State Historical Society of Iowa
Since shortly after the treaty that ended World War I, the world economy struggled. Germany was straddled with harsh reparation debts and their economy stalled. Farm income in the United States fell dramatically with the end of wartime price supports, and with nearly half of the U.S. population living in rural areas, American buying power plunged. At the same time, the U.S. imposed tariffs on imported items, helping manufacturing but raising prices for consumers. The stock market boomed, and investors poured money into stocks far beyond their earning capacity. Eventually, these and other factors combined to bring the stock market crash of 1929 and the beginning of the greatest economic downturn ever experienced in the United States.
Herbert Hoover was elected president in 1928 and assumed office while prosperity was still running high. When the market crashed in October, he and many other economists saw it as a temporary slide and predicted quick recovery. As unemployment continued to rise and business slumped, Hoover proposed some new efforts by the federal government. His main idea was to provide incentives and financial supports to business to get firms hiring and selling again. He favored lower taxes and a balanced budget. He also encouraged greater volunteer contributions to charities for the poor and unemployed, but he opposed any direct relief efforts to individuals fearing the welfare would discourage the unemployed from looking for work.
Anger against Hoover grew rapidly through 1931 and 1932, leading to the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. While Roosevelt also talked about balanced budgets during the campaign, he changed courses between his November election and March inaugural as national conditions became worse. With the Democratic majorities in Congress that were elected with him, Roosevelt pushed through a remarkable agenda of programs that radically changed the relationship of individuals to the federal government. The New Deal created work programs like the Works Progress Administration and the Public Works Administration that put people to work on public parks, roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects and hired teachers and artists. The Civilian Conservation Corps hired, fed and clothed teenage boys and sent most of their salaries back to support their families. The Agriculture Adjustment Act provided payments to farmers who agreed to limit their production. It was Roosevelt's policy that, in times of recession, the government should spend to spur economic growth, even if that means adding to the federal debt.
While New Deal programs provided a safety net to hundreds of thousands of American families, there is debate among economic historians about their overall effectiveness. What finally ended the Depression was American entry into World War II with a military draft and government contracts for planes, tanks, ships, munitions, uniforms and farm products. However, on the political side, the hope that the New Deal offered those struggling, including many Iowa farm families, was a factor that prevented rebellions against the government at all levels. It also reconfigured the American political landscape as African Americans, other urban-based minorities and labor unions leaving the Republican Party to form a strong Democratic coalition.
| New Deal Source Set Teaching Guide |
| Printable Image and Document Guide |
This letter from President Herbert Hoover to Herbert S. Crocker, president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, responds to the Society's suggestion to expand public works programs. Hoover outlines in detail his opposition to expanding public w...
The cartoon from J.N. Darling was published a week before President Hoover signed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act into law on January 22, 1932. This Act established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), whose purpose was to: "to pr...
In 1932, during the Great Depression, tens of thousands of impoverished World War I veterans traveled to Washington, DC. They called themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force (BEF). The public called them the Bonus Army. They came to the nation's capit...
The image captures a protest in St. Louis, Missouri. A racially integrated group of protestors carried signs asking for union wages, jobs, and basic support. In these early years of the depression, divisions that had been building widened. While the 1920s...
Following a conversation with Senator Simeon Fess on February 20, 1933, President Herbert Hoover wrote Fess to record his analysis of key events in the development of the Great Depression.He identified what he saw as five distinct periods. Hoover's le...
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first "Hundred Days" were characterized by a flood of legislative proposals designed to alleviate the problems resulting from the Great Depression, namely high unemployment, feeding the hungry millions, ...
In this campaign radio address from Madison Square Garden, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced a series of proposals to combat the Great Depression that he wanted to implement if he was re-elected After he won the election and the proposals pas...
This black and white photograph shows men putting up power lines. The work was made possible through the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), one of the New Deal programs created early in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first term. ...
The mural highlighted here was created under the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), the first of the New Deal art programs. The program began in December 1933 to assist unemployed artists by enabling them to work on the decoration of non-federal public b...
This document is a letter sent by Edwin Locke to photographer Arthur Rothstein. It outlines the type of photographs the government would like captured regarding the aftermath of the drought. The instructions focus on a desire for dramatic photographs show...
While the 1920s were seen as a time of prosperity, in farming communities this was not always the case. Prices dropped and continued to drop throughout the 1920s because of increased production and decreased global consumption following World War I. Until...
This article was published in the Centerville Daily Iowegian and Citizen newspaper on October 20, 1936, in the midst of Roosevelt's reelection campaign. At that point, an estimated 20 million Americans had received some form of assistance from the gov...
By 1938, the Great Depression was a decade old. The country had experienced recession in 1937, and Roosevelt had seen some of his New Deal programs, such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the National Industrial Reco...
This interview with Henry Gill, a resident of Connecticut, was conducted as part of the Federal Writers' Project, just as the interview with Charles Fusco was. Gill's interview took place as Europe moved closer to war. Just two years before this i...
The photograph depicts two young women cutting wood strips for doll beds in Farmington, Iowa. The young women were participating in the National Youth Administration, which began during President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first term in office. As pa...
Spurred on by Herbert Hoover's push to feed US allies during World War I, agricultural production increased. With demand and prices high, farmers met the challenge set by Hoover, often borrowing money to buy more land and new equipment to do so. Howev...
By 1932, crop prices were less than a third of what they had been in 1920. Farmers lobbied for aid and tariff reform, but no legislation was passed. Farmers were forced to pay more to grow crops than they would ever earn selling them. In frustration, Milo...
The diary of Elmer Powers shows the perspective of one Iowa farmer before and during the farm holiday. In 1933, the Federal government passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) to help farmers. The law set limits on the amount of the crops and size of ...
In 1924, before the start of the Great Depression, Indigenous people gained federal citizenship. Many tribes, however, including the Meskawki, were still under federal trusteeship. Although trusteeship was theoretically meant to "protect" tribes...
In 1934, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act, also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act. It replaced the Dawes Act of 1887, which had been designed to eliminate tribal sovereignty and break up communally held lands by allotting plots to individuals r...
This document is an interview with Dr. M. Santos, a Cuban immigrant, and was interviewed in part for a program within the Works Progress Administration. His oral history included information about his time in Cuba and early days in the United States, as w...
After the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the Meskwaki people established their own constitution in 1937. It is the foundational document that still governs the law of the tribe today. The preamble states, "We, the Meskawk...
The document is an interview conducted by the Federal Writers' Project in New York with Emanuel Verschleiser, an elderly Jewish man. In the interview, Verschleiser strongly supports the actions of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and he offers stro...
This oral history was collected as part of the South Carolina Writers' Project. Ernest Boney was a white farmer who provided a history of his life in South Carolina. His son received help from the National Youth Administration to finish at Clemson. Th...
The primary power of the Indian Reorganization Act was that it superceded the1887 Dawes Act. That federal legislation had broken up Native lands, tried to destroy tribal cohesion, and led to the sale of 90 million acres—some two-thirds—of Indian ter...
Pay discrimination was specifically addressed in this interview with Vivian Morris, a Black garment worker in Harlem, New York. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 a national minimum wage was instituted. Roosevelt had attempted a federal minimum wa...
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) is arguably the most famous New Deal program, because it affected so many people. The WPA employed more than 8.5 million people, but only 13.5% of those were women at its peak. Black workers were often the last hire...
The general scene depicted in the cartoon connected to the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was signed into law in June 1938 and is better known as the Wagner Act. Among other things,the Wagner Act supported the right of workers to unionize and bargain col...
The photograph shows two young men receiving training from the Works Progress Administration in New York. The men are in machine shop practice and are shown setting up shaper work to cut 45-degree angles at the base for a surface gauge. The National Yout...
This web resource has images and locations highlighting work in communities across the country by the individuals through New Deal programs.
This web resource from the Library of Congress has a variety of resources on individuals experiences with the Great Depression.
This web resource from the Library of Congress has a variety of resources on individuals experiences with the Great Depression.
This web resource has documents that directly relate to how effective the New Deal programs were for Americans.
| No. | Standard Description |
| SS-US 9-12.16. | Examine labor and governmental efforts to reform and/or maintain a capitalistic economic system in the Great Depression. |
| SS-US 9-12.21. | Analyze change, continuity and context across eras and places of study from civil war to modern America. |
| SS-US 9-12.24. | Critique primary and secondary sources of information with attention to the source of the document, its context, accuracy, and usefulness such as the Reconstruction amendments, Emancipation Proclamation, Treaty of Fort Laramie, Chinese Exclusion Act, Roosevelt's Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, Wilson's Fourteen Points, New Deal Program Acts, Roosevelt's Declaration of War, Executive Order 9066, Truman Doctrine, Eisenhower's Farewell Speech, Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Test Ban Treaty of 1963, Brown vs. Board of Education decision, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, and the Voting Act of 1965. |
| SS-US 9-12.25. | Analyze how regional, racial, ethnic and gender perspectives influenced American history and culture. |
| SS-US 9-12.27. | Evaluate Iowans or groups of Iowans who have influenced U.S. History. |
| SS-Gov. 9-12.13. | Evaluate the powers and responsibilities of local, state, tribal, national, and international civic and political institutions, how they interact and the role of government in maintaining order. (21st century skills) |
| SS-Gov. 9-12.25 | Evaluate the intended and unintended consequences of the implementation of public policy, specifically looking at the bureaucracy, citizen feedback, public opinion polls, interest groups, media coverage, and other related topics. (21st century skills) |
| SS-Econ.9-12.13. | Apply the concept of scarcity when making economic decisions. |
![Read More](/primarysource/supportingquestion/67
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="pss-sub-item p-0">
<div class="row">
<div class="pss-item-media col-4">
</div>
<div class="pss-item-content col-8">
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="pss-sub-item p-0">
<h2 class="support-question-title">National Youth Administration Work Center in Brooklyn, New York, ca. August 1942</h2>
<div class="row">
<div class="pss-item-media col-4">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/assets/primary-source-sets/files/styles/large/public/primary-sources/images/history-education-pss-deal-NYA-source.jpg">
</div>
<div class="pss-item-content col-8">
<p><a class="pss-a" href="/assets/primary-source-sets/files/primary-sources/images/history-education-pss-deal-NYA-source.jpg" target="_blank">Download Resource</a></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="pss-sub-item p-0">
<h2 class="support-question-title">Depression-Era Breadlines, ca. 1932</h2>
<div class="row">
<div class="pss-item-media col-4">
<img class="img-fluid" src="/assets/primary-source-sets/files/styles/large/public/primary-sources/images/history-education-pss-deal-bread-source.jpg">
</div>
<div class="pss-item-content col-8">
<p><a class="pss-a" href="/assets/primary-source-sets/files/primary-sources/images/history-education-pss-deal-bread-source.jpg" target="_blank">Download Resource</a></p>
<h2>Description</h2>
<p>This black and white photograph depicts a long breadline with a number of men waiting for food in New York City. Under President Herbert Hoover, there was an absence of substantial government relief programs. Free food was distributed with private funds i...</p>
<p><a class=){kind=link}