Depression Timeline

October 29, 1929

The stock market crashes, ending an era of unprecedented prosperity in the United States.

December 1931

The Bank of the United States collapses, losing almost $200 million in deposits.

May 1932

A group of homeless veterans who called themselves the "Bonus Expeditionary Forces" travel to Washington, D.C. to demand early payment of a bonus they'd earned by serving in World War I. President Hoover refused to pay. By the end of June, there were more than 20,000 bonus marchers living in makeshift encampments around the capital. The Army's Chief of Staff, Douglas MacArthur, was convinced (erroneously) that the marchers were dangerous subversives and that their march was a Communist plot--so, in July, he sent cavalry, infantry, tank troops and a machine gun squadron to chase the Bonus Army out of town. Once they'd crossed the city line, MacArthur and his troops burned the protestors' main campsite. This extraordinary overreaction was no secret, and journalists' accounts of the soldiers' callousness and brutality toward their fellow veterans contributed to Hoover's loss in that fall's election.

November 8, 1932

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the governor of New York, defeats the incumbent Herbert Hoover in the presidential election. He received 22,800,000 votes; Hoover got 15,750,000.

March 4, 1933

FDR delivers his first inaugural address before 100,000 people on Washington, D.C.'s Capitol Plaza. "First of all," he said, "let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." He promised that he would act swiftly to face the "dark realities of the moment" and assured Americans that he would "wage a war against the emergency" just as though "we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe." His speech gave many people confidence that they'd elected a man who was not afraid to take bold steps to solve the nation's problems.

March 5, 1933

Frances Perkins, an economist and social worker, becomes the first female member of a presidential cabinet. She served as the secretary of labor from 1933-1945.

March 5, 1933

FDR declares a four-day bank holiday. After the crash of 1929, almost half of the nation's banks had failed and people were beginning to withdraw their savings in a panic from the other half--and no bank could survive that. So, Roosevelt closed the banks to stop the withdrawals and give his "Brain Trust" some time to come up with a plan. They did: on March 9, the Emergency Banking Act reorganized the banks and closed the ones that were insolvent. In his first "fireside chat" three days later, the president urged Americans to put their savings back in the banks, and by the end of the month almost three-quarters of them had reopened.

March 13, 1933

President Roosevelt asks Congress to take the first step toward ending Prohibition by making beer legal again. The legislators passed the bill, and by April Americans could buy beer (though it was weak beer--the law said it couldn't contain more than 3.2% alcohol) for the first time since the Volstead Act went into effect in 1919. At the end of the year, Congress ratified the 21st Amendment and ended Prohibition for good.

May 18, 1933

FDR signs the Tennessee Valley Authority Act into law. The TVA built dams along the Tennessee River that controlled flooding and generated inexpensive hydroelectric power for the people in the region. Private power companies hated the TVA because it sold its electricity much more cheaply than they did. ("We are willing to be put out of business if it can be done in a plain straightforward business like manner," one coal-industry representative said, "but we do object to our Government putting us out of business.") Many spent years suing the TVA to stop it from cutting into their profits, but in 1936 and again in 1939, the Supreme Court ruled that Roosevelt's program was indeed a constitutionally sound use of federal authority.

June 16, 1933

FDR's "First Hundred Days"--the first phase of the New Deal--ends. During this time, he passed 15 major laws, including the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Glass-Steagall Banking Bill, the Home Owners' Loan Act, and the National Industrial Recovery Act. (Historian William E. Leuchtenburg summed it up: when Congress adjourned on the hundredth day, he wrote, "it had committed the country to an unprecedented program of government-industry co-operation; promised to distribute stupendous sums to millions of staple farmers; accepted responsibility for the welfare of millions of unemployed; agreed to engage in farreaching exprimentation in regional planning; pledged billions of dollars to save homes and farms from foreclosure; undertaken huge public works spending; guaranteed the small bank deposits of the country; and had, for the first time, established federal regulation of Wall Street.") Almost every American found something to be pleased about and something to complain about in this motley collection of bills, but it was clear that FDR was taking the "direct, vigorous" action that he'd promised in his inaugural address.

February 1934

Louisiana Senator Huey Long organizes the Share-Our-Wealth Society, which promised to redistribute wealth by raising income taxes on wealthy Americans and using the proceeds to buy a house, a car and a radio for every family in the U.S. He also advocated generous old-age pensions, a minimum wage, a shortened workweek and a guaranteed annual income for all. His motto (adapted from a speech by William Jennings Bryan) was "Every man a king, but no one wears a crown." Long loathed FDR and hoped to run for president, but he was assassinated in Baton Rouge on September 8, 1935.

May 1934

Dust storms blow hundreds of tons of soil from depleted farmland in the drought-stricken western states. The storms were so violent that the dust blew all the way to the East Coast: Some cities there had to turn on their street lights during the day so people could see through all the debris in the air.

April 1935

FDR creates the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to provide jobs for unemployed people. WPA projects weren't allowed to compete with private industry, so they focused on building new public works like post offices, bridges, schools, highways and parks. The WPA also gave work to artists, writers, theater directors and musicians. (The WPA's Federal Writers Project published a series of guidebooks to the nation's states and cities, for example, and you can still see WPA murals on display in places like courthouses, hospitals and zoos.) The program gave work to nearly 9 million Americans and existed until 1943.

July 1935

The National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act, creates the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB supervises union elections and is supposed to prevent businesses from treating their workers unfairly. The law established an important right for many workers: the right to form unions and bargain collectively.

August 15, 1935

FDR signs the Social Security Act of 1935. The law guaranteed pensions to millions of Americans, set up a system of unemployment insurance and stipulated that the federal government would help care for dependent children and the disabled.

September 1935

FDR dedicates the Boulder Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. (The dam's name was changed to the Hoover Dam in 1947.) It is 725 feet high and is still the second-highest dam in the United States.

October 31, 1936

While campaigning for a second term (he was running against Republican Alf Landon of Kansas), FDR tells a roaring crowd at Madison Square Garden that "The forces of 'organized money' are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred." He went on: "I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match, [and] I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces have met their master." This FDR had come a long way from his earlier repudiation of class-based politics and was promising a much more aggressive fight against the people who were profiting from the troubles of ordinary Americans.

November 3, 1936

FDR wins the presidential election in a landslide.

December 30, 1936

The UAW's sit-down strike at the GM plant in Flint, Michigan begins. Within two weeks, almost 150,000 workers from the company's factories in 35 cities were on strike. The workers wanted GM to recognize their union, and they also wanted it to stop buying car parts and other equipment from non-union factories. The strikers locked themselves in the Flint GM plant for 44 days. Eventually, the company agreed to recognize the UAW as the workers' only bargaining agent, to pay them a "minimum rate&commensurate with an American standard of living," to establish a 30-hour workweek and to respect workers' seniority rights.

November 5, 1940

FDR defeats Wendell Wilkie and wins an unprecedented third term.

December 7, 1941

The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and the United States enters World War II. The war effort stimulated American industry and, as a result, finally ended the Great Depression.

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