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Great Depression

New York City In the Roaring 20s: A Primer

May 29, 2023 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

Jazz, the Charleston, flappers, prohibition and a lot moreAs the ravages of the First World War and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic receded into the past, a new spirit gripped New York City. Energy seemed to infuse every aspect of city life, from business to leisure and everything in between. For a decade, New Yorkers by and large lived, worked and partied with abandon. [Read more…] about New York City In the Roaring 20s: A Primer

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: Black History, Cultural History, Economic History, Great Depression, Great Migration, Harlem Renaissance, Immigration, Labor History, Literature, New York City, Prohibition, Roosevelt Island Historical Society, Vice, womens history

FDR’s Landslide Victory in 1936

October 21, 2022 by Bob Cudmore Leave a Comment

The Historians LogoThis week on The Historians Podcast, David Pietrusza discusses his latest book, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal (Diversion Books, 2022). [Read more…] about FDR’s Landslide Victory in 1936

Filed Under: Books, History Tagged With: FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Depression, New Deal, Podcasts, Political History

Wall Street History: The Great Depression & A New Deal For Working People

March 14, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 1 Comment

out of work men during the Great Depression (retouched)In 1933, during Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s first year as President, the Democrats launched a number of New Deal social welfare and economic recovery efforts to combat the Great Depression.

Among the more popular and successful of these was the creation of the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), jobs programs which were modeled on similar programs in New York State. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: The Great Depression & A New Deal For Working People

Filed Under: Food, History, New York City Tagged With: Agricultural History, Charles Evans Hughes, Culinary History, Dairy, Economic History, FDR, Financial History, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Depression, Industrial History, Labor History, Legal History, New Deal, New York City, Political History, Supreme Court, Wall Street, Wall Street History Series, World War Two

The First Great Reset: Wall St, the Great Depression & the Pecora Commission

March 9, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 4 Comments

Crowd at New York's American Union Bank during a bank run early in the Great Depression (ca 1931)Initially many thought the severe Wall Street crash of October 1929 was a temporary phenomenon and like many subsequent crashes (i.e. 1987, 2008) the stock market would recover in a few months or years.

Unfortunately, this did not prove to be the case. After some upward spurts, stocks on the New York Stock Exchange continued to fall for the next three years and economic conditions throughout the country continued to worsen, so that by 1932 the market closed at 41, a drop of 89% over its 1929 high of 381. Employment in Wall Street firms plummeted, as the once heady activity evaporated and the Great Depression took hold.

The response would require a great reset between Wall Street and working Americans. [Read more…] about The First Great Reset: Wall St, the Great Depression & the Pecora Commission

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Agricultural History, Al Smith, Disability History, Economic History, FDR, Financial History, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Depression, Herbert Hoover, Labor History, Manhattan, New Deal, New York City, NYC, Political History, Wall Street, Wall Street History Series

Wall Street History: Individual Investors & The Crash of 1929

February 28, 2022 by James S. Kaplan Leave a Comment

Gasoline Marketing Territories of the Standard Oil companies in 1918The break-up of Standard Oil and other monopolies during the Trust-busting Era, created somewhat greater competition, but did not significantly impact Wall Street, or its major players. For example, after the success of the Justice Department in the 1911 Supreme Court Case United States v. Standard Oil (in which the Court ruled that Standard Oil of New Jersey violated the Sherman Antitrust Act), the company was ordered broken into 34 ostensibly independent companies. *

The stock in each of these companies was distributed to Standard Oil Company shareholders (principally the Rockefeller family) and each company had separate boards of directors and separate management, but by and large they continued to operate on separate floors of the same building — 26 Broadway in Manhattan. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: Individual Investors & The Crash of 1929

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Al Smith, Economic History, FDR, Financial History, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Depression, Industrial History, Manhattan, New York City, New York Stock Exchange, Oil Industry, Theodore Roosevelt, Transportation History, Wall Street, Wall Street History Series, World War One

Featured Collections: Great Depression Photos

January 31, 2022 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

Farm and woodlot in New York State about thirty miles west of Albany by Paul Carter FSA Photo courtesy Library of CongressBetween 1935 and 1942 photographers of the New Deal’s Farm Security Administration (FSA) documented the lives and struggles of Americans enduring the Great Depression.

Considered one of the largest documentary photography projects ever undertaken, the photographs include some of the most familiar and powerful images of the nation to emerge from the Depression. Many have reached iconic status in American culture.

The images, held at the Library of Congress, were made in every region of the nation and number in the tens of thousands, and include are photographs made by Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, Carl Mydans, Russell Lee, John Vachon, Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, and many others. [Read more…] about Featured Collections: Great Depression Photos

Filed Under: Arts, History Tagged With: Documentary, Farm Security Administration, Great Depression, New York State Museum, Photography

Albany County’s West Mountain: Some History

November 23, 2021 by Harold Miller Leave a Comment

Lewis Sherman HouseWest Mountain refers to the highlands in the southwest quadrant of the Town of Berne, NY, and is the highest point in Albany County at 2,160 ft.

A map of Van Rensselaer Patroonship leases made in 1787 does not shows anyone living on West Mountian, but white settlers probably started clearing land there within a few years of that date.  A few years later there were enough folks to organize the Baptist Church of Christ, just north of the Rensselaerville-Berne town line. A schoolhouse was built next door, jointly operated by both towns. [Read more…] about Albany County’s West Mountain: Some History

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History, Nature Tagged With: Agricultural History, Albany County, Berne, Environmental History, Great Depression, New Deal, Partridge Ridge WMA, Rensselaerswijck, Rensselaerville

Memoir Recounts The Remarkable Life of Sophie Kussmaul

July 12, 2020 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

through sophies eyesThrough Sophie’s Eyes (Cahaba, 2008) is a remarkable memoir by Sophie Kussmaul (1875-1968), granddaughter of Princess Regina Henry, first cousin to Frederick III, Emperor of Germany, and niece of Dr. Adolf Kussmaul, a noted Heidelberg physician.

Edited by Sinclair Seevers, the memoir spans her first six decades, two thirds of Kussmaul’s long life.  It’s a vivid account of her shy childhood in the 1870s through the years of the Great Depression. [Read more…] about Memoir Recounts The Remarkable Life of Sophie Kussmaul

Filed Under: Books, History Tagged With: Books, German-American History, Great Depression, Immigration, Medical History, Social History

A Visit To The Deansboro, Oneida Co, CCC Camp

May 27, 2020 by Richard Williams 3 Comments

Deansboro CCC Camp flag pole and three buildingsDuring the Great Depression of the 1930s the federal government started numerous programs to provide jobs. One, based on an earlier New York State program established by then Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).

The CCC employed about 3.5 million young men nationwide, with about 210,00 of them at 116 camps across New York State. The camps, for men only, were supervised by the U.S. Army and the Soil Conservation Commission. [Read more…] about A Visit To The Deansboro, Oneida Co, CCC Camp

Filed Under: Adirondacks & NNY, History, Mohawk Valley, Western NY Tagged With: CCC, Clinton County, Great Depression, Oneida County, Utica

Cutting The Scotia Runway: An Adirondack Conservationist During The War

May 9, 2020 by David Gibson 2 Comments

Paul Schaefer shouldering an axeIn the 1990s I would visit Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks (AfPA) vice president and archivist Paul Schaefer (1908-1996) at his home in Niskayuna to learn as much as I could from him about wilderness preservation.

After he died, Paul was named one of the 100 top conservationists in the United States by Audubon magazine. I was the executive director of the AfPA and learned a great deal from Paul during the last decade of his life. [Read more…] about Cutting The Scotia Runway: An Adirondack Conservationist During The War

Filed Under: Adirondacks & NNY, Capital-Saratoga, History, Mohawk Valley, Nature Tagged With: Adirondack Park, Bakers Mills, conservation, Great Depression, Paul Schaefer, World War Two

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