That the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. By the time Franklin Roosevelt gives his 199033 speech, a quarter of the nation is unemployed. 5000 banks have failed and drought is persisting in key agricultural areas of the country. You people must have faith. Coming up in the next hour, stories from the Great Depression as we take you around the country to places like around the country to places like toledo. The banking failure of the Great Depression. 26 for Infrastructure Projects of the times impacting us today. And to one ending in tragedy. We will take you to st. Paul where a depression era gangster and the corrupt police force strike a bargain. We will explore the impact of programs like the civilian conservation corps, as we go to kansas outside of amarillo, texas. We would not have a park here if it were not for the corp. And we will learn about the people who were hit hardest, and their tails. When the sun comes shining announcer we take a trip to toledo, ohio. In the 1920s, toledo was the Fastest Growing manufacturing city in america. In some ways, it was like the Silicon Valley of today. The Auto Industry cutting Edge Technologies were centered here at the time. And as a result, the Manufacturing Bank was going gangbusters. Toledo appeared to be one of the brightest economic spots on the whole american map, during a decade that was a decade of prosperity. And then in 1931, the entire house of cards collapsed all in one week. And five of the six largest banks in toledo all failed at the same time, which made it the largest banking failure of the Great Depression. The Banking Industry here was perhaps the 27th largest city in america. Its economy was rather diversified for a city of its size. It was an upandcoming major producer of automobiles. It had one of the largest automobile companies, producing cars here. Hadit was also a city that a Large Manufacturing base in the glass industry. Not only did it have her bubbly the most Glass Production of any city in the country, its companies owned all the important patents to glass technologies. Any bottle and any windowpane that was made in the world, some of those royalties came back to toledo. The Banking System in toledo is similar to the Banking System throughout ohio and maybe even the country, in that the banks were mostly chartered by the state government, not the federal government. And that is significant because that means the federal government did not regulate or inspect them. Instead, the inspections and regulations were done by the state of ohio. And that unfortunately allowed banks to pretty much pursue a wild west atmosphere of investing. They really didnt have many constraints on the type of loans that they would give out. They really didnt have many constraints on any Business Decisions that they made. What would eventually happen is that the banks pretty much escaped even state regulation. We know this because just on the eve of all these banks collapsing, the state inspectors certified them all as being healthy. And in fact, the bank that is right next door, the Security Home bank, was put on the honor roll of ohio banks even though it had not made a profit in over a year, and even though the inspectors discovered that they were at least 300,000 short on their accounting. And the Bank Directors had given themselves dividends illegally. In spite of all in spite of that, they put it on the honor roll of banking. Thats how weak banking regulations were here. We are in the former trust building, which was the only bank that survived that period. It survived because it was part of a Federal Reserve system and was federally inspected. Banks had to have good at accounting and it was not able to escape the regulations put upon it. When their bank crisis occurred, when the other banks began failing, this bank could call upon the Federal Reserve in cleveland and have an armored truck filled with 11 million in cash, driven out here so fast that it got into an accident and had to transfer its entire stock into a different armored car to make the trip. It was putting the depositors at ease that they had money. All of the banks in the city were owned by local investors, and controlled by local directors. The major problem that leads to the bank, is that the directors and owners were also involved in other companies. They were often times the owners of Big Manufacturing Companies in town. Often times Bank Directors would be directors on two or three banks at the same time. All the Bank Directors were heavily invested in Real Estate Companies because one of the primary contributors to the bank crisis here in toledo in the 1930s, just as it was in america in 2007, was the overinvestment in real estate. Real estate speculation reached a mindboggling rate in the 1920s. For example, by 1925 there was 435 Real Estate Companies in this small city. They developed 67 subdivisions, which could hold over one Million People for a city of a quarter Million People. Clearly overleveraged and over invested. Real Estate Companies could do this because they were owned by Real Estate Investors who were loaning money and giving themselves money. The interlocking directives of the Real Estate Companies and Manufacturing Companies meant there were all these incentives for bankers to give downloads when there was not collateral out loans when there was not collateral for a Good Business reason to do so. By 1931, that overhang of bad loans, finally the bill came do. On june 6, 1931, rumors were swirling around the city that the banks were about to fail. Crowds of depositors lined up outside the doors to demand their money. Little did they know that when they lined up outside the doors the people inside the banks, the directors, owners, and investors were already moving their money, leaving them very little. Toledo, after the bank crisis of 1931, went from being a city in recession to a city in catastrophe. By the winter of 1932, its estimated half of all the workers in toledo were laid off. Things got so bad that the city of toledo, which went bankrupt, cannot afford to buy bulbs for streetlights. The city got a little darker and darker. They cannot replace fire trucks. The number of fires that burned out of control increased every year. By 1934, one out of six people were on federal relief. Federal relief was so tight for toledo that dietitians begin calculating the minimum number of calories needed to maintain life. Thats what was allocated to individuals. It could not have been much worse, from that sense. The city was very much closed by 1932 as a result of the bank crisis. Toledo was in a state of economic catastrophe through most of the Great Depression. It was not until 1936 that the programs of the new deal had an affect. 1930s is a high proportion of the workforce. It was federal new deal relief that got the city back on its feet. Of course, its also true throughout the country and the Great Depression, the coming of the war in the 1940s invigorating the economy. Toledo began making the famous wartime released jeep. A converted many of its hardware factories into munitions factories. By the early 1940s, toledo was running on full employment. The economy would never rebound the way it was in the 1920s. The 1920s, toledo was one of the Fastest Growing cities in the country. After the war, and the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, their rate of growth fell behind the national average. They never recovered after the Great Depression. Its a significant event of the citys modern history. Fdr speaks to the nation on march for, 1933. You must have faith. Let me make it clear that the banks will take care of all means. Thehe Banking System is not only thing that president roosevelt has his eyes on. Wants, her roosevelt gets. Anything he needs to put out the fire. Every newic days, deal passes without question. The new secretary of the interior administers the pwa come the program of public works designed to create new jobs for the unemployed. That work on largescale public works and infrastructure. One of the most notable is the hoover dam. Tour featurecities on the Great Depression takes you to what was originally called the boulder dam until the name was changed to honor herbert hoover. Hoover dam was started in 1931, in april. The contractors were given seven years to complete it and got it done in five years. When the federal government decided to authorize hoover dam and fund it, it took six different Construction Companies to come together with their resources to have enough stuff, machines, manpower to put this together. You will see signs around hoover dam that was built i six by six companies, because that is actually how many it took. They joined forces to build this beautiful place. There were about 21,000 men that worked on the dan. About 1934 there were 5000 workers. The workers worked 24 7. They had two days off a year they could take. It was voluntary. You ask those people what the days were, everybody gets christmas, but the other day they could take off was the fourth of july. The primary purpose for building hoover dam was flood control. The Colorado River could flood and flood, trickle and trickle and flood. One person said it was too thick too thin to farm. Control theto colorado because it kept washing everything away. Other purpose was monitored delivery. Up. Water was divvied a way toed to have deliver the water. You have to do it when the farmers need it, so water delivery was different. Right now, i believe we have come down about 500 feet. We are in one of the tunnels that was built inside the rock walls. The arizona sign is part of hoover dam that contained nine generators. It is generating electricity. You can see that some of them are generating and some of them are not. We do not generate electricity all the time. We generate it when we get an order from the Electrical Company that we need more power. You will see some of these generators irs. Power,ot just generate we deliver water. Powerl not generate any because the water is designed to fill water orders and generate electricity. Hoover dam is 126 feet high. That is higher than the washington monument. We are about 50 feet above the bedrock. Feed theng to contractors who have water entitlements to the colorado. It is a gravity arch dam. It comes up to 45 feet at the top. Againstshing down and the walls of the canyon. About 4. 3 million cubic yards of concrete. That is enough to build a 16 foot wide highway from los angeles to new york. A lot of construction people know that concrete takes time to cool. To make that deadline, they built their own refrigeration plant and they ran types through the concrete with refrigerated water so they could keep pouring. As they poured, they cooled the concrete. It was an ingenious thing to build their own refrigeration plant at the bottom of the canyon. Many agreements called the law of the river. Water. Ied up the is basicallyin what hoover dam controls. Up,he time they divvied it they were counting on record taking keeping. They divvied up the water based on some pretty wet years. Snowpackave great years or you can go through what we are going through now. Maybers of drought with one goodyear. When the river is called over allocated, hydrology is not keeping up with water delivery needs. The needs meeting that are contracted. As of today, we have never failed to meet delivery. We do not anticipate that year, but if we continue to see the drop, we might be in a shortage in future years. Arizona and nevada would take less water. ,hen the contract was signed the census was 8000 people. Nobody envisioned a las vegas, reno or any industries that have risen in nevada since then. As water became more available, and it has become a huge community. They have managed their water. It was predictable how much they could take. They managed to recycle their water. They take care of every drop, they recycle it and they put a lot back into the lake. It was pretty clear, especially in the Great Depression that this would be an enormous undertaking. People would want to come and see this. To acknowledge that and make a place, they knew that they had to add them of the art echo where. Copperg statues made of that salute the american spirit, they knew that would come, and they did. Ticket. Ot have to buy a we have about one Million People a year that visit the dam. Ofis an incredible mixture engineering and creativity. I sometimes think, how did those straightline engineers, how did they find a place to make this so beautiful and functional . And so boulder dam stands steaming and controlling the flood. To perform. The hoover dam is one of 134,000 traction projects funded during the depression. Providing jobs to a nation with an unemployment rate, they spend over 6 million. Next, a construction project on wrong as our cspan cities tour takes you to the pacific west. Partially funded by the public works administration, the bridge is built over puget sound, towards the end of the era. The area of your standing in now is in the southern section of puget sound. When the Transcontinental Railroad came, there was talk about one day being able to ban puget sound, but it really was not an undertaking anybody was willing to do. , therethe depression were big jobs creating public works projects. Mid1930s, there would be talk about creating a bridge from tacoma to the peninsula. The bridge was opened the first after two years of construction. It is also little bit of a wind tunnel. People working on the deck again noticing meant. Wingt like an airplane lift. Movement, they began to feel a vertical lift, especially in the center span. There was no suspension bridge or anything like this in our part of the world. There was an unfamiliar rarity went how Something Like this was supposed to behave, so people excited about it, there is a , so peoplecefulness just wanted to thank that it was normal. Added,itional weight was that it would all go vaped. Fall, ourmer and into prevailing wind out of the southwest, which blows almost deck,ly across the bridge they began to notice that there was an undulation. Fall, soldiers were coming out from the military base for the novelty of writing the bridge. Riding the they would lead out as far as they could in the center deck of the bridge. It would be rising not just inches but feet, to a point where the undulation was so automobiles or a truck and an automobile coming from opposite directions had light and vehicle coming at you would disappear under the Rolling Hills of the deck. For conservative people, something was very wrong from the beginning. For a Community Proud of their bridge, for the many people who participated in building the bridge, it was unthinkable that this was wrong, but the engineers began to work on the idea of stiffening the bridge. They thought the railings on the side could be converted and that would add some rigidity to the bridge. For some of those minor structural additions, modifications were implemented or about to be implemented, as we got through october 1940. November, four point 4. 5 months, the weather began to shift into its with winter pattern. That was the bellwether of what was about to happen. On the morning of november 7, the winds kicked up and they were fiercely directed, right at the side of the bridge. The way wind comes over the wing of an airplane. Instead of the normal undulation, the deck began to twist, began to turn. Everybody noticed immediately that it was a behavior that people had not noticed before. Were in the morning, there hundreds, if not thousands of people who came out on both sides of the bridge to start to watch what was happening. Keepers, it was a toll bridge, so they had decided that they would close the bridge. It was not safe anymore. Just not an action that should happen with an inanimate object of this sides. One last car was coming across the bridge, even though access to the bridge had been shut off. A man coming from his summer tacoma hadd towards a cocker spaniel with him in the car. By the time he got to the most severely moving part of the bridge deck, the car screeched around and ended up diagonally across both lanes on the bridge. Ran, getting and off of the bridge. 30 or 40 minutes, violentge went into a movement that no one had seen before. All of the crowds on both sides closed in to watch. I think everyone started to suspect that the bridge was going to give it up, was going to fail. Up, was going to fail. Trying to solve the puzzle. There was enough time for people there. Ble to get out a professor actually ran out onto the bridge to get the dog out of the car and there is great footage of him. It looks like a Steven Spielberg movie. We watch that footage and you cannot even imagine that someone would run out onto the bridge with this carrying deck. Too terrified to get out of the car, so he gave up and was knocked down by the movement of the bridge. Finally got off the bridge and in the moments that followed, the deck tore away from the hangers. Likesses talk about it listening to gunshots. These bolts. Ed they go do