Chapter 21 The New Deal, 1932–1940 “ America’s Lifeboat”

Chapter 21The New Deal, 1932–1940

“America’s Lifeboat”

The First New Deal

• FDR and the Election of 1932.

• “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.”

• 1. FDR came from a privileged background but served as a symbol for the ordinary man.

• 2. In his speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president, in 1932, FDR promised a “New Deal” for the American people, but his campaign was vague in explaining how he was going to achieve that.

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd EditionCopyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company

A celebrated cover of The New Yorkerdepicts a morose Herbert Hoover

The First New Deal

• The Coming of the New Deal: (Why it was crucial)

• 1.Conservative and totalitarian leaders led the peoples of Europe in the 1930s.

• 2.On the other side of the Atlantic, Roosevelt saw his New Deal as an alternative to socialism on the left, to Nazism on the right, and also to the inaction of upholders of unregulated capitalism.

• 3. For advice, FDR relied heavily on a group of intellectuals and social workers (old Progressives) who took key positions in his administration.


A card issued by the Communist Party during the 1936 campaign illustrates

The First New Deal

• The Coming of the New Deal/The “Brains” behind the New Deal– Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins (veteran of Jane

Addams’s Hull House/Settlement houses)

– Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes (advisor to Progressive president Theodore Roosevelt)

– Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (had advised Progressive president Woodrow Wilson)

-The presence of these individuals reflected how FDR drew on the reform traditions of the Progressive era.

New Deal short clip

• http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl/videos/fdr-a-voice-of-hope?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false

http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl/videos/fdr-a-voice-of-hope?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false



The First New Deal

• The Banking Crisis: (Immediate action needed-The Hundred Days)

• FDR spent much of 1933 trying to reassure the public; banks close to collapse; had invested $$ in the stock market and were failing

• FDR declared a “bank holiday,” temporarily halting all bank operations, and called Congress into special session

• -Emergency Banking Act (provided $$ to floundering banks.)

• While 5,000 banks had failed between 1929 and 1933 (1/3 of all banks in the U.S.); no banks failed in 1936

The First New Deal

• The Banking Crisis: (Alert! Alert! Action Stations!)

• Further measures also transformed the American financial system:

• -Glass-Steagall Act (barred commercial banks from buying and selling stock/cut down on irresponsible actions)

• -Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) (ensured the accounts of individual depositors)

• -FDR took the U.S. off the gold standard (able now to issue more $$ and stimulate business activity)

New Deal short clips

• http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl/videos/the-new-deal-how-does-it-affect-us-today?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false

http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl/videos/the-new-deal?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false




The First New Deal• The National Recovery Administration (NRA):

“The ‘Alphabet’ Agencies

• 1. An unprecedented flurry of legislation (not just banking) during the first three months of of FDR’s administration was a period known as the Hundred Days.

• 2. The centerpiece of Roosevelt’s plan for combating the Depression was the National Industrial Recovery Act.

•

The First New Deal: Never before had any American president exercised such power or so

quickly expanded the role of the federal government in Americans’ lives.

• The Hundred Days also brought the government into providing relief for those in need through FDR’s ‘Alphabet Agencies.’

• Government “Shovel Ready” Jobs needed for 25 million unemployed

• -Federal Emergency Relief Administration, estb. 1933 (FERA)

• Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)• -Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)/ 1933-

provided shovel-ready jobs to millions of young unemployed men


A Civilian Conservation Corps workforce in YosemiteNational Park, 1935.


A map published by the PublicWorks Administration in 1935

Thanks, to Isabella

• http://livingnewdeal.org/map/

http://livingnewdeal.org/map/

The First New Deal

• Public Works Projects: (Created by the National Industrial Recovery Act/NIRA)

– Public Works Administration (PWA)-built roads, schools, hospitals, and other public facilities

– Civil Works Administration (CWA)-road and highway – construction, tunnels, courthouses, and airports

– Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)—built dams to prevent floods and provided cheap electricity to poor people

The First New Deal

• The New Deal and Agriculture:– The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)

authorized the federal gov’t to try to raise farm prices by setting production quotas for major crops and paying farmers not to plant more.

– The AAA succeeded in significantly raising farm prices and incomes for large farmers.

– 1930s time of severe drought creating the Dust Bowl, a terrible time particularly for small and tenant farmers


A Dorothea Lange photograph of a sharecropper and his family outside their modest home.


A giant dust storm engulfs a town in westernKansas on April 14

Dust Bowl Short Clips

• http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl/videos/black-blizzard

• http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl/videos/america-black-blizzard?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false

• http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl/videos/migrant-mother-photo?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false

http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl/videos/black-blizzard

http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl/videos/black-blizzard

Pop research project

• SUPPLEMENTAL WEB RESOURCES FOR CHAPTER 21:

• 1-VOICES FROM THE DUST BOWL (Library of Congress American Memory site)

• http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wwghtml/wwghome.html

• 2-WPA (This site focuses on the WPA art but has many resources such as timelines and links to other information about this New Deal project.)

• www.wpamurals.com/index.htm

• 3-SOCIAL SECURITY (This government site covers the history of Social Security along with chronologies and quizzes.)

• www.ssa.gov/history/history.html

Even more supplemental resources for Chapter 21

4-NEW DEAL OVERVIEW (The New Deal Network is affiliated with the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and is an extensive resource for teachers and students, providing research on the New Deal.•http://newdeal.feri.org/• •5-AMERICA FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION TO WORLD WAR II•(This Library of Congress American Memory site includes images from the Farm Security Administration and Office of the War. The Collection includes images of rural life, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and mobilization for World War II.•http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsowhome.html

New Deal Sites

• 6-THE DUST BOWL (This PBS site has information on a video called Surviving the Dust Bowl, from the American Experience series.)

• www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/peopleevents/pandeAMEX09.html

FDR Fireside chat on “Farmers and Laborers”

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRTbmGnI7pY&list=PL3833257914F80DA9&index=5

The First New Deal

• The New Deal and Housing:• Home ownership had become a mark of

respectability, but the Depression devastated the American housing industry

• FDR’s administration established a federally sponsored bank to issue home loans

• FDR moved energetically to protect homeowners from foreclosure and to stimulate new construction

• Home Owners Loan Corporation (insured millions of long-term mortgages issued by private banks)

• Federal Housing Administration (FHA) (ditto)• Thousands of units of low-rent housing built

The First New Deal

• The New Deal and Housing:• Other important measures of Roosevelt’s first two

years in office:– Twenty-first Amendment (repealed Prohibition)– Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

(supervise radio and tv communications) – Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

(gov’t regulation of stock and bond market)

The First New Deal

• The First New Deal was a series of experiments, some of which failed, which transformed the role of the federal government and assisted millions of Americans in the midst of the Depression. But it did not end the Depression. In 1934, 10 million Americans, more than 20 percent of the labor force, was still out of work.

The First New Deal

• The Court and the New Deal:• In 1935, the Supreme Court (dominated by

conservative Republican judges) began to invalidate key New Deal laws:– National Recovery Administration (NRA)– The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)

The Second New Deal (launched by FDR in 1935; country still in the Depression)

• The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Wagner Act:

• First New Deal focused on economic recovery;

• Second New Deal centered on economic security (protection from unemployment and poverty)

The Second New Deal (launched by FDR in 1935)

• The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Wagner Act:

• WPA = FDR’s federal employment program. Hired 3 million workers each year until it ended in 1943.

• Directed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA transformed the American landscape. It built thousands of public buildings, bridges, roads, airports, stadiums, swimming pools, and sewage treatment plants. The WPA even employed white-collar professionals. The most famous WPA projects were in the arts and included murals, historical and tourist guidebooks, and also in Federal Theater and Dance Projects.

The Second New Deal (launched by FDR in 1935)

• The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Wagner Act

• The Wagner Act was another major Second New Deal measure. Sponsored by Robert Wagner of New York, the bill made illegal “unfair labor practices” such as firing and blacklisting union organizers that had stymied organization in the past.

The Second New Deal

• The American Welfare State (Modern American welfare state is born; built on old Progressive proposals)

• The Social Security System: The Social Security Act was the most important element of the Second New Deal. Created the American version of the Welfare State.

• It established a permanent system of social insurance: unemployment insurance, old age pensions, and aid to the disabled, elderly poor, and families with dependent children.

• The original Social Security bill contained a system of national health insurance that was eliminated after vehement opposition by the American Medical Association, which feared government regulation of doctors’ incomes and practices.

1935 Social Security Act announced by FDR

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xaHX5EBwXc

The Second New Deal

• The Second New Deal dramatically changed the relationship between the federal government and American citizens. Before the 1930s, Americans asked whether the government should intervene in the economy. After the New Deal, Americans asked only how the government should intervene.

A Reckoning with Liberty• FDR and the Idea of Freedom:

• Roosevelt was not just a master politician but also a brilliant communicator; he turned to the radio to reach Americans with weekly broadcasts called “fireside chats” in order to build support for his policies.

• FDR gave the term “liberalism” its modern meaning

• FDR’s opponents (conservative businessmen and politicians) organized the “American Liberty League.” Portrayed FDR as a dictator.

A Reckoning with Liberty

• The Election of 1936:

• By 1936, politics reflected class divisions more than at any other point in American history. Working-class voters provided large majorities for the Democratic Party.

• Roosevelt, in his speech accepting the nomination, attacked “economic royalists” who intended to establish a tyranny over ordinary people. He insisted that poor men “are not free men.”

• Republicans chose Kansas governor Alfred Landon, a former Theodore Roosevelt Progressive.

• FDR won a landslide re-election. Support came from the “New Deal coalition.”


• The Court Fight: Encouraged by his massive victory, Roosevelt committed what many believe was an enormous error.

• FDR proposed to change the face of the court for political reasons. “Court Packing” FDR’s goal was to change the balance of power on a Court that might invalidate Social Security, the Wagner Act, and other parts of the Second New Deal.

• The plan aroused cries that the president was an aspiring dictator.

• Congress rejected the plan.

FDR Fireside Chat (Packing the Court)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUBH1dygxyE&list=PL3833257914F80DA9&index=6


• The End of the Second New Deal:

• The Fair Labor Standards bill

• -banned goods produced by child labor• -set 40 cents as the minimum hourly wage• -required overtime pay for hours exceeding 40

per week

A New Conception of America

• The End of the New Deal:

• By 1940, the New Deal was ending.• Congress started to eliminate many popular New Deal

programs. • Roosevelt turned his administration’s attention towards

Europe and impending war.

A New Conception of America

The New Deal in American History:

-Effort at coping with an economic calamity unprecedented in American history-Even as New Deal receded, its substantial accomplishments remained.-Failed to generate prosperity in the country-But the New Deal accomplished many things, most importantly making the federal government an active force in regulating and shaping economic life.• But even the New Deal could not undo the Depression, which was finally ended only by the mass employment created by World War II.

Chapter 21 The New Deal, 1932–1940 “ America’s Lifeboat”

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Transcript of Chapter 21 The New Deal, 1932–1940 “ America’s Lifeboat”