document_title: Great Depression in the United States

question_text: when did the great depression end in the us

text: Great Depression in the United States

text: Stock market crash[edit]

text: The Wall Street Crash of 1929 is often cited as the beginning of the Great Depression. It began on October 24, 1929, and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States. Much of the stock market crash can be attributed to exuberance and false expectations. In the years leading up to 1929, the rising stock market prices had created vast sums of wealth for those invested, in turn encouraging borrowing to further buy more stock. However, on October 24 (Black Thursday), share prices began to fall and panic selling caused prices to fall sharply. On October 29 (Black Tuesday), share prices fell by $14 billion in a single day, more than $30 billion in the week. [9] The value that evaporated the week was 10x more than the entire federal budget and more than all of what the U.S. spent on World War I. By 1930 the value of shares had fallen by 90%. [10]

text: Since many banks had also invested their clients' savings in the stock market, these banks were forced to close when the stock market crashed. After the stock market crash and the bank closures, people were too afraid to lose more money. Because of the fears of further economic challenge, individuals from all classes stopped purchasing and consuming. Thousands of individual investors who believed they could get rich by investing on margin lost everything they had. The stock market crash severely impacted American economy.

text: Banking failures[edit]

text: A large contribution to the recession was the closure and suspension of thousands of banks across the country. Financial institutions failed for several reasons, including unregulated lending procedures, confidence in the Gold standard, consumer confidence in future economics, and agricultural defaults on outstanding loans. With these compounding issues the banking system struggled to keep up with the public's increasing demand for cash withdrawals. This overall decreased the money supply and forced the banks to result to short sale (real estate) and liquidation of existing loans.[8] In the race to liquidate assets the banking system began to fail on a wide scale. In November 1930 the first major banking crisis began with over 800 banks closing their doors by January 1931. By October 1931 over 2100 banks were suspended with the highest suspension rate recorded in the St. Louis Federal Reserve District, with 2 out of every 5 banks suspended.[11] The economy as a whole experienced a massive reduction in banking footholds across the country amounting to more than nine thousand closed banks by 1933.

text: The closures resulted in a massive withdrawal of deposits by millions of Americans estimated at near $6.8 billion (equivalent to around $60 billion in today's dollars). During this time the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was not in place resulting in a loss of roughly $1.36 billion (or 20%) of the total $6.8 billion accounted for within the failed banks. These losses came directly from everyday individuals' savings, investments and bank accounts. As a result, GDP fell from the high seven-hundreds in 1929 to the low mid six-hundreds in 1933 before seeing any recovery for the first time in nearly 4 years.[12] Federal leadership intervention is highly debated on its effectiveness and overall participation. The Federal Reserve Act could not effectively tackle the banking crisis as state bank and trust companies were not compelled to be a member, paper eligible discount member banks heavily restricted access to the Federal Reserve, power between the twelve Federal Reserve banks was decentralized and federal level leadership was ineffective, inexperienced, and weak.

text: Unregulated growth[edit]

text: Throughout the early 1900s banking regulations were extremely lax if not non-existent. The Currency Act of 1900 lowered the required capital of investors from 50,000 to 25,000 to create a national bank. As a result of this change nearly two thirds of the banks formed over the next ten years were quite small, averaging just above the 25,000 in required capital.[13] The number of banks will nearly double (number of banks divided by Real GDP) from 1890 to 1920 due to the lack of oversight and qualification when banking charters were being issued in the first two decades of the 1900s.[14]

text: The unregulated growth of small rural banking institutions can be partially attributed to the rising cost of agriculture especially in the Corn Belt and Cotton Belt. Throughout the corn and cotton belts real estate increases drove the demand for more local funding to continue to supply rising agricultural economics. The rural banking structures would supply the needed capital to meet the farm commodity market, however, this came with a price of reliability and low risk lending. Economic growth was promising from 1887 to 1920 with an average of 6 percent growth in [GDP]. In particular the participation in World War I drove a booming agricultural market that drove optimism at the consumer and lending level which, in turn, resulted in a more lax approach in the lending process. Overbanked conditions existed which pressured struggling banks to increase their services (specifically to the agricultural customers) without any additional regulatory oversight or qualifications. This dilemma introduced several high risk and marginal business returns to the banking market.[15] Banking growth would continue through the first two decades well outside of previous trends disregarding the current economic and population standards. Banking profitability and loan standards begin to deteriorate as early as 1900 as a result.

text: Crop failures beginning in 1921 began to impact this poorly regulated system, the expansion areas of corn and cotton suffered the largest due to the dust bowl era resulting in real estate value reductions. In addition, the year 1921 was the peak for banking expansion with roughly 31,000 banks in activity, however, with the failures at the agricultural level 505 banks would close between 1921 -1930 marking the largest banking system failure on record.  Regulatory questions began to hit the debating table around banking qualifications as a result; discussions would continue into the [Great Depression] as not only were banks failing but some would disappear altogether with no rhyme or reason.[16] The panic of financial crisis would increase in the Great Depression due to the lack of confidence in the regulatory and recovery displayed during the 1920s, this ultimately drove a nation of doubts, uneasiness, and lack of consumer confidence in the banking system.

text: Contagion[edit]

text: With a lack of consumer confidence in the economic direction given by the federal government panic started to spread across the country shortly after the Wall Street Crash of 1929. President Hoover retained the Gold Standard as the country’s currency gauge throughout the following years. As a result, the American shareholders with the majority of the gold reserves began to grow wary of the value of gold in the near future. Europe’s decision to move away from the Gold Standard caused individuals to start to withdraw gold shares and move the investments out of the country or began to horde gold for future investment. The market continued to suffer due to these reactions, and in result caused several of the everyday individuals to speculate on the economy in the coming months.  Rumors of market stability and banking conditions began to spread, consumer confidence continued to drop and panic begin to set in. Contagion spread like wild fire pushing Americans all over the country to withdraw their deposits en masse. This idea would continue from 1929-1933 causing the greatest financial crisis ever seen at the banking level pushing the economic recovery efforts further from resolution. An increase in the currency-deposit ratio and a money stock determinant forced money stock to fall and income to decline. This panic-induced banking failure took a mild recession to a major recession.[17]

text: Whether this caused the Great Depression is still heavily debated due to many other attributing factors. However, it is evident that the banking system suffered massive reductions across the country due to the lack of consumer confidence. As withdraw requests would exceed cash availability banks began conducting steed discount sales such as fire sales and short sales. Due to the inability to immediately determine current value worth these fire sales and short sales would result in massive losses when recuperating any possible revenue for outstanding and defaulted loans.  This would allow healthy banks to take advantage of the struggling units forcing additional losses resulting in banks not being able to deliver on depositor demands and creating a failing cycle that would become wide spread.[18] Investment would continue to stay low through the next half decade as the private sector would horde savings due to uncertainty of the future. The federal government would run additional policy changes such as the Check tax, monetary restrictions (including reduction of money supply by burning), High Wage Policy, and The New Deal through the Hoover and Roosevelt administration.

text: Urban desperation politic[edit]

text: One visible effect of the depression was the advent of Hoovervilles,  which were ramshackle assemblages on vacant lots of cardboard boxes, tents, and small rickety wooden sheds built by homeless people. Residents lived in the shacks and begged for food or went to soup kitchens. The term was coined by Charles Michelson, publicity chief of the Democratic National Committee, to refer sardonically to President Herbert Hoover whose policies Michelson blamed for the depression.[19]

text: Unemployment reached 25 percent in the worst days of 1932-33, but it was unevenly distributed. Job losses were  less severe among women, workers in nondurable industries (such as food and clothing), services and sales workers, and those employed by the government. Unskilled inner city men had much higher unemployment rates. Age also played a factor. Young people had a hard time getting their first job. Men over the age of 45, if they lost their job, would rarely find another one because employers had their choice of younger men. Millions were hired in the Great Depression, but men with weaker credentials were not, and they fell into a long-term unemployment trap. The migration in the 1920s that brought millions of farmers and townspeople to the bigger cities suddenly reversed itself. Unemployment made the cities unattractive, and the network of kinfolk and more ample food supplies made it wise for many to go back.[20]  City governments in 1930-31 tried to meet the depression by expanding public works projects, as President Herbert Hoover strongly encouraged. However, tax revenues were plunging, and the cities as well as private relief agencies were totally overwhelmed by 1931; no one was able to provide significant additional relief. People fell back on the cheapest possible relief, including soup kitchens providing free meals to anyone who showed up.[21] After 1933, new sales taxes and infusions of federal money helped relieve the fiscal distress of the cities, but the budgets did not fully recover until 1941.

text: The federal programs launched by Hoover and greatly expanded by President Roosevelt's New Deal used massive construction projects to try to jump start the economy and solve the unemployment crisis. The alphabet agencies ERA, CCC, FERA, WPA and PWA built and repaired the public infrastructure in dramatic fashion, but did little to foster the recovery of the private sector. FERA, CCC and especially WPA focused on providing unskilled jobs for long-term unemployed men.

text: The Democrats won easy landslide victories in 1932 and 1934, and an even bigger one in 1936; the hapless Republican Party seemed doomed. The Democrats capitalized on the magnetic appeal of Roosevelt to urban America. The key groups were low skilled ethnics, especially Catholic, Jewish, and black people. The Democrats promised and delivered in terms of political recognition, labor union membership, and relief jobs. The cities' political machines were stronger than ever, for they mobilized their precinct workers to help families who needed help the most navigate the bureaucracy and get on relief. FDR won the vote of practically every demographic in 1936, including  taxpayers, small business and the middle class. However, the Protestant middle class voters turned sharply against him after the recession of 1937-38 undermined repeated promises that recovery was at hand. Historically, local political machines were primarily interested in controlling their wards and citywide elections; the smaller the turnout on election day, the easier it was to control the system. However, for Roosevelt to win the presidency in 1936 and 1940, he needed to carry the electoral college and that meant he needed the largest possible majorities in the cities to overwhelm rural voters. The machines came through for him.[22]  The 3.5 million voters on relief payrolls during the 1936 election cast 82% percent of their ballots for Roosevelt. The rapidly growing, energetic labor unions, chiefly based in the cities, turned out 80% for FDR, as did Irish, Italian and Jewish communities. In all, the nation's 106 cities over 100,000 population voted 70% for FDR in 1936, compared to his 59% elsewhere. Roosevelt worked very well with the big city machines, with the one exception of his old nemesis, Tammany Hall in Manhattan. There he supported the complicated coalition built around the nominal Republican Fiorello La Guardia,  and based on Jewish and Italian voters mobilized by labor unions.[23]

text: In 1938, the Republicans made an unexpected comeback, and Roosevelt's efforts to purge the Democratic Party of his political opponents backfired badly. The conservative coalition of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats took control of Congress, outvoted the urban liberals, and halted the expansion of New Deal ideas. Roosevelt survived in 1940 thanks to his margin in the Solid South and in the cities. In the North the cities over 100,000 gave Roosevelt 60% of their votes, while the rest of the North favored Willkie 52%-48%.[24]

text: With the start of full-scale war mobilization in the summer of 1940, the economies of the cities rebounded. Even before Pearl Harbor, Washington pumped massive investments into new factories and funded round-the-clock  munitions production, guaranteeing a job to anyone who showed up at the factory gate.[25] The war brought a restoration of prosperity and hopeful expectations for the future across the nation. It had the greatest impact on the cities of the West Coast, especially Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.[26]

text: Economic historians led by Price Fishback have examined the impact of New Deal spending on improving health conditions in the 114 largest cities, 1929-1937.  They estimated that every additional $153,000 in relief spending  (in 1935 dollars, or $1.95 million in year 2000 dollars) was associated with a reduction of one infant death, one suicide, and 2.4 deaths from infectious disease. [27][28]

text: Global comparison of severity[edit]

text: The Great Depression began in the United States of America and quickly spread worldwide.[29] It had severe effects in countries both rich and poor. Personal income, consumption, industrial output, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 25%, and in some countries rose as high as 33%.[30]

text: Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by approximately 60%.[31][32] Facing plummeting demand with few alternate sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as grain farming, mining and logging, as well as construction, suffered the most.[33]

text: Most economies started to recover by 1933–34. However, in the U.S. and some others the negative economic impact often lasted until the beginning of World War II, when war industries stimulated recovery.[34]

text: There is little agreement on what caused the Great Depression, and the topic has become highly politicized. At the time the great majority of economists around the world recommended the "orthodox" solution of cutting government spending and raising taxes. However, British economist John Maynard Keynes advocated large-scale government deficit spending to make up for the failure of private investment. No major nation adopted his policies in the 1930s.[35]

text: Europe[edit]

text:
Europe as a whole was badly hit, in both rural and industrial areas. Democracy was discredited and the left often tried a coalition arrangement between Communists and Socialists, who previously had been harsh enemies. Right wing movements sprang up, often following Italy's fascist mode.[36]
As the Great Depression worsened, Labour lost power in Britain and a coalition government dominated by conservatives came to power in 1931, and remained in power until 1945. There were no programs in Britain comparable to the New Deal.
In France, the "Popular Front" government of Socialists with some Communist support, was in power 1936–1938. It launched major programs favoring labor and the working class, but engendered stiff opposition.
Germany during the Weimar Republic had fully recovered and was prosperous in the late 1920s. The Great Depression hit in 1929 and was severe. The political system descended into violence and the Nazis under Hitler came to power through elections in early 1933. Economic recovery was pursued through autarky, pressure on economic partners, wage controls, price controls, and spending programs such as public works and, especially, military spending.
Spain saw mounting political crises that led in 1936–39 to civil war.
In Benito Mussolini's Italy, the economic controls of his corporate state were tightened. The economy was never prosperous.
The Soviet Union was mostly isolated from the world trading system during the 1930s. To force peasants into industrial jobs in the cities, food was stripped from rural areas, and millions died of starvation.

text: Canada and the Caribbean[edit]

text:
In Canada, Between 1929 and 1939, the gross national product dropped 40%, compared to 37% in the U.S. Unemployment reached 28% at the depth of the Depression in 1929 and 1930,[37] while wages bottomed out in 1933.[38] Many businesses closed, as corporate profits of C$396 million in 1929 turned into losses of $98 million in 1933. Exports shrank by 50% from 1929 to 1933. Worst hit were areas dependent on primary industries such as farming, mining and logging, as prices fell and there were few alternative jobs. Families saw most or all of their assets disappear and their debts became heavier as prices fell. Local and provincial government set up relief programs but there was no nationwide New-Deal-like program. The  Conservative government of Prime Minister R. B. Bennett retaliated against the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act by raising tariffs against the U.S. but lowered them on British Empire goods. Nevertheless, the economy suffered. In 1935, Bennett proposed a series of programs that resembled the New Deal; but was defeated in the elections of that year and no such programs were passed.[39]
Cuba and the Caribbean saw its greatest unemployment during the 1930s because of a decline in exports to the U.S., and a fall in export prices.

text: Asia[edit]

text:
China was at war with Japan during most of the 1930s, in addition to internal struggles between Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists and Mao Zedong's communists.
Japan's economy expanded at the rate of 5% of GDP per year after the years of modernization. Manufacturing and mining came to account for more than 30% of GDP, more than twice the value for the agricultural sector. Most industrial growth, however, was geared toward expanding the nation's military power. Beginning in 1937 much of Japan's energy was focused on a large-scale war and occupation of China.

text: Australia and New Zealand[edit]

text:
In Australia, 1930s conservative and Labor-led governments concentrated on cutting spending and reducing the national debt.
In New Zealand, a series of economic and social policies similar to the New Deal were adopted after the election of the first Labour Government in 1935.[40]

text: Tight monetary policy[edit]

text: The stock market crash in the 1929 not only affected the business community and the public’s economic confidence, but also it led to the banking system soon after the turmoil. The boom of the US economy in the 1920s was based on high indebtedness, and the rupture of the debt chain caused by the collapse of the bank had produced widespread and far-reaching adverse effects. It is precisely because of the shaky banking system, the United States was using monetary policy to save the economy that had been severely constrained. The American economist Kindleberger of long-term studying of the Great Depression pointed out that in the 1929, before and after the collapse of the stock market, the Fed lowered interest rates, tried to expand the money supply and eased the financial market tensions for several times, however they were not successful, the fundamental reason was that the relationship between various credit institutions and the community was in a drastic adjustment process, the normal supply channels for money supply were blocked.[41] Later, some economists argued that the Fed should do a large-scale opening market business at that time, but the essence of the statement was that the US government should be quick to implement measures to expand fiscal spending and fiscal deficits, whereas, the essence of this argument was that the US government should be promptly implemented to expand the fiscal spending and the fiscal deficits measures.

text: Hoover Administration gold standard[edit]

text: Between the 1920s and 1930s, The United States began to try the tight money policy to promote economic growth. In terms of the fiscal policy, the US government failed to reach a consensus on the fiscal issue. President Hoover began to expand federal spending, he set up a governmental financial revitalization company to provide emergency assistance to banks and financial institutions that were on the verge of bankruptcy. Hoover's fiscal policy had accelerated the recession. In December 1929, as means of showing government confidence of the economy, Hoover reduced all income tax rates by 1% of 1929 due to the continuing budget surplus. By 1930, the surplus turned into a fast-growing deficit of economic contraction. In 1931, the US federal fiscal revenue and expenditure changed from the financial surplus to deficit for the first time (the deficit was less than 2.8% of GDP). By the end of 1931, Hoover had decided to recommend a large increase in taxes to balance the budget; in addition, Congress approved the tax increase in 1932, a substantial reduction in personal immunity to increase the number of taxpayers, and the interest rates had risen sharply, the lowest marginal rate rose from 25% on taxable income in excess of $100,000 to 63% on taxable income in excess of $1 million as the rates were made much more progressive. Hoover changed his approach to fighting the Depression. He justified his call for more federal assistance by noting that "We used such emergency powers to win the war; we can use them to fight the Depression, the misery, and suffering from which are equally great." This new approach embraced a number of initiatives. Unfortunately for the President, none proved especially effective. Just as important, with the presidential election approaching, the political heat generated by the Great Depression and the failure of Hoover's policies grew only more withering.[42]

text: In terms of the financial reform, since the recession, Hoover had been trying to repair the economy. He founded government agencies to encourage labor harmony and support local public works aid which promoted cooperation of government and business, stabilize prices, and strive to balance the budget. His work focused on indirect relief from individual countries and the private sector, which was reflected in the letter emphasizing "more effective supporting for each national committee" and volunteer service -" appealing for funding" from outside the government.[43] The commitment to maintain the gold standard system prevented the Federal Reserve expanded its money supply operations in 1930 and 1931, and it promoted Hoover's destructive balancing budgetary action to avoid the gold standard system overwhelming the dollar. As the Great Depression became worse, the call raised for increasing in federal intervention and spending. But Hoover refused to allow the federal government to force fixed prices, control the value of the business or manipulate the currency, in contrast, he started to control the dollar price. For official dollar prices, he expanded the credit base through free market operations in federal reserve system to ensure the domestic value of the dollar. He also tended to provide indirect aid to banks or local public works projects, refused to use federal funds to give aid to citizens directly, which will reduce public morale. Instead, he focused on volunteering to raise money.[43] Even though Hoover was a philanthropist before becoming president, his opponents regarded him as not responsible for the citizens. During the administration of Hoover, the US economic policies had moved to activism and interventionism. In his re-election campaign, Hoover tried to persuade the Americans to claim that the measures they requested seemed to be helpful in the short term, but it would be devastating in the long run. Eventually, he was defeated by Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.

text: Consequences of the Hoover policy[edit]

text: In 1929, the Great Depression began, the asset bubble burst, and the unemployment rate rose. The following year, though most people thought that there was nothing  worth worrying about, Hoover took decisive action on issues such as employment, construction, public construction, and agriculture, which helped restore public confidence. The unemployed population rose, although it remained less than 9%.

text: In 1931, "the tragic year", politicians and economists were convinced that the economy would recover in 1931, but a serious economic crisis and depression happened this year. In a somewhat critical atmosphere, at the Congress meeting in 1932, Hoover prepared to take more vigorous measures in the government work report which he submitted to the Congress. Primarily, Hoover affirmed his own achievements over the past two years. Owing to Hoover's policy having led to financial spending increases and financial difficulties, he decided to increase taxes.

text: Roosevelt Administration gold standard[edit]

text: At the beginning of 1933, the last few weeks of Hoover's term, the American financial system was paralyzed. The Great Depression was extended by the interventionist policy for four years. Bank crisis caused the serious deflationary pressures. For this phenomenon, Hoover still wanted to stop it. In fact, the worst period of 1932 – the Great Depression had passed, but the recovery was slow and weak. During the financial crisis of 1933 that culminated in the banking holiday in March 1933, a lot of gold flowed out from the Fed, some of them flow out to individuals and companies in the United States. This domestic loss occurred because individuals and businesses like to deposit metal gold into bank deposits or banknotes, some gold flows to foreign countries, and this external loss occurred because foreign investors were worried about the depreciation of the dollar.[44] Roosevelt understands that the traditional political and financial policy cannot save the United States from the "disaster years", he pursued the "New Deal" to attempt to make up for the United States by administrative means. In the spring and summer of 1933, the Roosevelt government suspended the gold standard. The Emergency Banking Act gave the President the power to control international and domestic gold sports. It also gave the treasury secretary the power to surrender of gold coins and certificates. On April 20, President Roosevelt issued a formal announcement of the moratorium on the gold standard. The announcement prohibited gold exports, and prohibited financial institutions from converting money and deposits into gold coins and ingots. The action prevented the gold outflow. Soon, the Roosevelt government weakened the connection with gold once again. Thomas amendment to the Agricultural Relief Act to the gave to the President power to reduce the dollar's gold content by as much as 50%. The President Roosevelt also used the silver standard instead of gold to exchange dollars, it determined by the price of the bank.[44] In April 1933, Roosevelt decided to abolish the gold standard through the New Deal. He abandoned this traditional monetary policy is mainly due to the big crisis to the original monetary policy failure.[45] And the purpose of his action is to prohibit all exports of gold except for foreign countries, so that the United States can maintain an equal monetary base with the vast majority of countries. The Hoover government stubbornly insisted on using the "sound money" policy who against deficit spending and state relief that only make the economic crisis worsen. Because of this situation Roosevelt forced the implementation of inflation, and used the federal deficit spending to promote employment to enforce relief. The abandon of the gold standard made the Wall Street stock prices quickly increased, Wall Street's stock trading was exceptionally active, with a total of 5 million shares delivered on a day, which is the most active day in the past six months.

text: Political responses of the depression era[edit]

text:
Periods in United States history
 [hide]Colonial period 1607–1775American Revolution 1765–1783Confederation Period 1783–1788Federalist Era 1788–1801Jeffersonian Era1801–1817Era of Good Feelings 1817–1825Jacksonian Era1825–1849Civil War era 1849–1865Reconstruction era 1865–1877Gilded Age 1870s–c. 1900Progressive Era 1897–1920Roaring Twenties 1920–1929Great Depression 1929–1939World War II 1941–1945Postwar era 1945–1964Civil Rights era 1964–1980Reagan Era 1981–present

Timelinevte

text: Hoover's response[edit]

text: The Hoover Administration attempted to correct the economic situation quickly, but was unsuccessful. Throughout Hoover's presidency, businesses were encouraged to keep wage rates high.[46] President Hoover and many academics believed that high wage rates would maintain a steady level of purchasing power, keeping the economy turning. In December 1929, after the beginning phases of the depression had begun, President Hoover continued to promote high wages. It wasn't until 1931 that business owners began reducing wages in order to stay afloat. Later that year, The Hoover Administration created the Check Tax[47] to generate extra government funding. The tax added a two cent tax to the purchase of all bank checks, directly affecting the common person. This additional cost pushed people away from using checks, so instead the majority of the population increased their usage of cash. Banks had already closed due to cash shortage, but this reaction to the Check Tax rapidly increased the pace.

text: Roosevelt's New Deal[edit]

text: In the "First New Deal" of 1933–34, a wide variety of programs were targeted toward the depression and agriculture in rural areas, in the banking industry, and for the economy as a whole.  Relief programs were set up for the long-term unemployed who are routinely passed over whenever new jobs did open up.  [48][49] The most popular program was the Civilian Conservation Corps the put young men to work in construction jobs, especially in rural areas.  Prohibition was repealed, fulfilling a campaign pledge and generating new tax revenues for local and state government.  A series of relief programs were designed to provide jobs, in cooperation with local governments.

text: The National Recovery Administration (NRA) sought to stimulate demand and provide work and relief through increased government spending. To end deflation the gold standard was suspended and a series of panels comprising business leaders in each industry set regulations which ended what was called "cut-throat competition," believed to be responsible for forcing down prices and profits nationwide.[50]  Several Hoover agencies were continued, most notably the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which provided large-scale financial aid to banks, railroads, and other agencies.[51]  Reforms that had never been enacted in the 1920s now took center stage, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) designed to electrify and modernize a very poor, mountainous region in Appalachia.

text: In 1934–36 came the much more controversial "Second New Deal."  It featured  social security; the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a very large relief agency for the unemployed run by the federal government; and the National Labor Relations Board, which operated as a strong stimulus to the growth of labor unions. Unemployment fell by ⅔ in Roosevelt's first term (from 25% to 9%, 1933–1937). The second set of reforms launched by the Roosevelt Administration during the same period, which is a responsibility for social welfare with the main legislation —— Social Security Act in 1935. Insurance and poor relief (“public assistance” or “welfare”)are constituent parts of the legislation that provided pensions to the aged, benefit payments to dependent mothers, crippled children and blind people, and unemployment insurance.[52] The Social Security Act still plays a significant role of the American health and human service system so far.  Much of the economy had recovered by 1936, but persistent, long-term unemployment lasted until rearmament began for World War II in 1940.[53]

text: The New Deal was, and still is, sharply debated.[54] The business community, with considerable support from such conservative Democrats as Al Smith, launched a crusade against the New Deal, warning that a dangerous man had seized control of the economy and threatened America's conservative traditions.[55]  Scholars remain divided as well.  When asked whether "as a whole, government policies of the New Deal served to lengthen and deepen the Great Depression," 74% of American university professors specializing in economic history disagreed, 21% agreed with provisos, and 6% fully agreed. Among respondents who taught or studied economic theory, 51% disagreed, 22% agreed with provisos, and 22% fully agreed.[56]

text: Recession of 1937–38[edit]

text: By 1936, all the main economic indicators had regained the levels of the late 1920s, except for unemployment, which remained high. In 1937, the American economy unexpectedly fell, lasting through most of 1938. Production declined sharply, as did profits and employment. Unemployment jumped from 14.3% in 1937 to 19.0% in 1938.[57] A contributing factor to the Recession of 1937 was a tightening of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve doubled reserve requirements between August 1936 and May 1937[58] leading to a contraction in the money supply.

text: The Roosevelt Administration reacted by launching a rhetorical campaign against monopoly power, which was cast as the cause of the depression, and appointing Thurman Arnold to break up large trusts; Arnold was not effective, and the campaign ended once World War II began and corporate energies had to be directed to winning the war.[59] By 1939, the effects of the 1937 recession had disappeared. Employment in the private sector recovered to the level of the 1936 and continued to increase until the war came and manufacturing employment leaped from 11 million in 1940 to 18 million in 1943.[60]

text: Another response to the 1937 deepening of the Great Depression had more tangible results. Ignoring the pleas of the Treasury Department, Roosevelt embarked on an antidote to the depression, reluctantly abandoning his efforts to balance the budget and launching a $5 billion spending program in the spring of 1938 in an effort to increase mass purchasing power.

text: Business-oriented observers explained the recession and recovery in very different terms from the Keynesian economists. They argued the New Deal had been very hostile to business expansion in 1935–37. They said it had encouraged massive strikes which had a negative impact on major industries and had threatened anti-trust attacks on big corporations. But all those threats diminished sharply after 1938. For example, the antitrust efforts fizzled out without major cases. The CIO and AFL unions started battling each other more than corporations, and tax policy became more favorable to long-term growth.[61]

text: On the other hand, according to economist Robert Higgs, when looking only at the supply of consumer goods, significant GDP growth only resumed in 1946. (Higgs does not estimate the value to consumers of collective goods like victory in war)[62] To Keynesians, the war economy showed just how large the fiscal stimulus required to end the downturn of the Depression was, and it led, at the time, to fears that as soon as America demobilized, it would return to Depression conditions and industrial output would fall to its pre-war levels. The incorrect prediction by Alvin Hansen and other Keynesians that a new depression would start after the war failed to take account of pent-up consumer demand as a result of the Depression and World War.[63]

text: Afterward[edit]

text: The government began heavy military spending in 1940, and started drafting millions of young men that year.[64] By 1945, 17 million had entered service to their country, but that was not enough to absorb all the unemployed. During the war, the government subsidized wages through cost-plus contracts. Government contractors were paid in full for their costs, plus a certain percentage profit margin. That meant the more wages a person was paid the higher the company profits since the government would cover them plus a percentage.[65]

text: Using these cost-plus contracts in 1941–1943, factories hired hundreds of thousands of unskilled workers and trained them, at government expense. The military's own training programs concentrated on teaching technical skills involving machinery, engines, electronics and radio, preparing soldiers and sailors for the post-war economy.[66]

text: Structural walls were lowered dramatically during the war, especially informal policies against hiring women, minorities, and workers over 45 or under 18. (See FEPC) Strikes (except in coal mining) were sharply reduced as unions pushed their members to work harder. Tens of thousands of new factories and shipyards were built, with new bus services and nursery care for children making them more accessible. Wages soared for workers, making it quite expensive to sit at home. Employers retooled so that unskilled new workers could handle jobs that previously required skills that were now in short supply. The combination of all these factors drove unemployment below 2% in 1943.[67]

text: Roosevelt's declining popularity in 1938 was evident throughout the US in the business community, the press, and the Senate and House. Many were labeling the recession the "Roosevelt Recession". In late December 1938, Roosevelt looked to gain popularity with the American people, and try to regain the nation's confidence in the economy. His decision that December to name Harry Hopkins as Secretary of Commerce was an attempt to achieve the confidence he so badly needed. The appointment came as a surprise to most because of Hopkins' lack of business experience, but proved to be vastly important in shaping the years following the recession.[68]

text: Hopkins made it his mission to strengthen ties between the Roosevelt administration and the business community. While Roosevelt believed in complete reform (The New Deal), Hopkins took a more administrative position;[clarification needed] he felt that recovery was imperative and that The New Deal would continue to hinder recovery. With support from Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr, popular support for recovery, rather than reform, swept the nation. By the end of 1938 reform had been struck down, as no new reform laws were passed.[68]

text: The economy in America was now beginning to show signs of recovery and the unemployment rate was lowering following the abysmal year of 1938. The biggest shift towards recovery, however, came with the decision of Germany to invade France at the beginning of WWII. After France had been defeated, the U.S. economy would skyrocket in the months following. France's defeat meant that Britain and other allies would look to the U.S. for large supplies of materials for the war.[69]

text: The need for these war materials created a huge spurt in production, thus leading to promising amount of employment in America. Moreover, Britain chose to pay for their materials in gold. This stimulated the gold inflow and raised the monetary base, which in turn, stimulated the American economy to its highest point since the summer of 1929 when the depression began.[69]

text: By the end of 1941, before American entry into the war, defense spending and military mobilization had started one of the greatest booms in American history thus ending the last traces of unemployment.[69]

text: Facts and figures[edit]

text: Fireside Chat 1 On the Banking Crisis  Roosevelt's first Fireside Chat on the Banking Crisis (March 12, 1933)

text: Effects of depression in the U.S.:[70]

text:
13 million people became unemployed. In 1932, 34 million people belonged to families with no regular full-time wage earner.[71]
Industrial production fell by nearly 45% between 1929 and 1932.
Homebuilding dropped by 80% between the years 1929 and 1932.
In the 1920s, the banking system in the U.S. was about $50 billion, which was about 50% of GDP.[72]
From 1929 to 1932, about 5,000 banks went out of business.
By 1933, 11,000 of the US' 25,000 banks had failed.[73]
Between 1929 and 1933, U.S. GDP fell around 30%, the stock market lost almost 90% of its value.[74]
In 1929, the unemployment rate averaged 3%.[75]
In Cleveland, the unemployment rate was 50%; in Toledo, Ohio, 80%.[71]
One Soviet trading corporation in New York averaged 350 applications a day from Americans seeking jobs in the Soviet Union.[76]
Over one million families lost their farms between 1930 and 1934.[71]
Corporate profits had dropped from $10 billion in 1929 to $1 billion in 1932.[71]
Between 1929 and 1932, the income of the average American family was reduced by 40%.[77]
Nine million savings accounts had been wiped out between 1930 and 1933.[71]
273,000 families had been evicted from their homes in 1932.[71]
There were two million homeless people migrating around the country.[71]
Over 60% of Americans were categorized as poor by the federal government in 1933.[71]
In the last prosperous year (1929), there were 279,678 immigrants recorded, but in 1933 only 23,068 came to the U.S.[78][79]
In the early 1930s, more people emigrated from the United States than immigrated to it.[80]
With little economic activity there was scant demand for new coinage. No nickels or dimes were minted in 1932–33, no quarter dollars in 1931 or 1933, no half dollars from 1930 to 1932, and no silver dollars in the years 1929–33.
The U.S. government sponsored a Mexican Repatriation program which was intended to encourage people to voluntarily move to Mexico, but thousands, including some U.S. citizens, were deported against their will. Altogether about 400,000 Mexicans were repatriated.[81]
New York social workers reported that 25% of all schoolchildren were malnourished. In the mining counties of West Virginia, Illinois, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, the proportion of malnourished children was perhaps as high as 90%.[71]
Many people became ill with diseases such as tuberculosis (TB).[71]
The 1930 U.S. Census determined the U.S. population to be 122,775,046. About 40% of the population was under 20 years old.[82]


document_title: List of countries by homeless population

question_text: what percentage of the world is homeless 2018

root

text: It is estimated 150 million people are homeless worldwide [1]. Habitat for Humanity estimated in 2015 that 1.6 billion people around the world live in "inadequate shelter".[2]

tag: p

text: This is a list of countries (not all 195) by the homeless population present on any given night.

text: List[edit]

text:
Country

Homeless Population (per night)

Data year

Homeless ratio

Main Article

 Australia

105,237

2011[3]

0.43%

Homelessness in Australia

 Austria

14,603

2014[4]

0.17%

 Bosnia and Herzegovina

143,000

2010[5]

3.73%

 Brazil

101,500

2016[6]

0.04%

 Canada

30,000

2013[7]

0.09%

Homelessness in Canada

 Chile

12,000

2014[8]

0.07%

 China

2,579,000

2011[9]

0.18%

 Croatia

462

2013[4]

0.01%

 Czech Republic

68,500

2015[4]

0.65%

 Denmark

6,138

2015[10]

0.11%

Homelessness in Denmark

 Egypt

2013[11]

18.28%

Homelessness in Egypt

 Estonia

864

2011[4]

0.06%

 Finland

7112

2017[12]

0.13%

 France

141,500

2012[13]

0.21%

Homelessness in France

 Germany

52,000

2016[14]

0.14%

Homelessness in Germany

 Greece

20,000

2013[15]

0.18%

Homelessness in Greece

 Grenada

60,000

2004[16]

56.44%

 Guatemala

475,000

2012[17]

3.15%

 Guinea

2012[18]

68.5%

 Haiti

2,300,000

2010

23.24%

 Honduras

1,000,000

2013[19]

12.35%

 Hong Kong

1,403

2014[20]

0.02%

 Hungary

10,068

2014[4]

0.10%

 India

1,770,000

2011[21]

0.15%

Homelessness in India

 Indonesia

3,000,000

2004[22]

1.36%

 Ireland

8,270

2017[23]

0.17%

Homelessness in Ireland

 Israel

1,831

2014[24]

0.02%

Homelessness in Israel

 Italy

48,000

2014[25]

0.08%

 Japan

15,534

2017[26]

0.14%

Homelessness in Japan

 Latvia

2,342

2011[4]

0.11%

 Lithuania

5,000

2014

0.16%

 Luxembourg

1,533

2013[27]

0.28%

 Mexico

40,911

2010[4]

0.04%

 Netherlands

31,000

2015[28]

0.19%

Homelessness in the Netherlands

 New Zealand

41,207

2015[4]

0.94%

Homelessness in New Zealand

 Nigeria

24,400,000

2007[29]

16.58%

 Norway

3,909

2016[30]

0.07%

 Peru

2011[31]

5.6%

 Poland

33,400

2017[32]

0.08%

 Portugal

3,000

2012

0.03%

 Romania

15,000

2004[33]

0.07%

 Russia

5,000,000

2014[34]

3.4%

Homelessness in Russia

 Slovenia

2,700

2015[4]

0.13%

 South Africa

7,000,000

2007[35]

14.31%

Homelessness in South Africa

 South Korea

11,340

2016[36]

0.022%

 Spain

40,000

2012[37]

0.09%

Homelessness in Spain

 Sweden

34,000

2011[38]

0.36%

Homelessness in Sweden

  Switzerland

3,000 - 8,000

2016[39]

0.035% - 0.095%

Homelessness in Switzerland

 Togo

100,000

1999[40]

2.11%

 Uganda

500,000

2014[41]

1.43%

 Ukraine

1,000,000

2015[42]

2.35%

 United Kingdom

307,000

2016[43]

0.46%

Homelessness in the United Kingdom

 United States

554,000

2017[44]

0.17%

Homelessness in the United States

 Venezuela

2,000,000

2012[45]

6.68%

 Wales

15,000

2011[46]

0.05%

 Zimbabwe

1,200,000

2013[47]

8.48%

tag: table


document_title: Roman art

question_text: in which form of art were the romans most innovative

text: Roman art

text: Introduction[edit]

text:
Ancient art history

Middle East

Mesopotamia
Ancient Egypt
Persia

Asia

India
China
Japan
Korea
Cambodia

European prehistory

Cycladic
Nuragic
Etruscan
Celtic
Scythia

Classical art

Ancient Greece
Hellenistic
Rome

v
t
e

text: While the traditional view of the ancient Roman artists is that they often borrowed from, and copied Greek precedents (much of the Greek sculptures known today are in the form of Roman marble copies), more recent analysis has indicated that Roman art is a highly creative pastiche relying heavily on Greek models but also encompassing Etruscan, native Italic, and even Egyptian visual culture. Stylistic eclecticism and practical application are the hallmarks of much Roman art.

text: Pliny, Ancient Rome’s most important historian concerning the arts, recorded that nearly all the forms of art – sculpture, landscape, portrait painting, even genre painting – were advanced in Greek times, and in some cases, more advanced than in Rome. Though very little remains of Greek wall art and portraiture, certainly Greek sculpture and vase painting bears this out. These forms were not likely surpassed by Roman artists in fineness of design or execution. As another example of the lost "Golden Age", he singled out Peiraikos, "whose artistry is surpassed by only a very few ... He painted barbershops and shoemakers’ stalls, donkeys, vegetables, and such, and for that reason came to be called the 'painter of vulgar subjects'; yet these works are altogether delightful, and they were sold at higher prices than the greatest [paintings] of many other artists.”[2] The adjective "vulgar" is used here in its original meaning, which means "common".

text: The Greek antecedents of Roman art were legendary. In the mid-5th century BC, the most famous Greek artists were Polygnotos, noted for his wall murals, and Apollodoros, the originator of chiaroscuro. The development of realistic technique is credited to Zeuxis and Parrhasius, who according to ancient Greek legend, are said to have once competed in a bravura display of their talents, history’s earliest descriptions of trompe l’oeil painting.[3] In sculpture, Skopas, Praxiteles, Phidias, and Lysippos were the foremost sculptors. It appears that Roman artists had much Ancient Greek art to copy from, as trade in art was brisk throughout the empire, and much of the Greek artistic heritage found its way into Roman art through books and teaching. Ancient Greek treatises on the arts are known to have existed in Roman times though are now lost.[4] Many Roman artists came from Greek colonies and provinces...[5]

text: The high number of Roman copies of Greek art also speaks of the esteem Roman artists had for Greek art, and perhaps of its rarer and higher quality.[5] Many of the art forms and methods used by the Romans – such as high and low relief, free-standing sculpture, bronze casting, vase art, mosaic, cameo, coin art, fine jewelry and metalwork, funerary sculpture, perspective drawing, caricature, genre and portrait painting, landscape painting, architectural sculpture, and trompe l’oeil painting – all were developed or refined by Ancient Greek artists.[6] One exception is the Roman bust, which did not include the shoulders. The traditional head-and-shoulders bust may have been an Etruscan or early Roman form.[7] Virtually every artistic technique and method used by Renaissance artists 1,900 year later, had been demonstrated by Ancient Greek artists, with the notable exceptions of oil colors and mathematically accurate perspective.[8] Where Greek artists were highly revered in their society, most Roman artists were anonymous and considered tradesmen. There is no recording, as in Ancient Greece, of the great masters of Roman art, and practically no signed works. Where Greeks worshiped the aesthetic qualities of great art and wrote extensively on artistic theory, Roman art was more decorative and indicative of status and wealth, and apparently not the subject of scholars or philosophers.[9]

text: Owing in part to the fact that the Roman cities were far larger than the Greek city-states in power and population, and generally less provincial, art in Ancient Rome took on a wider, and sometimes more utilitarian, purpose. Roman culture assimilated many cultures and was for the most part tolerant of the ways of conquered peoples.[5] Roman art was commissioned, displayed, and owned in far greater quantities, and adapted to more uses than in Greek times. Wealthy Romans were more materialistic; they decorated their walls with art, their home with decorative objects, and themselves with fine jewelry.

text: In the Christian era of the late Empire, from 350 to 500 CE, wall painting, mosaic ceiling and floor work, and funerary sculpture thrived, while full-sized sculpture in the round and panel painting died out, most likely for religious reasons.[10] When Constantine moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople), Roman art incorporated Eastern influences to produce the Byzantine style of the late empire. When Rome was sacked in the 5th century, artisans moved to and found work in the Eastern capital. The Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople employed nearly 10,000 workmen and artisans, in a final burst of Roman art under Emperor Justinian (527–565 CE), who also ordered the creation of the famous mosaics of Ravenna.[11]

text: Painting[edit]

text: Of the vast body of Roman painting we now have only a very few pockets of survivals, with many documented types not surviving at all, or doing so only from the very end of the period. The best known and most important pocket is the wall paintings from Pompeii, Herculaneum and other sites nearby, which show how residents of a wealthy seaside resort decorated their walls in the century or so before the fatal eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. A succession of dated styles have been defined and analysed by modern art historians beginning with August Mau, showing increasing elaboration and sophistication.

text: Starting in the 3rd century CE and finishing by about 400 we have a large body of paintings from the Catacombs of Rome, by no means all Christian, showing the later continuation of the domestic decorative tradition in a version adapted - probably not greatly adapted - for use in burial chambers, in what was probably a rather humbler social milieu than the largest houses in Pompeii. Much of Nero's palace in Rome, the Domus Aurea, survived as grottos and gives us examples which we can be sure represent the very finest quality of wall-painting in its style, and which may well have represented significant innovation in style. There are a number of other parts of painted rooms surviving from Rome and elsewhere, which somewhat help to fill in the gaps of our knowledge of wall-painting. From Roman Egypt there are a large number of what are known as Fayum mummy portraits, bust portraits on wood added to the outside of mummies by a Romanized middle-class; despite their very distinct local character they are probably broadly representative of Roman style in painted portraits, which are otherwise entirely lost.

text: Nothing remains of the Greek paintings imported to Rome during the 4th and 5th centuries, or of the painting on wood done in Italy during that period.[4] In sum, the range of samples is confined to only about 200 years out of the about 900 years of Roman history,[12] and of provincial and decorative painting. Most of this wall painting was done using the secco (“dry”) method, but some fresco paintings also existed in Roman times. There is evidence from mosaics and a few inscriptions that some Roman paintings were adaptations or copies of earlier Greek works.[12] However, adding to the confusion is the fact that inscriptions may be recording the names of immigrant Greek artists from Roman times, not from Ancient Greek originals that were copied.[8] The Romans entirely lacked a tradition of figurative vase-painting comparable to that of the Ancient Greeks, which the Etruscans had emulated.

text: Variety of subjects[edit]

text: Roman painting provides a wide variety of themes: animals, still life, scenes from everyday life, portraits, and some mythological subjects. During the Hellenistic period, it evoked the pleasures of the countryside and represented scenes of shepherds, herds, rustic temples, rural mountainous landscapes and country houses.[8] Erotic scenes are also relatively common. In the late empire, after 200AD, early Christian themes mixed with pagan imagery survive on catacomb walls.[13]

text: Landscape and vistas[edit]

text: The main innovation of Roman painting compared to Greek art was the development of landscapes, in particular incorporating techniques of perspective, though true mathematical perspective developed 1,500 years later. Surface textures, shading, and coloration are well applied but scale and spatial depth was still not rendered accurately. Some landscapes were pure scenes of nature, particularly gardens with flowers and trees, while others were architectural vistas depicting urban buildings. Other landscapes show episodes from mythology, the most famous demonstrating scenes from the Odyssey.[14]

text: In the traditional view, the art of the ancient East would have known landscape painting only as the backdrop to civil or military narrative scenes.[15] This theory, defended by Franz Wickhoff, is debatable. It is possible to see evidence of Greek knowledge of landscape portrayal in Plato's Critias (107b–108b):

text: ... and if we look at the portraiture of divine and of human bodies as executed by painters, in respect of the ease or difficulty with which they succeed in imitating their subjects in the opinion of onlookers, we shall notice in the first place that as regards the earth and mountains and rivers and woods and the whole of heaven, with the things that exist and move therein, we are content if a man is able to represent them with even a small degree of likeness ...[16]

text: Still life[edit]

text: Roman still life subjects are often placed in illusionist niches or shelves and depict a variety of everyday objects including fruit, live and dead animals, seafood, and shells. Examples of the theme of the glass jar filled with water were skillfully painted and later served as models for the same subject often painted during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.[17]

text: Portraits[edit]

text: Pliny complained of the declining state of Roman portrait art, "The painting of portraits which used to transmit through the ages the accurate likenesses of people, has entirely gone out ... Indolence has destroyed the arts."[18][19]

text: In Greece and Rome, wall painting was not considered as high art. The most prestigious form of art besides sculpture was panel painting, i.e. tempera or encaustic painting on wooden panels. Unfortunately, since wood is a perishable material, only a very few examples of such paintings have survived, namely the Severan Tondo from c. 200 AD, a very routine official portrait from some provincial government office, and the well-known Fayum mummy portraits, all from Roman Egypt, and almost certainly not of the highest contemporary quality. The portraits were attached to burial mummies at the face, from which almost all have now been detached. They usually depict a single person, showing the head, or head and upper chest, viewed frontally. The background is always monochrome, sometimes with decorative elements.[20] In terms of artistic tradition, the images clearly derive more from Greco-Roman traditions than Egyptian ones. They are remarkably realistic, though variable in artistic quality, and may indicate that similar art which was widespread elsewhere but did not survive. A few portraits painted on glass and medals from the later empire have survived, as have coin portraits, some of which are considered very realistic as well.[21]

text: Gold glass[edit]

text: Gold glass, or gold sandwich glass, was a technique for fixing a layer of gold leaf with a design between two fused layers of glass, developed in Hellenistic glass and revived in the 3rd century AD. There are a very few large designs, including a very fine group of portraits from the 3rd century with added paint, but the great majority of the around 500 survivals are roundels that are the cut-off bottoms of wine cups or glasses used to mark and decorate graves in the Catacombs of Rome by pressing them into the mortar. They predominantly date from the 4th and 5th centuries. Most are Christian, though there are many pagan and a few Jewish examples. It is likely that they were originally given as gifts on marriage, or festive occasions such as New Year. Their iconography has been much studied, although artistically they are relatively unsophisticated.[23] Their subjects are similar to the catacomb paintings, but with a difference balance including more portraiture. As time went on there was an increase in the depiction of saints.[24] The same technique began to be used for gold tesserae for mosaics in the mid-1st century in Rome, and by the 5th century these had become the standard background for religious mosaics.

text: The earlier group are "among the most vivid portraits to survive from Early Christian times. They stare out at us with an extraordinary stern and melancholy intensity",[25] and represent the best surviving indications of what high quality Roman portraiture could achieve in paint. The Gennadios medallion in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is a fine example of an Alexandrian portrait on blue glass, using a rather more complex technique and naturalistic style than most Late Roman examples, including painting onto the gold to create shading, and with the Greek inscription showing local dialect features. He had perhaps been given or commissioned the piece to celebrate victory in a musical competition.[26] One of the most famous Alexandrian-style portrait medallions, with an inscription in Egyptian Greek, was later mounted in an Early Medieval crux gemmata in Brescia, in the mistaken belief that it showed the pious empress and Gothic queen Galla Placida and her children;[27] in fact the knot in the central figure's dress may mark a devotee of Isis.[28] This is one of a group of 14 pieces dating to the 3rd century AD, all individualized secular portraits of high quality.[29] The inscription on the medallion is written in the Alexanrian dialect of Greek and hence most likely depicts a family from Roman Egypt.[30] The medallion has also been compared to other works of contemporaneous Roman-Egyptian artwork, such as the Fayum mummy portraits.[22] It is thought that the tiny detail of pieces such as these can only have been achieved using lenses.[31] The later glasses from the catacombs have a level of portraiture that is rudimentary, with features, hairstyles and clothes all following stereotypical styles.[32]

text: Genre scenes[edit]

text: Roman genre scenes generally depict Romans at leisure and include gambling, music and sexual encounters.[citation needed] Some scenes depict gods and goddesses at leisure.[8][12]

text: Triumphal paintings[edit]

text: From the 3rd century BC, a specific genre known as Triumphal Paintings appeared, as indicated by Pliny (XXXV, 22).[33] These were paintings which showed triumphal entries after military victories, represented episodes from the war, and conquered regions and cities. Summary maps were drawn to highlight key points of the campaign. Josephus describes the painting executed on the occasion of Vespasian and Titus's sack of Jerusalem:

text: There was also wrought gold and ivory fastened about them all; and many resemblances of the war, and those in several ways, and variety of contrivances, affording a most lively portraiture of itself. For there was to be seen a happy country laid waste, and entire squadrons of enemies slain; while some of them ran away, and some were carried into captivity; with walls of great altitude and magnitude overthrown and ruined by machines; with the strongest fortifications taken, and the walls of most populous cities upon the tops of hills seized on, and an army pouring itself within the walls; as also every place full of slaughter, and supplications of the enemies, when they were no longer able to lift up their hands in way of opposition. Fire also sent upon temples was here represented, and houses overthrown, and falling upon their owners: rivers also, after they came out of a large and melancholy desert, ran down, not into a land cultivated, nor as drink for men, or for cattle, but through a land still on fire upon every side; for the Jews related that such a thing they had undergone during this war. Now the workmanship of these representations was so magnificent and lively in the construction of the things, that it exhibited what had been done to such as did not see it, as if they had been there really present. On the top of every one of these pageants was placed the commander of the city that was taken, and the manner wherein he was taken.[34]

text: These paintings have disappeared, but they likely influenced the composition of the historical reliefs carved on military sarcophagi, the Arch of Titus, and Trajan's Column. This evidence underscores the significance of landscape painting, which sometimes tended towards being perspective plans.

text: Ranuccio also describes the oldest painting to be found in Rome, in a tomb on the Esquiline Hill:

text: It describes a historical scene, on a clear background, painted in four superimposed sections. Several people are identified, such Marcus Fannius and Marcus Fabius. These are larger than the other figures ... In the second zone, to the left, is a city encircled with crenellated walls, in front of which is a large warrior equipped with an oval buckler and a feathered helmet; near him is a man in a short tunic, armed with a spear...Around these two are smaller soldiers in short tunics, armed with spears...In the lower zone a battle is taking place, where a warrior with oval buckler and a feathered helmet is shown larger than the others, whose weapons allow to assume that these are probably Samnites.

text: This episode is difficult to pinpoint. One of Ranuccio's hypotheses is that it refers to a victory of the consul Fabius Maximus Rullianus during the second war against Samnites in 326 BC. The presentation of the figures with sizes proportional to their importance is typically Roman, and finds itself in plebeian reliefs. This painting is in the infancy of triumphal painting, and would have been accomplished by the beginning of the 3rd century BC to decorate the tomb.

text: Sculpture[edit]

text: Early Roman art was influenced by the art of Greece and that of the neighbouring Etruscans, themselves greatly influenced by their Greek trading partners. An Etruscan speciality was near life size tomb effigies in terracotta, usually lying on top of a sarcophagus lid propped up on one elbow in the pose of a diner in that period. As the expanding Roman Republic began to conquer Greek territory, at first in Southern Italy and then the entire Hellenistic world except for the Parthian far east, official and patrician sculpture became largely an extension of the Hellenistic style, from which specifically Roman elements are hard to disentangle, especially as so much Greek sculpture survives only in copies of the Roman period.[35] By the 2nd century BC, "most of the sculptors working in Rome" were Greek,[36] often enslaved in conquests such as that of Corinth (146 BC), and sculptors continued to be mostly Greeks, often slaves, whose names are very rarely recorded. Vast numbers of Greek statues were imported to Rome, whether as booty or the result of extortion or commerce, and temples were often decorated with re-used Greek works.[37]

text: A native Italian style can be seen in the tomb monuments of prosperous middle-class Romans, which very often featured portrait busts, and portraiture is arguably the main strength of Roman sculpture. There are no survivals from the tradition of masks of ancestors that were worn in processions at the funerals of the great families and otherwise displayed in the home, but many of the busts that survive must represent ancestral figures, perhaps from the large family tombs like the Tomb of the Scipios or the later mausolea outside the city. The famous bronze head supposedly of Lucius Junius Brutus is very variously dated, but taken as a very rare survival of Italic style under the Republic, in the preferred medium of bronze.[38] Similarly stern and forceful heads are seen in the coins of the consuls, and in the Imperial period coins as well as busts sent around the Empire to be placed in the basilicas of provincial cities were the main visual form of imperial propaganda; even Londinium had a near-colossal statue of Nero, though far smaller than the 30 metre high Colossus of Nero in Rome, now lost.[39] The Tomb of Eurysaces the Baker, a successful freedman (c. 50-20 BC) has a frieze that is an unusually large example of the "plebeian" style.[40] Imperial portraiture was initially Hellenized and highly idealized, as in the Blacas Cameo and other portraits of Augustus.

text: The Romans did not generally attempt to compete with free-standing Greek works of heroic exploits from history or mythology, but from early on produced historical works in relief, culminating in the great Roman triumphal columns with continuous narrative reliefs winding around them, of which those commemorating Trajan (113 CE) and Marcus Aurelius (by 193) survive in Rome, where the Ara Pacis ("Altar of Peace", 13 BC) represents the official Greco-Roman style at its most classical and refined, and the Sperlonga sculptures it at its most baroque. Some late Roman public sculptures developed a massive, simplified style that sometimes anticipates Soviet socialist realism. Among other major examples are the earlier re-used reliefs on the Arch of Constantine and the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius (161),[41] Campana reliefs were cheaper pottery versions of marble reliefs and the taste for relief was from the imperial period expanded to the sarcophagus.

text: All forms of luxury small sculpture continued to be patronized, and quality could be extremely high, as in the silver Warren Cup, glass Lycurgus Cup, and large cameos like the Gemma Augustea, Gonzaga Cameo and the "Great Cameo of France".[42] For a much wider section of the population, moulded relief decoration of pottery vessels and small figurines were produced in great quantity and often considerable quality.[43]

text: After moving through a late 2nd century "baroque" phase,[44] in the 3rd century, Roman art largely abandoned, or simply became unable to produce, sculpture in the classical tradition, a change whose causes remain much discussed. Even the most important imperial monuments now showed stumpy, large-eyed figures in a harsh frontal style, in simple compositions emphasizing power at the expense of grace. The contrast is famously illustrated in the Arch of Constantine of 315 in Rome, which combines sections in the new style with roundels in the earlier full Greco-Roman style taken from elsewhere, and the Four Tetrarchs (c. 305) from the new capital of Constantinople, now in Venice. Ernst Kitzinger found in both monuments the same "stubby proportions, angular movements, an ordering of parts through symmetry and repetition and a rendering of features and drapery folds through incisions rather than modelling... The hallmark of the style wherever it appears consists of an emphatic hardness, heaviness and angularity – in short, an almost complete rejection of the classical tradition".[45]

text: This revolution in style shortly preceded the period in which Christianity was adopted by the Roman state and the great majority of the people, leading to the end of large religious sculpture, with large statues now only used for emperors, as in the famous fragments of a colossal acrolithic statue of Constantine, and the 4th or 5th century Colossus of Barletta. However rich Christians continued to commission reliefs for sarcophagi, as in the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, and very small sculpture, especially in ivory, was continued by Christians, building on the style of the consular diptych.[46]

text:
Etruscan sarcophagus, 3rd century BC

The "Capitoline Brutus", dated to the 4th to 3rd centuries BC

A Roman naval bireme depicted in a relief from the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste (Palastrina),[47] which was built c. 120 BC;[48] exhibited in the Pius-Clementine Museum (Museo Pio-Clementino) in the Vatican Museums.

The Orator, c. 100 BC, an Etrusco-Roman bronze statue depicting Aule Metele (Latin: Aulus Metellus), an Etruscan man wearing a Roman toga while engaged in rhetoric; the statue features an inscription in the Etruscan alphabet

The Grave relief of Publius Aiedius and Aiedia, 30 BC, Pergamon Museum (Berlin)

Augustus of Prima Porta, statue of the emperor Augustus, 1st century AD, Vatican Museums

Tomb relief of the Decii, 98–117 AD

Bust of Emperor Claudius, c. 50 CE, (reworked from a bust of emperor Caligula), Vatican Museums

Commodus dressed as Hercules, c. 191 CE, in the late imperial "baroque" style; Capitoline Museum, Rome.

The Four Tetrarchs, c. 305, showing the new anti-classical style, in porphyry, now San Marco, Venice

The cameo gem known as the "Great Cameo of France", c. 23 AD, with an allegory of Augustus and his family

Portrait Bust of a Man, Ancient Rome, 60 BC

Roman portraiture is characterized by its "warts and all" realism.

Veristic portrait bust of an old man, head covered (capite velato), either a priest or paterfamilias (marble, mid-1st century BC)

tag: ul

text: Traditional Roman sculpture is divided into five categories: portraiture, historical relief, funerary reliefs, sarcophagi, and copies of ancient Greek works.[49] Contrary to the belief of early archaeologists, many of these sculptures were large polychrome terra-cotta images, such as the Apollo of Veii (Villa Givlia, Rome), but the painted surface of many of them has worn away with time.

text: Narrative reliefs[edit]

text: While Greek sculptors traditionally illustrated military exploits through the use of mythological allegory, the Romans used a more documentary style. Roman reliefs of battle scenes, like those on the Column of Trajan, were created for the glorification of Roman might, but also provide first-hand representation of military costumes and military equipment. Trajan's column records the various Dacian wars conducted by Trajan in what is modern day Romania. It is the foremost example of Roman historical relief and one of the great artistic treasures of the ancient world. This unprecedented achievement, over 650 foot of spiraling length, presents not just realistically rendered individuals (over 2,500 of them), but landscapes, animals, ships, and other elements in a continuous visual history – in effect an ancient precursor of a documentary movie. It survived destruction when it was adapted as a base for Christian sculpture.[50] During the Christian era after 300 AD, the decoration of door panels and sarcophagi continued but full-sized sculpture died out and did not appear to be an important element in early churches.[10]

text: Minor arts[edit]

text: The Romans inherited a tradition of art in a wide range of the so-called "minor arts" or decorative art. Most of these flourished most impressively at the luxury level, but large numbers of terracotta figurines, both religious and secular, continued to be produced cheaply, as well as some larger Campana reliefs in terracotta.[51] Roman art did not use vase-painting in the way of the ancient Greeks, but vessels in Ancient Roman pottery were often stylishly decorated in moulded relief.[52] Producers of the millions of small oil lamps sold seem to have relied on attractive decoration to beat competitors and every subject of Roman art except landscape and portraiture is found on them in miniature.[53]

text: Luxury arts included fancy Roman glass in a great range of techniques, many smaller types of which were probably affordable to a good proportion of the Roman public. This was certainly not the case for the most extravagant types of glass, such as the cage cups or diatreta, of which the Lycurgus Cup in the British Museum is a near-unique figurative example in glass that changes colour when seen with light passing through it. The Augustan Portland Vase is the masterpiece of Roman cameo glass,[54] and imitated the style of the large engraved gems (Blacas Cameo, Gemma Augustea, Great Cameo of France) and other hardstone carvings that were also most popular around this time.[55]

text: Mosaic was a minor art, though often on a very large scale, until the very end of the period, when late-4th-century Christians began to use it for large religious images on walls in their new large churches; in earlier Roman art mosaic was mainly used for floors, curved ceilings, and inside and outside walls that were going to get wet. The famous copy of a Hellenistic painting in the Alexander Mosaic in Naples was originally placed in a floor in Pompeii; this is much higher quality work than most Roman mosaic, though very fine panels, often of still life subjects in small or micromosaic tesserae have also survived. The Romans distinguished between normal opus tessellatum with tesserae mostly over 4 mm across, which was laid down on site, and finer opus vermiculatum for small panels, which is thought to have been produced offsite in a workshop, and brought to the site as a finished panel. The latter was a Hellenistic genre which is found in Italy between about 100 BC and 100 AD. Most signed mosaics have Greek names, suggesting the artists remained mostly Greek, though probably often slaves trained up in workshops. The late 2nd century BC Nile mosaic of Palestrina is a very large example of the popular genre of Nilotic landscape, while the 4th century Gladiator Mosaic in Rome shows several large figures in combat.[56]

text: Metalwork was highly developed, and clearly an essential part of the homes of the rich, who dined off silver, while often drinking from glass, and had elaborate cast fittings on their furniture, jewellery, and small figurines. A number of important hoards found in the last 200 years, mostly from the more violent edges of the late empire, have given us a much clearer idea of Roman silver plate. The Mildenhall Treasure and Hoxne Hoard are both from East Anglia in England.[57] There are few survivals of upmarket ancient Roman furniture, but these show refined and elegant design and execution.

text: Coins and medals[edit]

text: Few Roman coins reach the artistic peaks of the best Greek coins, but they survive in vast numbers and their iconography and inscriptions form a crucial source for the study of Roman history, and the development of imperial iconography, as well as containing many fine examples of portraiture. They penetrated to the rural population of the whole Empire and beyond, with barbarians on the fringes of the Empire making their own copies. In the Empire medallions in precious metals began to be produced in small editions as imperial gifts, which are similar to coins, though larger and usually finer in execution. Images in coins initially followed Greek styles, with gods and symbols, but in the death throes of the Republic first Pompey and then Julius Caesar appeared on coins, and portraits of the emperor or members of his family became standard on imperial coinage. The inscriptions were used for propaganda, and in the later Empire the army joined the emperor as the beneficiary.

text: Architecture[edit]

text: It was in the area of architecture that Roman art produced its greatest innovations. Because the Roman Empire extended over so great of an area and included so many urbanized areas, Roman engineers developed methods for city building on a grand scale, including the use of concrete. Massive buildings like the Pantheon and the Colosseum could never have been constructed with previous materials and methods. Though concrete had been invented a thousand years earlier in the Near East, the Romans extended its use from fortifications to their most impressive buildings and monuments, capitalizing on the material’s strength and low cost.[58] The concrete core was covered with a plaster, brick, stone, or marble veneer, and decorative polychrome and gold-gilded sculpture was often added to produce a dazzling effect of power and wealth.[58]

text: Because of these methods, Roman architecture is legendary for the durability of its construction; with many buildings still standing, and some still in use, mostly buildings converted to churches during the Christian era. Many ruins, however, have been stripped of their marble veneer and are left with their concrete core exposed, thus appearing somewhat reduced in size and grandeur from their original appearance, such as with the Basilica of Constantine.[59]

text: During the Republican era, Roman architecture combined Greek and Etruscan elements, and produced innovations such as the round temple and the curved arch.[60] As Roman power grew in the early empire, the first emperors inaugurated wholesale leveling of slums to build grand palaces on the Palatine Hill and nearby areas, which required advances in engineering methods and large scale design. Roman buildings were then built in the commercial, political, and social grouping known as a forum, that of Julius Caesar being the first and several added later, with the Forum Romanum being the most famous. The greatest arena in the Roman world, the Colosseum, was completed around 80 AD at the far end of that forum. It held over 50,000 spectators, had retractable fabric coverings for shade, and could stage massive spectacles including huge gladiatorial contests and mock naval battles. This masterpiece of Roman architecture epitomizes Roman engineering efficiency and incorporates all three architectural orders – Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian.[61] Less celebrated but just as important if not more so for most Roman citizens, was the five-story insula or city block, the Roman equivalent of an apartment building, which housed tens of thousands of Romans.[62]

text: It was during the reign of Trajan (98–117 AD.) and Hadrian (117–138 AD) that the Roman Empire reached its greatest extent and that Rome itself was at the peak of its artistic glory – achieved through massive building programs of monuments, meeting houses, gardens, aqueducts, baths, palaces, pavilions, sarcophagi, and temples.[50] The Roman use of the arch, the use of concrete building methods, the use of the dome all permitted construction of vaulted ceilings and enabled the building of these public spaces and complexes, including the palaces, public baths and basilicas of the "Golden Age" of the empire. Outstanding examples of dome construction include the Pantheon, the Baths of Diocletian, and the Baths of Caracalla. The Pantheon (dedicated to all the planetary gods) is the best preserved temple of ancient times with an intact ceiling featuring an open "eye" in the center. The height of the ceiling exactly equals the interior diameter of the building, creating an enclosure that could contain giant sphere.[59] These grand buildings later served as inspirational models for architects of the Italian Renaissance, such as Brunelleschi. By the age of Constantine (306-337 AD), the last great building programs in Rome took place, including the erection of the Arch of Constantine built near the Colosseum, which recycled some stone work from the forum nearby, to produce an eclectic mix of styles.[13]

text: Roman aqueducts, also based on the arch, were commonplace in the empire and essential transporters of water to large urban areas. Their standing masonry remains are especially impressive, such as the Pont du Gard (featuring three tiers of arches) and the aqueduct of Segovia, serving as mute testimony to their quality of their design and construction.[61]