ABSTRACT
The Depression and the Second World War dominated everyday life during the 1930s and 1940s. The regulatory policies initiated by the federal government during the 1930s promoted continuous economic growth during and after the Second World War. A committee of the National Research Council’s Division of Psychology and Anthropology chaired by Clark Wissler issued a confidential report recommending six areas for future anthropological research. With the financial support of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1929 to 1934, Cole, Sapir, and Redfield-Robert Park's son-in-law who joined the anthropology faculty in 1929-attracted graduate students and were able to fund their ethnological, archaeological, and linguistic research during the early years of the Depression. In 1943, Steward established and directed the Smithsonian's Institute of Social Anthropology to carry out research on the Indian question in the countries south of the Rio Grande; at the same time, Steward helped Ralph Beals organize the Inter-American Society of Anthropology and History and its journal, Acta Americana.
