Term
| 1. Identify and describe in detail the various causes of the economic crash and start of the Great Depression according to John Kenneth Galbraith. |
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Definition
| The inequitable distribution of wealth in the US during the 1920s, tax breaks for the upper echelon of the American people increased the wealth in the hands of the few, the failure of the US to adjust it’s trade policies whilst becoming a creditor nation vs its prior state as a debtor nation, WWI altered the economic relationship w/Europe, the increasing pyramiding of holding companies, and the increased speculation in the Bull Market New York Stock Exchange were all various causes of the economic crash and start of the Great Depression |
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Term
| How did the Depression impact stock market values? |
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Definition
| speculation drove up the prices of the stock so that the value was inflated to 3 or 4 times what it was actually rough |
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Term
| How did the Depression impact bank failures? |
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Definition
| banks which had speculatively invested their depositors money went bankrupt and their proponents lost their life savings in the process, during the panic depositors feared for the security of their savings and withdrew their deposits guaranteeing the banks failure |
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Term
| How did the Depression impact business failures? |
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Definition
| when the capital lost in stock market investment was drained they were unable to continue; industrial production declined and cutting production and prices failed to save many businesses over 100,000 went under during 1929 and 1932 |
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Term
| How did the Depression impact.) unemployment, underemployment, and wage reductions? |
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Definition
| 1 in 4 families suffered extended unemployment without the safety net our current government now provides; members of communities considered themselves lucky to attain employment whatsoever creating a middle class of low paid, low skilled employees; wages fell and homelessness emerged which was estimated in 1932 to have escalated in between 1 and 2 million men who were once home owners were roaming America searching for opportunity |
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Term
| How did the Depression impact home and farm mortgage foreclosures? |
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Definition
| the value of property shrunk and reappraisal greatly diminished property worth |
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Term
| How did the Depression impact declining government revenues? |
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Definition
| a bulk of the population could not afford to pay property tax greatly injuring government’s income revenue |
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Term
| 1. Identify the various potential uses/benefits of the Colorado River which had originally attracted settlers to the Central Texas region. |
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Definition
| A transportation route to the Gulf coast, a reliable reservoir of drinking water, and the means to power machinery |
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Term
| What was the historic problem of flooding along the Colorado River and attempts to control the problem being sure to identify the major floods of the Depression era of the 1930s. |
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Definition
| Colorado was too shallow to accommodate vessels of real size, highly variable rainfall patterns and topography to create two seemingly totally different rivers, it would be nearly dry during droughts and during rain season it would become a raging torrent, several attempts to Dam the river fell victim to the flood waters and demonstrated the need for more than one structure that couldn’t been afforded at the time |
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Term
| 3. Describe in detail life in the Texas Hill Country prior to the acquisition of electricity being sure to cover each of the following areas: |
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Definition
(a.) agriculture-it was decided that providing service to rural areas would be too costly to warrant the risk but studies have proven that in the long run it would have been profitable
(b.) household chores-running water was impossible without electricity so wells and buckets were required for water usage, clothes washing was over a fire and very difficult,
(c.) indoor plumbing-there was none
(d.) refrigeration/heating/cooling-insulated wooden boxes holding twenty lb. blocks hauled in from the nearest ice plant for refrigeration, heating was via wood burning stoves and air-conditioning was known as breeze
(e.) sanitation-outhouses
(f.) entertainment-almost none because all of the daylight was used for working |
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Term
| 4. Identify the reasons Hill Country residents had been unable to obtain electricity prior to the New Deal of the 1930s. |
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Definition
| Because the private electricity service providers felt it would have been too expensive to adequately turn a profit for themselves and stalled the process of bringing major reform to corral the natural resources people had flocked to in order to improve the quality of life and protect from soil erosion and flooding |
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Term
| Why was the creation of the Lower Colorado River Authority important and how did hit happen? |
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Definition
| Alvin J. Wirtz based his efforts on the TVA’s actions and convinced the Texas legislature to create the LCRA as an independent state agency to develop the water resources of the river system but was faced with a lack of financial ability, Texan’s in the nations capital critically influenced the PWA to contribute to the cause on the Colorado |
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Term
| What was the role of the Public Works Administration? |
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Definition
| Harold Ickes administered this organization which attacked depression by lending or granting money to other governmental entities across the nation for construction projects helping the growing unemployment rate and attacking inflation |
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Term
| What did the Texas' congressional delegation, including James P. Buchanan and Lyndon Johnson, in obtaining federal funding? Why was that important? |
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Definition
| without their crucial influence in chair positions of committees and leading roles in appropriations relating to rivers and reservoirs the movement to secure funding for the LCRA would have been impossible |
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Term
| Describe the role of Buchanan, Mansfield, and Tom Miller Dams in the Highland Lakes chain administered by LCRA: |
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Definition
| Congressman Buchanan secured $4.5 million loan from the PWA to complete the construction of the Insull started Hamilton Dam. It was later named Buchanan Dam and was designed to create a massive reservoir and generate electricity. The Mansfield dam cost grew large but Lyndon Johnson’s lobbying reduced the amount that needed to be repaid substantially. Mayor Tom Miller successfully compromised to rent out an unused dam to the river authority to avoid competition within the city that would raise property taxes and remain in the income stream of dam operations. |
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Term
| How did Hill Country residents, like rural dwellers across the rest of the country, finally acquire electrical service being sure to identify the role of the Rural Electrification Administration and the Pedernales Electric Cooperative? |
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Definition
The REA was part of the Second New Deal, which attacked the problem of the lack of rural electricity by lending rural dwellers who banded themselves together into economic cooperatives the funds to obtain electricity. The cooperative itself was responsible for paying back these loans over 30 years with minimal interest and the participants were only required to pay the $5 membership fee in order to receive the benefits
Pedernales Electric Cooperative was one of the several cooperatives springing up from wary residents convinced by publicity campaigns |
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Term
| 7. Identify the reasons the successful marketing of electricity in both the urban and rural areas of Central Texas was so critical to the financial viability of the LCRA. |
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Definition
| Cities such as Bastrop, Smithville, Elgin, Brenham along with others abandoned private companies after being guaranteed the rates would fall and service would improve if they also applied to the LCRA as cooperatives, this addition to LCRA constituents allowed more loans to be authorized validating the viability of the LCRA |
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Term
| 1. Identify and describe in detail the threat posed by the Supreme Court to President Roosevelt's New Deal by 1935-36 and explain why he felt it best to deal with the Court in early 1937. |
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Definition
| The Court was controlled by reactionary conservative justices aided on most occasions by the swing votes of Justices Hughes and Roberts, the Court began to invalidate important elements of the First New Deal making decisions on the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Because most of these judges had been appointed in an era where federal government was much less expansive the judges challenged the constitutionality of the New Deal initiatives and confronted the revolutionary president in a stand off for control of government; He reacted to the institutional threat the Court posed with an attempt to reorganize it early on because pending measures that challenged important measures of the Second New Deals were scheduled to be considered in 1937 FDR |
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Term
| How did Vice-President John Nance Garner block the court fight? |
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Definition
| he was asked to guide the bill through congress but refused and became an activist in the proposal’s defeat, he publicly supported the plan but didn’t use his talent to progress the bill, behind the scenes he covertly rallied and encouraged the opposition inadvertently creating the Conservative Congressional Coalition which survives to this day. The working relationship between President and Vice President was over and for the last 2 years of the administration they wouldn’t even speak with each other |
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Term
| How did Representative Hatton Sumners help kill the court fight? |
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Definition
| Probably did the most to kill the court bill as chair of the House Judiciary Committee and immediately reportedly decided that he would take a strong stand against the bill even if it meant the end of his career in politics. He kept the bill in committee and blocked it from getting to the House where it may have gained momentum early on, this forced it to be heard in the Senate where FDR had less influence. |
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Term
| How did Senator Tom Connally combat the court stacking attempt by FDR? |
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Definition
| he announced loud and repeatedly to the Texas Legislature leading to the Texas senate’s denunciation of that bill shortly after, he influenced Senate Judiciary Committee chair Henry F. Ashurst of Arizona to stall the bill in committee and was particularly brutal in his questioning of Attorney General Cummings who had written the proposal |
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Term
| 4. Explain how the Court fight demonstrated the ideological split within the Democratic party nationally and how President Roosevelt had only limited success in keeping the various factions of the party working together in harmony. |
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Definition
| The rift between the factions of the Democratic party was not a new occurrence and the division between Southern Conservatives and “New Immigrant” voters in the urban industrial Northeast had previously crippled the party in elections, the parties’ successes had come when the dire needs of a country in severe depression forced the two to work together. The tenets of Jacksonian Democracy feared sweeping civil rights legislation antibusiness, pro-union stances FDR displayed |
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Term
| 1. Identify and describe in detail the two political cornerstones upon which Texas had historically rested. |
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Definition
the distrust of government and dread of highly centralized power in a remote national capital which underlay the 1836 revolution against the Republic of Mexico served as cornerstones of Texas's political culture for a century thereafter. Residents regarded government as a necessary evil whose dangers had to be constantly guarded against and limited its size, cost, and power whenever possible. Adherents of Jacksonian Democracy, they resisted the growth of federal authority in favor of state and local programs viewed as more representative and easier to control. So strong were these beliefs that Texas chose secession and war in 1861 rather than accept the Republican party's promised use of federal power to create a national economic system and prevent the geographic expansion of slavery. Experiencing large, expensive, and active government for the first time during the Reconstruction era, Texans reacted with a vengeance in the aftermath, restricting it in every way possible under the Constitution of 1876, and accepting new laws and initiatives only when convinced of their absolute necessity. Only when the Great Depression ravaged the state in the 1930s were Texans willing to accept significantly larger government in both Austin and Washington, D. C.
The absolute dominance of the Democratic party was the other foundation of Texas politics. With the Republican party discredited by the Civil War and Reconstruction experiences, the state witnessed unbroken Democratic rule in the years following "redemption." When discontent with the status quo surfaced from time to time, it found expression in either third parties or factional infighting within Democratic party ranks. On only one occasion was a Republican presidential candidate able to carry the state of Texas. Herbert Hoover's victory in Texas in 1928 was, however, more of Texans' rejection of their party's nominee, Al Smith of New York, because of his Roman Catholicism and opposition to prohibition than an embrace of the Republican party. When the greatest economic depression in American history broke out shortly thereafter and Hoover was unable to engineer a quick recovery, Texas voters had yet another reason for remaining Democratic. Only against the backdrop of this traditional political culture and the absence of two-party competition is it possible to understand the reaction of Texans to the New Deal and the resulting bifurcation of the Democratic party in the 1930s and 1940s which proved the birth pangs of a viable Republican opposition in the Lone Star state. |
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Term
| 2. Explain those factors which had historically prevented the Republican party from being viable in Texas. |
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Definition
| The historical association of Lincoln, the civil war, and reconstruction left a bitter taste for Republicanism in Texas in nearly all mouths; the absence of a two viable party system prevented Republican growth, the failure of Herbert Hoover reconfirmed allegiances to the Democratic party, once the rifts in the Democratic party were cemented the Republican party was able to pick up the pieces |
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Term
| Why did Texas Democrats, despite their inherently conservative ideology, support Roosevelt and the New Deal? |
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Definition
| Because they felt the need to accept support which they could not have provided without federal aide and felt that the emergency crisis needed drastic solutions |
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Term
| What attitudes and events signaled growing tensions between conservative Democrats and the New Deal by 1936? |
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Definition
| The court packing crisis signaled the end of the sense of crisis which had unified party ranks and temporarily muted Texans’ traditional fear of big government and centralized power |
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Term
4. Be familiar with the breach between Texas conservatives and FDR following 1936 being sure to describe each of the following:
(a.)the Court Packing Fight
(b.)the sit down strike agains General Motors
(c.)the recession of 1937-8
(d.)the attempted purge of the Democratic party in 1938
(e.)the 3rd Term issue |
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Definition
(a.) the "Court Packing" Fight- VP Garner, Rep. Hatton Sumners, and Senator Tom Connaly adamantly argued the unconstitutionality of the court packing bill and created coalitions across party lines to defeat it’s passage
(b.) the sit down strike against General Motors-the Congress of Industrial Organizations were looked at as communism and when the president refused to move forcefully with troops in reaction
(c.) the recession of 1937-38- FDR and liberal supoorters seemed committed to boosting federal spending to cope with recession forcing higher wages upon the business community and the expansion of federal govt and shrinking of local and state govts combined to turn many away from the democratic cause
(d.) the attempted purge of the Democratic party in 1938-the administration pushed an increasingly meager legislative agenda and halfheartedly tried to purch the party of its most conservative elements of the party in primaries
(e.) the 3rd Term issue-FDR broke tradition and decided to pursue a 3rd term leading to severe disagreements and open revolt towards the democratic party |
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Term
| What was the Texas Regulars movement? |
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Definition
| the Texas Regulars movement-a third party organized in the wake of the Butler-dominated State Democratic Executive Committee chairman’s anti-administration presidential electors which motioned to allow the voters to choose all 23 electoral votes for the Republican or third-party candidate even if the state overwhelmingly chose FDR forcing the end of hopes for reconciliation within the party |
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Term
| What was the Dixiecrat campaign of 1948? |
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Definition
| also know as the States Rights Party which received many segregationist Texas conservatives in the presidential election subsequent to Truman’s embrace of civil rights and Fair Deal continuations to FDR’s New Deal policy |
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Term
| Who were the Shivercrats and Democrats for Eisenhower? |
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Definition
| 2 times carried Texas because of ticket splitting behavior against Democratic rivals by conservatives |
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Term
| Which major Republican electoral victories has Texas been a part of? |
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Definition
| John Tower signified the viability of the GOP and opened the floodgates for the abandonment of the Democratic party, only one Democratic presidential candidate has carried Texas since 1968 William Clements ended the Democratic stronghold on the Texas Governors’ Mansion, Phil Graham and Kay Bailey Hutchinson represent Texas in the US Senate today, George Bush Jr. gained a governorship and then a presidency largely due to Texas support for the Republican causes and Republicans have maintained control over the Texas legislature for some time now |
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