Roosevelt and the new deal
Housing
Roosevelts aim was to improve living conditions.
The Resettlement Administration built new suburban towns for urban families.
It was originally set up to help the rural poor.
Only three were constructed so Congress passed the Housing Act.
Helped to set up a new agency to create new homes to replace shanty towns.
Working Conditions
The National Labor Relations Act had impacted the second New Deal.
It helped to improve the working lives of industrial workers.
A minimum wage and maximum hours for workers in industry were introduced years later.
Access to Land
Rather than the rural poor working as sharecroppers or tenants for wealthy landowning farmers, Roosevelt wanted them to have their own farms.
The Resettlement Administration was the first measure.
It helped to resettle families from overworked land.
But they had only resettled a few thousand.
This led to its replacement by the Farm Security Administration(FSA).
By 1941, it had offered $1 billion loans to help farmers.
Migrant Workers
Up until 1935 little was done to help migrant workers who did not have their own land or had lost land during the Depression.
The FSA now helped migrant workers who travelled across the USA in search of work.
Migrant camps were set up to provide shelter to those who had left the Dustbowl and California and paid for doctors and dentists to look after Migrants.
It didn’t help migrants find work but it kept them alive and healthy.
Farm Prices
The Supreme Curt had declared that the first Agricultural Adjustment Act had not been valid in 1936.
The price of agricultural goods was still too low.
The second Agricultural Adjustment Act created mandatory measures to limit production using quotas.
They were effective because they did not rely on co-operation from farmers.
They were enforced through heavy taxes on sales above the quota.
The government was able to control how much was produced.