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The Great Depression and the New Deal

How a stock market crash became a decade of unemployment, and the alphabet of agencies FDR built to fight back.

5 topics · 16 questions

Each topic is a path, not a menu: work down it in order and every question builds on the one above. Click any of them to watch the answer draw itself.

The Crash of 1929 and the Unemployment Collapse

  1. Going furtherWhat happens to ordinary bank customers once a wave of bank runs starts in the early 1930s.
  2. How it worksWalk me through the chain from buying stocks on margin to the panic selling of October 1929.
  3. Worked exampleShow me the unemployment rate climbing from about 3 percent in 1929 to around 25 percent by 1933.
Your turn1 of 2
The stock market crash of October 1929 happened on a single trading floor in New York, yet by 1933 about a quarter of American workers were unemployed nationwide. Why did a crash in one place throw so many people out of work everywhere?

The Dust Bowl

  1. How it worksShow me the Dust Bowl's storms spreading across the Southern Plains through the 1930s.
  2. Going furtherWhat happens to Dust Bowl families once hundreds of thousands migrate to California looking for work.
  3. How it worksHow did plowing up native prairie grass for wheat leave the soil with nothing to hold it down in a drought.
Your turn1 of 2
In the 1930s, a severe drought turned huge stretches of the Southern Plains, farmland that had fed the country for decades, into choking clouds of dust. Why did the drought have such a devastating effect there?

Hoover's Response Against FDR's

  1. Going furtherWhat happens to public trust in Hoover once the Bonus Army marchers are driven out of Washington by troops.
  2. How it worksCompare Hoover's belief in limited federal relief with FDR's willingness to have Washington spend directly on jobs.
  3. How it worksWalk me through how Hoovervilles sprang up as homeless camps named after a president many blamed for the crisis.
Your turn1 of 2
Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt both faced the Great Depression as president, yet took almost opposite approaches to what the federal government should do about it. Why did the same crisis produce two such different responses?

The New Deal's Alphabet Agencies

  1. How it worksWalk me through how money moved from the federal government through the CCC and WPA into paychecks for millions of workers.
  2. Common mistakeWhy isn't the New Deal something that single-handedly ended the Great Depression by 1940.
  3. How it worksHow did the TVA build dams that brought electricity to a region private companies had never bothered to wire.
Your turn1 of 2
Unemployment in 1940 remained well above its pre-Depression level, even after seven years of New Deal programs. Why isn't the New Deal something that single-handedly ended the Great Depression by 1940?

The Second New Deal and Social Security

  1. Going furtherWhat happens to elderly poverty rates in the decades after Social Security checks start going out in 1940.
  2. How it worksShow me the Social Security Act of 1935 collecting payroll taxes from workers to fund payments to retirees.
  3. How it worksHow did the Wagner Act finally give unions the legal right to organize and bargain that employers had long denied.
  4. Ties togetherHow does Social Security's 1935 payroll-tax design connect to the same funding debate the program faces today?
Your turn1 of 2
In 1935, with the worst of the immediate banking and unemployment crisis somewhat eased, FDR launched a second wave of programs including Social Security and the Wagner Act. Why launch a new wave of programs just as the worst seemed to be easing?