Essay- (2.5 Pages)
The New Deal, 1932-1940
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First New Deal (the “Hundred Days”)
Changes in American Life and Thought
Democratic Party
Liberalism
Public Works
Freedom
Economic Security
Initial approach to economic crisis
New Deal as alternative to socialist, Nazi, and Laissez-faire solutions
Circle of advisors
Leading figures: Francis Perkins, Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes
Louis Brandeis
“Brains trust”
First New Deal (the “Hundred Days”)
FDR inaugural: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Financial program
Initiatives
“Bank holiday”
FDIC
Removal of United States from gold standard
National Recovery Administration (NRA)
Industry codes for output, prices, working conditions
Recognition of labor’s right to organize
Restoration of economic vitality, stability
Ebbing of public enthusiasm; growth of controversy
Corporate domination
I am certain that 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 impel. 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…Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
FDR’s First Inaugural Address
True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish…Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources…If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline…I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption. But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.
First New Deal (the “Hundred Days”)
Relief and jobs programs
Initiatives
Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA)
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
Public Works Administration (PWA) > Harold Ickes
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)
Elements
Production quotas
Subsidies for removal of land from cultivation
Destruction of crops, livestock
Uneven impact on farmers
Gains for landowning farmers
Exclusion and displacement of tenants, sharecroppers
A sharecropper’s family affected by the Oklahoma dust bowl.
Dust storm approaching, 1930s.
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Library of Congress
First New Deal (the “Hundred Days”)
Further initiatives
Repeal of Prohibition
Federal Communications Commission
Securities and Exchange Commission
Overall impact
Transformation of role of federal government
Scale of relief, public projects
Failure to end Depression
Gathering Supreme Court assault
Invalidation of NRA
Invalidation of AAA
Crusaders for economic justice
Huey Long; Share-Our-Wealth movement
Dr. Francis Townsend; Townsend Clubs
Huey Long
Second New Deal
Underlying aims
Economic security
Redistribution of income-broadening of purchasing power
Central initiatives
Tax on wealth, corporate profits
Rural Electrification Agency
Works Projects Administration (WPA)
Directed by Harry Hopkins
Mass participation
Impact on national life
Infrastructure
The arts
This mural, painted by WPA artist Victor Arnautoff, depicts a bustling New Deal-era street scene.
Second New Deal
Central initiatives
Social Security Act
Provisions
Unemployment insurance
Old-age pension
Aid to disabled, elderly poor, and families with dependent children
Key features
System of taxes on employees and workers
Mix of national and local funding, control, and eligibility standards
Significance: launching of American welfare system
Changing ideas of government: from should government intervene to how
Reckoning with liberty
Contested meanings of freedom
New Deal version: often promoted in FDR’s “fireside chats”
Expanded power of national state
Social and industrial freedom
Economic security of liberty of contract
Anti-New Deal version
Freedom from government regulation, fiscal responsibility
Individual freedom
American Liberty League
Election of 1936: FDR vs. Republican Alf Landon
Sharp divisions between classes, conceptions of freedom
FDR’s court-packing plan
Ultimate success
New receptiveness of Supreme Court to New Deal regulation
Winding down of Second New Deal
Shift in New Deal approach to economic crisis
Adoption of Keynesian, public spending tool
Limits of Change
New Deal and American women
Expanded presence of women in federal government
Political decline in feminism
Depression-era resistance to women’s employment
Exclusion of blacks from key entitlements of welfare status
Reflection of southern Democrats’ power
Hardships for African-Americans
“Last hired and first fired”
Disproportionate rates of unemployment
Growing black focus on economic survival
“Black Cabinet”
Native American Indians
John Collier
Indian Reorganization Act (1934)
Eleanor Roosevelt
New conception of America
End of New Deal
Mounting opposition of southern Democrats
Consolidation of southern Democrat-northern Republican coalition
Exhaustion of New Deal momentum
Shifting focus from domestic to foreign affairs
Historical significance of New Deal
There’s No Depression in Love
We’re in the Money
We're in the money, we're in the money; We've got a lot of what it takes to get along! We're in the money, that sky is sunny, Old Man Depression you are through, you done us wrong. We never see a headline about breadlines today. And when we see the landlord we can look that guy right in the eyeWe're in the money, come on, my honey, Let's lend it, spend it, send it rolling along!
Oh, yes we're in the money, you bet we're in the money, We've got a lot of what it takes to get along! Let's go we're in the money, Look up the skies are sunny, Old Man Depression you are through, you done us wrong. We never see a headline about breadlines today. And when we see the landlord we can look that guy right in the eyeWe're in the money, come on, my honey, Let's lend it, spend it, send it rolling along!
My Oklahoma Home
When they opened up the strip I was young and full of zip I wanted some place to call my home And so I made the race and I staked me out a place And settled down along the Cimarron It blowed away (blown away), it blowed away (blown away) My Oklahoma home, it blown away Well it looked so green and fair when I built my shanty there My Oklahoma home, it blown away Well I planted wheats and oats, got some chickens and some shoats Aimed to have some ham and eggs to feed my face Got a mule to pull the plow, I got an old red muley cow And I also got a fancy mortgage on this place Well it blowed away (blown away), it blowed away (blown away) All the crops that I've planted blown away Well you can't grow any grain if you ain't got any rain Everything except my mortgage blown away Well it looked so green and fair when I built my shanty there I figured I was all set for life I put on my Sunday best with my fancy scalloped vest Then I went to town to pick me out a wife She blowed away (blown away), she blowed away (blown away) My Oklahoma woman blown away Mr as I bent to kiss her, she was picked up by a twister My Oklahoma woman blown away Well then I was left alone just listening to the moan Of the wind around the corners of my shack So I took off down the road, yeah, when the south wind blowed I traveled with the wind upon my back
I blowed away (blown away), I blowed away (blown away) Chasin' that dust cloud up ahead Well once it looked so green and fair and now it's up in the air My Oklahoma farm is over head And now I'm always close to home, it don't matter where I roam For Oklahoma dust is everywhere Makes no difference where I'm walkin', I can hear my chickens squawkin' I can hear my wife a-talking in the air
It blowed away (blown away), it blowed away (blown away) Yeah my Oklahoma home is blown away But my home Sir, is always near, it's up here in the atmosphere My Oklahoma home is blown away Well I'm a roam'n Oklahoman but I'm always close to home And I'll never get homesick until I die 'Cause no matter where I'm found, my home's all around My Oklahoma home is in the sky It blowed away (blown away), it blowed away (blownd away) And my farm down on Cimarron But now all around the world wherever the dust is swirled There is some from my Oklahoma home It blowed away (blown away), it blowed away (blown away) Yeah my Oklahoma home is blown away Yeah it's up there in the sky in that dust cloud over n' by My Oklahoma home is blown away Well it's blown away (blown away), blown away (blown away) Oh my Oklahoma home is blown away Yeah it's up there in the sky in that dust cloud over n' by My Oklahoma home is the sky