The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC):
The CCC was part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New
Deal, and was designed to provide jobs for thousands of
unemployed young men to work towards conservation on a
national scale. When President Roosevelt took office in
1933 he faced a nation that was bankrupt in money and
spirit. One of his first acts was to ask Congress for a large
appropriation for emergency conservation work. This
resulted in the passage, in March 1933, of the Emergency
Work Act, or as it came to be called the "Civilian
Conservation Corps." It was a program to recruit thousands
of young men to work in forests, parks, lands and water in
the preservation and use of basic natural resources.
Men between the ages of 17 and 25 who were unmarried,
out of school and unemployed were eligible for enrollment.
They were paid $30.00 a month, $25 of which was sent
home to their families or if they had no family, it was held in
an account for the enrollee until they were discharged from
the camp. The boost to the economy brought by these
checks was felt throughout the country. There was a social
impact. These young men were taken off the streets. They
traveled far from home and performed useful work in a
healthy environment. Over 110,000 illiterates learned to
read and write. The men worked 40-hour, six-day weeks, in
crews of 48. Each crew had a leader and assistant leader
who were in charge in the barracks and on the job.
“Bank Holiday”
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933,
one in four Americans was out of work nationally, but in
some cities and some industries unemployment was well
over 50 percent. Equally troubling were the bank panics.
Between 1929 and 1931, 4,000 banks closed for good; by
1933 the number rose to more than 9,000, with $2.5
billion in lost deposits. Banks never have as much in their
vaults as people have deposited, and if all depositors claim
their money at once, the bank is ruined. Millions of
Americans lost their money because they arrived at the
bank too late to withdraw their savings. The panics raised
troubling questions about credit, value, and the nature of
capitalism itself. And they made clear the unpredictable
relationship between public perception and general
financial health—the extent to which the economy seemed
to work as long as everyone believed that it would. To
stop the run on banks, many states simply closed their
banks the day before Roosevelt’s inauguration. Roosevelt
himself declared a four-day “bank holiday” almost
immediately upon taking office and made a national radio
address on Sunday, March 12, 1933, to explain the
banking problem. This excerpt from Roosevelt’s first
“fireside chat” demonstrated the new president’s
remarkable capacity to project his personal warmth and
charm into the nation’s living rooms.
Just days after taking office, FDR declared a national
“banking holiday”. Only banks that were declared solvent
by the government were allowed to reopen.
The bank holiday aimed to restore faith in the nation’s
banking industry.
President Roosevelt’s First Fireside Chat (March 12, 1933)
…First of all, let me state the simple fact that when you
deposit money in a bank, the bank does not put the money
into a safe deposit vault. It invests your money in many
different forms of credit -- in bonds, in commercial paper,
in mortgages and in many other kinds of loans. In other
words, the bank puts your money to work to keep the
wheels of industry and of agriculture turning around. A
comparatively small part of the money that you put into
the bank is kept in currency -- an amount which in normal
times is wholly sufficient to cover the cash needs of the
average citizen. In other words, the total amount of all the
currency in the country is only a comparatively small
proportion of the total deposits in all the banks of the
country…
Glass-Steagall Act:
In June of 1933, The Banking Act brought significant reform
to banking:
 it separated commercial from investment banking
 it increased the authority of the Federal Reserve to
prevent member banks from engaging in excessive
speculation
 it created the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation (FDIC) to federally guarantee deposits
up to $2,500
Federal Emergency Relief Association (FERA) 1933:
The economic collapse of 1929 known as the Great Depression caused widespread hardship throughout the United States. When
President Franklin Roosevelt took office in January 1933, 15 million Americans were unemployed. Many had lost not only their
jobs, but their also their savings and homes and were dependent on relief money from the government to survive. Businesses
and banks had closed, production and sales of goods and services had been severely reduced. Most federal relief efforts had
been mired for some time in a quagmire of political and legislative wrangling. Little aid or direction had actually reached the
state level.
"When Roosevelt appointed Hopkins as director of FERA, he called him to his office for a five-minute talk. The president told the
Washington newcomer two things: give immediate and adequate relief to the unemployed, and pay no attention to politics or
politicians. Hopkins did just that. Thirty minutes later, seated at a makeshift desk in a hallway . he began a program committed
to action rather than debate, a program that would eventually put 15 million people to work. Even more important, FERA
established the doctrine that adequate public relief was a right that citizens in need could expect to received from their
government." (J. Hopkins p. 309)
FERA had three primary objectives: 1) Adequacy of relief measures; 2) providing work for employable people on the relief rolls;
and 3) diversification of relief programs.
FERA accepted as elementary that all needy persons and their dependents should receive sufficient relief to prevent physical
suffering and to maintain a minimum standard of living." (Williams p. 96) In a report to Congress in 1936, FERA indicated that
while actual physical suffering was prevented, it was never fully possible to achieve living standards of minimum decency for the
entire population in need of relief.
Public Works Administration (PWA):
Created by the National Industrial Recovery Act on June 16,
1933, the Public Works Administration (PWA) budgeted
several billion dollars to be spent on the construction of
public works as a means of providing employment,
stabilizing purchasing power, improving public welfare, and
contributing to a revival of American industry. Simply put,
it was designed to spend "big bucks on big projects."
More than any other New Deal program, the PWA
epitomized the Rooseveltian notion of "priming the pump"
to encourage economic growth. Between July 1933 and
March 1939, the PWA funded the construction of more than
34,000 projects, including airports, electricity-generating
dams, and aircraft carriers; and seventy percent of the new
schools and one third of the hospitals built during that time
The PWA spent over $6 billion, but did not succeed in
returning the level of industrial activity to predepression levels. Nor did it significantly reduce the
unemployment level or help jump-start a widespread
creation of small businesses. FDR, personally opposed to
deficit spending, refused to spend the sums necessary to
accomplish these goals. Nonetheless, the historical legacy of
the PWA is perhaps as important as its practical
accomplishments at the time. It provided the federal
government with its first systematic network for the
distribution of funds to localities, ensured that conservation
would remain an element in the national discussion, and
provided federal administrators with a broad amount of
badly needed experience in public policy planning.
When FDR moved industry toward war production and
abandoned his opposition to deficit spending, the PWA
became irrelevant and was abolished in June 1941.
Farm Credit Association (FCA):
Homeowner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC):
The Farm Credit Act of 1933 provides for
organizations within the Farm Credit
Administration. The Farm Credit Act of 1933 was
part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal,
to help farmers refinance mortgages over a longer
time at below-market interest rates at regional and
national banks. This helped farmers recover from
the Dustbowl. The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act
loaned funds to farmers in danger of losing their
properties. The campaign refinanced 20% of
farmer's mortgages.
Continued high unemployment is unfortunately not the only bad piece of
economic news that the nation has had to face this summer. It now
appears as if the level of home foreclosures will continue at an alarming
pace, with many economists now predicting that the number of Americans
likely to lose their homes in 2010 will exceed one million — a figure that
would surpass the more than 900,000 homes lost to foreclosure in 2009.
With so many homes at risk, the current housing crisis certainly rivals that
which struck the nation in the wake of the 1929 crash, when the housing
industry all but collapsed. Indeed by the end of 1933, housing starts had
fallen to one tenth of pre-1929 levels, and the number of urban homes
that were either in delinquency or in foreclosure was running at a
staggering fifty per cent.
The New Deal response to this crisis was immediate and effective. In
June of 1933, FDR signed the Homeowners Refinancing Act, which
established the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), a new federal
agency whose chief purpose was to refinance existing home mortgages
that were in default and at risk of foreclosure. The HOLC also assisted
mortgage lenders by providing them with additional capital and by
refinancing problematic loans. By the close of 1935, when the program
had come to an end, the HOLC had refinanced approximately twenty per
cent of all the urban mortgages in the United States — over one million
homes — and had lent out roughly $3.5 billon (an estimated $750 billion
in today’s dolla
rs).
Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) 1933:
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal
law of the New Deal era which reduced agricultural production by
paying farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land and to kill off
excess livestock. Its purpose was to reduce crop surplus and therefore
effectively raise the value of crops. The money for these subsidies was
generated through an exclusive tax on companies which processed
farm products. The Act created a new agency, the Agricultural
Adjustment Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, to oversee the distribution of the subsidies.
"The goal of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, restoring farm purchasing
power of agricultural commodities or the fair exchange value of a
commodity based upon price relative to the prewar 1909-14 level, was
to be accomplished through a number of methods. These included the
authorization by by the Secretary of Agriculture to secure voluntary
reduction of the acreage in basic crops through agreements with
producers and use of direct payments for participation in acreage
control programs; to regulate marketing through voluntary agreements
with processors, associations or producers, and other handlers of
agricultural commodities or products; to license processors,
association, and others handling agricultural commodities to eliminate
unfair practices or charges; to determine the necessity for and the rate
or processing taxes; and to use the proceeds of taxes and appropriate
funds for the cost of adjustment operations, for the expansion of
markets, and for the removal or agricultural surpluses."
On January 6, 1936, the Supreme Court decided in United States v.
Butler that the act was unconstitutional for levying this tax on the
processors only to have it paid back to the farmers. Regulation of
agriculture was deemed a state power. As such, the federal
government could not force states to adopt the Agricultural Adjustment
Act due to lack of jurisdiction. However, the Agricultural Adjustment Act
of 1938 remedied these technical issues and the farm program
continued.
National Youth Administration (NYA):
The National Youth Administration (NYA) was launched by executive order in June
of 1935. Its goals were two-fold. The first was to prevent young people already
enrolled in high school and college from dropping out due to financial hardship. This
was accomplished by providing the students with grants in return for part-time work
in libraries, cafeterias, as janitors, etc., with the twin objectives of developing the
talents of young people while at same time keeping them out of the struggling labor
market. The second goal was to provide training and/or employment of long-term
value. By 1937, more than 400,000 youth were either employed or in job training
programs under the auspices of local NYA offices. With the outbreak of the war in
Europe in 1939 these figures increased significantly, with the vast majority of those
in the program getting training as skilled machinists to work in the nation’s
burgeoning defense industries. The productive labor of these NYA-trained workers
helped turn the United States into the great “Arsenal of Democracy” that made it
possible for us to win the war against fascism.
Moreover, under the leadership of such enlightened figures as Aubrey Williams, the
NYA also worked to specially address the problems of unemployment and access to
education among African Americans. Williams created an Office of Minority Affairs
headed by Mary McLeod Bethune, who would soon become one of the most
effective and outspoken advocates for the employment and educational rights of
blacks in the country.
Overall, the NYA helped over 4.5 million young people find work, get vocational
training, or afford a better education before the office was closed down in 1943.
Equally important, it helped a struggling generation not only to maintain its dignity,
but also to contribute to the growth and productivity of the American economy at a
desperate time in our history. Indeed, even though the NYA was a federal program,
it became enormously popular among the business community and offers us a fine
example of what enlightened leadership can do in a moment of great crisis. Surely
providing jobs and making education and vocational training more affordable for
young people is an investment in our future that this generation of Americans — and
all generations — deserve. With youth unemployment approaching 25 percent, and
with the cost of higher education skyrocketing, perhaps it is time to offer this
generation the hope and promise of another NYA.
Security and Exchange Commission (SEC):
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is a federal agency that
provides protection for investors and regulates the bulk of the securities industry - including U.S. stock exchanges, options markets, and other electronic exchanges
and securities markets.
It was created by The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 -- a law governing the
secondary trading of securities in the U.S. The commission's division of
enforcement investigates possible violations of federal securities-related laws and
can take civil action with other law enforcement agencies when it comes to
criminal cases.
The stock market crash of 1929
The market crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression took a toll on the
public's trust in capital markets. Investors looking to go from rags to riches turned
to the stock market during the roaring 20s. According to the SEC
, an estimated
$50 billion in new securities were offered, and half became worthless.
The Securities Exchange Act of 1934
Thus, Congress passed The Securities Act of 1933 and The Securities Exchange
Act of 1934 (which created the SEC) in an effort to restore confidence in the
markets. Publicly-traded companies were now obligated to disclose investment
risks and provide full information about the state of their business.
Brokers, dealers and exchanges were now legally required to put the interests of
the investors first and treat them in a fair and honest manner. Congress
established the SEC to enforce these laws for the sake of the investors and the
future of market stability.
Wagner Act:
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB):
The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), also known
as the Wagner Act, passed through Congress in the
summer of 1935 and became one of the most important
legacies of the New Deal. Reversing years of federal
opposition to organized labor, the statute guaranteed the
right of employees to organize, form unions, and bargain
collectively with their employers. It assured that workers
would have a choice on whether to belong to a union or
not, and promoted collective bargaining as the major
way to insure peaceful industry-labor relations. The act
also created a new National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) to arbitrate deadlocked labor-management
disputes, guarantee democratic union elections, and
penalize unfair labor practices by employers. The law
applied to all employers involved in interstate commerce
other than airlines, railroads, agriculture, and
government.
The act contributed to a dramatic surge in union
membership and made labor a force to be reckoned with
both politically and economically. Women benefitted
from this shift as well, and, by the end of the 1930s,
800,000 women belonged to unions, a threefold increase
over 1929.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA):
President Franklin Roosevelt needed innovative solutions if the New Deal was to lift the nation out of
the depths of the Great Depression, and TVA was one of his most innovative ideas. Roosevelt
envisioned TVA as a totally different kind of agency. He asked Congress to create “a corporation
clothed with the power of government but possessed of the flexibility and initiative of a private
enterprise.” On May 18, 1933, Congress passed the TVA Act.
From the start, TVA established a unique problem-solving approach to fulfilling its mission:
integrated resource management. Each issue TVA faced — whether it was power production,
navigation, flood control, malaria prevention, reforestation, or erosion control — was studied in its
broadest context. TVA weighed each issue in relation to the whole picture.
From this beginning, TVA has held fast to its strategy of integrated solutions, even as the issues
changed over the years.
Even by Depression standards, the Tennessee Valley was in sad shape in 1933. Much of the land had
been farmed too hard for too long, eroding and depleting the soil. Crop yields had fallen along with
farm incomes. The best timber had been cut. TVA built dams to harness the region’s rivers. The
dams controlled floods, improved navigation and generated electricity. TVA developed fertilizers,
taught farmers how to improve crop yields and helped replant forests, control forest fires, and
improve habitat for wildlife and fish. The most dramatic change in Valley life came from the
electricity generated by TVA dams. Electric lights and modern appliances made life easier and farms
more productive. Electricity also drew industries into the region, providing desperately needed jobs.
The Social Security Act (1935):
On August 14, 1935, Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act.
During the Great Depression many older people were unemployed.
Americans were living longer but retiring earlier; age discrimination
made it difficult for elderly Americans to find employment. People who
had worked hard all their life to support their families were living in
poverty. Americans all over the country argued that they deserved
compensation. Dr. Francis E. Townsend advocated that all Americans
over the age of 60 should stop working and receive $200 per month from
the federal government, and he gathered over 5 million supporters. As
"Townsend Clubs" sprang up across the country, Franklin Roosevelt
knew he had to do something to address the plight of unemployed, older
Americans.
As Governor of New York State FDR enacted a law to provide old-age
pensions and was ready to extend it nationally. By Executive Order,
Roosevelt created the Committee on Economic Security and their
recommendations provided the basis for Congress' 1935 Social Security
Act. Under the Act, Congress appropriated some funds for the program,
but the rest of the money came from a payroll tax. Money was taken out
of an employee's paycheck to help pay for Social Security, which in
1937 was about 2% of each paycheck. Older Americans, and later
dependents and the disabled were given the money. Initially 60% of the
workforce was covered by Social Security (by 1995, 95% of the
workforce was covered). Ernest Ackerman was the first person to
receive Social Security; he retired one day after the program began. For
that one day the government withheld $.05 of his paycheck but later he
got back a lump-sum payment of $.17. During the first few years of
Social Security, eligible Americans received, on average, $58.06.
Before Franklin Roosevelt's administration, it was unusual for the
government to give people money, and some Americans were against
Social Security. In two cases, the Supreme Court ruled on the
Constitutionality of the Social Security Act, but ruled in both instances
that Congress could legislate on this national issue. Social Security is
one of the many things still in place today because of Franklin
Roosevelt. Americans still pay into Social Security while they work so
that they will receive money when they stop working.
The National Labor Relations Act (1935): THE WAGNER ACT
At the beginning of the New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Labor Secretary, Frances Perkins, steered a progressive middle course in
labor relations. They and many of their advisers believed that if laws and regulations could be put in place that improved workplace conditions and
increased wages, then workers would not need unions. This idea was a guiding principle in the National Industrial Recovery Act that sought to bring
management, labor, and consumers together to create industrial codes that produced goods at a fair price, under fair working conditions, and resulted
in a fair profit.
But although the NIRA included a provision known as Section 7a that guaranteed workers the right of collective bargaining, factory owners regularly
broke strikes or set up alternate “company unions” that they asserted satisfied the requirements of Section 7a. In an effort to resolve the growing labor
crisis, a National Labor Relations Board was established in 1934, but it was administratively weak and had little enforcement power. When the NIRA
was finally struck down by the Supreme Court in May 1935 based on the unconstitutionality of the industrial codes, only the weak Section 7a
remained.
Enter United States Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York. Wagner was a German immigrant who had come to the United States at the age of nine,
he attended the New York City public schools, worked his way through college and law school, and became active in local Democratic politics.
Wagner deeply believed in the New Deal’s goal to provide economic security to lower-income groups. He was an early supporter of public housing,
public works programs, unemployment insurance, and the Social Security Act. As historian Anthony Badger has noted, “running through all Wagner’s
thinking was not just concern for social justice but also a conviction that the American economy could not operate at its fullest capacity unless mass
purchasing power was guaranteed by government spending, welfare benefits, and the protection of workers’ rights.” And so Wagner took up the cause
to improve upon the foundation laid by Section 7a of the NIRA.
The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 is the product of his efforts, and as a result, it is the law most closely associated with his name. The Wagner
Act not only restated the Section 7a right of workers to collective bargaining, it established a new independent National Labor Relations Board with
real enforcement powers to protect this right. Under the new law, employee union elections were certified by the NLRB and were based on majority
rule and exclusive representation. The so-called “company unions” previously used by management to flout collective bargaining rights were
outlawed, as were other unfair labor practice such as blacklisting, strike-breaking, and discriminatory firings. The NLR B was empowered to hold
hearings and compel compliance by management.
Because of the Wagner Act, union membership increased dramatically throughout the 1930s, and by 1940 there were nearly 9 million union members
in the United States. The system of orderly industrial relations that the Wagner Act helped to create led to an era of unprecedented productivity,
improved working conditions, and increased wages and benefits. Today, the Wagner Act stands as a testament to the reform efforts of the New Deal
and to the tenacity of Senator Robert Wagner in guiding the bill through Congress so that it could be signed into law by President Roosevelt.
Works Progress Administration (WPA):
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was a relief measure
established in 1935 by executive order as the Works Progress
Administration, and was redesigned in 1939 when it was transferred
to the Federal Works Agency. Headed by Harry L. Hopkins and
supplied with an initial congressional appropriation of
$4,880,000,000, it offered work to the unemployed on an
unprecedented scale by spending money on a wide variety of
programs, including highways and building construction, slum
clearance, reforestation, and rural rehabilitation. So gigantic an
undertaking was inevitably attended by confusion, waste, and
political favoritism, yet the 'pump-priming' effect stimulated private
business during the depression years and inaugurated reforms that
states had been unable to subsidize.
Particularly novel were the special programs. The Federal Writers'
Project prepared state and regional guide books, organized archives,
indexed newspapers, and conducted useful sociological and historical
investigations. The Federal Arts Project gave unemployed artists the
opportunity to decorate hundreds of post offices, schools, and other
public buildings with murals, canvases, and sculptures; musicians
organized symphony orchestras and community singing. The Federal
Theatre Project experimented with untried modes, and scores of stock
companies toured the country with repertories of old and new plays,
thus bringing drama to communities where it had been known only
through the radio.
By March, 1936, the WPA rolls had reached a total of more than
3,400,000 persons; after initial cuts in June 1939, it averaged
2,300,000 monthly; and by June 30, 1943, when it was officially
terminated, the WPA had employed more than 8,500,000 different
persons on 1,410,000 individual projects, and had spent about $11
billion. During its 8-year history, the WPA built 651,087 miles of
highways, roads, and streets; and constructed, repaired, or improved
124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, 8,192 parks, and 853
airport landing fields.
WPA Posters & Art:
National Industrial Recovery Act, U.S. labor legislation (1933) that was one of
several measures passed by Congress and supported by Pres. Franklin D.
Roosevelt in an effort to help the nation recover from the Great Depression. The
National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) was an unusual experiment in U.S. history,
as it suspended antitrust laws and supported an alliance of industries.
Under the NIRA, companies were required to write industrywide codes of fair
competition that effectively fixed wages and prices, established production quotas,
and placed restrictions on the entry of other companies into the alliances. These
codes were a form of industry self-regulation and represented an attempt to regulate
and plan the entire economy to promote stable growth and prevent
another depression.
Employees were given the right to organize unions and could not be required, as a
condition of employment, to join or to refrain from joining a labour organization. Prior
to this act, the courts had upheld the right of employers to go to great lengths to
prevent the formation of unions. Companies could fire workers for joining unions,
force them to sign a pledge not to join a union as a condition of employment, require
them to belong to company unions, and spy on them to stop unionism before it got
started.
The law created the National Recovery Administration (NRA) to promote compliance.
The NRA was chiefly engaged in drawing up industrial codes for companies to adopt
and was empowered to make voluntary agreements with companies regarding hours
of work, rates of pay, and prices to charge for their products. More than 500 such
codes were adopted by various industries, and companies that voluntarily complied
could display a Blue Eagle emblem in their facilities, signifying NRA participation.
The NIRA was declared unconstitutional in May 1935 when the Supreme Courtissued
its unanimous decision in the case Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States. The
court ruled that the NIRA assigned lawmaking powers to the NRA in violation of
the Constitution’s allocation of such powers to Congress. Many of the labor provisions
in the NIRA, however, were reenacted in later legislation.