1. Define the Great Depression.

2. What were three major causes of the Great Depression?

3. Define speculation.

4. What is one way people make money from stock?
5. What is the largest stock market in the United States?
6. What happened to stock prices on the New York Stock Exchange between 1920 and 1929?
7. How did the increase in stock prices during the 1920s affect many stock market speculators?
8. What does it mean to buy stock on margin?
9. To what did margin buying lead?
10. What did many investors do when the stock market dropped, and how did their actions affect stock prices?
11. What happened to the New York Stock Exchange as a result of the downward cycle in the stock market?
12. What functions as the central bank of the United States?
13. What type of bank is a Federal Reserve Bank?
14. Explain how a Federal Reserve Bank works?

15. Who appoints the members of the Federal Reserve Board?
16. What are two functions of the Federal Reserve Board?

17. Why is the Federal Reserve Board’s power to set interest rates important?
18. Under what circumstances might the Federal Reserve Board cut interest rates?
19. Under what circumstances might the Federal Reserve Board raise interest rates?
20. Define inflation.

21. Was the Federal Reserve Board able to prevent the 1929 stock market crash from triggering the Great Depression?
22. Why did many banks fail when the stock market crashed?

23. How did bank failures after the stock market crash affect Americans’ confidence in the nation’s banking system?
24. What did thousands of Americans do when they began to lose confidence in the nation’s banking system?
25. How many American banks failed during the first three years of the Great Depression? 
26. How many Americans lost their savings as a result of bank failures during the first three years of the Great Depression?
27. What was the result of the widespread collapse of the American banking system between 1929 and 1932?
28. What is a protective tariff?

29. After the 1929 stock market crash, how did Congress try to help American business?
30. Identify the Hawley-Smoot Tariff (Tariff Act of 1930).
31. Congress intended the Hawley-Smoot Tariff to help business.  Why do most historians believe it actually hurt business?

32. What was the result of retaliatory tariffs passed by foreign countries?
33. How did the erection of trade barriers by all of the world’s major industrial powers affect world trade?
34. What four-pronged effect did the Great Depression have on the United States?

35. What was the unemployment rate among Americans by 1932?
36. What became more militant during the Great Depression?
37. What did some Americans question during the Great Depression?
38. What effect did farm foreclosures have on farm families?
39. Whom did most Americans blame for the Great Depression?
40. To what political party did Herbert Hoover belong?
41. Who ran for president in 1932, what was each candidate’s political party, and who won this election?
42. Who told the American people in 1933 that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”?
43. What did President Franklin Roosevelt offer the American people?
44. Identify the New Deal.

45. Name three ways in which the New Deal changed the role of the federal government.

46. What was the New Deal’s three-pronged strategy, and for what did each “R” stand?
47. What was the purpose of the New Deal’s relief programs?
48. What did relief measures do?

49. Give one example of a New Deal relief program.
50. Define public works.

51. What was the purpose of the New Deal’s recovery program?
52. Give one example of a New Deal recovery program and explain what it did.

53. What was the purpose of the New Deal’s reform programs?

54. Identify the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

55. Identify the Social Security Act.

56. What did Americans come to believe was a purpose of the federal government?
57. When did the Great Depression end?
58. List five short-term and lasting results of the New Deal.

59. What three basic rights did organized labor acquire or gain during the New Deal?

The Great Depression and the New Deal Study Guide

Answers 
 

1. Great Depression = a period of severe economic hardship lasting from 1929 to World War II
2. 1) Stock market crash

2) Collapse of nation’s banking system

3) High protective tariffs

3. speculation = buying something at a low price in the hope of selling it later at a profit

4. speculation

5. New York Stock Exchange

6. Steadily increased

7. They became very wealthy.

8. Buy stock on credit

9. Overspeculation
10. Sold their stock; stock prices dropped even further

11. Crashed

12. The Federal Reserve System

13. A banker’s bank

14. If a bank needs to borrow money, it may do so from the Federal Reserve Bank.  However, a bank must pay interest on its loans from the Federal Reserve.
15. The president

16. 1) oversees the actions of the Federal Reserve Banks

2) sets the interest rate which banks must pay to borrow money from the Federal Reserve

17. enables the Federal Reserve to control the nation’s money supply

18. if  the Federal Reserve believes the American economy is slowing down

19. if the Federal Reserve believes the American economy is overheating and thereby causing inflation
20. inflation = when prices increase and the dollar buys less when prices increase and the value of the dollar decreases

21. no

22. 1) banks had invested savings deposits in the stock market

2) banks had loaned money to stock speculators who were buying stock on margin

23. Americans lost confidence

24. Withdraw their savings from the banks, before they closed

25. 5,000

26. 9 million

27. led to a severe contraction in the nation’s money supply

28. protective tariff = a tax on imports that is so high Americans cannot afford to buy foreign goods
29. passed the Hawley-Smoot Tariff (the Tariff Act of 1930)

30. a protective tariff that set the highest tariff rates in American history
31. encouraged foreign countries to retaliate (to return like for like; do unto others, as they do unto you) by passing high tariffs of their own

32. foreigners could not afford to buy American goods
33. strangled world trade

34. 1) unemployment increased       

        2) banks closed 

        3) political unrest

        4) farm foreclosures                         

35. 25 %

36. labor unions

37. whether capitalism was the best economic system for the United States
38. caused thousands of farm families to migrate
39. President Herbert Hoover

40. Republican

41. Franklin Roosevelt (Democrat)

Herbert Hoover (Republican)

Roosevelt won

42. Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR)

43. a “New Deal”

44. FDR’s program to end the Great Depression
45. 1) federal gov’t. would actively try to solve the nation’s problems

2) power of federal gov’t. increased

3) federal gov’t. was responsible for American economy

46. “three R’s”: relief, recovery, and reform

47. to ease the suffering of the unemployed

48. provided direct payments to people for immediate help
49. Works Progress Administration (WPA)

50. public works = construction projects that benefit the whole society, like highways, bridges, schools, post offices, and parks
51. to bring about the recovery of American business
52. Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA); tried to raise farm prices by paying farmers not to grow crops and not to raise livestock
53. change for the better; to help prevent future economic crises and provide some financial security for the most needy Americans
54. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation = protects the money of depositors in insured banks; today FDIC insures deposits up to $100,000
55. Social Security Act = offered safeguards for workers, including unemployment insurance and retirement benefits
56. to provide care for those Americans, who through no fault of their own could not take care of themselves
57. World War II

58. 1) gave hope to Americans

2) changed the role of the American gov’t. in the economy: (federal gov’t. now responsible for the economy)

3) encouraged changes in people’s attitudes toward responsibilities of the federal gov’t.: (Americans expected more from the federal gov’t.)

4) organized labor gained new rights

5) New Deal passed federal laws that reshaped American capitalism; far more gov’t. regulation of business

59. 1) right to form a union, 2) right to strike, 3) minimum wage