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| 1936, Nov. 3 |
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| Franklin D. Roosevelt reelected president over Alfred M. Landon (Republican) by 524 electoral votes to 7. He carried every state except Maine and Vermont. | 1 |
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| 1937, Jan. 20 |
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| FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT inaugurated for second term. | 2 |
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| Jan.–June |
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| Widespread labor troubles resulting from efforts of the CIO to organize the workers in the automobile and steel industries on the basis of industrial unionism. The sit-down strike made its appearance in the General Motors strike as a weapon of labor. The strike spread to Chrysler Corp. employees and to those of the Republic Steel Corp., the Youngstown Sheet Steel and Tube Co., the Inland Steel Co., and the Bethlehem Steel Corp. A strike among workers of the U.S. Steel Corp. was avoided when the company signed a contract with the CIO on March 2. The strike of the employees of the Republic Steel Corp. resulted in bloodshed. Although the sit-down strikes and the aggressiveness of the CIO in this period seriously divided public opinion, labor, through the application of the collective-bargaining provisions of the Wagner Labor Relations Act by the National Labor Relations Board, made substantial progress in the unionization of the mass-production industries, where the principle of collective bargaining had never before been admitted by employers. | 3 |
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| Feb. 5 |
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| President Roosevelt in a special message to Congress recommended the enactment of legislation empowering him to appoint “additional judges in all federal courts without exception, where there are incumbent judges of retirement age who do not choose to resign.” This proposal aroused widespread opposition in and out of Congress as an attempt on the part of the president to “pack” the U.S. Supreme Court, whose adverse decisions on various items of New Deal legislation had greatly displeased Roosevelt. After months of debate and controversy the bill failed of enactment, due largely to opposition by members of the president's own party in the Senate. | 4 |
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| April 26 |
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| The president signed the Guffey-Vinson Act, successor to the Bituminous Coal Stabilization Act of 1935, largely invalidated by the Supreme Court. The act created a Bituminous Coal Commission, to administer a code covering “unfair” practices, fixing minimum and, in some cases, maximum prices for coal, and dealing with arrangements for marketing. | 5 |
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| May |
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| Neutrality Act, reaffirming and somewhat enlarging statutes of Aug. 1935 and Feb. 1936. Whenever the president proclaimed a state of war outside of the Americas, the export of arms and munitions to the belligerents was to be prohibited. Certain materials designated by the president would have to be paid for before leaving the U.S., and would have to be carried in foreign ships. All other trade with the combatants was subject to the cash, but not to the carry, restriction. In addition the act prohibited American citizens from traveling on belligerents’ ships and barred loans to warring powers. | 6 |
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| Sept. 2 |
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| President Roosevelt signed the Wagner-Steagall Act, declaring a federal policy of employing government funds and credit to help states and their subdivisions to remedy the housing shortage. | 7 |
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| Oct |
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| A business recession, the gradual onset of which had been evident for several months, brought sharp declines in the stock market. By November the recession had become general throughout the country. | 8 |
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