Then you weren't paying attention in school. People would regularly skip meals back then. Protests over this were called Hunger Marches.
Geeee....seems to have slipped my mind. Hunger marches did occur in the UK, but wasn't very widespread in the U.S. at all, from my mother's recollection---she lived through the Depression. All I can find are references to the food riots that happened in some cities during 1931-1932, during the Hoover administration. I just can't find anything like that after FDR's election.
Have any links to these Hunger Marches that occurred nationally in late 1933 to whenever in response do FDR's agriculture policies of 1933 and beyond?
What else would it be about? Why would the government make shiny rocks illegal? Gold was money at that time, so he was effectively making money illegal. Can you imagine Bush or Obama trying something like that? Making it a crime to hold US dollars? No sane person would create such a stupid law. It had to be schizophrenia induced aliens telling him to do it.
Well, since gold was money, hoarding of gold had become something to do to hedge against the Depression and inflation. But, the U.S. was on the gold standard, and the gov't had to have a minimum gold reserve on hand equal to 40% (?) of the value of the printed money in circulation, if memory serves. That meant that hoarding gold essentially removed money from the economy....the govt. couldn't print as much as it potentially could if the populace wasn't hoarding the stuff.
So, an economic stimulus like we know today would be impossible if a substantial portion of available gold was being hoarded by individuals....remember, these were extraordinary times. When FDR was elected, unemployment had risen from 8 to 15 million and the gross national product had decreased from $103.8 billion to $55.7 billion.
Personally, FDR should have immediately dropped off the gold standard instead of the halfway step of trying to consolidate all the avail. gold into the gov't's hands. But, he did what he did and it's past history, never to be changed. C'est la vie.