led by John Pace
- Douglas MacArthur with Eisenhower and Patton with 6 tanks
- newspaper photographs of Anacostia camp July 28, 1932
- 300 casualties including Joseph T. Agelino, DSC 1918 for saving the life of Patton
- Communist Party - William Z. Foster won 103,000 votes in 1932
- Popular Front coalition of leftist, antifascist groups and parties
- Organized hunger march in D.C. 1931, infiltrated 1932 Bonus March
- 1933 International Labor Defense (ILD) defended Scottsboro boys
- took over 1934 American Youth Congress
- 75 cells created in 6 New Deal agencies, Harold Ware in AAA
- 1936 Abraham Lincoln Brigade fought in Spain
- Socialist Party - Norman Thomas won 881,000 votes 1932
- helped H.L. Mitchell organize STFU biracial coalition
- March of Time story "King Cotton's Slaves" Aug. 7, 1936
- Upton Sinclair EPIC (End Poverty in California) impressed FDR
- as the kind of experiment that was the essence of the New Deal
- won the 1934 Democratic primary for governor in CA over
- George Creel, but defeated by Republican Frank Merriam
- Father Divine - George Baker, I. R. C., Harlem "heavens"
- Townsend Movement in Long Beach, California
- Old Age Revolving Pensions - Francis Townsend, Robert Clements
- $200 per month to all over 60, must spend it all, must retire
- financed by special 2% tax; influenced Social Security Act
- March of Time Dec. 13, 1935
- Charles Coughlin in Detroit at the Shrine of the Little Flower
- used radio to denounce money changers, socialists, communists
- National Union for Social Justice 1934, praised H. Long, Mussolini
- March of Time story on "Royal Oak, Michigan" Aug. 16, 1935
- Union Party 1936 & W. Lemke opposed FDR
- March of Time story on "Lunatic Fringe" Sept. 2, 1936
- Christian Front of 1938 was fascist, allied with Bund
- Huey Long - 1928 Louisiana governor, 1932 cotton holiday
- 1933 Senate filibuster opposed Banking Act for 3 weeks
- Share Our Wealth Society, Gerald L. K. Smith
- March of Time April 19, 1935
- Fascist movements - Art Smith, William Kelley,
- Fritz Kuhn & German-American Alliance
- Technocracy - Howard Scott, Thorstein Veblen, Charles Steinmetz
- Farm Holiday - Milo Reno in Iowa May 1932
2. Conservative
- Herbert Hoover - voluntarism, Agricultural Marketing Act, Hawley-Smoot Tariff, Reconstruction Finance Corporation
- survival - Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, Audie Murphy, Albert Fuller, Cesar Chavez
- Popular Culture - Popeye, Alfred Butts, Charles Darrow
- Hollywood films - Public Enemy, Frank Capra, Walt Disney
- Backlash after 1937
3. Liberal
- Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Liberal Response
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington DC
- NRA, AAA, WPA, Social Security
- RA of Rexford Tugwell began April 30, 1935 - grew out of purge of Jerome Frank from Wallace's AAA because of failure to help the sharecropper - STFU revolt is subject of 1936 March of Time newsreel "King Cotton's Slaves"
- Tugwell financed documentary film The Plow That Broke the Plains by Pare Lorentz in 1936
- FSA created July 22, 1937 by Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act to make 40-year loans to tenants for purchase of farms, make rehabilitation loans, aid migrant camps, establish cooperative homestead communities and model towns such as Greenbelt, MD.
- TVA subject of 1936 March of Time newsreel - Arthur Morgan's "national yardstick" vs. Wendell Willkie's Commonwealth and Southern
- Crime Bills of 1934 to strengthen FBI
- Fiorella LaGuardia of New York featured in Oct. 1, 1937 March of Time newsreel - urban liberal
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revised 3/28/07 by Steven Schoenherr | Depression Crisis | Depression links