1932 - Commerce
Commerce
Congress authorizes a Reconstruction Finance Corp. January 22 to help finance industry and agriculture in accordance with President Hoover's request of last year. The RFC uses taxpayers' money to help corporations recover and create new jobs.
President Hoover persuades his secretary of the treasury Andrew W. Mellon to step down February 12 and accept appointment as ambassador to the Court of St. James. Now 76, Mellon has held the office since the late Warren Harding took office in March 1921 and embraced a "trickle-down" theory that spending by big business benefits all citizens; Hoover replaces him with Newport, R.I.-born millionaire Ogden L. (Livingston) Mills, now 47, who has been Mellon's under secretary and will follow the failed policies of his predecessor.
Parliament raises Britain's protective tariff February 29 with a new "Corn Law," abandoning free trade for the first time since 1849.
The suicide of Swedish "match king" Ivar Kreuger, 51, at Paris March 12 reveals a gigantic stock swindle that rocks the financial world and bankrupts the Boston banking house Lee, Higginson & Co.
Dearborn, Mich., police fire into a crowd of 3,000 men, women, and children demonstrating outside the Ford Motor Company plant March 7. Four are killed, 100 wounded, and the wounded are handcuffed to their hospital beds on charges of rioting (see United Auto Workers, 1935).
The Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act passed by Congress March 23 prohibits the use of injunctions in labor disputes except under defined conditions and outlaws "yellow-dog contracts" that make workers promise not to join any labor union. Sponsored by George W. (William) Norris (R. Neb.), now 70, and Fiorello H. (Henry) La Guardia (R. N.Y.), 39, the bill has been pushed by seamen's union chief Andrew Furuseth, now 78, and helps establish labor's right to strike, picket, and conduct boycotts.
"Bonus Marchers" descend on Washington beginning in May as some 25,000 poverty-stricken Great War veterans demonstrate to obtain "bonuses" authorized by the Adjustment Compensation Act of 1924 but not due until 1945. Some 300 veterans began May 11 by blocking the tracks outside Portland, Ore., and hijacking a train. Veteran William Walter took charge at Walla Walla, Wash., and imposed some military discipline as the "marchers" picked up support on their way across the country. Hoping to get roughly $500 each, the veterans—some with wives and children—camp out in the city's parks, dumps, empty stores, and warehouses. Baltimore Sun reporter Drew Pearson, 34, sees "no hope on their faces," and Washington's sympathetic chief of police Pelham Glasford issues rations and army pup tents. Former U.S. Marine Corps commandant Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler, now 50, encourages the bonus marchers, denouncing efforts by the U.S. Government to intervene in foreign affairs for the benefit of American financial interests (Butler resigned his position last year after writing a book in which he claimed that his service on three continents was for the benefit of New York banks and Standard Oil Company; see politics, 1934), but communists who try to infiltrate the ranks of the demonstrators are beaten up. Abilene, Kansas-born Major Dwight D. (David) Eisenhower, 41, tells Chief of Staff Gen. Douglas MacArthur, 52, that it would be demeaning for the army to be involved in a riot, but tanks roll down Pennsylvania Avenue, and cavalrymen and infantry armed with machine guns and bayonetted rifles use tear gas grenades to disperse the demonstrators from their main camp on Anacostia Flats and elsewhere, burning their shacks and ousting 15,000 men, women, and children. MacArthur has not consulted with Police Chief Glasford and has ignored orders from President Hoover to stop at the Anacostia Bridge. Major George S. (Smith) Patton, Jr., 45, and other officers participate in the July 28 violence, which produces 100 casualties, and although President Hoover summons MacArthur and the secretary of war to his office, he maintains that the Bonus Marchers were "communists and persons with criminal records" rather than veterans.
A tariff war between Britain and Ireland begins in July (see 1922). The loss of her chief export market brings a collapse of Ireland's cattle industry and worsens her economic depression (see 1935).
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets to 41.22 by July 7, down from its high of 381.17 September 3, 1929. It rallies somewhat before falling 5.79 points (8.40 percent) August 12, its fourth worst plunge yet, but remains above its July 7 low. Stock prices have lost 85 to 90 percent of their pre-Crash values and will never again fall so low, but they will not reach their 1929 heights until 1954 (not until the 1990s when adjusted for inflation).
An Emergency Relief and Reconstruction Act signed into law by President Hoover July 21 gives the RFC power to lend $1.8 billion to the states for relief and self-liquidating public works projects. Many states have been unable to raise money for relief purposes.
The U.S. controller of the currency announces August 26 that foreclosures on first mortgages will be temporarily suspended to provide some relief for beleagured homeowners.
Some 1,616 U.S. banks fail, nearly 20,000 business firms go bankrupt, there are 21,000 suicides, and expenditures for food and tobacco fall $10 billion below 1929 levels.
The average U.S. weekly wage falls to $17, down from $28 in 1929. "Breadlines" form in many cities.
David Dubinsky (originally Dobnievski) becomes president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). Now 40, the Polish-born organizer launches a membership drive that will triple the union's rolls in 3 years.
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) reverses its long-standing position against unemployment insurance and urges that work be spread through a 30-hour week with some "economic planning" by the federal government.
U.S. industrial production drops to one-third its 1929 total, and the U.S. Gross National Product (GNP) sinks to $41 billion, just over half its 1929 level.
Financier Paul M. Warburg dies of pneumonia at his New York home January 24 at age 63; Brookings Institution founder Robert S. Brookings at Washington, D.C., November 15 at age 82.
Prominent U.S. intellectuals endorse communism, saying that only the Communist Party has proposed a real solution to the nation's problems. Endorsers include Sherwood Anderson, Erskine Caldwell, John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, Waldo Frank, Granville Hicks, Sidney Hook, Matthew Josephson, and Lincoln Steffens.
Britain imposes a 10 percent tariff on most imported goods in September; Liberal Party leader (and confirmed free trader) Herbert L. Samuel, now 61, resigns his position as home secretary in Prime Minister MacDonald's cabinet in protest. Britain agrees at the Imperial Economic Conference at Ottawa to exempt Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other Commonwealth nations, which in turn will provide markets for Britain's otherwise uncompetitive textiles, steel, motorcars, and telecommunications equipment, discouraging innovation in many industries.
Germany has 5.6 million unemployed, Britain 2.8 million, but German national income rises to 57.5 billion marks, up from 45.7 billion in 1914.
Belgium, France, and four other debtor nations default on their payments to the United States December 15. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson proposed in July that the 1-year moratorium on all foreign debts be extended for a second year, but President Hoover refused.
U.S. unemployment reaches between 15 and 17 million by year's end, 34 million Americans have no income of any kind, and Americans who do work average little more than $16 per week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average struggles back from its low to close December 31 at 59.93, down from 77.90 at the end of 1931.
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