The New Deal, 1933–1939

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The 1932 election marked the emergence of a Democratic coalition that would help to shape national politics for the next four decades.

In the worst winter of the depression, unemployment stood at 20 to 25 percent, and the nation’s banking system was close to collapse.

The depression had totally overwhelmed public welfare institutions, and private charity and public relief reached only a fraction of the needy; hunger haunted both cities and rural areas.

Bad banking structure.

• In the 1920s, banks were opening at the rate of four to five per day, but without many federal restrictions to determine how much start-up capital a bank needed or how much it could lend. As a result, most of these banks were highly insolvent. Between 1923 and 1929, banks closed at the rate of two a day. Yet, until the stock market crash in 1929, the nation's seemingly inevitable prosperity helped concealed the potentially fatal flaws in the American banking system.

Foreign balance of payments

• World War I had turned the United States from a debtor nation into a creditor nation. In the aftermath of the war, both the victorious Allies and the defeated Central Powers owed the United States more money than it owed to foreign nations. The Republican administrations of the 1920s insisted on payments in gold bullion, but the world's gold supply was limited and by the end of the 1920s, the United States, itself, controlled much of the world's gold supply. Besides gold, which was increasingly in short supply, countries could pay their debts in goods and services. However, protectionism and high tariffs kept foreign goods out of the United States.

• Recall that the Hawley-Smoot Act (1930) set the highest schedule of tariffs to date. This protectionism produced a negative effect on United States exports: if foreign countries couldn't pay their debts, they had no money to buy American goods.

Limited or poor state of economic intelligence.

• Most American economists and political leaders in 1929 still believed in laissez-faire and the self regulating economy. To help the economy along in its self-adjustment, President Hoover asked businesses to voluntarily hold down production and increase employment, but businesses couldn't keep up high employment for long when they weren't selling goods.

• There was a widespread belief that if the federal budget were balanced, the economy would bounce back. To balance the budget demanded no further tax cuts (although Hoover lowered taxes) and no increase in government spending, which was disastrous in light of rising unemployment and falling prices.

• Another problem with economic practices of the day was the commitment of the Hoover administration to remain on the international gold standard. Many analysts implored Hoover to increase the money supply and to devalue the dollar by printing paper money not backed by gold, but the president refused. Going off the gold standard was one of Roosevelt's first actions when he entered the White House in 1933.

• The Great Depression destroyed Herbert Hoover's reputation and helped to establish Roosevelt's.

• Roosevelt's ideology was not vastly different from Hoover's, but he was willing to experiment with new programs to address the current crisis. His programs put people to work and instilled hope in the future.

• Roosevelt crafted his administration's programs in response to shifting political and economic conditions rather than according to a set ideology or plan.

Roosevelt's Leadership

• FDR gravitation toward new reform movement of “liberalism” – Government should regulate capitalism – Government should not tell people how to behave

• The New Deal came to stand for a complex set of responses to the nation's economic collapse. The New Deal was meant to relieve suffering yet conserve the nation's political and economic institutions. Through unprecedented intervention by the national government, Roosevelt's programs put people to work, instilling hope and restoring the nation's confidence.

• Roosevelt made his administration's programs respond to shifting political and economic conditions rather than adhering to a set ideology or plan. He established a close rapport with the American people; his use of radio-broadcasted 'fireside chats' fostered a sense of intimacy. Roosevelt's approach expanded the power of the executive branch to initiate policy, thereby helping to create the modern presidency.

• At the beginning of his administration, Roosevelt convened Congress in a special session and launched the New Deal with an avalanche of bills. Historians refer to this period as the "Hundred Days." Roosevelt introduced a new notion of the presidency whereby the president, not Congress, was the legislative leader. Most of the bills he proposed set up new government agencies, called the "alphabet soup" agencies because of their array of acronyms.

• Roosevelt established a close rapport with the American people; his use of radiobroadcasted "fireside chats" fostered a sense of intimacy.

• 7. Roosevelt's personal charisma allowed him to dramatically expand the role of the executive branch in initiating policy, thereby helping to create the modern presidency.

• 8. For policy formulation he turned to his cabinet, but Roosevelt was just as likely to turn to advisors and administrators scattered throughout the New Deal bureaucracyeager young people who had flocked to Washington to join the New Deal.

The Hundred Days

• In his first fireside chat, the president reassured citizens that the banks were safe; when the banks reopened, there were more deposits than withdrawals.

• The Banking Act was the first of fifteen pieces of major legislation enacted by Congress in the opening months of the Roosevelt administration, in what became known as the "Hundred Days."

• Roosevelt's promise to act quickly was embodied in the legislation of the "hundred days." • Programs were quickly established to aid agriculture and industry, and direct relief was provided to millions of suffering families. • Federal job projects aided millions more. Although those actions did not end the depression, they offered both hope and sustenance to many. • Legislation regulating banks and the stock market sought to eliminate some of the financial excesses of the 1920s that had contributed to the depression.

First New Deal, 1933–1935

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Saving the banks

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Bank holiday and Emergency Banking Act

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permitted banks to reopen but only if a Treasury Department inspection showed they had sufficient cash reserves.

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Glass-Steagall Act (1933)

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Created Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

– insured deposits up to $2,500

Securities Act (1933) and Exchange Act (1934)

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Homeowners’ Loan Corporation (HLC)

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to refinance home mortgages

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Saving the people

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Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

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Agriculture Adjustment Act

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National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA)

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Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA)

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Public Works Administration

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Civil Works Administration (CWA)

• The Civilian Conservation Corps was created, which sent 250,000 young men to do reforestation and conservation work.

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CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps)

--A public works project, operated under the control of the army, which was designed to promote environmental conservation while getting young, unemployed men off city street corners. Recruits planted trees, built wildlife shelters, stocked rivers and lakes with fish, and cleared beaches and campgrounds. The CCC housed the young men in tents and barracks, gave them three square meals a day, and paid them a small stipend. The army's experience in managing and training large numbers of civilians would prove invaluable in WWII. Wisconsin was a beneficiary of the CCC; one of the organizations many local projects was trail construction at Devil's Lake State Park.

Civilian Conservation Corps Workers

• The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) received approval for its plan of government sponsored regional development and public energy.

•

TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority)

--One of the most ambitious and controversial New Deal projects, the TVA proposed building dams and power plants along the Tennessee River to bring electric power to rural areas in seven states. Although the TVA provided many Americans with electricity for the first time and provided jobs to thousands of unemployed construction workers, the program outraged many private power companies.

Tennessee Valley Authority

• Moral reformers criticized the act that legalized beer. Full repeal of Prohibition came in December of 1933.

• The Roosevelt administration targeted three pressing problems – agricultural overproduction – business failures – unemployment relief.

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Repairing the Economy: Agriculture

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Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)

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Goal was curtailing farm production by paying farmers not to produce

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Tenant Farmers and sharecroppers left out

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Soil Conservation Service (SCS)

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Deal with problem of Dust Bowl

• The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) established a system for seven major

commodities (wheat, cotton, corn, hogs,

rice, tobacco, and dairy products) that provided cash subsidies to farmers who cut production in the hopes that prices would rise.

• The AAA's benefits were distributed unevenly; it fostered the migration of marginal farmers to the cities, while they consolidated the economic and political clout of larger landholders.

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AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act)

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Supreme Court declared AAA unconstitutional in 1935; an unnecessary invasion of private property rights.

Administration replied with Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act

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Took land out of cultivation for conservation rather than economic reasons

NIRA (National Industrial

Recovery Act)--

• The NIRA established the NRA (National Recovery Administration) to stimulate production and competition by having American industries set up a series of codes designed to regulate prices, industrial output, and general trade practices. The federal government, in turn, would agree to enforce these codes. In return for their cooperation, federal officials promised to suspend anti-trust legislation. Section 7A of the NIRA recognized the rights of labor to organize and to have collective bargaining with management. The NIRA was the most controversial piece of legislation to come out of the Hundred Days and many of its opponents charged it with being un American, socialist, even communist, even though it did not violate the sanctity of private property or alter the American wage system.

• The National Industrial Recovery Act launched the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which established a system of industrial self government to handle the problems of overproduction, cutthroat competition, and price instability.

• The NRA’s codes established prices and production quotas, as well as minimum wages and maximum hours, outlawed child labor, and gave workers union rights.

• Trade associations, controlled by large companies, tended to dominate the NRA’s code drafting process, thus solidifying the power of large businesses at the expense of smaller ones.

Why the NIRA failed

• Whether radical or conservative, the NIRA ultimately failed for three reasons: – The NRA assumed businesses would police themselves. The codes, established in the interest of protecting workers and consumers, were ultimately drawn up by the largest companies. This hurt small businesses. – Corporations rarely respected the rights of labor to organize. Because of the number and complexity of the codes, the federal government never enforced labor's right to collective bargaining. – The NRA attacked recovery from the wrong direction. It tried to stabilize prices by lowering production, rather than redistributing money to American consumers and encouraging them to purchase goods. • Within two years, the Supreme Court declared the NIRA unconstitutional.

The Federal Emergency Relief Administration

• (FERA), set up in May 1933 under the direction of Harry Hopkins offered federal money to the states for relief programs and was designed to keep people from starving until other recovery measures took hold. Over the program’s two-year existence, FERA spent $1 billion.

• Whenever possible New Deal administrators promoted work relief over cash subsidies, and they consistently favored jobs that would not compete directly with the private sector.

• Persistent and pervasive unemployment led to the establishment of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), an agency that would provide millions of federally funded jobs through the remainder of the decade. The New Deal accelerated the expansion of the federal bureaucracy, and power was increasingly centered in the nation's capital, not in the states.

• The Public Works Administration (PW A), under Harold L. Ickes, received a $3.3 billion appropriation in 1933, but Ickes's caution in initiating public works projects limited the agency's effectiveness.

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Public Works Administration (PWA)

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Built bridges, roads, dams, hospitals, schools, airports

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Helped to spur development in Arizona, California, Washington

Public Works Projects

When President Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the just-completed Boulder Dam in Nevada in September 1935, he noted that only four years earlier "the mighty waters of the Colorado [River] were running unused to the sea” but now the dam "translate[s] them into a great national possession.” The massive dam-then the largest in the world-tamed the river to provide public services of flood control, hydroelectric power, and water for crops and people throughout the Southwest. In 1933, New Dealers had officially renamed the dam Boulder Dam, and so it remained until 1947 when it was officially renamed Hoover Dam in honor of the president who was instrumental in pushing the long contemplated dream into reality. At a cost of less than $200 million, the construction project provided jobs for over 4,000 men and inspired Americans with dramatic evidence of the creative potential of ambitious public works

Civil Works Administration (CWA)

• Established in November, 1933, the Civil Works Administration (CWA) put 2.6 million men and women to work; at its peak, it employed 4 million in public works jobs. The CWA lapsed the next spring after spending all its funds.

• Many of these early emergency measures were deliberately inflationary and meant to trigger price increases thought necessary to stimulate recovery.

• Roosevelt’s executive order of April 18, 1933, to abandon the international gold standard allowed the Federal Reserve System to manipulate the value of the dollar in response to fluctuating economic conditions.

• In 1934, the Securities and Exchange Commission was established in order to regulate the stock market and prevent abuses.

• The Banking Act of 1935 placed the control of money-market policies at the federal level rather than with regional banks and encouraged centralization of the nation’s banking system.

Until Next time

Back Again

New Deal Under Attack

• Business leaders and conservative Democrats formed the Liberty League in 1934 to lobby against the New Deal and its “reckless spending” and “socialist” reforms.

• In

Schechter v. United States

, the Supreme Court ruled that the National Industrial Recovery Act represented an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the executive branch.

• Citizens like Francis Townsend thought that the New Deal had not gone far enough; • Townsend proposed the Old Age Revolving Pension Plan.

• In 1935, Father Charles Coughlin organized the National Union for Social Justice to attack Roosevelt’s New Deal and demand nationalization of the banking system and expansion of the money supply.

• Because he was Canadian-born and a priest, Coughlin was not likely to run for president —the most direct threat to Roosevelt came from Senator Huey Long.

• In 1934, Senator Long broke with the New Deal and established his own national movement, the Share Our Wealth Society.

• Coughlin and Long offered feeble solutions to the depression and quick-fix plans that addressed only part of problem. Both men showed little respect for the principles of representative government.

• Popular leaders accused the New Deal of moving too slowly in redistributing wealth and caring for the elderly. This pressure from the left caused FDR to inaugurate the "Second New Deal" a program that offered support for organized labor and Social Security legislation that included unemployment insurance and aid to those who couldn't work.

• The New Deal accelerated the expansion of the federal bureaucracy, and power was increasingly centered in the nation’s capital, not in the states. • During the 1930s the federal government, then, operated as a broker state, mediating between contending groups seeking power and benefits. After FDR’s reelection in 1936, the New Deal began to falter. • An abortive attempt to alter the structure of the Supreme Court undercut FDR’s popularity, and his premature reductions in federal spending led to the “Roosevelt recession” of 1937 to 1938.

• Roosevelt’s attempt to “purge” the Democratic Party of some of his most conservative opponents only widened the liberal-conservative rift as the 1938 election approached. • Fresh out of ideas and with the nation still in a depression, FDR’s basic conservatism became more apparent. Tinkering with the system had not led to economic recovery; something more drastic would be required.

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FDR’s Advisors

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Idealistic, dedicated, confident

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Not all were men of wealth and privilege Important women in administration worked mostly behind the scenes

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Frances Perkins

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Little commitment in administration for women’s equality

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Focused instead on protective legislation

The Second New Deal, 1935–1938

• Legislative Accomplishments • Stalemate

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Major measures of the Second New Deal

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National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act)

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Social Security Act

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Rural Electrification Administration

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Emergency Relief Appropriation Act

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Works Progress Administration

"The Broker State"

• During his first two years in office, FDR promoted a new vision of the executive branch; he viewed himself as an "honest broker" who would negotiate among competing interests. The president would mediate conflicts while balancing the interests of one group against another. His older cousin TR had held a similar idea of the presidency, but FDR expanded this concept of the broker state. However, the idea of the broker state has two inherent flaws:

• Presidents tend to get weaker the longer they are in office, because they have to make tough choices that alienate particular interest groups. • The strongest interest groups can pressure even the most forceful broker. This was true in FDR's administration, when the NIRA and AAA favored big business and big agriculture

• The Wagner Act of 1935 upheld the right of industrial workers to join a union and established the nonpartisan National Labor Relations Board to further protect workers' rights.

• The Social Security Act of 1935 provided pensions for most workers in the private sector to be financed by a federal tax that both employers and employees would pay and established a joint federal-state system of unemployment compensation.

The Social Security Act of 1935 required each working American who participated in the system to register with the government and obtain a unique number-the "SSN” familiar to every citizen today-

• The Social Security Act was a milestone in the creation of the modern welfare state in that with it the United States joined countries such as Great Britain and Germany in providing old age pensions and unemployment compensation to

citizens.

• The act also mandated categorical assistance programs for those who clearly could not support themselves, such as the blind, deaf, disabled, and dependent children.

• The Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 was the New Deal's effort to end the "dole" and replace it with public employment. The act appropriated approximately $4.8 billion to finance the last months of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and initiate what became the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

• Under Harry Hopkins the Works Progress Administration (WPA) became the main federal relief agency for the rest of the depression and put relief workers directly onto the federal payroll; between 1935 and 1943 the WPA employed 8.5 million Americans and spent $10.5 billion. – Including funds for construction of buildings on Maxwell

The 1936 Election

• As the 1936 election approached. new voters joined the Democratic Party. Roosevelt could count on a potent coalition of organized labor, Midwestern farmers, white ethnic groups, northern blacks, and middle-class families concerned about unemployment and old-age dependence.

• He also commanded the support of Jews, intellectuals. and progressive Republicans. The Democrats also held on to their traditional constituency of white Southerners.

• The Republicans realized that the New Deal was too popular to oppose directly. So they chose as their candidate the progressive governor of Kansas, Alfred M. Landon.

• Landon accepted the legitimacy of most New Deal programs but criticized their inefficiency and expense. The Republican candidate also pointed to authoritarian regimes in Italy and Germany, directed by Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler, respectively, and hinted that Roosevelt harbored similar dictatorial ambitions.

• Despite these charges, Roosevelt's victory in 1936 was one of the biggest landslides in American history. The assassination of Huey Long in September 1935 had deflated the threat of a serious third-party challenge; the candidate of the combined LongTownsend-Coughlin camp, Congressman William Lemke of North Dakota, garnered fewer than 900,000 votes (1.9 percent) for the Union Party ticket.

• Roosevelt received 60.8 percent of the popular vote and carried every state except Maine and Vermont. The New Deal was at high tide.

Stalemate

• Because he felt the future of New Deal reforms might be in doubt, Roosevelt asked for fundamental changes in the structure of the Supreme Court only two weeks after his inauguration.

• Roosevelt proposed the addition of one new justice for each sitting justice over the age of seventy-a scheme that would have increased the number of justices from nine to fifteen; opponents protested that he was trying to "pack" the court with justices who favored the New Deal.

• The issue became a moot point when the Supreme Court upheld several key pieces of New Deal legislation and a series of resignations created vacancies on the court.

• Roosevelt managed to reshape the Supreme Court to suit his liberal philosophy through seven new appointments, but the courtpacking episode galvanized congressional conservatives by demonstrating that Roosevelt was no longer politically invincible.

• A conservative coalition tried to impede social legislation, but two reform acts did pass: the National Housing Act of 1937, which mandated the construction of lowcost public housing, and the Fair Labor • Standards Act of 1938, which made permanent the minimum wage, maximum hours

,

and anti-child labor provisions in the NRA codes.

• The "RooseveIt recession" of 1937 to 1938 dealt the most devastating blow to the president's political effectiveness in his second term. A steady improvement in the economy had caused Roosevelt to slash the budget, causing a tightening in credit, a market downturn, and rising unemployment.

• Roosevelt spent his way out of the downturn; he and his economic advisors were groping toward John Maynard Keynes's theory of using deficit spending in order to stimulate the economy. Over time, Keynesian economics gradually won wider acceptance as defense spending during World War II ended the Great Depression.

• Roosevelt's attempt to "purge" the Democratic Party of some of his most conservative opponents only widened the liberal-conservative rift.

• In the 1938 election, Republicans picked up eight seats in the Senate, eighty-one in the House, and thirteen state governorships.

• Even without these political reversals, the reform impetus of the New Deal probably would not have continued, as Roosevelt's instincts were basically conservative; he wanted only to save the capitalist economic system by reforming it.

The New Deal’s Impact on Society

• New Deal Constituencies and the Broker State • The New Deal and the Land • The New Deal and the Arts • The Legacies of the New Deal

The Rise of Labor

• The New Deal accelerated the expansion of the federal bureaucracy, and power was increasingly centered in the nation's capital, not in the states.

• During the 1930s the federal government operated as a broker state, mediating between contending pressure groups seeking power and benefits.

• Labor's dramatic growth in the 1930s represented one of the most important social and economic changes of the decade. Organized labor won the battle for recognition, higher wages, seniority systems, and grievance procedures.

• The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) served as the cutting edge of the union movement by promoting "industrial unionism" organizing all of the workers in one industry, both skilled and unskilled, into one union.

• The CIO scored its first two major victories through sit-down strikes with the United Automobile Workers at General Motors and the Steel Workers Organizing Committee at the U.S. Steel Corporation.

• The CIO worked deliberately to attract new groups to the labor movement.

• Mexicans and African Americans were attracted to the CIO's commitment to racial justice, and women workers found a limited welcome in the CIO, though few held leadership positions.

• Hoping to use its influence to elect candidates that were sympathetic to labor and social justice, the CIO quickly allied itself with the Democratic Party.

• The labor movement still had not developed into a dominant force in American life, and many workers remained indifferent or even hostile to unionization.

Women and Blacks in the New Deal

• Under the experimental climate of the New Deal, Roosevelt appointed the first female cabinet member, the first female director of the mint, and a female judge to the court of appeals.

• Eleanor Roosevelt had worked to increase women's power in political parties, labor unions, and education; as first lady, she pushed the president and the New Deal to do more and served as the conscience of the New Deal.

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African Americans

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Marian Anderson

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New Deal did more to reinforce patterns of racial discrimination than to advance the cause of racial equality

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Administration took symbolic steps in support of civil rights but did not make the issue a priority

• African Americans, who had always known discrimination and limited opportunities, viewed the depression differently from most whites.

• Despite the black migration to the cities of the North, most African Americans still lived in the South and earned less than a quarter of the annual average wages of a factory worker.

• Throughout the 1920s, southern agriculture suffered from falling prices and overproduction, so the depression made an already desperate situation worse.

• The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, which some black farmers joined, could do little to reform an agricultural system based on deep economic and racial inequalities

• The hasty trials and the harsh sentences in the 1931 Scottsboro, Alabama, rape case along with an increase in lynching in the early 1930s gave black Americans a strong incentive to head for the North and the Midwest.

• Harlem, one of their main destinations, was already strained by the enormous influx of African Americans in the 1920s and, in 1935, was the setting of the only major race riot of the decade, when anger exploded over the lack of jobs, a slowdown in relief services, and economic exploitation of blacks.

• Partly in response to the riot but mainly in return for growing black allegiance to the Democratic Party, the New Deal channeled significant amounts of relief money toward blacks outside the South.

• The NAACP continued to challenge the status quo of race relations, though calls for racial justice went largely unheeded during the depression.

• Even though the New Deal did not end the depression, it ushered in an unprecedented expansion of the federal government that redefined its role. By seeking to spread benefits more equitably among neglected portions of the population, the New Deal attracted African Americans, professional women, and organized labor to the Democratic Party.

• Mary McLeod Bethune headed the "black cabinet," an informal network that worked for fairer treatment of blacks by New Deal agencies.

• Blacks had voted Republican since the Civil War, but in 1936, blacks outside the South gave Roosevelt 71 percent of their votes and have remained overwhelmingly Democratic ever since.

Native Americans

• •

John Collier at the Bureau of Indian Affairs

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Commitment to cultural pluralism Indian Reorganization Act (1934)

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Revoked allotment practices

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Redistributed land to tribes and otherwise fostered community authority

• The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and other changes in federal policies under the "Indian New Deal" were well intentioned but did little to improve the lives of Native Americans.

• Influenced by academic anthropologists, who celebrated the unique character of native cultures, government officials no longer attempted to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream society. Instead, they embraced a policy of cultural pluralism and pledged to preserve Indian languages, arts, and traditions.

Migrants and Minorities in the West

• During the 1920s and 1930s, agriculture in California became a big business-large scale, intensive, and diversified. Corporateowned farms produced specialty cropslettuce, tomatoes, peaches, grapes, and cotton-whose staggered harvests required a lot of transient labor during picking seasons.

• Thousands of workers, initially migrants from Mexico and Asia and later from the Midwestern states, trooped from farm to farm, harvesting crops. Some of these migrants also settled in the rapidly growing cities along the West Coast, especially the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles.

• The economic downturn brought dramatic changes to the lives of thousands of Mexican Americans. A formal deportation policy for illegal immigrants instituted by the Hoover administration was partly responsible for the decline in numbers, but even more Mexicans left voluntarily in the first years of the depression. Working as migrant laborers, they knew that local officials would not provide them with relief assistance.

• Under the New Deal, the situation of Mexican Americans improved. New Deal initiatives supporting labor unions indirectly encouraged the acculturation of Mexican immigrants; joining the CIO was an important stage in becoming an American for many Mexicans

• Other immigrants heeded the call of the Democratic Party to join the New Deal coalition. Los Angeles activist Beatrice Griffith noted, "Franklin D. Roosevelt's name was the spark that started thousands of Spanish-speaking persons to the polls." • The farm union organizer Cesar Chavez grew up in such a family. In 1934, when Chavez was ten, his father lost his farm near Yuma, Arizona, and the family became part of the migrant workforce in California. They experienced continual discrimination, even in restaurants, where signs proclaimed "White Trade Only."

• Chavez's father joined several bitter strikes in the Imperial Valley, all of which failed, including one in the San Joaquin Valley that mobilized 18,000 cotton pickers. But they set the course for the young Chavez, who founded the United Farm Workers. a successful union of Mexican American workers, in 1962.

• Men and women of Asian descent-mostly from China, Japan, and the Philippinesformed a tiny minority of the American population but were a significant presence in some western cities and towns.

• Migrants from Japan and China had long faced discrimination. As farm prices declined during the depression and racial discrimination undermined the prospects for non farm jobs, about 20 percent of the immigrants returned to Japan.

• Chinese Americans were even less prosperous than their Japanese counterparts. In the hard times of the depression. they turned for assistance both to traditional Chinese social organizations such as

huiguan

(district associations) and to local authorities. Few benefited from the New Deal.

• Until the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943, Chinese immigrants were classified as "aliens ineligible for citizenship" and therefore excluded from most federal programs.

• Because Filipino immigrants came from a U.S. territory, they were not affected by the ban on Asian immigration passed in 1924.

• As the depression cut wages, Filipino immigration slowed to a trickle and was virtually cut off by the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934. The act granted independence to the Philippines (which since 1898 had been an American dependency), classified all Filipinos in the United States as aliens, and restricted immigration to fifty persons per year.

• Even as California lost its dazzle for Mexicans and Asians, it became the destination of tens of thousands of displaced farmers from the "dust bowl" of the Great Plains

Dust Bowl Migrations

• The years 1930 to 1941 witnessed the worst drought in America’s history, but low rainfall alone did not cause the dust bowl.

What were the stages of the 1930s dust bowl disaster?

• A severe drought on the Great Plains, after years of ill advised farming techniques, - To maximize profit, farmers stripped the land of its natural vegetation, destroying the ecological balance of the plains; when the rains dried up, there was nothing to hold the soil. This created severe wind erosion and ultimately a series of dust storms. In May 1934 the storms reached the Upper Midwest and even the East, where they blackened the skies

• The dust bowl was one of the reasons for the great migration of “Okies” from the region. (The other was the eviction of farm workers from the land due to the growth of large-scale agriculture.) • “Okie” descendants came to make up a large proportion of California’s population, especially in the San Joaquin Valley.

• John Steinbeck’s

Grapes of Wrath

immortalized the Okies, ruined by the ecological disaster and unable to compete with large-scale corporate farms, who headed west in response to promises of good jobs in California.

• A few Okies were professionals, business proprietors, or white-collar workers, and the drive west was fairly easy along Route 66.

• California agriculture was large-scale, intensive, and diversified, and its massive irrigation system laid the groundwork for serious future environmental problems.

• Key California crops had staggered harvest times and required a great deal of transient labor; a steady supply of cheap migrant labor made this type of farming feasible.

• At first, migrants met hostility from old time Californians, but they stayed and filled important roles in California’s expanding economy.

A New Deal for the Environment

• The expansion of federal responsibilities in the 1930s created a climate conducive to conservation efforts, as did public concern heightened by the devastation in the dust bowl.

• Although the long-term success of New Deal resources policy was mixed, it innovatively stressed scientific management of the land, conservation instead of commercial development, and the aggressive use of public authority to care for the natural environment

.

• The most extensive New Deal environmental undertaking was the Tennessee Valley Authority. It integrated flood control, reforestation, and agricultural and industrial development, and a hydroelectric grid provided cheap power for the valley's residents.

• The dust bowl helped to focus attention on land management and ecological balance. Agents from the Soil Conservation Service taught farmers the proper technique for tilling hillsides.

• Government agronomists tried to prevent soil erosion through better agricultural practices and windbreaks like the Shelterbelts.

• New Deal projects affecting the environment can be seen throughout the countryCCC and WP A workers built the Blue Ridge Parkway; government workers built the San Francisco Zoo, Berkeley's Tilden Park, and the canals of San Antonio; the CCC helped to complete the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail through the Sierra Nevada.

• Cabins, shelters, picnic areas, and lodges in American state parks are witness to the New Deal ethos of recreation coexisting with conservation.

The New Deal and the Arts

• A WP A project known as "Federal One" put unemployed artists, actors, and writers to work; "art for the millions" became a popular New Deal slogan.

• The Federal Art Project commissioned murals for public buildings and post offices across the country.

• Under the Federal Music Project, government-sponsored orchestras toured the country and presented free concerts that emphasized American themes and employed musicologist Charles Seeger and his wife, Ruth Crawford Seeger, to catalog hundreds of American folk songs.

• The Federal Writers' Project, at its height, employed about 5,000 writers, some of whom later achieved great fame.

• The Federal Theatre Project was an ambitious program that reached 25-30 million people during its four years. Its tendency to take a hard and critical look at social problems made the program vulnerable to red-baiting, and Congress terminated it in 1939 after allegations of Communist influence.

• The documentary, probably the decade's most distinctive genre, influenced practically every aspect of American culture: literature, photography, art, music, film, dance, theater, and radio.

• The March of Time newsreels, which were shown to audiences before feature films, presented the news of the world for the pre-television age.

• The Farm Security Administration subsidized the documenting and photographing of American life for the government; these photos depicted life in the United States during the depression years.

One of the more innovative New Deal programs was the Federal Theatre Project. Its director, Hallie Flanagan, envisioned a nationwide network of community theaters that would produce plays of social relevance. "Living Newspaper" productions, such as the one advertised in this 1938 poster for a performance in Oregon, were documentary plays designed to expose Americans to contemporary social problems. One Third of a Nation by Arthur Arent tackled the history of New York City's housing problems, while at the same time it promoted New Deal Housing legislation.

• The Great Depression saw a flowering of American culture. The WPA employed many writers and artists to produce works that celebrated the lives of ordinary people throughout the nation. • A hallmark of the era was the "documentary impulse," a presentation in photography, graphic arts, music, and film of a social reality designed to elicit public empathy. As Europe moved toward war and Japan expanded its incursions in the Far East, Roosevelt focused less on domestic reform and more on international relations

The Legacies of the New Deal

• New Deal programs were marred by grave flaws; some NRA codes set a lower minimum wage for women than men, and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) did not hire women at all. When they did hire women, New Deal programs tended to reinforce the broader society's gender and racial attitudes.

• New Deal programs were marred by grave flaws; some NRA codes set a lower minimum wage for women than men, and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) did not hire women at all. When they did hire women, New Deal programs tended to reinforce the broader society's gender and racial attitudes.

• Although some New Deal programs reflected prevailing racist attitudes, blacks received significant benefits from programs that were for the poor, regardless of race. Yet no significant civil rights legislation was passed during the decade.

• For the first time, organized labor had federal support, and prominent blacks and women were brought into government service. • Also the New Deal did much more than simply reinforce and extend the "regulatory" liberalism of the Progressive Era. By creating a powerful national bureaucracy and laying the foundation of a social welfare state, it redefined the meaning of American liberalism.

• The New Deal created a political coalition that would dominate national politics for most of the next three decades.

• For the first time, Americans experienced the federal government as a part of their everyday lives through Social Security payments, farm loans, relief work, and mortgage guarantees.

• The government made a commitment to intervene when the private sector could not guarantee economic stability, and federal regulation brought order and regularity to economic life.

• Defects of the emerging welfare system were that it did not include national health care and failed to reach a significant minority of American workers, including domestics and farm workers.

• The New Deal completed the transformation of the Democratic Party that had begun in the 1920s toward a coalition of ethnic groups, city dwellers, organized labor, blacks, and a broad cross section of the middle class that would form the backbone of the Democratic coalition for decades to come.

• The New Deal Democratic coalition contained potentially fatal contradictions mainly involving the issue of race, and the resulting fissures would eventually weaken the coalition.

• As Europe moved toward war and Japan seized more territory in the Far East, Roosevelt put domestic reform on the back burner and focused on international relations.

Good night