The end of Hoover

The Bonus March
– July 1932
Election 1932
Hoover and Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt, 1933
Franklin D. Roosevelt

A Patrician in Government
– From a an old, wealthy family
– Married a cousin Eleanor Roosevelt
– Contracted polio in 1921

The Making of a Politician
– Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson
– Governor of New York 1928

The Election of 1932
–
–
–
–
Campaigned to give “a new deal to the American people.”
A new coalition of farmers, factory workers, and immigrants
Won by a large margin
“fireside chats”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Roosevelt family 1920s
The “New Deal”
OBJECTIVES
1.
RELIEF for the poor and unemployed
RECOVERY for the economy
3. REFORM government and banking systems
2.
to avert future economic disasters
Guiding Ideas of New Deal

1. Capitalist solutions to problems (not socialist
or communist)

2. Attempt to achieve a balance between
consumption and production

3. Government programs to counterbalance
power of huge corporations

4. Allow working people a bigger share in
economy
Who?

The New Dealers
– Harry Hopkins
– Frances Perkins
– Eleanor Roosevelt
– Mary McLeod Bethune
Harry Hopkins (right)
Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins (left)
Workers, Hoover Dam
Mary McLeod Bethune receiving a
YWCA award
Bethune in office at BethuneCookman College
Banking and Finance Reform
Emergency Banking Act created during
“bank holiday”: four days where banks
were closed for reorganization
 FDIC: the government to insure bank
deposits
 SEC: Securities and Exchange Commission
to prevent fraud and insider trading in the
stock market

Relief and Conservation Programs
FERA: Federal Emergency Relief Act
 Civilian Conservation Corps

– For example Hoover Dam

TVA—Tennessee Valley
TVA
Tennessee Valley Authority
landscape
TVA
Worker, TVA
Agricultural Initiatives

AAA: Agricultural Adjustment Act
– “While millions of Americans went to bed
hungry, farmers slaughtered millions of cattle,
hogs, sheep, and other livestock and
destroyed millions of acres of crops in order
to qualify for their allotment payments.”

FCA: Farm Credit Act
– Helped farmers to avoid foreclosure
Industrial Recovery
NIRA: National Industrial Recovery Act
 NRA: National Recovery Act

– A sort of “peace” offering by Roosevelt to
business, asking them to monitor themselves
to curtail competition and agree to collective
bargaining.
– Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for
taking powers reserved to Congress
Dust Bowl
Farm wife
In California from Dust Bowl
In California from Dust Bowl
Opposition to the New Deal
from the right and the left

From the Right:
Resistance to Business
Reform; said reforms
were too radical
– U.S. Chamber of
Commerce
– National Association of
Manufacturers

From the Left
–
–
–
–
Socialists and Communists
Father Charles Coughlin
Dr. Francis Townsend
Huey Long, Governor of
Louisiana
– Upton Sinclair, candidate for
Governor of California
Father Charles Coughlin
Upton Sinclair
Doctor Townsend
Social Security
What is it?

The Social Security Act required that pensions for
the elderly be funded not by direct government
payments, but instead by tax contributions from
workers and employers.

For the first time in the nation’s history, millions
of ordinary citizens were numbered, registered,
and identified by the government, creating a link
between the individual and the government.

First check not issued until 1940.
Toward a Welfare State
Relief for the Unemployed
 Empowering Labor
 Social Security and Tax Reform
 Neglected Americans and the New Deal

The New Deal from Victory
to Deadlock
The Election of 1936
 Court Packing
 Reaction and Recession
 The Last of the New Deal Reforms

Mrs. Roosevelt during the war
Mass meetings
Demonstration S.F. City Hall, WPA
Successes of the New Deal
Social Security
 Labor’s right to organize
 Stabilization of agriculture and its markets
 Did not abandon democracy for socialism
or communism
 Retained American capitalist system

Failures of the New Deal
Relief, recovery, and reform left many
people out
 Depression not fundamentally remedied
 Did not address the shortcomings of
capitalism
 Two of its programs deemed
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court:
the NRA and the AAA

Firsts of the New Deal
First woman cabinet member: Frances Perkins, Secretary
of Labor
 First Labor Relations Law: The Wagner Act 1934, the socalled “Magna Carta” for labor
 First president to advocate protection for the elderly
 First national registration of ordinary citizens with the
government
 First black woman to head a federal agency: Mary
McLeod Bethune in the National Youth Administration
 First federal housing law: National Housing Act, 1937,
for decent urban housing

Quotations from ER

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

"A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot
water.”

"Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make
them all yourself."

"Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people
are works of art."
White House years