The Great Depression

Reference

Sources and further reading

Where every quotation on this site comes from, and where to read each work in full

The essays on this site

  • Higgs, Robert. “How FDR Made the Depression Worse.” First published 1995; archived in the Mises Institute’s Free Market series. Source. Reproduced in full on the essay page.
  • Rothbard, Murray N. For a New Liberty (1973); America’s Great Depression (1976); “Taking Money Back” (1994). Quoted on the Rothbard page.
  • Mises, Ludwig von. Human Action (1949); Economics and the Public Welfare (1951). Quoted on the von Mises page.

Primary documents

  • Roosevelt, Franklin D. Executive Order 6102, “Forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion and Gold Certificates,” 5 April 1933. Full text at Mises Wire.
  • Gold Reserve Act of 1934, Pub. L. 73–73. Reduced the gold content of the dollar from 25.8 grains to 15¼ grains nine-tenths fine.
  • Emergency Banking Act of 1933; Banking Act of 1933 (the National Industrial Recovery Act); Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933; National Industrial Recovery Act codes, 557 basic and 189 supplementary.
  • Hughes, C. E. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935), striking down the NRA. “Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power.”

Copyright

The essays reproduced here remain the property of their authors and their publishers. Higgs died in 2023 and Rothbard in 1995; von Mises in 1973. Each text is linked back to a source where it can be read in its published form. Nothing here is offered for republication.