AP®︎ US History: Topic 7.9 Flashcards

Severe economic collapse beginning in 1929, reaching its low point in 1933 with about 25% unemployment, and ending fully only with World War II mobilization

Postwar overproduction and declining demand lowered farm prices, leaving indebted farmers unable to pay mortgages, loans, and taxes

Farms and factories produced more than consumers could afford, causing inventories, falling prices, production cuts, and layoffs

Profits and productivity outpaced many wages, concentrating wealth and leaving mass purchasing power too weak to sustain production

Purchasing goods through borrowed money and future payments, which supported 1920s consumption but left households burdened with debt

A general fall in prices and wages that reduced revenue, encouraged delayed purchases, and increased the real burden of fixed debts

Buying stocks mainly in expectation of reselling them at higher prices, creating a bubble unsupported by company earnings

Purchasing stock with a small down payment and borrowed funds, magnifying losses and forced selling when prices fell

A rush by depositors to withdraw money that could collapse a bank because banks kept only a fraction of deposits in cash

The Fed tightened credit before the crash and then failed to supply enough liquidity as lender of last resort, allowing banks and credit to collapse

The roughly one-third decline in the money supply from 1929 to 1933, which restricted credit, caused deflation, and deepened the downturn

A system tying currencies to gold that discouraged monetary expansion and spread deflation as governments protected their gold reserves

The 1930 law raising U.S. import duties to historic levels, provoking retaliation and further reducing international trade and American exports

A shantytown built by homeless people during the Depression and named sarcastically for President Herbert Hoover

The encouraged or coerced removal of hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican descent during the 1930s, including many U.S. citizens

Drought and wind erosion on overplowed Great Plains farmland that ruined farms and intensified Depression-era poverty and migration

Often-derogatory name for Great Plains migrants, especially from Oklahoma, who traveled west and frequently became low-paid California farmworkers

Documentary photographer whose Depression-era images, especially Migrant Mother, built public awareness of rural poverty and displacement

Dorothea Lange’s 1936 photograph of Florence Owens Thompson and her children, symbolizing migrant families’ insecurity and hardship

President who expanded federal intervention but favored voluntary cooperation and local relief, resisted direct federal aid, and failed to halt the collapse

Hoover’s 1932 agency that lent federal money to banks, railroads, insurers, and other institutions to stabilize credit

World War I veterans who marched on Washington in 1932 for early bonus payments and were forcibly removed by troops under Douglas MacArthur

Franklin D. Roosevelt decisively defeated Herbert Hoover after promising a “new deal,” signaling voters’ willingness to accept broader federal responsibility for relief and recovery

Democratic victor in 1932 whose promise of a new deal represented voters’ acceptance of a more active federal response to the Depression

The belief that federal regulation and social provision are necessary to protect meaningful freedom and economic security in an industrial society

A system in which the federal government regulates capitalism and reduces insecurity without replacing private property, markets, or private employment

The prolonged market collapse beginning in 1929 that destroyed wealth and confidence and accelerated the decline of an already vulnerable economy

October 29, 1929, when panic selling culminated in severe stock-market losses during the crash

The collapse of more than 9,000 banks from 1930 to 1933, erasing savings, restricting credit, and deepening the Depression