1933–1941 Franklin Roosevelt Fashions New Deal Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal evolved from a series of legislative acts designed to combat the Great Depression and create a more equitable society. The election of November 1932 resulted in a landslide victory by Roosevelt over incumbent Herbert Hoover and generated large congressional majorities for the Democratic Party, which successfully mobilized a broad coalition of farmers, industrial labor, white-collar workers, women, African-Americans, and intellectuals. FDR and his party quickly proceeded to enact reforms in the areas of banking and finance (Glass-Steagall Act), industrial organization (National Industrial Recovery Act), agriculture (Agricultural Adjustment Act), and relief and conservation (Civilian Conservation Corps and Tennessee Valley Authority, among others). In ensuing years the New Deal established the framework of an American welfare state with the Social Security Act (1935), the National Labor Relations Act (1936), and the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938). These changes were strongly opposed by business leaders and conservatives who believed they represented unacceptable governmental involvement in the economy. SEE FIGURE 31
1937 Japan Invades China
Bent on dominating the Pacific Basin, Japan needed raw materials and markets for its goods to become an industrial and imperial power. In 1931, to increase its economic reach and because it desired a buffer with the Soviet Union, Japan occupied Manchuria, the northernmost province of China. The two nations fought intermittently after 1931. Total war began in 1937, when Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China known as the Second Sino-Japanese War, thereby inaugurating a conflict that would involve it militarily on the Asian mainland for the next eight years. By the end of 1937 Japan had secured major victories in Shanghai and captured the Chinese capital of Nanking, but by 1939 the war reached a stalemate when Chinese Nationalist and allied communist forces achieved victories. With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and the entrance of the United States into the Pacific War, the ongoing Chinese-Japanese conflict merged into World War II.
1934–1938 “Okies” and “Arkies” Flee the Dust Bowl
In addition to experiencing the devastating effects of the Great Depression, the 1930s also witnessed an American ecological disaster known as the Dust Bowl. Beginning in 1931, the plentiful rains that customarily fell on the Great Plains were replaced by a prolonged drought. As ferocious dust storms repeatedly occurred, thousands of families were forced into destitution. The response to widespread farm bankruptcy and tenant eviction was another epic western migration, this time with migrants traveling in automobiles rather than covered wagons. John Steinbeck poignantly described the harrowing experiences of one such fictional migrating family of tenant farmers, the Joads, in his influential novel, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Hundreds of thousands of “Okies” (from Oklahoma), “Arkies” (from Arkansas), and others sought work in California’s “factories in the fields,” where they faced hostility and disdain. Often unsuccessful in their search for agricultural jobs, many migrants flooded into Los Angeles and other urban centers. SEE FIGURE 32
Figure 31. President Franklin D. Roosevelt conducts a “fireside” radio chat. Image courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration. Figure 32. Impoverished Dustbowl refugees arrive in San Fernando, California after a transcontinental journey in search of jobs and food. Image courtesy of Dorothea Lange.
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