The New Deal, 1933–1939
• 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 selfregulating 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
• Saving the banks
– Bank holiday and Emergency Banking Act
• permitted banks to reopen but only if a
Treasury Department inspection showed they
had sufficient cash reserves.
– Glass-Steagall Act (1933)
• Created Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
– insured deposits up to $2,500 Securities Act (1933)
and Exchange Act (1934)
– Homeowners’ Loan Corporation (HLC)
• to refinance home mortgages
• Saving the people
–
–
–
–
–
–
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
Agriculture Adjustment Act
National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA)
Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA)
Public Works Administration
Civil Works Administration (CWA)
• The Civilian Conservation Corps was created,
which sent 250,000 young men to do reforestation
and conservation work.
• 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 governmentsponsored 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
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• 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.
• Repairing the Economy: Agriculture
– Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)
• Goal was curtailing farm production by paying
farmers not to produce
• Tenant Farmers and sharecroppers left out
– Soil Conservation Service (SCS)
• 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.
• AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act)
– Supreme Court declared AAA unconstitutional
in 1935; an unnecessary invasion of private
property rights.
Administration replied with Soil Conservation
and Domestic Allotment Act
– 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 unAmerican, 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 selfgovernment 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.
• Public Works Administration (PWA)
– Built bridges, roads, dams, hospitals,
schools, airports
– 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 longcontemplated 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.
• FDR’s Advisors
– Idealistic, dedicated, confident
– Not all were men of wealth and privilege
– Important women in administration worked
mostly behind the scenes
• Frances Perkins
– Little commitment in administration for
women’s equality
• Focused instead on protective
legislation
The Second New Deal, 1935–1938
• Legislative Accomplishments
• Stalemate
• Major measures of the Second New Deal
–
–
–
–
–
National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act)
Social Security Act
Rural Electrification Administration
Emergency Relief Appropriation Act
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 oldage 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.
• African Americans
– Marian Anderson
– New Deal did more to reinforce patterns of
racial discrimination than to advance the
cause of racial equality
– 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
– Commitment to cultural pluralism
• Indian Reorganization Act (1934)
– Revoked allotment practices
– 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 illadvised 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