apush ch 21 the new deal

Sections 1,4,5

The First New Deal 

FDR and the Election of 1932

• FDR 

  • Ran for VP on Democratic ticket of 1920 

  • Contracted Polio (nobody knew) 

  • Promised a “new deal” for the American people 

    • Balanced federal budget 

  • Greater awareness of the plight of ordinary Americans 

  • Won VP election of 1932

• Democrats called for repeal of prohibition 

  • Provide jobs by reopening a shattered industry and raise gov. revenue 

The coming of a New Deal 

• FDR hoped to reconcile 

  • Democracy 

  • Individual liberty

  • Economic recovery and development 

• Louis Brandeis 

  • Advised Woodrow Wlson during 1912 campaign 

  • Offered political advice to FDR while serving on Supreme court 

  • Believed that the large corporations not only wielded excessive power 

    • Contributed to depression 

• Large firms needed to be managed and directed by the government. 

• First New Deal 

The Banking Crisis 

• Banking system = on the verge of collapse

• March 1933 

  • Banking had been suspended in a majority of the states 

• “Bank Holiday” 

• Emergency Banking Act 

  • Provided funds to shore up threatened institutions 

• The Glass Steagall Act 

  • Barred commercial banks from becoming involved in the bing and selling of stocks 

    • Repealed in 1990s 

  • Prevented many of the irresponsible practices that had contributed to the stock market crash 

• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) 

  • Government system that insured the accounts of individual depositors 

• Measures = rescued the financial system and greatly increased government power over it 

The NRA

• Emergency Banking Act was first of the flurry of legislation during the first three months of FDR’s admin 

• Hundred Days 

• FRD 

  • Won rapid passage of laws he hoped would promote economic recovery

• Host of new agencies 

  • NRA, AAA, CCC 

• National Industrial Recovery Act 

  • Modeled on the government business partnership established by the war Industries Board of WWI 

• National Recovery Administration 

  • Work with groups of business leaders to establish industry codes that set standards for output, prices, and working conditions 

  • Set standards for production, prices, and wages 

    • In textile, steel, mining, and auto industries 

  • Mired in Controversy 

  • Large companies dominated the code-writing process 

  • Produced neither economic recovery nor peace between employers and works 

  • Combat the pervasive sense that the government was doing nothing to deal with the economic crisis 

Government Jobs 

• Brought government into providing relief to those in need 

• FDR + advisors shared widespread fear that direct gov payments to the unemployed would undermine individual self-reliance 

• Federal Emergency Relief Administration 

  • Make grants to local agencies that aided those impoverished by the depression 

• Civilian Conservation Corps 

  • Unemployed young men to work on projects like forest preservation, flood control, and improvement of national parks and wildlife preservations 

  • Major contribution to the enhancement of the American environment 

Public-Works Projects 

• Public Works Administration 

  • Directed by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes 

  • Built roads, schools, hospitals, and public facilities 

• Civil Works Administration = launched in November 1933

  • Construction of highways, tunnels, courthouses, and airports 

  • Cost spiraled upward and complaints multiplied that the new deal was creating a class of Americans permanently dependent on government jobs 

  • = Dissolved 

• Tennessee valley Authority 

  • Product of the Hundred Days 

  • Built a series of dams to prevent floods and deforestation along Tennessee River 

  • Provide cheap electric power for homes and factories 

The New Deal and Agriculture

• Agricultural Adjustment Act 

  • Authorized the federal government to set production quotas for major crops and pay farmers to plant less 

  • In attempt to raise farm prices 

  • Succeeded in significantly raising farm prices and incomes 

  • Not all farmers benefited 

  • Policy of paying landowners not to grow crops 

    • Encouraged the eviction of thousands of poor tenants and sharecroppers 

  • Mid-decade = region suffered from century’s most severe drought 

    • Dust Bowl        

      • Displaced more than 1 million farmers 

The New Deal and Housing 

• Depression devastated the American housing industry 

• Construction of new residences all but ceased 

  • Banks and savings and loan associations that had financed home ownership collapsed 

• Millions of Americans lived in overcrowded, unhealthy urban slums 

• “Security of the Home”

  • FDR spoke 

    • = fundamental right 

• Home Owners Loan Corporation and Federal Housing Administration 

  • Insured millions of long term mortgages 

  • Issued by private banks 

• Home ownership came within the reach of tens of millions of families 

• Federal Communications Commission came to oversee that nation’s broadcast airwaves and telephone communications 

  • Creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate the stock and bond markets 

  • Ratification of the 21st amendment 

    • Repealed prohibition

• First New Deal 

  • Series of experiments 

  • Some succeed and some did not 

  • Transformed the role of the federal government 

  • Constructed numerous public facilities 

  • Provided relief to millions of needy people 

• Economy had not achieved sustained recovery 

The Court and the New Deal

• 1935 = Supreme Court began to invalidate key New Deal laws 

• NRA 

  • Declared unconstitutional 

  • Case brought by Schechter Poultry Company of Brooklyn 

  • Charged with violating code adopted by the chicken industry 

  • NRA = unlawful (declared by court) 

• AAA 

  • Fell in United States vs. Butler 

  • Declared in an unconstitutional exercise of congressional power over local economic activities     

The Limits of Change 

• Second new deal and Social Security 

  • Expanding the meaning of freedom by extending assistance to broad groups of needy Americans 

    • As a right of citizenship 

• Different groups of Americans experienced the new Deal in radically different ways 

The New Deal and American Women 

• New Deal brought more women into government than ever before in American history 

• Secretary of Labor 

  • Frances Perkins 

• Eleanor Roosevelt

  • Transformed the role of the first lady 

    • Base for political action 

• Organized feminism disappeared as a political force

• Depression inspired widespread demands for women to remove themselves from the labor market 

  • To make room for unemployed men 

• Most New Deal programs did not exclude women from benefits 

  • But did exclude 3 million mostly female domestic workers altogether 

The Southern Veto 

• FDR made the federal government the symbolic representation of all the people 

• Power of the Solid south 

  • Helped to mold the New Deal welfare state into an entitlement of white Americans 

• Democrats enjoyed political monopoly in the region 

  • Democratic members of congress were elected again and again  

• Social Security law 

  • Excluded agricultural and domestic workers 

    • Largest categories of Black employment 

• Black organizations 

  • Urban League and NAACP Lobbied strenuously for a system that enabled agricultural and domestic workers to receive unemployment and old age benefits 

• Social Security Act 

The Stigma of Welfare 

• Because of the Southern Veto 

  • Majority of Black workers found themselves confined to the least generous and most vulnerable wing of the new welfare state 

• Public assistance programs 

  • Established by Social Security 

  • Notably aid to dependent children and the poor elderly 

  • Were open to all Americans who could demonstrate financial need 

• Situation seemed certain to identify Blacks as recipients of unearned government assistance and welfare as a program for minorities

The Native American New Deal 

• New Deal had contradictory impact Native Americans 

• Indian New Deal 

• Indian Reorganization Act in 1934 

  • Abolished the government’s campaign of forcibly dividing Indian lands into small plots for individual families and selling off “surplus” lands 

    • Dating back to Dawes Act

  • Recognized the right of Indigenous nations to govern their own affairs 

  • Encouraged tribes to establish governing councils and new constitutions 

    • Compelled them to adopt constitutions that were in line with government officials’ expectations 

• Navajo nation 

  • Largest tribe in US at time 

  • Indian New Deal brought new injustices 

  • Sheephearding was important to their political economy 

    • Grazing contributed to soil erosion and drought 

  • Federal conservation officials called for drastic, immediate herd reductions 

  • Rejected Indian Reorganization Act in June 1935 

• Indian New deal ended the devastating policy of forced assimilation and now emphasized the goal of Native sovereignty

  • Did not improve reservation living conditions significantly 

The New Deal and Mexican Americans 

• Mexican Americans 

  • Depression was a wrenching experience 

  • Deportation campaigns of the federal government and local officials led more than 400,000 to return to Mexico  

• Wagner Act and Social Security Act did not apply to agricultural laborers 

• Mexican American leaders struggled to develop consistent strategy 

  • Sought greater rights by claiming to be white Americans 

• Mexican Americans were not the only group encouraged to leave the US 

  • 1935 Congress passed the Filipino Repatriation Act 

    • Offered free transportation to those born in the Philippines and willing to return there 

A New Deal for Blacks 

• African Americans were hit hardest by the Depression 

• Unemployment rate double that of whites 

• Blacks benefited disproportionately from direct government relief and jobs on New Deal public works projects 

• FDR appointed Mary LcLeod Bethune as special advisor on minority affairs 

  • Prominent Black educator  

• Historic shift in Black voting patterns 

  • In favor of Democrats and the new deal 

Federal Discrimination 

• Federal housing policy 

  • Powerfully reinforced residential segregation 

  • Revealed the racial boundaries of New Deal Freedom 

• Federal Housing Administration 

  • No hesitation about insuring mortgages that contained clauses barring future sales to non-white buyers 

• Federal policy became a major factor 

  • In further entrenching housing segregation in the United States 

• Federal employment practices also discriminated on the basis of race 

• New Deal began the process of modernizing southern agriculture

A New Conception of America 

• 1930’s witnessed the absorption of other groups into the social mainstream 

• Catholics and Jews occupying prominent posts in the FDR administration 

• New immigrant voters forming an important part of its electoral support

  • New Deal made ethnic pluralism a living reality in American politics 

• Increasing penetration of movies, chain stores, mass advertising into ethnic communities 

  • Common experience of economic crisis 

  • Acceleration of cultural assimilation   

The Heyday of American Communism 

• The left 

  • Enjoyed a shaping influence on the nation’s politics and culture 

• CIO and Communist Party 

  • Became focus points for a broad social and intellectual impulse that helped to redraw the boundaries of American freedom 

• Communist party 

  • Remarkable growth during 1930s 

• Popular Front

  • Period during the mid-1930s when the Communist party sought to ally itself with socialists and New Dealers in movements for social change 

    • Urged reform of the capitalist system rather than revolution 

  • Communists gained an unprecedented respectability on it 

Redefining the people 

• Popular Front vision of American society sank deep roots and survived 

  • Longer than the political roots that it sprang from 

• Social and economic radicalism on broad left wing 

  • Defined true Americanism 

• Artists and writers who strove to create socially meaningful works 

  • Task of depicting the daily lives of ordinary farmers and city dwellers 

  • Art 

    • Seen as expressions of genuine Americanism 

Challenging the Color Line 

• Popular Front culture moved well beyond New Deal liberalism

  • in condemning racism as incompatible with true Americanism 

• American Jewish Committee and the National Conference of Christians and Jews 

  • Promoted ethnic and religious tolerance        

• Communist party was the era’s only predominantly white organization to make fighting racism a top priority 

• Scottsboro Case 

  • International cause celebre

  • 9 young Black men arrested for the rape of two white women in Alabama in 1931 

• CIO 

  • Brought large numbers of Black industrial workers into the labor movement for the first time 

    • Ran extensive educational campaigns to persuade white workers to recognize the interests they shared with their Black counterparts 

Labor and Civil Liberties 

• Central element to the Popular front public culture 

  • Mobilization for civil liberties 

    • Especially the right of labor to organize 

• Labor militancy helped to produce an important shift in understanding of civil liberties 

• Concept now expanded to include violations of free speech and assembly by powerful private groups

• The federal government became a protector of freedom of expression 

• Civil liberties had assumed a central place in New Deal understanding of freedom 

• New appreciation of free expression = hardly universal 

  • House of Rep. established 

    • House Un-American Activities Committee (1938)

      • Investigate disloyalty 

    • “Un-American” = communists, labor radicals, and the left of the democratic party 

• Congress enacted the Smith Act in 1940 

  • Made it a federal crime to teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow of the government 

The End of the New Deal 

• New Deal = an era of far-reaching social reform

  • Began to recede 

• More and more southern Democrats were finding themselves at odds with FDR’s policies 

• A new generation of homegrown radicals emerged in 1938 = Southern New Dealers 

  • Black Activists, labor leaders, communists, 

  • Founded the Southern Conference for Human welfare to work for unionization, unemployment relief, and racial injustice 

• FDR concluded that the enactment of future New Deal measures 

  • Required a liberalization of the Southern democratic party 

• Administration increasingly focused its attention on the storm gathering in Europe 

The New Deal in American History 

• New Deal seems in many ways limited 

  • Social Security remained restricted in scope and modest in cost 

  • Failed to address the problem of racial inequality 

• Substantial accomplishments remained 

  • Greatly expanded the federal government's role in the American economy and made it an independent force in relations between industry and labor

• Improved economic conditions in the US 

  • But more than 15% of the workforce remained unemployed in 1940 

• Only the mobilization of the nation’s resources to fight WWII would finally end the Great Depression