Your people must have faith. In the 1920s, toledo was the Fastest Growing manufacturing city in america. In some, ways it was the Silicon Valley of today. The auto industry, cutting edge technologies, they were all centered here at the time. As a result, the Manufacturing Base was going gangbusters. Toledo seemed to be one of the brightest economic spots on the whole american map during a decade that was a decade of prosperity. Then, in 1931, the entire house of cards collapsed. And five of the six largest banks in toledo all failed at the same time. That made it the largest banking failure of the Great Depression. The Banking Industry here was perhaps more corrupt than other places. That contributed to its catastrophic collapse. Toledo was the 27th largest city in america. Its economy was rather diversified for a city of its size. It was an up and coming, major producer of automobiles. It had one of the largest Automobile Companies producing cars here. But it was also a city that had a large Manufacturing Base in the glass industry. In fact, not only did it have the most Glass Production of any city in the country, its companies owned all the important patents to glass technologies. So any bottle and any windowpane made in the world, some of those royalties came back here to toledo. The Banking System in toledo is similar to the Banking System throughout ohio, and maybe even the country. The banks were mostly chartered by the state government, not the federal government. That is significant, because it means the federal government did not regulate or inspect them. Instead, the inspections and regulations were all done by the state of ohio. That, unfortunate, lee allowed banks to pretty much pursue a wild west atmosphere of investing. They really didnt have many constraints on the type of loans they would give out. They really didnt have many constraints on any Business Decisions that they made. What eventually happened is that the banks pretty much escaped state regulation. We know this because just on the eve of all these banks collapsing, the state inspectors certified them all as being healthy. In fact, the bank that is right next door, the Security Home bank, was put on the on a roll of ohio banks, even though it had not made a profit in over a year. And even though the inspectors discovered that there were at least 300,000 dollars short on their accounting. And the Bank Directors had given themselves dividends illegally. In spite of all that, they still put it on the honorable of banking. That is a weak banking regulations were here. We are standing in the former toledo trust building, which was the only bank that survived that period. It largely survived because it was part of the Federal Reserve system. It was federally inspected, which meant it had to actually have good accounting and be able to escape the regulations that were put up on it. When the bank crisis occurred, when other banks began failing, this bank could call upon the Federal Reserve in cleveland and have an armored truck filled up with 11 Million Dollars in cash and driven out here at a high rate of speed. So fast, in fact, that it got into an accident and had to transfer its entire stock into a different armored car to make the trip. So as to put the depositors at ease that it actually had money. The problem, all the banks in the city were owned by local investors. They were controlled by local directors. The major problem that leads to the Bank Failures is that these directors and owners were also involved in other companies. So they were oftentimes the owners of some of the Big Manufacturing Companies in town. Oftentimes, Bank Directors would be directors on tour three banks at the same time. They would also be involved, all Bank Directors, are heavily invested in Real Estate Companies. 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 over investment 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. And they developed 67 subdivisions which could hold over 1 Million People, for a city of a quarter Million People. Clearly, they over leveraged and over invested. The reason these Real Estate Companies could do that is because they were largely owned by the directors of the banks, who by loaning that money, were essentially giving themselves money. And the interlocking directors of the banks and Real Estate Companies and Manufacturing Companies meant that there was all these incentives for bankers to give out loans when there wasnt collateral or a Good Business reason to do so. By 1931, that overhang of bad loans finally, the bill came due and on june six 1931, rumors began swirling around the city that the banks were about to fail. Crowds of depositors began lining up outside these very doors, demanding the money. Little did they know that when they lined up outside the doors, the people inside the bank, the directors, owners, people investing, were already removing their money ahead of the deposits, leaving them very little. Toledo after the bank crisis of 31 went from being a city in a recession to being a city and a catastrophe. By the winter of 1930, two it is estimated that as many as half of all workers in toledo were laid off. Things got so bad that the city of toledo quickly went bankrupt and couldnt afford to buy new light bulbs for street lights. Every, day the city got a little darker. They couldnt afford to replace the fire trucks, so the number of fires that were allowed to burn uncontrolled increased every year through the Great Depression. By 1934, one out of six people in the city were on federal relief and federal relief was sowed, so tight for toledo that dietitians began calculating the minimum number of calories needed to maintain life. And that is what was allocated to individuals. So it could not have actually been a much worse from that sense. The city was very much closed by 1932 as a result of the bank crisis. So toledo is very much in the state of economic catastrophe through most of the Great Depression. It was not until 1935, 1936 that the programs of the new deal began to have an effect. By the late 1930s, a very high proportion of the workforce in toledo is actually federally employed. So it was federal new deal relief that eventually got the city back on its feet. And of course, as is true throughout the country in the Great Depression, the coming of the war in the 1940s invigorated the economy. Toledo retooled for the war. They began making the famous wartime will ease jeep. They began converting many of its hardware factories into munitions factories. And by the early 1940s, toledo is essentially running at full bore again. The economy would never rebound the way it was again. In the 1920s, it was one of the fastestgrowing cities in the country. In the 1930s, it actually lost population. Even after the war in the 1940s through 1960s, the rate of growth fell behind the national average. It never really recovered from the Great Depression. That was the single event of the cities modern history. Every new deal measure passes without question. The new secretary of the interior introduces a program of public works designed to create jobs for the unemployed. Those hired work on largescale Infrastructure Projects like, bridges, roads and dams. One of the most notable was the hoover dam, receiving 38 Million Dollars from the pita you a. Up next, the feature on the Great Depression takes you to what was originally named the boulder dam until a 1947 act of Congress Changes the name to honor fdrs predecessor in the white house, herbert hoover. Hoover dam was started in 1931, and april. The contractors were given seven years to complete it, and they got it done in five years. When the federal government decided to authorize the hoover dam and fund it, it took literally six different Construction Companies to come together with their resources to have enough stuff, machines, man power to put this together. You see the signs around hoover dam that it was built by six companies. Thats actually how many it took, and they joined forces to build this beautiful place. Totally, that was about 21,000 men that worked on the dam. At its peak, towards the end, 1930, four there were 5000 workers that were here working. They work 24 7. They had two days off a year they could take. It was voluntary. You ask a lot of people and a lot of them ask about those days. Where everyone gets christmas. The other day they could take off was the 4th of july. Thats how proud they were of this structure. The primary purpose for building the hoover dam was flood control. The Colorado River could flood and flood and trickle and trickle and flood and someone said it was too thick to drink and too thin to farm. So what they wanted to do is add some stability to the Southwestern United States to increase farming and enhance the growth. But they needed to control the colorado, because it kept washing everything away. It was built primarily for flood control. The other purpose of course was water delivery. And the rate compact signed with arizona and california, the water is divvied up for the end of the river. Thats our region here. They wanted to have a way to deliver that water. You cant do it all at once. You have to do it when the farmers needed or when the Community Needs it. Water delivery was second and hydro power, generating electricity, the third reason. 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 beside the hoover dam. We are headed to the arizona side of the dam. The arizona side is part of the hoover dam that contains nine generators. It is generating electricity and you can see when we get in there that some of them are generating and some are not. These generators are marked to indicate that they are on the arizona side with a letter a. We are a peeking plant. We dont generate electricity all the time. We generate electricity when we get an order from the Electrical Companies that say we need more power. And our joke around here is that when you turn your air conditioner on in california, you see some of these generators fire up because they want more power. But the interesting thing is we dont just generate power. We deliver water. And water is king. We wont generate water unless there is power to go with it. Power is designed to fulfill water orders. It will be released to generate electricity when the water orders come in. The hoover dam is 726 feet high. Thats 171 feet higher than the Washington Monument in washington, d. C. So we are about 50 feet above the bedrock. This is where the water comes out of the turbans after it has generated electricity. And it will feed the contractors who have water entitlement to the colorado. Its a ground a arch down which means it is 660 feet at the bottom and then it comes up to 45 feet at the top. So its basically pushing down and against the walls of the canyon. So it will definitely be staying in place. When the dam was constructed, it took about 4. 3 million cubic yards of concrete. Thats enough to build a 16 foot wide highway from los angeles to new york. So when they were building that, of course, a lot of construction folks know that concrete takes time to cool. To conquer that problem and keep pouring in pouring and make that deadline, they built their own refrigeration plant down here in the 1932 timeframe. And they ran pipes through the concrete with refrigerated water to cool the blocks so that they could keep pouring. So as they poured, they cooled concrete, poured some, or cooled. It it was quite an ingenious thing to build their own refrigeration plant down here at the bottom of the canyon. There is a large body of treaties, court cases, agreements called the law of the river. Included in the law of the river is the compact that was signed in 1922 which divvied up the water into the upper Colorado River basin and lower Colorado River basin. The lower Colorado River basin is basically what hoover dam controls. The water deliveries to arizona, california, nevada. At the time they defeated up, they were counting on Record Keeping from 19 five. Those have been pretty wet years. They did it up the water based on some pretty wet years. The system is variable. You can have great snow packed ears and get lots of water in the colorado. Or you can go through what we are going through now. 16 years of drought, with maybe one good year in their. The lake has dropped and the river at this point, given the history, is what is being called over allocated. When the river is called over allocated, it basically means he hydrology is in keeping up with the water delivery needs. In other words, we are not getting enough water into the system to meet the water delivery needs that our contracted with us. As of today, we have never failed to meet the contracted water deliveries to arizona, nevada, and california. We dont anticipate that next year. But if we continue to see the lake drop, we might be in a condition called shortage in future years. Under that compact, arizona and nevada would take less water. California has the senior water right in the agreement. When the compact was signed in 1922, i looked this, up the census for nevada was 1000 people. Nobody envisioned a las vegas or a reno, or any of the industries that have risen in nevada since then. As time went on and water became more available, the communities sprung. Up las vegas grew. It clearly has become a huge community. And people continue to move out here. But they have managed their water. They knew how much they had. It was predictable how much they could take by contract. So they have managed to reuse their water, recycle their water. If you look at the fountains in downtown las vegas, that is not freshwater. That is reused water. They recycle every drop and put a lot of it back into lake mead. As they were putting the plans together to build to freedom, it was pretty clear, especially in the Great Depression, this was going to be an enormous undertaking, people were going to want to come and see it. In order to acknowledge that and make a place for all these visitors, they knew they had to add some of the art deco work in. There we have terrazas our bill floors. Statues are made of copper that salute the american spirit on the memorial flies a. So they knew that people would come. We sell 800,000 tickets a year for the tours and you dont have to buy a tour ticket. So we figure we get about 1 Million People here that come and visit the hoover dam. They spend their time, take a look around, and its an incredible mixture of engineering and art deco creativity. I sometimes think to myself, how did those engineers and architect find a place to get along and make this so beautiful and so functional. The area we are standing in right now is in the southern section of puget sound, which is Washington State and the pacific northwests great inland water. From the transcontinental where road, there was talk about one day being able to span puget sound. But it was not an undertaking anyone was prepared to do during the depression. Federal programs like the building of the hoover dam, there were a big job creating public work projects happening in the pacific northwest. And in the mid 19 thirties, there began to be talk about creating a bridge over puget sound to reach from to coma to the peninsula. To come a narrows bridge was opened up on the 1st of july and 1940, after two years of construction. The to common narrows is also a bit of a wind tunnel, and people working on the deck began to notice movement. Almost like airplane wing lift and the bridge. So unlike just horizontal movement, they began to feel a vertical lift in the bridge, especially in the center span. There was no suspension bridge, anything like, this anywhere and our part of the world, anywhere in the pacific northwest. There was an unfamiliarity with about how a big thing like this was supposed to behave. So people are excited about it. There is a certain kind of gracefulness about a bridge like this. So people i guess just wanted to think it wasnt anything wrong. It was normal. And once they get the concrete down on the deck and everything that, that would all go away. , then as we went out of the summer and began to get into the fall and the winds picked up a little bit, our prevailing wind out of the southwest, which blows almost directly across the bridge deck, they began to notice that there was an undulation in the deck. And by fall, soldiers were coming out from the military base for the novelty of riding the bridge. They would go out and kick their feet over the railing and stand on the outside of the bridge and leaned down as far as they could. And the center deck of the bridge would be rising, not