The Eastern Carolina League was a minor league baseball affiliation which operated in the Eastern part of North Carolina . The league had two distinct periods of operation: 1908 to 1910 and a revival of the league in 1928 and 1929. It was classified as a Class D level league.
123-633: The most famous person to play in the league was Jim Thorpe , considered by some the greatest athlete of the twentieth century. It was his involvement with the Eastern Carolina League that cost him his amateur status and his 1912 Summer Olympics metals. † In late August 1908, Eastern North Carolina was hit by what is now known as Tropical Storm #5. The playoffs were abandoned with Wilmington leading Wilson 2 games to 1. 1908 schedule New Bern and Kinston withdrew July 15 Playoffs: Abandoned August 27 due to bad weather. Wilmington
246-634: A deflationary spiral started in 1931. Farmers faced a worse outlook; declining crop prices and a Great Plains drought crippled their economic outlook. At its peak, the Great Depression saw nearly 10% of all Great Plains farms change hands despite federal assistance. At first, the decline in the U.S. economy was the factor that triggered economic downturns in most other countries due to a decline in trade, capital movement, and global business confidence. Then, internal weaknesses or strengths in each country made conditions worse or better. For example,
369-526: A running back , defensive back , placekicker and punter , Thorpe scored all of his team's four field goals in an 18–15 upset of Harvard , a top-ranked team in the early days of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). His team finished the season 11–1. In 1912, Carlisle won the national collegiate championship largely as a result of Thorpe's efforts: he scored 25 touchdowns and 198 points during
492-418: A silver standard , almost avoided the depression entirely. The connection between leaving the gold standard as a strong predictor of that country's severity of its depression and the length of time of its recovery has been shown to be consistent for dozens of countries, including developing countries . This partly explains why the experience and length of the depression differed between regions and states around
615-917: A brief time in 1913, he was considering going into professional hockey for the Tecumseh Hockey Club in Toronto , Ontario, Canada. Thorpe married three times and had a total of eight children. In 1913, Thorpe married Iva M. Miller, whom he had met at Carlisle. In 1917, Iva and Thorpe bought a house now known as the Jim Thorpe House in Yale, Oklahoma , and lived there until 1923. They had four children: James F., Gale, Charlotte, and Grace Frances , an environmentalist and Native rights activist. Miller filed for divorce from Thorpe in 1925, claiming desertion. In 1926, Thorpe married Freeda Verona Kirkpatrick (September 19, 1905 – March 2, 2007). She
738-604: A former privately run bank, bearing no relation to the U.S. government (not to be confused with the Federal Reserve ). Unable to pay out to all of its creditors, the bank failed. Among the 608 American banks that closed in November and December 1930, the Bank of United States accounted for a third of the total $ 550 million deposits lost and, with its closure, bank failures reached a critical mass. In an initial response to
861-624: A great man. I never expect to look upon a finer athlete." He told a reporter from New York World , "Thorpe is the greatest athlete that ever lived. He has me beaten fifty ways. Even when I was in my prime, I could not do what he did today." In 1912, strict rules regarding amateurism were in effect for athletes participating in the Olympics. Athletes who received money prizes for competitions, were sports teachers, or had competed previously against professionals, were not considered amateurs. They were barred from competition. In late January 1913,
984-467: A greater reduction in credit. On 5 April 1933, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102 making the private ownership of gold certificates , coins and bullion illegal, reducing the pressure on Federal Reserve gold. British economist John Maynard Keynes argued in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money that lower aggregate expenditures in the economy contributed to
1107-574: A kicking coach teaching young football players to drop-kick . He played the captain of the guard in 1935's She , an umpire in the 1940 film Knute Rockne, All American , and a member of the Navajo Nation in the 1950 film Wagon Master . An American Indian Magazine article states Thorpe appeared in over 70 films. In 1931, during the Great Depression, Thorpe sold the film rights to his life story to MGM for $ 1,500 (equivalent to $ 30,000 in 2023). Warner Bros. eventually acquired
1230-600: A modern industrial city handled shortages of money and resources. Often they updated strategies their mothers used when they were growing up in poor families. Cheap foods were used, such as soups, beans and noodles. They purchased the cheapest cuts of meat—sometimes even horse meat—and recycled the Sunday roast into sandwiches and soups. They sewed and patched clothing, traded with their neighbors for outgrown items, and made do with colder homes. New furniture and appliances were postponed until better days. Many women also worked outside
1353-402: A monetary contraction first-hand were forced to join the deflationary policy since higher interest rates in countries that performed a deflationary policy led to a gold outflow in countries with lower interest rates. Under the gold standard's price–specie flow mechanism , countries that lost gold but nevertheless wanted to maintain the gold standard had to permit their money supply to decrease and
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#17327915862101476-533: A non-sports-related job and never held a job for an extended period of time. During the Great Depression in particular, he had various jobs, among others as a movie actor, mostly as an extra , usually playing an American Indian in Westerns , starting with the 1931 serial Battling with Buffalo Bill . In the 1932 comedy Always Kickin ' , Thorpe was prominently cast in a speaking part as himself,
1599-449: A physical game as football. Thorpe, however, convinced Warner to let him try some rushing plays in practice against the school team's defense; Warner assumed he would be tackled easily and give up the idea. Thorpe "ran around past and through them not once, but twice". He walked over to Warner and said, "Nobody is going to tackle Jim", while flipping him the ball. Thorpe first gained nationwide notice in 1911 for his athletic ability. As
1722-762: A record score in the decathlon, he added a victory in the All-Around Championship of the Amateur Athletic Union . Later in 1913, Thorpe signed with the New York Giants , and he played six seasons in Major League Baseball between 1913 and 1919. Thorpe joined the Canton Bulldogs American football team in 1915, helping them win three professional championships. He later played for six teams in
1845-567: A serious issue in the 1930s. Support for increasing welfare programs during the depression included a focus on women in the family. The Conseil Supérieur de la Natalité campaigned for provisions enacted in the Code de la Famille (1939) that increased state assistance to families with children and required employers to protect the jobs of fathers, even if they were immigrants. In rural and small-town areas, women expanded their operation of vegetable gardens to include as much food production as possible. In
1968-564: A similar competition known as the all-around championship had been part of American track meets since the 1880s. A men's version had been featured on the program of the 1904 St. Louis Olympics . The events of the new decathlon differed slightly from the American version. Thorpe was so versatile that he served as Carlisle's one-man team in several track meets. According to his obituary in The New York Times , he could run
2091-480: A small cadre of Labour, but the vast majority of Labour leaders denounced MacDonald as a traitor for leading the new government. Britain went off the gold standard , and suffered relatively less than other major countries in the Great Depression. In the 1931 British election, the Labour Party was virtually destroyed, leaving MacDonald as prime minister for a largely Conservative coalition. In most countries of
2214-713: A standstill agreement froze Germany's foreign liabilities for six months. Germany received emergency funding from private banks in New York as well as the Bank of International Settlements and the Bank of England. The funding only slowed the process. Industrial failures began in Germany, a major bank closed in July and a two-day holiday for all German banks was declared. Business failures were more frequent in July, and spread to Romania and Hungary. The crisis continued to get worse in Germany, bringing political upheaval that finally led to
2337-500: A ticket that documented his time in professional basketball was discovered in an old book in 2005. By 1926, he was the main feature of the World Famous Indians of LaRue, Ohio , a traveling basketball team. The team barnstormed for at least two years (1927–28) in multiple states. Although stories about Thorpe's team were published in some local newspapers at the time, his basketball career is not well-documented. For
2460-658: Is a consensus that the Federal Reserve System should have cut short the process of monetary deflation and banking collapse, by expanding the money supply and acting as lender of last resort . If they had done this, the economic downturn would have been far less severe and much shorter. Modern mainstream economists see the reasons in Insufficient spending, the money supply reduction, and debt on margin led to falling prices and further bankruptcies ( Irving Fisher 's debt deflation). The monetarist explanation
2583-493: Is supported by the contrast in how the crisis progressed in, e.g., Britain, Argentina and Brazil, all of which devalued their currencies early and returned to normal patterns of growth relatively rapidly and countries which stuck to the gold standard , such as France or Belgium. Frantic attempts by individual countries to shore up their economies through protectionist policies – such as the 1930 U.S. Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act and retaliatory tariffs in other countries – exacerbated
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#17327915862102706-704: The Worcester Telegram reported that Thorpe had played semi-professional baseball before the Olympics, and other U.S. newspapers followed up the story. Thorpe had played semi-professional baseball in the Eastern Carolina League for Rocky Mount, North Carolina , in 1909 and 1910, receiving meager pay; reportedly as little as US$ 2 ($ 65 today) per game and as much as US$ 35 ($ 1,145 today) per week. College players, in fact, regularly spent summers playing professionally in order to earn some money, but most used aliases, unlike Thorpe. Although
2829-484: The 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, two new multi-event disciplines were included, the pentathlon and the decathlon . A pentathlon, based on the ancient Greek event, had been introduced at the 1906 Intercalated Games . The 1912 version consisted of the long jump , javelin throw , 200-meter dash, discus throw , and 1500-meter run. The decathlon was a relatively new event in modern athletics, although
2952-779: The 1913 National League champions . Immediately following the Giants' October loss in the 1913 World Series , Thorpe and the Giants joined the Chicago White Sox for a world tour. Barnstorming across the United States and around the world, Thorpe was the celebrity of the tour. Thorpe's presence increased the publicity, attendance and gate receipts for the tour. He met with Pope Pius X and Abbas II Hilmi Bey (the last Khedive of Egypt ), and played before 20,000 people in London including King George V . Thorpe
3075-539: The 1932 election , Hoover was defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt , who from 1933 pursued a series of " New Deal " policies and programs to provide relief and create jobs, including the Civilian Conservation Corps , Federal Emergency Relief Administration , Tennessee Valley Authority , and Works Progress Administration . Historians disagree on the effects of the New Deal, with some claiming that
3198-649: The Haskell Institute , an Indian boarding school in Lawrence, Kansas , so that he would not run away again. When Thorpe's mother died of childbirth complications two years later, the youth became depressed. After several arguments with his father, he left home to work on a horse ranch. In 1904, the sixteen-year-old Thorpe returned to his father and decided to attend Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania . There his athletic ability
3321-541: The National Football League (NFL) two years later. Thorpe was nominally their first president , but spent most of the year playing for Canton; a year later, he was replaced as president by Joseph Carr . He continued to play for Canton, coaching the team as well. Between 1921 and 1923, he helped organize and played for the Oorang Indians ( LaRue, Ohio ), an all-Native American team. Although
3444-564: The National Football League (NFL). He played as part of several all-American Indian teams throughout his career, and barnstormed as a professional basketball player with a team composed entirely of American Indians. From 1920 to 1921, Thorpe was nominally the first president of the American Professional Football Association, which became the NFL in 1922. He played professional sports until age 41,
3567-582: The New York Bank of United States – which produced panic and widespread runs on local banks, and the Federal Reserve sat idly by while banks collapsed. Friedman and Schwartz argued that, if the Fed had provided emergency lending to these key banks, or simply bought government bonds on the open market to provide liquidity and increase the quantity of money after the key banks fell, all the rest of
3690-539: The coming to power of Hitler's Nazi regime in January 1933. The world financial crisis now began to overwhelm Britain; investors around the world started withdrawing their gold from London at the rate of £2.5 million per day. Credits of £25 million each from the Bank of France and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and an issue of £15 million fiduciary note slowed, but did not reverse,
3813-426: The discus 136 feet. Thorpe entered the U.S. Olympic trials for both the pentathlon and the decathlon. He easily earned a place on the pentathlon team, winning three events. The decathlon trial was subsequently cancelled, and Thorpe was chosen to represent the U.S. in the event. The pentathlon and decathlon teams also included Avery Brundage , a future International Olympic Committee president. Thorpe
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3936-578: The "greatest athlete" from the first 50 years of the 20th century, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame inducted him as part of its inaugural class in 1963. The town of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania , was named in his honor. It has a monument site that contains his remains, which were the subject of legal action. Thorpe appeared in several films and was portrayed by Burt Lancaster in the 1951 film Jim Thorpe – All-American . Information about Thorpe's birth, name and ethnic background varies widely. He
4059-427: The 100-yard dash in 10 seconds flat; the 220 in 21.8 seconds; the 440 in 51.8 seconds; the 880 in 1:57, the mile in 4:35; the 120-yard high hurdles in 15 seconds; and the 220-yard low hurdles in 24 seconds. He could long jump 23 ft 6 in and high-jump 6 ft 5 in. He could pole vault 11 feet; put the shot 47 ft 9 in; throw the javelin 163 feet; and throw
4182-447: The 1937 recession that interrupted it). The common view among most economists is that Roosevelt's New Deal policies either caused or accelerated the recovery, although his policies were never aggressive enough to bring the economy completely out of recession. Some economists have also called attention to the positive effects from expectations of reflation and rising nominal interest rates that Roosevelt's words and actions portended. It
4305-544: The AAU and IOC did not follow their own rules for disqualification. The rulebook for the 1912 Olympics stated that protests had to be made "within 30 days from the closing ceremonies of the games." The first newspaper reports did not appear until January 1913, about six months after the Stockholm Games had concluded. There is also some evidence that Thorpe was known to have played semi-professional baseball before
4428-813: The British crisis. The financial crisis now caused a major political crisis in Britain in August 1931. With deficits mounting, the bankers demanded a balanced budget; the divided cabinet of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government agreed; it proposed to raise taxes, cut spending, and most controversially, to cut unemployment benefits 20%. The attack on welfare was unacceptable to the Labour movement. MacDonald wanted to resign, but King George V insisted he remain and form an all-party coalition " National Government ". The Conservative and Liberals parties signed on, along with
4551-530: The Depression. Businessmen ignored the mounting national debt and heavy new taxes, redoubling their efforts for greater output to take advantage of generous government contracts. During World War I many countries suspended their gold standard in varying ways. There was high inflation from WWI, and in the 1920s in the Weimar Republic , Austria , and throughout Europe. In the late 1920s there
4674-521: The Dow returning to 294 (pre-depression levels) in April 1930, before steadily declining for years, to a low of 41 in 1932. At the beginning, governments and businesses spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the corresponding period of the previous year. On the other hand, consumers, many of whom suffered severe losses in the stock market the previous year, cut expenditures by 10%. In addition, beginning in
4797-489: The Federal Reserve did not act to limit the decline of the money supply was the gold standard . At that time, the amount of credit the Federal Reserve could issue was limited by the Federal Reserve Act , which required 40% gold backing of Federal Reserve Notes issued. By the late 1920s, the Federal Reserve had almost hit the limit of allowable credit that could be backed by the gold in its possession. This credit
4920-442: The Great Depression is right, or the traditional Keynesian explanation that a fall in autonomous spending, particularly investment, is the primary explanation for the onset of the Great Depression. Today there is also significant academic support for the debt deflation theory and the expectations hypothesis that – building on the monetary explanation of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz – add non-monetary explanations. There
5043-642: The Great Depression. According to the U.S. Senate website, the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act is among the most catastrophic acts in congressional history. Many economists have argued that the sharp decline in international trade after 1930 helped to worsen the depression, especially for countries significantly dependent on foreign trade. Most historians and economists blame the Act for worsening the depression by seriously reducing international trade and causing retaliatory tariffs in other countries. While foreign trade
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5166-481: The New Deal prolonged the Great Depression, as they argue that National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and National Labor Relations Act of 1935 restricted competition and established price fixing. John Maynard Keynes did not think that the New Deal under Roosevelt single-handedly ended the Great Depression: "It is, it seems, politically impossible for a capitalistic democracy to organize expenditure on
5289-504: The Olympic trials held at Celtic Park in New York, his all-round ability stood out in all these events and so he earned a place on the team that went to Sweden. The poet Marianne Moore , who taught Thorpe at Carlisle, recalled: He had a kind of ease in his gait that is hard to describe. Equilibrium with no stricture, but couched in the lineup of football he was the epitome of concentration, wary, with an effect of plenty in reserve. For
5412-423: The Olympics, but the AAU had ignored the issue until being confronted with it in 1913. The only positive aspect of this affair for Thorpe was that, as soon as the news was reported that he had been declared a professional, he received offers from professional sports clubs. In 1910, Thorpe had the unusual status of a sought-after free agent at the major league level during the era of the reserve clause , because
5535-660: The Reds and Hippo Vaughn of the Chicago Cubs , Thorpe drove in the winning run in the 10th inning. Late in the season, he was sold back to the Giants. Again, he played sporadically for them in 1918 before being traded to the Boston Braves on May 21, 1919, for Pat Ragan . In his career, he amassed 91 runs scored , 82 runs batted in and a .252 batting average over 289 games. He continued to play minor league baseball until 1922, and once played for
5658-544: The U.K. economy, which experienced an economic downturn throughout most of the late 1920s, was less severely impacted by the shock of the depression than the U.S. By contrast, the German economy saw a similar decline in industrial output as that observed in the U.S. Some economic historians attribute the differences in the rates of recovery and relative severity of the economic decline to whether particular countries had been able to effectively devaluate their currencies or not. This
5781-490: The U.S. unemployment rate down below 10%. World War II had a dramatic effect on many parts of the American economy. Government-financed capital spending accounted for only 5% of the annual U.S. investment in industrial capital in 1940; by 1943, the government accounted for 67% of U.S. capital investment. The massive war spending doubled economic growth rates, either masking the effects of the Depression or essentially ending
5904-622: The United States, agricultural organizations sponsored programs to teach housewives how to optimize their gardens and to raise poultry for meat and eggs. Rural women made feed sack dresses and other items for themselves and their families and homes from feed sacks. In American cities, African American women quiltmakers enlarged their activities, promoted collaboration, and trained neophytes. Quilts were created for practical use from various inexpensive materials and increased social interaction for women and promoted camaraderie and personal fulfillment. Oral history provides evidence for how housewives in
6027-543: The United States, remained on the gold standard into 1932 or 1933, while a few countries in the so-called "gold bloc", led by France and including Poland, Belgium and Switzerland, stayed on the standard until 1935–36. According to later analysis, the earliness with which a country left the gold standard reliably predicted its economic recovery. For example, The UK and Scandinavia, which left the gold standard in 1931, recovered much earlier than France and Belgium, which remained on gold much longer. Countries such as China, which had
6150-492: The United States. On the Olympic team's return, Thorpe was the star attraction in a ticker-tape parade on Broadway . He remembered later, "I heard people yelling my name, and I couldn't realize how one fellow could have so many friends." Apart from his track and field appearances, Thorpe also played in one of two exhibition baseball games at the 1912 Olympics , which featured two teams composed mostly of U.S. track and field athletes. Thorpe had previous experience in
6273-638: The Wall Street crash, after which the slide continued for three years, which was accompanied by a loss of confidence in the financial system. By 1933, the U.S. unemployment rate had risen to 25 percent, about one-third of farmers had lost their land, and about half of the country's 25,000 banks had gone out of business. Many people, unable to pay mortgages or rent, became homeless and relied on begging or charities to feed themselves. The U.S. federal government initially did little to help. President Herbert Hoover , like many of his fellow Republicans , believed in
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#17327915862106396-486: The banks of the North Fork River ;... hope this will clear up the inquiries as to my birthplace." Most biographers believe that he was born on May 22, 1887, the date listed on his baptismal certificate . Thorpe referred to Shawnee as his birthplace in his 1943 note to the newspaper. Thorpe's father, Hiram Thorpe, had an Irish father and a Sac and Fox Indian mother. His mother, Charlotte Vieux,
6519-460: The banks would not have fallen after the large ones did, and the money supply would not have fallen as far and as fast as it did. With significantly less money to go around, businesses could not get new loans and could not even get their old loans renewed, forcing many to stop investing. This interpretation blames the Federal Reserve for inaction, especially the New York branch . One reason why
6642-573: The beginning of the Depression. The Depression was preceded by a period of industrial growth and social development known as the " Roaring Twenties ". Much of the profit generated by the boom was invested in speculation , such as on the stock market , which resulted in growing wealth inequality . Banks were subject to minimal regulation under laissez-faire economic policies, resulting in loose lending and widespread debt. By 1929, declining spending had led to reductions in manufacturing output and rising unemployment . Share values continued to rise until
6765-465: The behavior of housewives. The common view among economic historians is that the Great Depression ended with the advent of World War II . Many economists believe that government spending on the war caused or at least accelerated recovery from the Great Depression, though some consider that it did not play a very large role in the recovery, though it did help in reducing unemployment. The rearmament policies leading up to World War II helped stimulate
6888-462: The collapse in global trade, contributing to the depression. By 1933, the economic decline pushed world trade to one third of its level compared to four years earlier. While the precise causes for the occurrence of the Great depression are disputed and can be traced to both global and national phenomena, its immediate origins are most conveniently examined in the context of the U.S. economy, from which
7011-475: The crash was a mere symptom of more general economic trends of the time, which had already been underway in the late 1920s. A contrasting set of views, which rose to prominence in the later part of the 20th century, ascribes a more prominent role to failures of monetary policy . According to those authors, while general economic trends can explain the emergence of the downturn, they fail to account for its severity and longevity; they argue that these were caused by
7134-569: The crisis, the U.S. Congress passed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act on 17 June 1930. The Act was ostensibly aimed at protecting the American economy from foreign competition by imposing high tariffs on foreign imports. The consensus view among economists and economic historians (including Keynesians , Monetarists and Austrian economists ) is that the passage of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff had, in fact, achieved an opposite effect to what
7257-633: The decade. The Depression had devastating economic effects on both wealthy and poor countries: all experienced drops in personal income , prices ( deflation ), tax revenues, and profits. International trade fell by more than 50%, and unemployment in some countries rose as high as 33%. Cities around the world , especially those dependent on heavy industry , were heavily affected. Construction virtually halted in many countries, and farming communities and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by up to 60%. Faced with plummeting demand and few job alternatives, areas dependent on primary sector industries suffered
7380-408: The depression. Not all governments enforced the same measures of protectionism. Some countries raised tariffs drastically and enforced severe restrictions on foreign exchange transactions, while other countries reduced "trade and exchange restrictions only marginally": The gold standard was the primary transmission mechanism of the Great Depression. Even countries that did not face bank failures and
7503-435: The domestic price level to decline ( deflation ). There is also consensus that protectionist policies, and primarily the passage of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act , helped to exacerbate, or even cause the Great Depression. Some economic studies have indicated that the rigidities of the gold standard not only spread the downturn worldwide, but also suspended gold convertibility (devaluing the currency in gold terms) that did
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#17327915862107626-402: The drop in demand. Monetarists believe that the Great Depression started as an ordinary recession, but the shrinking of the money supply greatly exacerbated the economic situation, causing a recession to descend into the Great Depression. Economists and economic historians are almost evenly split as to whether the traditional monetary explanation that monetary forces were the primary cause of
7749-419: The early 1950s. When hospitalized for lip cancer in 1950, Thorpe was admitted as a charity case. At a press conference announcing the procedure, his wife, Patricia, wept and pleaded for help, saying, "We're broke ... Jim has nothing but his name and his memories. He has spent money on his own people and has given it away. He has often been exploited." Great Depression The Great Depression
7872-427: The economies of Europe in 1937–1939. By 1937, unemployment in Britain had fallen to 1.5 million. The mobilization of manpower following the outbreak of war in 1939 ended unemployment. The American mobilization for World War II at the end of 1941 moved approximately ten million people out of the civilian labor force and into the war. This finally eliminated the last effects from the Great Depression and brought
7995-528: The end of his sports career coinciding with the start of the Great Depression . He struggled to earn a living after that, working several odd jobs. He suffered from alcoholism , and lived his last years in failing health and poverty. He was married three times and had eight children, including Grace Thorpe , an environmentalist and Native rights activist, before suffering from heart failure and dying in 1953. Thorpe has received numerous accolades for his athletic accomplishments. The Associated Press ranked him as
8118-576: The end of the month. A large sell-off of stocks began in mid-October. Finally, on 24 October, Black Thursday , the American stock market crashed 11% at the opening bell. Actions to stabilize the market failed, and on 28 October, Black Monday, the market crashed another 12%. The panic peaked the next day on Black Tuesday, when the market saw another 11% drop. Thousands of investors were ruined, and billions of dollars had been lost; many stocks could not be sold at any price. The market recovered 12% on Wednesday but by then significant damage had been done. Though
8241-500: The explanations of the Keynesians and monetarists. The consensus among demand-driven theories is that a large-scale loss of confidence led to a sudden reduction in consumption and investment spending. Once panic and deflation set in, many people believed they could avoid further losses by keeping clear of the markets. Holding money became profitable as prices dropped lower and a given amount of money bought ever more goods, exacerbating
8364-503: The few women in the labor force, layoffs were less common in the white-collar jobs and they were typically found in light manufacturing work. However, there was a widespread demand to limit families to one paid job, so that wives might lose employment if their husband was employed. Across Britain, there was a tendency for married women to join the labor force, competing for part-time jobs especially. In France, very slow population growth, especially in comparison to Germany continued to be
8487-452: The first week of June, 540 million in the second, and 150 million in two days, 19–20 June. Collapse was at hand. U.S. President Herbert Hoover called for a moratorium on payment of war reparations . This angered Paris, which depended on a steady flow of German payments, but it slowed the crisis down, and the moratorium was agreed to in July 1931. An International conference in London later in July produced no agreements but on 19 August
8610-401: The gold medal. That same day, he qualified for the high jump final, in which he finished in a tie for fourth. On July 12, Thorpe placed seventh in the long jump. Thorpe's final event was the decathlon, his first (and as it turned out, his only) decathlon. Strong competition from local favorite Hugo Wieslander was expected. Thorpe, however, defeated Wieslander by 688 points. He placed in
8733-606: The government tried to reshape private household consumption under the Four-Year Plan of 1936 to achieve German economic self-sufficiency. The Nazi women's organizations, other propaganda agencies and the authorities all attempted to shape such consumption as economic self-sufficiency was needed to prepare for and to sustain the coming war. The organizations, propaganda agencies and authorities employed slogans that called up traditional values of thrift and healthy living. However, these efforts were only partly successful in changing
8856-498: The greatest athlete in the world", to which Thorpe replied, "Thanks, King". Thorpe biographer Kate Buford suggests that the story is apocryphal , as she believes that such a comment "would have been out of character for a man who was highly uncomfortable in public ceremonies and hated to stand out." The anecdote appeared in newspapers by 1948, 36 years after his appearance in the Olympics and time for myth making, and in books as early as 1952. Thorpe's successes were followed in
8979-519: The home, or took boarders, did laundry for trade or cash, and did sewing for neighbors in exchange for something they could offer. Extended families used mutual aid—extra food, spare rooms, repair-work, cash loans—to help cousins and in-laws. In Japan, official government policy was deflationary and the opposite of Keynesian spending. Consequently, the government launched a campaign across the country to induce households to reduce their consumption, focusing attention on spending by housewives. In Germany,
9102-527: The initial crisis spread to the rest of the world. In the aftermath of World War I , the Roaring Twenties brought considerable wealth to the United States and Western Europe. Initially, the year 1929 dawned with good economic prospects: despite a minor crash on 25 March 1929, the market seemed to gradually improve through September. Stock prices began to slump in September, and were volatile at
9225-563: The lack of an adequate response to the crises of liquidity that followed the initial economic shock of 1929 and the subsequent bank failures accompanied by a general collapse of the financial markets. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 , when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped from 381 to 198 over the course of two months, optimism persisted for some time. The stock market rose in early 1930, with
9348-527: The light brightening the path to the cabin where he was born. Thorpe's parents were both Roman Catholic, a faith which Thorpe observed throughout his adult life. Thorpe attended the Sac and Fox Indian Agency school in Stroud , with his twin brother, Charlie. Charlie helped him through school until he died of pneumonia when they were nine years old. Thorpe ran away from school several times. His father sent him to
9471-521: The market entered a period of recovery from 14 November until 17 April 1930, the general situation had been a prolonged slump. From 17 April 1930 until 8 July 1932, the market continued to lose 89% of its value. Despite the crash, the worst of the crisis did not reverberate around the world until after 1929. The crisis hit panic levels again in December 1930, with a bank run on the Bank of United States ,
9594-414: The mid-1930s, a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the U.S. Interest rates dropped to low levels by mid-1930, but expected deflation and the continuing reluctance of people to borrow meant that consumer spending and investment remained low. By May 1930, automobile sales declined to below the levels of 1928. Prices, in general, began to decline, although wages held steady in 1930. Then
9717-558: The minor league Toledo Mud Hens . Thorpe had not abandoned football either. He first played professional football in 1913 as a member of the Indiana-based Pine Village Pros , a team that had a several-season winning streak against local teams during the 1910s. He signed with the Canton Bulldogs in 1915. They paid him $ 250 ($ 7,530) a game, a tremendous wage at the time. Before signing him Canton
9840-555: The minor league team that last held his contract had disbanded that year, so he was free to choose which baseball team to play for. In January 1913, he turned down a starting position with the St. Louis Browns , then at the bottom of the American League . Thorpe signed with the New York Giants baseball club in 1913, the defending 1912 National League champion . With Thorpe playing in 19 of their 151 games, they repeated as
9963-423: The monetary base and by not injecting liquidity into the banking system to prevent it from crumbling, the Federal Reserve passively watched the transformation of a normal recession into the Great Depression. Friedman and Schwartz argued that the downward turn in the economy, starting with the stock market crash, would merely have been an ordinary recession if the Federal Reserve had taken aggressive action. This view
10086-502: The most to make recovery possible. Every major currency left the gold standard during the Great Depression. The UK was the first to do so. Facing speculative attacks on the pound and depleting gold reserves , in September 1931 the Bank of England ceased exchanging pound notes for gold and the pound was floated on foreign exchange markets. Japan and the Scandinavian countries followed in 1931. Other countries, such as Italy and
10209-427: The most. The outbreak of World War II in 1939 ended the Depression, as it stimulated factory production, providing jobs for women as militaries absorbed large numbers of young, unemployed men. The precise causes for the Great Depression are disputed. One set of historians, for example, focuses on non-monetary economic causes. Among these, some regard the Wall Street crash itself as the main cause; others consider that
10332-582: The need to balance the national budget and was unwilling to implement expensive welfare spending . In 1930, Hoover signed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act , which taxed imports with the intention of encouraging buyers to purchase American products, which worsened the Depression because foreign governments retaliated with tariffs on American exports. In 1932, Hoover established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation , which offered loans to businesses and support to local governments. In
10455-483: The physical volume of exports fall, but also the prices fell by about 1 ⁄ 3 as written. Hardest hit were farm commodities such as wheat, cotton, tobacco, and lumber. Governments around the world took various steps into spending less money on foreign goods such as: "imposing tariffs, import quotas, and exchange controls". These restrictions triggered much tension among countries that had large amounts of bilateral trade, causing major export-import reductions during
10578-480: The policies prolonged the Depression instead of shortening it. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an estimated 15%; in the U.S., the Depression resulted in a 30% contraction in GDP. Recovery varied greatly around the world. Some economies, such as the U.S., Germany and Japan started to recover by the mid-1930s; others, like France, did not return to pre-shock growth rates until later in
10701-459: The political situation in Europe. In their book, A Monetary History of the United States , Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz also attributed the recovery to monetary factors, and contended that it was much slowed by poor management of money by the Federal Reserve System . Chairman of the Federal Reserve (2006–2014) Ben Bernanke agreed that monetary factors played important roles both in
10824-424: The public did not seem to care much about Thorpe's past, the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), and especially its secretary James Edward Sullivan , took the case very seriously. Thorpe wrote a letter to Sullivan, in which he admitted playing professional baseball: I hope I will be partly excused by the fact that I was simply an Indian schoolboy and did not know all about such things. In fact, I did not know that I
10947-457: The rights and memorialized Thorpe in Jim Thorpe – All-American (1951), starring Burt Lancaster . The film was directed by Michael Curtiz . Although there were rumors that Thorpe received no money, he was paid $ 15,000 by Warner Bros. plus a $ 2,500 donation toward an annuity for him by the studio's head of publicity. The movie included archival footage of the 1912 and 1932 Olympics. Thorpe
11070-434: The scale necessary to make the grand experiments which would prove my case—except in war conditions." According to Christina Romer , the money supply growth caused by huge international gold inflows was a crucial source of the recovery of the United States economy, and that the economy showed little sign of self-correction. The gold inflows were partly due to devaluation of the U.S. dollar and partly due to deterioration of
11193-555: The season, according to CNN 's Greg Botelho. Steve Boda, a researcher for the NCAA, credits Thorpe with 27 touchdowns and 224 points. Thorpe rushed 191 times for 1,869 yards, according to Boda; the figures do not include statistics from two of Carlisle's 14 games in 1912 because full records are not available. Carlisle's 1912 record included a 27–6 victory over the West Point Army team . In that game, Thorpe's 92-yard touchdown
11316-885: The sport, as the public soon learned. After his victories at the Olympic Games in Sweden, on September 2, 1912, Thorpe returned to Celtic Park, the home of the Irish American Athletic Club , in Queens , New York (where he had qualified four months earlier for the Olympic Games), to compete in the Amateur Athletic Union 's All-Around Championship. Competing against Bruno Brodd of the Irish American Athletic Club and John L. Bredemus of Princeton University , he won seven of
11439-574: The team's record was 3–6 in 1922, and 1–10 in 1923, Thorpe played well and was selected for the Green Bay Press-Gazette 's first All-NFL team in 1923. This was later formally recognized in 1931 by the NFL as the league's official All-NFL team. Thorpe never played for an NFL championship team. He retired from professional football at age 41, having played 52 games for six teams from 1920 to 1928. Most of Thorpe's biographers were unaware of his basketball career until
11562-511: The ten events contested and came in second in the remaining three. With a total point score of 7,476 points, Thorpe broke the previous record of 7,385 points set in 1909 (also at Celtic Park), by Martin Sheridan , the champion athlete of the Irish American Athletic Club. Sheridan, a five-time Olympic gold medalist, was present to watch his record broken. He approached Thorpe after the event and shook his hand saying, "Jim, my boy, you're
11685-411: The top four in all ten events, and his Olympic record of 8,413 points stood for nearly two decades. Even more remarkably, because someone had stolen his shoes just before he was due to compete, he found a mismatched pair of replacements, including one from a trash can, and won the gold medal wearing them. Overall, Thorpe won eight of the 15 individual events comprising the pentathlon and decathlon. As
11808-412: The track and, still in street clothes, beat all the school's high jumpers with an impromptu 5-ft 9-in jump. His earliest recorded track and field results come from 1907. He also competed in football, baseball, lacrosse , and ballroom dancing , winning the 1912 intercollegiate ballroom dancing championship. Pop Warner was hesitant to allow Thorpe, his best track and field athlete, to compete in such
11931-476: The world, recovery from the Great Depression began in 1933. In the U.S., recovery began in early 1933, but the U.S. did not return to 1929 GNP for over a decade and still had an unemployment rate of about 15% in 1940, albeit down from the high of 25% in 1933. There is no consensus among economists regarding the motive force for the U.S. economic expansion that continued through most of the Roosevelt years (and
12054-673: The world. The financial crisis escalated out of control in mid-1931, starting with the collapse of the Credit Anstalt in Vienna in May. This put heavy pressure on Germany, which was already in political turmoil. With the rise in violence of National Socialist ('Nazi') and Communist movements, as well as investor nervousness at harsh government financial policies, investors withdrew their short-term money from Germany as confidence spiraled downward. The Reichsbank lost 150 million marks in
12177-778: The worldwide economic decline and eventual recovery. Bernanke also saw a strong role for institutional factors, particularly the rebuilding and restructuring of the financial system, and pointed out that the Depression should be examined in an international perspective. Women's primary role was as housewives; without a steady flow of family income, their work became much harder in dealing with food and clothing and medical care. Birthrates fell everywhere, as children were postponed until families could financially support them. The average birthrate for 14 major countries fell 12% from 19.3 births per thousand population in 1930, to 17.0 in 1935. In Canada, half of Roman Catholic women defied Church teachings and used contraception to postpone births. Among
12300-658: Was a scramble to deflate prices to get the gold standard's conversation rates back on track to pre-WWI levels, by causing deflation and high unemployment through monetary policy. In 1933 FDR signed Executive Order 6102 and in 1934 signed the Gold Reserve Act . The two classic competing economic theories of the Great Depression are the Keynesian (demand-driven) and the Monetarist explanation. There are also various heterodox theories that downplay or reject
12423-505: Was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty; drastic reductions in liquidity , industrial production, and trade; and widespread bank and business failures around the world. The economic contagion began in 1929 in the United States , the largest economy in the world, with the devastating Wall Street stock market crash of October 1929 often considered
12546-478: Was a small part of overall economic activity in the U.S. and was concentrated in a few businesses like farming, it was a much larger factor in many other countries. The average ad valorem (value based) rate of duties on dutiable imports for 1921–1925 was 25.9% but under the new tariff it jumped to 50% during 1931–1935. In dollar terms, American exports declined over the next four years from about $ 5.2 billion in 1929 to $ 1.7 billion in 1933; so, not only did
12669-484: Was a third-team All-American in 1908 and a first-team All-American in 1911 and 1912. Football was – and remained – Thorpe's favorite sport. He did not compete in track and field in 1910 or 1911, although this turned out to be the sport in which he gained his greatest fame. In the spring of 1912, he started training for the Olympics. He had confined his efforts to jumps, hurdles and shot-puts, but now added pole vaulting, javelin, discus, hammer and 56 lb weight. In
12792-566: Was an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation , Thorpe was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States in the Olympics. Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, he won two Olympic gold medals in the 1912 Summer Olympics (one in classic pentathlon and the other in decathlon ). He also played football (collegiate and professional), professional baseball, and professional basketball. He lost his Olympic titles after it
12915-665: Was averaging 1,200 fans a game, but 8,000 showed up for Thorpe's debut against the Massillon Tigers . The team won titles in 1916, 1917, and 1919. Thorpe reportedly ended the 1919 championship game by kicking a wind-assisted 95-yard punt from his team's own 5-yard line, effectively putting the game out of reach. In 1920, the Bulldogs were one of 14 teams to form the American Professional Football Association , which became
13038-563: Was baptized "Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe" in the Catholic Church . Thorpe was born in Indian Territory of the United States (later Oklahoma ), but no birth certificate has been found. He was generally considered to have been born on May 22, 1887, near the town of Prague . Thorpe said in a note to The Shawnee News-Star in 1943 that he was born May 28, 1888, "near and south of Bellemont – Pottawatomie County – along
13161-409: Was decided to restore him as the sole champion in both events. Thorpe grew up in the Sac and Fox Nation in Indian Territory (what is now the U.S. state of Oklahoma ). As a youth, he attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania , where he was a two-time All-American for the school's football team under coach Pop Warner . After his Olympic success in 1912, which included
13284-535: Was doing wrong, because I was doing what I knew several other college men had done, except that they did not use their own names ... His letter did not help. The AAU decided to withdraw Thorpe's amateur status retroactively. Later that year, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) unanimously decided to strip Thorpe of his Olympic titles, medals and awards, and declare him a professional. Although Thorpe had played for money,
13407-474: Was endorsed in 2002 by Federal Reserve Governor Ben Bernanke in a speech honoring Friedman and Schwartz with this statement: Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression, you're right. We did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again. The Federal Reserve allowed some large public bank failures – particularly that of
13530-432: Was extremely busy in the Olympics. Along with the decathlon and pentathlon, he competed in the long jump and high jump. The first competition was the pentathlon on July 7. He won four of the five events and placed third in the javelin, an event he had not competed in before 1912. Although the pentathlon was primarily decided on place points, points were also earned for the marks achieved in the individual events. Thorpe won
13653-490: Was found he had been paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics, thus violating the contemporary amateurism rules. In 1983, 30 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) restored his Olympic medals with replicas, after ruling that the decision to strip him of his medals fell outside of the required 30 days . Official IOC records still listed Thorpe as co-champion in decathlon and pentathlon until 2022, when it
13776-426: Was given by American economists Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz . They argued that the Great Depression was caused by the banking crisis that caused one-third of all banks to vanish, a reduction of bank shareholder wealth and more importantly monetary contraction of 35%, which they called "The Great Contraction ". This caused a price drop of 33% ( deflation ). By not lowering interest rates, by not increasing
13899-500: Was in the form of Federal Reserve demand notes. A "promise of gold" is not as good as "gold in the hand", particularly when they only had enough gold to cover 40% of the Federal Reserve Notes outstanding. During the bank panics, a portion of those demand notes was redeemed for Federal Reserve gold. Since the Federal Reserve had hit its limit on allowable credit, any reduction in gold in its vaults had to be accompanied by
14022-446: Was intended. It exacerbated the Great Depression by preventing economic recovery after domestic production recovered, hampering the volume of trade; still there is disagreement as to the precise extent of the Act's influence. In the popular view, the Smoot–Hawley Tariff was one of the leading causes of the depression. In a 1995 survey of American economic historians, two-thirds agreed that the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act at least worsened
14145-465: Was leading Wilson 2 games to 1. 1909 schedule Playoffs: Wilson awarded Championship after ineligible player violations were enacted. 1910 schedule Playoffs: Fayetteville 4 games, Rocky Mount 1. Playoffs: Goldsboro 4 games, Wilmington 2. Playoffs: Rocky Mount 4 games, Wilmington 2. Jim Thorpe James Francis Thorpe ( Meskwaki : Wa-Tho-Huk , translated as "Bright Path"; May 22 or 28, 1887 – March 28, 1953)
14268-433: Was nullified by a teammate's penalty, but on the next play Thorpe rushed for a 97-yard touchdown. Future President Dwight D. Eisenhower , who played against him in that game, recalled of Thorpe in a 1961 speech: Here and there, there are some people who are supremely endowed. My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw. Thorpe
14391-479: Was recognized and he was coached by Glenn Scobey "Pop" Warner , one of the most influential coaches of early American football history. Later that year the youth was orphaned after his father Hiram Thorpe died from gangrene poisoning, after being wounded in a hunting accident. The young Thorpe again dropped out of school. He resumed farm work for a few years before returning to Carlisle School. Thorpe began his athletic career at Carlisle in 1907 when he walked past
14514-580: Was seen in one scene as a coaching assistant. It was also distributed in the United Kingdom, where it was called Man of Bronze . Apart from his career in films, he worked as a construction worker, a doorman/bouncer , a security guard, and a ditchdigger. He briefly joined the United States Merchant Marine in 1945, during World War II. Thorpe was a chronic alcoholic during his later life. He ran out of money sometime in
14637-415: Was the custom of the day, the medals were presented to the athletes during the closing ceremonies of the games. Along with the two gold medals, Thorpe also received two challenge prizes, which had been donated by King Gustav V of Sweden for the decathlon and Czar Nicholas II of Russia for the pentathlon. Several sources recount that, when awarding Thorpe his prize, King Gustav said, "You, sir, are
14760-403: Was the daughter of Citizen Potawatomi Nation members Elizabeth and Jacob Vieux, and was a descendant of Chief Louis Vieux. Thorpe was raised as a Sac and Fox, and his native name, Wa-Tho-Huk , is translated as "path lit by great flash of lightning" or, more simply, "Bright Path". As was the custom for Sac and Fox, he was named for something occurring around the time of his birth, in this case
14883-578: Was the last man to compete in both the Olympics (in a non-baseball sport) and Major League Baseball before Eddy Alvarez did the same in 2020. Thorpe played sporadically with the Giants as an outfielder for three seasons. After playing in the minor leagues with the Milwaukee Brewers in 1916, he returned to the Giants in 1917. He was sold to the Cincinnati Reds early in the season. In the "double no-hitter " between Fred Toney of
15006-470: Was the rollback of those same reflationary policies that led to the interruption of a recession beginning in late 1937. One contributing policy that reversed reflation was the Banking Act of 1935 , which effectively raised reserve requirements, causing a monetary contraction that helped to thwart the recovery. GDP returned to its upward trend in 1938. A revisionist view among some economists holds that
15129-437: Was working for the manager of the baseball team for which he was playing at the time. They had four sons: Phillip, William, Richard, and John Thorpe. Kirkpatrick divorced Thorpe in 1941, after they had been married for 15 years. Lastly, Thorpe married Patricia Gladys Askew on June 2, 1945. She was with him when he died. After his athletic career, Thorpe struggled to provide for his family. He found it difficult to work
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