Transcript Document
The Great Depression • The New Deal • Historiographic Debates • Stages • Election of 1936 • New Deal Successes • Banking • TVA and CCC • Farmers • Labor • Backlash • Critics: Huey Long and Father Coughlin • Legislation and anti-union violence • Court Packing case • Depression Culture • Works Progress Administration • Popular Front New Deal > “Fundamentally, the ship was sound,” New Yorker, 1932 New Deal > Private FDR Photograph, 1930s New Deal > Public FDR Photographs, 1930s New Deal > FDR Giving a Fireside Chat New Deal > FDR’s Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933 I am certain that on this day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days. In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment. New Deal > One Hundred Days Cartoon, Lynn Item, 1933 New Deal > One Hundred Days Cartoon, Houston Post, 1933 New Deal > Literary Digest and Gallup polls on 1936 election Literary Digest Final Poll Landon Roosevelt States for Landon States for FDR 57% 43 32 16 January 1936 Gallup Poll By Income Roosevelt Upper third 41% Lower third 70 Reliefers 82 Landon 59% 30 18 A.I.P.O. (Gallup) Final Poll Roosevelt Landon States for FDR States for Landon On the line 55.7% 44.3 40 6 2 Election Results Roosevelt Landon States for FDR States for Landon 61% 49% 46 2 October 1936 Gallup Poll Farmers Roosevelt 52.6% Landon 42.1% Women Roosevelt 51.4% Landon 44.8% Young People (21–24 Years) Roosevelt 57.4% Landon 38.4% Reliefers Roosevelt 78.8% Landon 14.0% New Deal > Percentage vote for Roosevelt in black districts, 1932 and 1936 New Deal > Stages • 1932 - FDR elected • First New Deal (“the hundred days”) • 1934 - Strike wave • 1934 - Leftist Democrats win the majority in congressional elections • Second New Deal (“the second hundred days”) • 1935 - Supreme Court unanimously declares NRA unconstitutional • 1936 - FDR reelected in a landslide • 1937 - Court-packing • FDR proposes but fails to implement unpopular Supreme Court reform • 1938 - Republicans and conservative Democrats regain seats in the House • As a reform movement, New Deal is over New Deal > Song from Thanks a Million, 1935 They started up the NRA to keep the big bad wolf away Then FDR began to be a headache to the GOP Now that codes are everywhere we’ve got initials in our hair The farmer’s IOU is O.K. since Congress formed the AAA The CCC chops down a tree and sells it pronto FOB … The RFC and NHA led millions to the AAA The AAA has crops it cuts and all of us are going nuts! --NRA - National Recovery Administration AAA - Agricultural Adjustment Administration CCC - Civilian Conservation Corps RFC - Reconstruction Finance Corporation NHA - National Housing Authority FDR - Franklin Delano Roosevelt GOP - Grand Old Party FOB - Freight on Board New Deal > Banking Crisis Advertisement, 1931 New Deal > Works Progress Administration poster New Deal > TVA: Big Ridge Dam, TN New Deal > CCC Worker Photograph, 1930 New Deal > NRA’s Blue Eagle Photograph, 1934 Farmers > Farm Holiday, 1932 and Archibald Willard, The Spirit of ‘76, 1876 Farmers > Dust Storm Approaching Startford, Texas, 1930s Farmers > Map of Erosion and Dust on the Plains Farmers > Traveling from South Texas to the Arkansas Delta, 1936 Farmers > Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, March 1936 Farmers > Arthur Rothstein, Steer Skull, Pennington County, South Dakota 1936 Farmers > Arthur Rothstein, the same skull on dry sun-baked earth Farmers > Arthur Rothstein, the same skull, cows grazing in the background Labor > Wagner Act, 1935: United Automobile Workers poster addressing Ford workers Labor > Social Security Poster, 1936 Labor > AFL and CIO AFL CIO • skilled workers only • by craft • anti-immigrant • native-born white male workers only • all workers, including semi-skilled (majority) • by industry • actively recruited immigrants, women, and nonwhites Labor > A CIO poster quoting FDR Labor > The rise in union membership Labor > Sit-down strike in Flint, MI Labor > UAW organizers Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen pose for press photographers, River Rouge Plant, May 26, 1937 Labor > They were approached by Ford Service Department men Labor > Ford men attacked Labor > Reuther and Frankensteen immediately after the incident Labor > Women’s sit-down strike in a Goody Nut Shop, 1937 Labor > Sit-down strike cartoon, New York World-Telegram, March 1937 Labor > CIO photomagazine, Photo-History, July 1937 Backlash > Anti-Roosevelt cartoon, 1938 Backlash > Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin • Populist critics of President Roosevelt • Long - Louisiana Governor and U.S. Senator; the rich should “share wealth” • Coughlin - Catholic priest, • Both used radio effectively • Long - the rich should “share wealth” (as Kingfish from Amos’n’Andy show) • Coughlin - sermons, attacked “money changers,” but also socialists • Both had large following in the early 1930s • Long - 8 million members of Share Our Wealth Clubs • Coughlin - 40 million listeners in 1930 • At first support FDR, then disillusioned • Long - till 1933 as U.S. Senator (Democrat) • Coughlin - till 1935 through sermons on the radio • Long shot in 1935, used for the main character in Robert Penn Warren’s novel All the King’s Men • Coughlin turned anti-semitic and conservative after FDR’s reelection in 1936, ordered by his bishop to cease all political activity in 1940 Backlash > Huey Long, My First Days in the White House (1935) Backlash > Schecter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 1935 • A small company - small firms objected the most to limits on hours and wages • Charles Evans Hughes for the majority: “Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power.” • Congress cannot relegate power to the executive branch, even in an emergency • NRA infringes on “freedom of contract,” through industrial price and wage codes Backlash > “Qualifying Test,” New York Herald Tribune, 1937 Backlash > “Step by Step,” Buffalo News, 1937 Backlash > Memorial Day Massacre, May 29, 1937 New Deal > Historiographic Debates • 1952, Herbert Hoover • New Deal failed because it “attempted to collectivize the American system of life.” • 1940s-1960s, “liberal consensus” historians • New Deal was a “pragmatic” revolution that expanded the role of the federal government in American life. • mid-1960s, “New Left” historians • New Deal was fundamentally conservative, it could but failed to redistribute power in American society; it protected American capitalism. • 1970s-2000s, contemporary historians • New Deal could not have done more than it did, because of conservative Congress, the lack of adequate government bureaucracy, and localist and antistatist political culture. Popular Front > Orr C. Fisher, The Corn Parade, oil on canvas 1941 Popular Front > Photograph of Diego Rivera’s mural destroyed by Nelson Rockefeller, 1933 Popular Front > Diego Rivera, Man at the Crossroads, fresco, 1934 Popular Front > Scottsboro March announcement, Daily Worker, 1934 Popular Front > Artists who were affiliated with the movement Orson Welles Dorothea Lange Charlie Chaplin John Steinbeck Frank Capra Duke Ellington Popular Front > “Here is the artist’s version of an ideal picket. The Disney workers make the ideal striker; there are mighty few labor disputes in which just about every striker can make his own picket sign.” PM (1941) Popular Front > Life of an animator, as the public imagines it and in reality, without union protection. PM (1941) Popular Front > “It’s OK for the seven dwarfs to whistle while they work, but not the girls who work for Disney. Discipline is strict. PM (1941) HUAC > Washington Post cartoon, 1938