Great Depression: Causes, Definition & Dates

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History Shorts: Dorothea Lange Documents America in Crisis

Dorothea Lange captured the reality of the Great Depression in the faces of those who struggled most.

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History Shorts: How Artists Helped End the Great Depression

By giving support to an army of creative workers, the government was able to lift the prospects of an entire nation.

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Flashback: Robots Smoked Cigarettes at the 1939 World’s Fair

Meant to exhibit the “World of Tomorrow,” the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City tried to predict what life would be like beyond the 20th century. “Elektro” is a perfect example – a humanoid robot who could enjoy a cigarette while cracking a joke.

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3:10 minTV-PG

Here’s How the Great Depression Brought on Social Security

Explore how the Great Depression of the 1930s forced America to consider having a social safety net, leading President FDR to sign the Social Security Act into law via his New Deal programs. Learn how Social Security has changed over time.

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Glass-Steagall Act

FDIC Created The Glass-Steagall Act set up a firewall between commercial banks, which accept deposits and issue loans and investment banks which negotiate the sale of bonds and stocks. The Banking Act of 1933 also created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which protected bank deposits up to $2,500 at the time (now up to […]

Gangsters in a patrol wagon, New York, USA, mid 1930s. Hiding their faces from the camera as they are on their way to the office of Special Prosecutor Thomas E Dewey. Dewey (1902-1971) was appointed Special Prosecutor to lead the fight against crime and corruption in New York. He later went on to serve as Governor of the state of New York (1943-1954) and was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for the US Presidency in 1944 and 1948. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Crime in the Great Depression

Organized Crime in the Prohibition Era The passage of the 18th Amendment and the introduction of Prohibition in 1920 fueled the rise of organized crime, with gangsters growing rich on profits from bootleg liquor—often aided by corrupt local policemen and politicians. According to the FBI, Chicago alone had an estimated 1,300 gangs by the mid-1920s, […]

Scottsboro Boys

Who Were the Scottsboro Boys? By the early 1930s, with the nation mired in the Great Depression, many unemployed Americans would try and hitch rides aboard freight trains to move around the country searching for work. On March 25, 1931, after a fight broke out on a Southern Railroad freight train in Jackson County, Alabama, […]

Franklin D. Roosevelt. United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing the Social Security Bill (Act) in 1935. (Photo by: Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Social Security Act

Early Social Assistance in America Economic security has always been a major issue in an unstable, unequal world with an aging population. Societies throughout history have tackled the issue in various ways, but the disadvantaged relied mostly on charity from the wealthy or from family and friends. In the early 17th century, England established “poor […]

Artists of the New Deal

New Deal Photographers The field of photography benefitted hugely from the New Deal. In the mid-1930s, the Farm Security Administration’s Resettlement Administration hired photographers to document the work done by the agency, which launched the careers of many major photojournalists. From 1937 to 1942 this army of photographers created iconic images defining the New Deal […]

FDIC

Bank Failures Deepen Depression Many analysts expected the United States economy to make a quick and robust recovery after the stock market crash of 1929. Three previous market contractions—in 1920, 1923 and 1926—had lasted an average of 15 months each. A series of bank panics in 1930 and 1931, however, turned a typical economic downturn […]

Tennessee, Tennessee Valley Authority - Tva - Weir Dam, South Holston Dam.Tennessee, Tennessee Valley Authority - Tva - Weir Dam, South Holston Dam. (Photo by Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

TVA

Muscle Shoals Bill and the TVA The TVA’s history starts in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a small town located on the southern bank of the Tennessee River. President Woodrow Wilson authorized the building of a hydroelectric dam at Muscle Shoals in 1916. Wilson Dam was to provide power for a munitions plant during World War I, […]

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

What Was the WPA? President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the WPA with an executive order on May 6, 1935. It was part of his New Deal plan to lift the country out of the Great Depression by reforming the financial system and restoring the economy to pre-Depression levels. The unemployment rate in 1935 was at […]