America demanded that Britain and France pay their debts to the United States. They could not, so they placed a huge price-tag onto Germany who certainly could not pay. Germany printed paper money en masse, thus creating inflation and making the money completely worthless. Inflation was crippling in Germany: a loaf of bread was 480 million marks, it got so bad that it was immeasurable.

An arrangement negotiated in 1924 to reschedule German reparations payments. It stabilized the German currency and opened the way for further American private loans to Germany.

His view that America was made great by strong, self-sufficient individuals, like the pioneers of old days trekking across the prairies, relying on no one else for help. This was the kind of folk America still needed, he said.

It was to lend money to farmers. The board started the Grain Stabilization Corporation and Cotton Stabilization Corporation in 1930. They were to buy up surpluses of those crops to keep prices high.

The highest protective tariff in the peacetime history of the United States, passed as a result of good old-fashioned horse trading. To the outside world, it smacked of ugly economic warfare.

The dark, panicky day of October 29, 1929 when over 16,410,000 shares of stock were sold on Wall Street. It was a trigger that helped bring on the Great Depression.

Businesses began to go out of business (since people could not or would not buy now). Unemployment shot up. Over 5,000, banks went bankrupt as people withdrew their money in fear of their bank going bankrupt (a self-fulfilling prophecy). The only things growing were soup kitchens and homeless shelters.

This law that banned “yellow-dog,” or anti-union, work contracts and forbade federal courts from issuing injunctions to quash strikes and boycotts. It was an early piece of labor-friendly federal legislation.