25 The Great Depression What made the Great Depression so severe and so lasting1929-1939
From Hooverism to the New Deal Hoover's Efforts at Recovery: short-sighted tax increases
-Despite the Depression, President Hoover insisted on trying to balance the federal budget by raising taxes and cutting budgets—precisely the wrong prescription for a sick economy. -He pushed through Congress the Revenue Act of 1932, the largest—and most poorly timed—peacetime tax increase in American history. By taking money out of consumers' pockets, the higher taxes accelerated the economic slowdown. People had less money to spend when what the struggling economy most needed was increased con- sumer spending.
From Hooverism to the New Deal Rising Criticism of Hoover farmers and veterans in protest
-Fears of organized revolt arose when thousands of unemployed military veterans converged on the nation's capital in the spring of 1932. The "Bonus Expeditionary Force," made up of veterans of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) that fought in Europe in the Great War, pressed Congress to pay the cash bonuses owed to nearly 4 million veterans -The House passed a bonus bill, but the Senate voted it down because it would have forced a tax increase. -Most of the disappointed veterans went home. The rest, along with their wives and children, having no place to go, camped in vacant federal buildings and in a shantytown within sight of the Capitol. -Hoover persuaded Congress to pay for their train tickets home. More left, but others stayed even after Congress adjourned, hoping to meet with the president. -Late in July, Hoover ordered the government buildings cleared. In doing so, a policeman panicked, fired into the crowd, and killed two veterans. -The soldiers, commanded by army chief of staff General Douglas MacArthur, used horses and tanks to disperse the unarmed veterans and their families. -Influence: Widespread news coverage of the assault on the unemployed veterans led even more people to view Hoover and the Republicans as heartless.
From Hooverism to the New Deal Hoover's Efforts at Recovery
-He invited business, labor, government, and agricultural lead- ers to a series of White House conferences in which he urged companies to maintain employment and wage levels, asked union leaders to end strikes, and pleaded with state governors to accelerate planned construction projects so as to keep people working. He also formed committees and commissions to study various aspects of the economic calamity, and he cut the income tax. Yet nothing worked. Unemployment continued to rise, and wage levels continued to fall.
From Hooverism to the New Deal Hoover's initial response
-His initial response to the economic disaster was denial: there was no crisis, he insisted. -All that was needed was to let the economy cure itself. -But Mellon's do-nothing approach did not work. Falling wages and declining land and home values made it even harder for struggling farmers, businesses, and households to pay their bills.
Roosevelt's New Deal saving homes
-Home Owners' Loan Corporation, which helped people refinance their mortgages at lower interest rates so as to avoid bankruptcy. -In 1934 Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which offered Americans much longer home mortgages (twenty years) in order to reduce their monthly payments. Up to that point, most mortgages were for less than ten years duration and covered only a portion of the purchase price.
The New Deal under Fire Continuing Hardships African Americans and the new deal
-However progressive Franklin Delano Roosevelt was on social issues, he showed little interest in the plight of African Americans, even as black voters were shifting from the Republicans (the "party of Lincoln") to the Democrats. -many New Deal programs discriminated against blacks eg. the payments from the AAA to farm owners to take land out of production in an effort to raise the prices for farm products forced hundreds of thousands of tenant farmers and sharecroppers, both blacks and whites, off the land. The FHA refused to guarantee mortgages on houses purchased by blacks in white neighborhoods, and both the CCC and the TVA practiced racial segregation. The NAACP waged an energetic legal campaign against racial preju- dice throughout the 1930s, but a major setback occurred in the Supreme Court ruling on Grovey v. Townsend (1935), which upheld the Texas Democrats' whites-only election primary. Thanks to relentless pressure from Eleanor Roosevelt, the president did appoint more African Americans to government positions than ever before. One of the most visible was Mary McLeod Bethune In 1935, Roosevelt approved her appointment as the director of the Division of Negro Affairs within the National Youth Administration, an agency that provided jobs to unemployed young Americans.
Roosevelt's New Deal the first hundred days
-President Roosevelt confronted four major challenges: reviving the industrial economy, relieving the widespread human misery, rescuing the ravaged farm sector, and reform- ing those aspects of the capitalist system that had helped cause the Depression. -The defining characteristic of Roosevelt's approach to pres- idential leadership was action.
From Hooverism to the New Deal Rising Criticism of Hoover
-The Democrats shrewdly exploited his predicament. In November 1930, they gained their first national election victory since 1916, winning a majority in the House and a near majority in the Senate.
From Hooverism to the New Deal Rising Criticism of Hoover congressional initiatives
-With a new Congress in session in 1932, demands for federal action forced Hoover to do more. That year, Congress set up the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to make emergency loans to banks, life-insurance companies, and railroads -Hoover, however, held back and signed only the Emergency Relief Act (1932), which authorized the RFC to make loans to the states for construction projects.
Roosevelt's New Deal "trial by fire"
-at age thirty- nine, an infectious neuromuscular disease that left him permanently disabled and forced him to use cumbersome leg braces to stand or walk. -Polio crippled his legs but expanded his sympathies.
Roosevelt's New Deal the 1933 inauguration
-he asked Congress for "a broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency" just as "if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.
Roosevelt's New Deal a people's president
-liked humanity as a whole and disliked people individually." -willingness to experiment with different ways of using government power and resources to address pressing problems.
Roosevelt's New Deal roosevelt's rise
-the adored only child of wealthy, aristocratic parents -attended Harvard College and Columbia University Law School -married Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, the favorite niece of Theodore Roosevelt, then president of the United States, who was also Franklin's distant cousin. -In 1913, Woodrow Wilson appointed him assistant secretary of the navy. -In 1913, Woodrow Wilson appointed him assistant secretary of the navy.
The New Deal under Fire Critics Assault the New Deal father Coughlin
A third outspoken critic was Father Charles E. Coughlin, a Roman Catholic "radio priest" in Detroit, Michigan. In fiery weekly broadcasts that attracted as many as 40 million listeners, he assailed Roosevelt as "anti-God" and claimed that the New Deal was a Communist conspiracy. Coughlin became increasingly anti-Semitic, claiming that Roosevelt was a tool of "international Jewish bankers" and rela- beling the New Deal the "Jew Deal." He praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis for killing Jews because he believed that all Jews were Communists who must be hunted down. Of Long, Townsend, and Coughlin, Long had the largest political follow- ing. A 1935 poll showed that he could draw more than 5 million votes as a third-party candidate for president, perhaps enough to prevent Roosevelt's reelection. Roosevelt decided to "steal the thunder" from his most vocal crit- ics by instituting an array of new programs. "I'm fighting Communism, Huey Longism, Coughlinism, Townsendism," Roosevelt told a reporter in early 1935. He needed "to save our system, the capitalist system" from such "crackpot ideas."
From Hooverism to the New Deal Hoover's Efforts at Recovery: hoover's reaction to the social crisis
All across the country, shantytowns sprouted in vacant lots. People erected shacks out of cardboard and scrap wood and metal. They called their makeshift villages Hoovervilles to mock the president. -Hoover feared that the nation would be "plunged into socialism" if the government provided direct support to the poor. -Hoover hoped that the "natural generosity" of the American people and charitable organizations would be sufficient, and he believed that volunteers would relieve the social distress caused by the Depression. But his faith in traditional "voluntarism" was misplaced. Local and state relief agencies were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the social crisis, as were churches and charitable organizations like the Salva- tion Army and the Red Cross.
The New Deal under Fire Cultural Life during the Depression literature and the depression
Among the writers who ad- dressed themes of social significance during the 1930s, two deserve special notice: John Steinbeck and Richard Wright. The novel that best captured the ordeal of the Depression, Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939), treats workers as people rather than variables in a political formula. Steinbeck had traveled with displaced "Okies" driven from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to pursue the illusion of good jobs in the fields of California's Central Valley. This firsthand experi- ence allowed him to create a vivid tale of the Joad family's painful journey west. Richard Wright: His period as a Communist, from 1934 to 1944, gave him an intellectual framework that did not overpower his fierce independence. Native Son (1940), Wright's masterpiece, is the story of Bigger Thomas, a product of the ghetto who is hemmed in by forces beyond his control, and finally impelled to commit murder.
The Second New Deal taxing the rich
Another major bill in the second phase of the New Deal was the Revenue Act of 1935, sometimes called the "Wealth-Tax Act" but popularly known as the "soak-the-rich" tax. It raised tax rates on annual income above $50,000, in part because of stories that many wealthy Americans were not paying taxes. Morgan and other business leaders fumed over Roosevelt's tax and spend- ing policies.
The New Deal under Fire Critics Assault the New Deal the townsend plan
Another popular critic of Roosevelt was a retired California doctor, Francis E. Townsend. he began promoting the Townsend Recovery Plan in 1934. Townsend wanted the federal government to pay $200 a month to every American over sixty who agreed to quit working. The recipients would have to spend the money each month. But like Huey Long's Share-the- Wealth scheme, the numbers in Townsend's plan did not add up; although it would have served only 9 percent of the population, it would have paid those retirees more than half the total national income.
The Second New Deal social security
As Francis Townsend had stressed, the Great Depression hit the oldest Americans and those with disabilities especially hard. To address the problems faced by the elderly and disabled, Roosevelt proposed the Social Security Act of 1935. Social Security was, he announced, the "cornerstone" and "supreme achievement" of the New Deal. The Social Security Act was designed largely by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first woman cabinet member in history. Its centerpiece was a self-financed federal retirement fund for people over sixty-five. Roosevelt stressed that Social Security was not intended to guarantee everyone a comfortable retirement. Rather, it was meant to supplement other sources of income and protect the elderly. The Social Security Act also set up a shared federal-state unemployment- insurance program, financed by a payroll tax on employers. In addition, it committed the national government to a broad range of social-welfare activities based upon the assumption that "unemployables"—people who were unable to work—would remain a state responsibility while the national government would provide work relief for the able-bodied. When compared with similar pro- grams in Europe, the U.S. Social Secu- rity system was conservative. It was the only government-managed retirement program in the world financed by taxes on the earnings of workers; most other countries funded such programs out of general government revenues. The Social Security payroll tax was also a regressive tax. It thus pinched the poor more than the rich, and it hurt efforts to revive the economy because it removed from circulation a significant amount of money. In addition, the Social Security system, excluded 9.5 million workers who most needed the new program: farm laborers, domestic workers (maids and cooks), and the self-employed, a disproportionate percentage of whom were African Americans. Conservatives condemned the Social Security Act as tyrannical and "socialistic."
Roosevelt's New Deal regulating wall street
Before the Great Crash in 1929, there was little government oversight of the securities (stocks and bonds) industry. In 1933, the Roosevelt administration developed two important pieces of legislation intended to regulate the operations of the stock market and eliminate fraud and abuses. The first, the Securities Exchange Act of 1933, was the first major federal legislation to regulate the sale of stocks and bonds. It required corporations that issued stock for public sale to "disclose" all relevant information about the operations and management of the company so that purchasers could know what they were buying. The second bill, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, established the Securities and Exchange Commission, a federal agency to enforce the new laws and regulations governing the issuance and trading of stocks and bonds.
Roosevelt's New Deal dust bowl migrants
Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma were the hardest hit. Crops withered, and income plummeted. Strong winds swept across the treeless plains, scooping up tons of parched topsoil into billowing dark clouds, called black blizzards, which engulfed farms and towns. By 1938, topsoil had disappeared from more than 25 million acres of prairie land. millions of people abandoned their farms. Many uprooted farmers and their families from the South and the Midwest headed toward California, where jobs were said to be plentiful Without money to pay rent or a mortgage, homeless migrants set up squatter camps, often called "Little Oklahomas" alongside highways or close to towns where they could get food and supplies. When one crop was harvested, the migrants moved on to the next, carrying their belongings with them.
The Second New Deal Roosevelt's Second Term a slumping economy
During 1935 and 1936, the economy finally began showing signs of revival. By the spring of 1937, industrial output had risen above the 1929 level. In 1937, however, Roosevelt, worried about federal budget deficits and rising inflation, ordered sharp cuts in government spend- ing. The economy stalled, then slid into a slump deeper than that of 1929. In only three months, unemployment rose by 2 million people. When the spring of 1938 failed to bring economic recovery, Roosevelt reversed himself and asked Congress to adopt a new federal spending program, and Congress voted $3.3 billion in new expenditures. The increase in government spending reversed the economy's decline, but only during World War II would employ- ment again reach pre-1929 levels. The Court-packing fight, the sit-down strikes, and the 1937 recession all undercut Roosevelt's prestige and power. When the 1937 congressional session ended, the only major New Deal initiatives were the Wagner-Steagall National Housing Act and the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act. The Housing Act, developed by Senator Robert F. Wagner, set up the federal Housing Authority, which extended long-term loans to cities to build public housing projects in blighted neighborhoods and provide subsidized rents for poor people. The Farm Tenant Act created a new agency, the Farm Security Administra- tion (FSA), which provided loans to keep farm owners from losing their land to bankruptcy. It also made loans to tenant farmers to enable them to purchase farms. In the end, however, the FSA proved to be little more than another relief operation that tided a few farmers over during difficult times. In 1938, the Democratic Congress also enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act. It replaced many of the provisions that had been in the NIRA, which had been declared unconstitutional. The federal government established a mini- mum wage of 40¢ an hour and a maximum workweek of forty hours. The act, which applied only to businesses engaged in interstate commerce, also prohib- ited the employment of children under the age of sixteen.
The Second New Deal Roosevelt's Second Term setbacks for the president
During the late 1930s, the Dem- ocrats in Congress increasingly split into two factions, with conservative southerners on one side and liberal northerners on the other. Many white southern Democrats balked at the party's growing dependence on the votes of northern labor unions and African Americans. Senator Ellison "Cotton Ed" Smith of South Carolina and several other southern delegates walked out of the 1936 Democratic party convention, with Smith declaring that he would not support any party that views "the Negro as a political and social equal." Other critics believed that Roosevelt was exercising too much power and spending too much money. Some southern Democrats began to work with conservative Republicans to veto any additional New Deal programs. Roosevelt now headed a divided party, and the congressional elections of November 1938 handed the administration another setback when the Democrats lost 7 seats in the Senate and 80 in the House. In his State of the Union message in 1939, Roosevelt for the first time presented no new reform programs but instead spoke of the need "to preserve our reforms." The conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats had stalemated the president. As one observer noted, the New Deal "has been reduced to a movement with no program, with no effective political organization, with no vast popular party strength behind it."
Roosevelt's New Deal Shoring Up the Financial System banking regulation
Emergency Banking Relief Act, which declared a four-day bank holiday to allow the financial panic to subside A few weeks later, on June 16, Roosevelt signed the Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1933, part of which created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which guaranteed customer accounts in banks up to $2,500, thus reducing the likelihood of future panics. the Glass-Steagall Act called for the separation of commercial banking from investment banking to prevent conventional banks from investing the savings of depositors in the risky stock market In addition, the Federal Reserve Board was given more authority to intervene in future financial emergencies. The banking crisis had ended, and the administration was ready to pursue a broader program of economic recovery.
The New Deal under Fire
Franklin Roosevelt had become the best loved and most hated presi- dent of the twentieth century. He was loved because he believed in and fought for the common people, for the "forgotten man" (and woman). And he was loved for what one French leader called his "glittering personality." Roosevelt radiated energy and hope, joy in his work, courage in a crisis, optimism for the future, and a monumental self-assurance bordering on arrogance. Roosevelt was perhaps the most visible and accessible president who had occupied the White House. Twice a week he held press conferences, explaining new legislation, addressing questions and criticisms, and, in the process, win- ning over most journalists. Roosevelt also mastered the art of using carefully timed radio addresses ("fireside chats") to speak to the nation. But he was hated, too, especially by business leaders and political conservatives who believed that the New Deal and the higher taxes it required were moving America toward socialism. Others, on the left, hated him for not doing enough to end the Depression. By the mid-1930s, the early New Deal programs had slowed the economy's downward slide, but prosperity remained elusive.
The Second New Deal Roosevelt's Second Term the court-packing plan
He believed his reelection demonstrated that the nation wanted even more gov- ernment action to revive the economy. The three-to-one Democratic majorities in Congress ensured that he could pass new legislation. But one major roadblock stood in the way: the conservative Supreme Court, made up of "nine old men." he hatched a clumsy plan to "reform" the Court by enlarg- ing it. Congress, not the Constitution, determines the size of the Supreme Court, which over the years had numbered between six and ten justices. But the "Court-packing" scheme, as opponents labeled the plan, back- fired. It was too manipulative and far too political, and quickly became the most controversial proposal of Roosevelt's presidency. The plan ignited a firestorm of opposition among conservative Republicans and even aroused fears among Democrats that the president was seeking dangerous new powers. As it turned out, several Court decisions during the spring of 1937 surpris- ingly upheld disputed provisions of the Wagner and Social Security Acts. Despite criticism from both parties, Roosevelt insisted on forcing his Court-packing bill through Congress. On July 22, 1937, the Senate overwhelm- ingly voted it down. It was the biggest political blunder and greatest humiliation of Roosevelt's career.
From Hooverism to the New Deal Hoover's Efforts at Recovery: upbeat messages
In speech after speech, Hoover became an ineffective cheerleader for American capitalism.
The New Deal under Fire Cultural Life during the Depression
Instead, it brought a renewed sense of militancy and affirmation, as if society could no longer afford the art-for-art's-sake outlook of the 1920s.
The Second New Deal Roosevelt's Second Term
On June 27, 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt accepted the Democratic party's nomination for a second term. The Republicans chose Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas, a progressive Republican who had endorsed many New Deal programs. The Republicans hoped that the followers of Huey Long, Charles E. Coughlin, Francis E. Townsend, and other Roosevelt critics would combine to draw enough Democratic votes away from the president to give Landon a winning margin. But that possibility faded when an assassin, the son-in-law of a Louisiana judge whom Long had sought to remove, shot and killed the forty-two-year- old senator in 1935. In winning another landslide election, Roosevelt forged a new electoral coalition that would affect national politics for years to come. While holding the support of most traditional Democrats, North and South, he made strong gains in the West among beneficiaries of New Deal agricultural programs.
The New Deal under Fire Critics Assault the New Deal Opposition from the Court
On May 27, 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court killed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) by a unanimous vote. In Schechter Poultry Corpora- tion v. United States, the justices ruled that Congress had given too much of its authority to the president when the NIRA created the National Recovery Administration (NRA), giving it the power to bring business and labor leaders together to create "codes of fair competition" for their industries—an activity that violated federal anti-trust laws. In a press conference soon after the Court announced its decision Then, on January 6, 1936, in United States v. Butler, the Supreme Court declared the Agricultural Adjustment Act's tax on "middle men," the companies that processed food crops and commodities like cotton, unconstitutional. In response to the Court's decision, the Roosevelt administration passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, which reestablished the earlier crop- reduction payment programs but left out the tax on processors. Although the AAA helped boost the overall farm economy, conservatives criticized its sweeping powers. By the end of its 1936 term, the Supreme Court had ruled against New Deal programs in seven of nine major cases. The same line of conservative judicial reasoning, Roosevelt warned, might endanger other New Deal programs—if he did not act swiftly to prevent it.
The New Deal under Fire Critics Assault the New Deal huey long
Others criticized Roosevelt for not doing enough to help the common people. The most potent of the president's "populist" opponents was Huey Pierce Long Jr., a Democratic senator from Louisiana. A short, colorful man with wild, curly hair, Long, known as "Kingfish," was a theatrical politician (a demagogue) who appealed to the raw emotions of the masses. First as Louisiana's governor, then as its most powerful U.S. senator, Long viewed the state as his personal empire. Reporters called him the "dictator of Louisiana." True, he reduced state taxes, improved roads and schools, built charity hospitals, and provided better public services, but in the process, he used bribery, intimidation, and blackmail to get his way. Long arrived in Washington as a supporter of Roosevelt and the New Deal, but he quickly grew suspicious of the NRA's efforts to cooperate with big business. Having developed presidential aspirations, he had also grown jealous of "Prince Franklin" Roosevelt's popularity. Rich devised a simplistic plan for dealing with the Great Depression that he called the Share-the-Wealth Society.
From Hooverism to the New Deal the 1932 election I
Republicans nominated President Hoover for a second term. By contrast, the Democrats arrived in Chicago and elected Fifty-year-old New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt Roosevelt continued to promise a "New Deal" for the American people, stressing that a revitalized economy required new ideas and aggressive action. -What were Herbert Hoover's criticisms of Roosevelt's New Deal? Roosevelt's proposals for unprecedented government action, he warned, "would destroy the very foundations of our American system." The election was more than a contest between two men and two political parties; it was a battle "between two philosophies of government" that would decide "the direction our nation will take over a century to come."
Roosevelt's New Deal First New Deal
Roosevelt and his advisers initially settled on a three-pronged strategy to revive the economy. First, they addressed the immediate banking cri- sis and provided short-term emergency relief for the jobless. Second, the New Dealers—men and women (professors, journalists, economists, social workers, and political appointees) who swarmed to Washington during the winter of 1933—encouraged agreements between management and unions. Third, they attempted to raise depressed commodity prices (corn, cotton, wheat, beef, pork, etc.) by paying farmers "subsidies" to reduce the sizes of their crops and herds so that prices would rise and thereby increase farm income. From March 9 to June 16, theso-called First Hundred Days, Con-gress approved fifteen major pieces of legislation proposed by Roosevelt. Sev- eral of these programs comprised what came to be called the First New Deal (1933-1935).
Roosevelt's New Deal the federal budget
Roosevelt next convinced Congress to pass an Economy Act (1933) allowing him to cut government workers' salaries, reduce payments to military veterans for non-service-connected disabilities, and reorganize federal agencies to help reduce government expenses. He then took the dramatic step of ending Prohibition, in part because it was being so widely violated, in part because most Democrats wanted it ended, and in part because he wanted to regain the federal tax revenues from the sale of alcoholic beverages. The Twenty-First Amendment, ratified on December 5, 1933, ended the "noble experiment" of Prohibition.
Roosevelt's New Deal eleanor roosevelt
She ceaselessly prodded her husband about social justice issues and sometimes scolded him, yet she always supported his ambitions and decisions. he began a lifelong crusade on behalf of women, blacks, and youth, giving voice to the voiceless. Her tireless compassion resulted in large part from the self-doubt and loneliness she had experienced as the child of an alcoholic father and an aloof mother. Equally influential in shaping Eleanor's outlook was the sense of betrayal she felt upon discovering in 1918 that her husband had fallen recklessly in love with Lucy Mercer, her friend and secretary. Eleanor Roosevelt redefined the role of the First Lady. She was not content just to host social events in the White House. Instead, she became an out-spoken and relentless activist: the first woman to address a national political convention, to write a nationally-syndicated newspaper column, and to hold regular press conferences.
Roosevelt's New Deal agricultural assistance
The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 created a new federal agency, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), The prospect of another bumper cotton crop forced the AAA to organize a "plow-under" program in which farmers were paid to kill the sprouting seeds in their fields. By the end of 1934, the AAA efforts had worked: wheat, cotton, and corn production had declined and prices for those commodities had risen. Farm income increased by 58 percent between 1932 and 1935.
Roosevelt's New Deal Helping the Unemployed and Homeless putting people to work
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), headed by Harry L. Hopkins, was Roosevelt's first major effort to deal with unemployment. It sent grants to the states to spend on the unemployed and homeless. After the state-sponsored programs funded by the FERA proved inadequate, Congress created the Civil Works Administration (CWA) in November 1933. It marked the first large-scale federal experiment with work relief by putting people directly on the government payroll at competitive wages: 40¢ an hour for unskilled workers, $1 for skilled. As the number of people employed by the CWA soared, however, the program's costs skyrocketed to more than $1 billion. Roosevelt balked at such high costs and worried that the people hired would become dependent upon federal jobs. So in the spring of 1934, he ordered the CWA dissolved. By April, some 4 million workers were again unemployed.
The Second New Deal a new direction for unions
The New Deal reinvigorated the labor union movement. When the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) demanded that every industry code affirm workers' rights to organize, unionists quickly translated it to mean "the president wants you to join the union." John L. Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers (UMW), was among the first to capitalize on the pro-union spirit of the NIRA. He rebuilt the UMW from 150,000 members to 500,000 within a year. with the passage of the Wagner Act, industrial unionists formed a Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO). Craft unionists began to fear submergence by the mass unions made up mainly of unskilled workers. Jurisdictional disputes divided them, and in 1936 the American Federation of Labor (AFL) expelled the CIO unions, which then formed a permanent struc- ture, called after 1938 the Congress of Industrial Organizations (also known by the initials CIO). The rivalry spurred both groups to greater efforts. The CIO focused on organizing the automobile and steel industries.
Roosevelt's New Deal reviving the industrial sector
The centerpiece of the New Deal's efforts to revive the industrial economy was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933. One of its two major sections created massive public-works construction projects funded by the federal government as a means of creating jobs. The NIRA started the Public Works Administration (PWA), granting $3.3 billion for the construction of government buildings, highways, bridges, dams, port facilities, and sewage plants. The second, and more controversial, part of the NIRA created the National Recovery Administration (NRA), headed by Hugh S. Johnson, a hard-drinking retired army general known for his administrative expertise, a "blustering, dictatorial, and appealing" bureaucrat. The NRA represented a radical shift in the federal government's role in the economy. Never before in peacetime had Washington bureaucrats taken charge of setting prices, wages, and standards for working conditions. In exchange for allowing companies to "cooperate" rather than compete, the NRA codes included "fair labor" policies long sought by unions and social progressives: a national forty-hour workweek, minimum weekly wages of $13 ($12 in the South, where living costs were lower), and a ban on the employment of children under the age of sixteen. The NRA also included a provision that guaranteed the right of workers to organize unions. Negative side: But as soon as economic recovery began, small business owners complained that the larger corporations dominated the NRA, whose price-fixing robbed small producers of the chance to compete. And because the NRA wage codes excluded agricultural and domestic workers (at the insistence of southern Democrats), most African Americans derived no direct benefit from the program. When the Supreme Court declared the NRA unconstitutional in May 1935, few regretted its demise.
The New Deal under Fire Continuing Hardships court cases and civil liberties
The continuing prejudice against blacks in the South was vividly revealed in a controversial case in Alabama. In 1931, an all-white jury, convicted nine black youths, ranging in age from thirteen to twenty-one, of raping two young white women while riding a freight train. Eight of the "Scottsboro Boys" were sentenced to death before cheering whites who packed the courtroom, while 10,000 spectators outside celebrated with a brass band. The injustice of the Scottsboro case sparked protests throughout the nation and the world. The two white girls, it turned out, had been selling sex to white and black boys on the train. One of the girls eventually recanted the rape charges and began appearing at rallies on behalf of the defendants. Further, it prompted two important legal interpretations. In Powell v. Alabama (1932), the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the original convictions because the judge had not ensured that the accused were provided adequate defense attorneys. The Court ordered new trials. In another case, Norris v. Alabama (1935), the Court ruled that the systematic exclusion of African Americans from Alabama juries had denied the Scottsboro defendants equal protection under the law Although the state of Alabama eventually dropped the charges against the four youngest of the Scottsboro defendants and granted paroles to the others, their lives were ruined. The last defendant was released from prison in 1950.
Roosevelt's New Deal Helping the Unemployed and Homeless the ccc
The most successful of the New Deal jobs programs was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), It built 2,500 camps to house up to half a million unemployed, unmarried young men ages seventeen to twenty-seven. They worked as "soil soldiers" in national forests, parks, and recreational areas, and on soil-conservation projects. The CCC also recruited 150,000 unemployed military veterans and 85,000 Native Americans, housing them in separate camps. -Women were excluded from the CCC, and African Americans and Native Americans were housed in segregated facilities.
The New Deal under Fire Continuing Hardships native Americans and the depression
They were initially encouraged by Roosevelt's appointment of John Collier as commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Collier steadily increased the number of Native Americans employed by the BIA and ensured that Native Americans gained access to the various relief programs The act that Congress passed, however, was a much-diluted version of Collier's original proposal, and the "Indian New Deal" brought only partial improvement to the lives of Native Americans. But it did spur the various tribes to revise their constitutions so as to give women the right to vote and hold office.
Roosevelt's New Deal the tennessee valley authority
To help the blighted South, Roos-evelt created one of the most innova-tive programs of the First New Deal:the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA),which would bring electrical power,flood control efforts, and jobs to Appa-lachia, the desperately poor mountain-ous region that stretched from WestVirginia through western Virginia and North Carolina, Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and northern Georgia and Alabama. By 1940, the TVA, a multipurpose public corporation, had constructed twenty-one hydroelectric dams which created the "Great Lakes of the South" and produced enough electricity to power the entire region, at about half the average national rate. The TVA also dredged rivers to allow for boat and barge traffic, promoted soil conservation and forestry management, drew new indus- tries to the region, encouraged the formation of labor unions, and improved schools and libraries. It gave 1.5 million farms access to electricity and indoor plumbing for the first time. Progress is rarely without its burdens or inconsistencies. Many New Deal programs helped some people and hurt others. Tough choices had to be made. Building all of those huge dams in Appalachia and the resulting lakes meant displacing thousands of hardscrabble people from homes and villages that were destroyed to make way for progress.
The Second New Deal
To rescue his legislative program from judicial and political challenges, Roo- sevelt in January 1935 launched the second, more radical phase of the New Deal, explaining that "social justice, no longer a distant ideal, has become a definite goal" of his administration. In his effort "to steal Huey Long's thun- der," the president called on Congress to pass a cluster of what he designated as "must" legislation that included a federal construction program to employ the jobless; banking reforms; increased taxes on the wealthy; and "social secu- rity" programs to protect people during unemployment, old age, and illness.
The New Deal under Fire Cultural Life during the Depression popular culture
While many writers and artists dealt with the suffering and social tensions aroused by the Great Depression, the more popular cultural outlets, such as radio programs and movies, provided a welcome escape from the decade's grim realities. In 1930, more than 10 million families owned a radio; by the end of the decade, the number had tripled. Franklin Roosevelt was the first president to take full advantage of the popularity of radio broadcasting. He hosted sixteen "fireside chats" to generate support for his New Deal initiatives. movies were transformed by the introduction of sound. The "talkies" made movies by far the most popular form of entertainment during the 1930s—much more popular than they are today. The introduction of dou- ble features in 1931 and the construction of outdoor drive-in theaters in 1933 boosted interest and attendance. More than 60 percent of the population— 70 million people—paid a quarter to see at least one movie each week. The movies of the 1930s rarely dealt directly with hard times. People wanted to be cheered up when they entered movie houses. In Stand Up and Cheer! (1934), featuring child star Shirley Temple, President Roosevelt appoints a Broadway producer to his cabinet as the Secretary of Amusement. His goal is to use entertainment to distract people from the ravages of the Depression. Most feature films transported viewers into the escapist realm of adventure, spectacle, and fantasy. Gone with the Wind (1939), based on Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, was a good example of such escapism, as were The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Walt Disney's feature cartoons. Moviegoers also relished shoot-'em-up gangster films, spectacular musicals (especially those starring dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers), "screwball" romantic comedies featuring wacky situations, zany characters, and witty dialogue like It Happened One Night (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936), and Mister Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and horror films such as Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), King Kong (1933), The Invisible Man (1933), and Werewolf of London (1935). Marx Brothers, The Cocoanuts (1929), Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932), and Duck Soup (1933) introduced moviegoers to the anarchic antics of Chico, Groucho, Harpo, and Zeppo Marx, who combined slapstick humor with verbal wit to create plotless masterpieces of irreverent satire.
How Franklin Roosevelt saved the country
Yet that is exactly what Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to do in 1932 as he assumed the presidency. He would save capitalism by transforming it. Like his hero, his cousin Theodore Roosevelt, he believed that the basic problem of twentieth-century life was the excessive power of large corporations. Only the federal government could regulate corporate capitalism for the public benefit.
The Second New Deal Roosevelt's Second Term a halfway revolution
a halfway revolution The New Deal's political momentum petered out in 1939 just as a new world war was erupting in Europe and Asia. Many New Deal programs had failed or were poorly conceived and implemented, but others were changing American life for the better: Social Security, federal regulation of stock markets and banks, minimum wage levels for workers, federally insured bank accounts, the right to join labor unions. Never before had the federal government intervened so directly in the economy or spent so much on social welfare programs. Franklin Roosevelt had also transformed the nation's political dynamics, luring black voters in large numbers to the Democratic party, and he had raised the nation's spirits through his relentless optimism. Roosevelt had led the nation out of the Depression and changed the role of the federal government. Most important of all, the New Deal brought faith and hope to the discouraged and desperate. The enduring reforms of the New Deal also constituted a significant change from the progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. They had assumed that the function of government was to use aggressive regulation of industry and business to ensure that people had an equal opportunity to pursue the American Dream. But Franklin Roosevelt and the New Dealers insisted that the government should provide at least a minimal quality of life for all Americans. The enduring protections afforded by bank-deposit insurance, unemployment benefits, a minimum hourly wage, the Wagner Act, and Social Security pensions gave people a sense of security and protected the nation against future economic crises. (There has not been a similar "depression" since the 1930s.) The greatest failure of the New Deal was its inability to restore prosperity and end record levels of unemployment. In 1939, 10 million Americans— nearly 17 percent of the workforce—remained jobless. Only the Second World War would finally produce full employment—in the armed forces as well as in factories supporting the military. Roosevelt's energetic pragmatism was his greatest strength—and weak- ness. He was flexible in developing new policies and programs; he kept what worked and discarded what failed. He sharply increased the regulatory powers of the federal government and laid the foundation for what would become an expanding system of social welfare programs. Despite what his critics charged, however, Roosevelt was no socialist; he sought to preserve the basic capitalist economic structure while providing protection to the nation's most vulnerable people. In this sense, the New Deal represented a "halfway revolution" that permanently altered the nation's social and political landscape. In a time of peril, Roosevelt created for Americans a more secure future.
What made the Great Depression so severe and so lasting
its global nature. In 1929, Europe was still reeling from the Great War. Once the American economy tumbled, it sent shock waves throughout the world. Economic distress fed the rise of totalitarian regimes—fascism and Nazism in Italy and Germany, communism in the Soviet Union. "Capitalism is dying," theolo- gian Reinhold Niebuhr proclaimed. "Let no one delude himself by hoping for reform from within."
The Second New Deal the wagner act
the Wagner act Another major element of the Second New Deal was the National Labor Relations Act, often called the Wagner Act in honor of the New York senator, Robert Wagner, who drafted it and convinced Roosevelt to support it. The Wagner Act was one of the most important pieces of labor legislation in history, guaranteeing workers the right to organize unions and bargain directly with management about wages and other issues. It also created a National Labor Relations Board to oversee union activities.
The Second New Deal the wpa
the wpa In the first three months of 1935, dubbed the Second Hundred Days, Roosevelt convinced Congress to pass most of the Second New Deal's "must" legislation. The first major initiative was the $4.8 billion Emergency Relief Appropriation Act. The largest peacetime spending bill in history to that point, it included an array of federal job programs managed by a news agency, the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA quickly became the nation's largest employer, hiring an average of 2 million people annually over four years. WPA workers built New York's LaGuardia Airport, restored the St. Louis riverfront, and managed the bankrupt city of Key West, Florida. The WPA also employed a wide range of writers, artists, actors, and musicians in new cultural programs: the Federal Theatre Project, the Federal Art Project, the Federal Music Project, and the Federal Writers' Project. The National Youth Administration (NYA), also under the WPA, provided part-time employment to students and aided jobless youths. Two future presidents were among the beneficiaries; twenty-seven-year-old Lyndon B. Johnson directed an NYA program in Texas, and Richard M. Nixon, a struggling Duke University law student, found work through the NYA at 35¢ an hour.
