Child Labor in the United States: In 1900 approximately two million children were working in mills, mines, fields, factories, stores, and on city streets across the United States. The 1900 census, which counted workers aged 10 to 15, found that 18.2 percent of the country's children between those ages were working. The census report helped to spark a national movement to end child labor in the United States. It took organizational form in 1904 with the founding of the National Child Labor Committee. The movement combined moral outrage, new interpretations of the value of childhood, and dire warnings about racial and national decay to mobilize support for strict regulation of child labor. Equating child labor with slavery, some argued that the country had not faced such a serious moral problem since the Civil War. Jim Zwick's excellent website provides a wealth of information on the campaign that took place to bring an end to child labor in the United States.
Wall Street Crash: On 29th October, 1929, investors sold sixteen million shares at a loss of $10 billion, twice the amount of money in circulation in the whole country at the time. This website provides an overview of the crash and attempts to answer the questions: Why did so many people in the U.S. invest in the stock market during 1929? What caused the 1929 Crash? How did the US Government reaction to the crash? Did the Stock Market Crash Cause the Great Depression?
Depression Papers of Herbert Hoover: A large collection of primary documents concerning President Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression. Subjects covered include Tariffs and Agriculture, Economic Stability Program, Relief, Unemployment and Public Works, The Dust Bowl, Banks & Finance, The Federal Budget, Economic Recovery Measures and the Bonus March.
Bonus Marchers: In 1924 Congress voted $3,500,000,000 to the American veterans of the First World War. In order to prevent an immediate strain on its funds, the Government decided to pay the money over a 20 year period. During the Great Depression, many of these veterans found it difficult to find work. An increasing number came to the conclusion that the money would be more useful to them in this time of need than when the bonus was due. In 1932 John Patman of Texas, introduced the Veteran's Bonus Bill which mandated the immediate cash payment of the endowment promised to the men who fought in the war. This website explains what happened when 10,000 of these ex-soldiers marched on Washington in an attempt to persuade Congress to pass the Patman Bill.
New Deal Network: In October, 1996, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (FERI), in collaboration with the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Marist College, and IBM, launched the New Deal Network (NDN), a research and teaching resource on the World Wide Web devoted to the public works and arts projects of the New Deal. At the core of the NDN is a database of photographs, political cartoons, and texts (speeches, letters, and other historic documents from the New Deal period). Currently there are over 20,000 items in this database, many of them previously accessible only to scholars. Unlike many databases on the Web, which represent the holdings of a particular institution, NDN is drawing from a wide variety of sources around the country to create a theme-based archive.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Fireside Chats:A week after his Inauguration, Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the first of what became known as his fireside chats. On 12th March 1933 an estimated 60 million people sat round their radio sets to listen to Roosevelt's talk on the Bank Crisis. This website is devoted to these fireside chats and includes the transcripts of 30 talks including those on the New Deal Program (7th May 1933), Purposes and Foundations of the Recovery Program (24th July 1933), Works Relief Program (28th April 1935), Reorganization of the Judiciary (9th March 1937), the European War (3rd September 1939) and Declaration of War With Japan (9th December 1941).
Roosevelt and the New Deal: A comprehensive encyclopedia of Roosevelt and the New Deal. Each entry contains a narrative, illustrations and primary sources. The text within each entry is hypertexted to other relevant pages in the encyclopedia. In this way it is possible to research individual people and events in great detail. The sources are also hypertexted so the student is able to find out about the writer, artist, newspaper, organization, etc., that produced the material. So far there are sections on New Deal Personalities (22), New Deal Legislation (18) and New Deal Photographers (18).
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library: The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Museum, and Digital Archives, is an on-line resource devoted to fulfilling Franklin Roosevelts dream of making the records of the past available "for the use of men and women in the future." Through this site, scholars, teachers, students and members of the general public can now gain access to a portion of the rich collection of documents, photographs, sound and video recordings, finding aids, and other primary source materials found at the library in Hyde Park, New York.
Debunking the Roosevelt Myth: The home page of this website states: "Urban myths abound in modern culture. One of those myths surrounds the life and presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, America's 32nd President. To this day, he is credited with pulling America out of the Great Depression. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. Roosevelt was hardly a learned man. He knew little about economics either in theory or practice. He was indeed a great orator, but that was the extent of his gifts." The website provides links to online e-books hostile to Roosevelt including The Roosevelt Myth (John T. Flynn), Communism at Pearl Harbor (Anthony Kubek), Roosevelt's Road to Russia (George N. Crocker) and The Yalta Betrayal (Felix Wittmer).
Roosevelt and the New Deal: A directory of the best websites on Roosevelt and the New Deal. It provides links to over 50 websites including the New Deal Network, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, FDR Cartoon Archive, Anticommunism and the New Deal Federal Art, The Four Freedoms, Roosevelt's Administration, New Deal Cultural Programs, Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and the Federal Writers' Project.
Father Coughlin: On 11th November, 1934, Father Charles E. Coughlin announced the formation of the National Union of Social Justice and began his bid to oust President Franklin D. Roosevelt from power. At this time some observers claimed that Coughlin was the second most important political figure in the United States. It was estimated that Coughlin's radio broadcasts were getting an audience of 30 million people. He was also apparently receiving 400,000 letters a week from his listeners. According to Wallace Stegner "Father Coughlin had a voice of such mellow richness, such manly, heart-warming, confidential intimacy, such emotional and ingratiating charm, that anyone tuning past it on the radio dial almost automatically returned to hear it again." This website traces the rise and fall of America's first radio star.
Munitions Investigating Committee: On 4th September, 1934, Gerald Nye and his Munitions Investigating Committee began interviewing witnesses and examining government documents. In the reports published by the committee over the next two years it was claimed that there was a strong link between the American government's decision to enter the First World War and the lobbying of the the munitions industry. This website looks at the impact that the Munitions Investigating Committee had on America's foreign policy before the outbreak of the Second World War.
The White House: The official website of the White House provides a large number of detailed biographies of people associated with this important building (organized under the headings of President, Vice-President and First Lady). There is also a online tour, a trivia quiz and information on the paintings in the White House.
Joe Hill: When Joe Hill heard he was to be executed by firing-squad on 19th November, 1915 he sent a message to Bill Haywood of the