Chapter 15 Review

FDR

• §defeated Hoover in 1932, 23 million to 16 million   Huge Democratic majorities in House and Senate

• §His brain trusters came up with a package of legislation called “The New Deal”

• §He began in March, 1933 (20th Amendment would move this to January after this…)

• §Three general goals of the New Deal

• §1. Relief for the needy  

• §2. economic recovery  

• §3. financial reform

• “100 days”

• §March to June, 1933   15 major pieces of legislation, significantly expanded the federal government’s role in the nation’s economy

• §FDR declared a bank holiday and closed all banks. Passed Emergency Banking Relief Act, in which fed gov would inspect the banks.  If approved they could reopen.  Confidence builder

• §March 12, 1st Fireside chat.  Americans began to return their savings to banks.

 §Congress … established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), 1933.

 §Congress and the president also worked to regulate the stock market, in which people had lost faith because of the crash of 1929. The Federal Securities Act, passed in May 1933, required corporations to provide complete information on all stock offerings and made them liable for any misrepresentations.

§In June of 1934, Congress created the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate the stock market.

§In addition, Roosevelt persuaded Congress to approve a bill allowing the manufacture and sale of some alcoholic beverages. The bill’s main purpose was to raise government revenues by taxing alcohol. By the end of 1933, the passage of the 21st Amendment had repealed prohibition altogether.

•  §AAA (Ag Adjust Act)   Paid farmers to take certain % of acreage out of circulation; angered some because food was destroyed for the sake of raising prices.

• §TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority)

• §Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), put young  men aged 18 to 25 to work building roads, developing parks, planting trees, and helping in soil-erosion and flood-control projects.

•  §The Public Works Administration (PWA), created in June 1933 as part of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), provided money to states to create jobs chiefly in the construction of schools and other community buildings. When these programs failed to make a sufficient dent in unemployment, President Roosevelt established the

• §Civil Works Administration in November 1933. It provided 4 million immediate jobs during the winter of 1933–1934. “make-work?”

• §The CWA built 40,000 schools and paid the salaries of more than 50,000 schoolteachers in America’s rural areas. It also built more than half a million miles of roads

 NIRA

• §The NIRA also sought to promote industrial growth by establishing codes of fair practice for individual industries. It created the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which set prices of many products to ensure fair competition and established standards for working hours and a ban on child labor. The aim of the NRA was to promote recovery by interrupting the trend of wage cuts, falling prices, and layoffs. The economist Gardiner C. Means attempted to justify the NRA by stating the goal of industrial planning.

• §“ The National Recovery Administration [was] created in response to an overwhelming demand from many quarters that certain elements in the making of industrial policy . . . should no longer be left to the market place and the price mechanism but should be placed in the hands of administrative bodies.”

 FOOD, CLOTHING, AND SHELTER

• §A number of New Deal programs concerned housing and home mortgage problems. The Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) provided government loans to homeowners who faced foreclosure because they couldn’t meet their loan payments.

• §In addition, the 1934 National Housing Act created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

•  §Another program, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), was funded with $500 million to provide direct relief for the needy. Half of the money was given to the states as direct grants-in-aid to help furnish food and clothing to the unemployed, the aged, and the ill.

• §By the end of the Hundred Days, millions of Americans had benefited from the New Deal programs. As well, the public’s confidence in the nation’s future had rebounded. Although President Roosevelt agreed to a policy of deficit spending— spending more money than the government receives in revenue— he did so with great reluctance. He regarded deficit spending as a necessary evil to be used only at a time of great economic crisis. Nevertheless, the New Deal did not end the depression, and opposition grew among some parts of the population.

 Opposition

• §Liberal critics argued that the New Deal did not go far enough to help the poor and to reform

• §Conservative critics argued that Roosevelt spent too much on direct relief and used New Deal policies to control business and socialize the economy.

• §Many critics believed the New Deal interfered with the workings of a free-market economy.

• Supreme Court Opposition

• §By the mid-1930s, conservative opposition to the New Deal had received a boost from two Supreme Court decisions. In 1935, the Court struck down the NIRA as unconstitutional. It declared that the law gave legislative powers to the executive branch and that the enforcement of industry codes within states went beyond the federal government’s constitutional powers to regulate interstate commerce.

• §The next year, the Supreme Court struck down the AAA on the grounds that agriculture is a local matter and should be regulated by the states rather than by the federal government.

More Critics

• §Court Packing

• §Three critics

  • §Charles Coughlin.  Priest, favored a national income and the nationalization of banks

  • §Dr. Francis Townsend.  Designed a plan of monthly benefits to help the elderly

  • §Huey Long.  La Senator  Share our Wealth.  Quote:

    • §“ We owe debts in America today, public and private, amounting to $252 billion. That means that every child is born with a $2,000 debt tied around his neck. . . . We propose that children shall be born in a land of opportunity, guaranteed a home, food, clothes, and the other things that make for living,

15.2  2^nd New Deal

• §The second hundred days…because

• –1934 Midterm election increased Dem maj

• –Dems 319  Repu 103 in House

• –Dems 69  Repub 25 in Senate

• §1936 Presidential election

• –Most Blacks vote Democratic

• –Labor support solely now to Dems

2^nd New Deal

§FARMERS

• –SC struck down the AAA early in 1936

• –Congress approved a 2^nd AAA

• –Programs to help sharecroppers buy land

§EMPLOYMENT

• –WPA receives budget of $5 billion

• –Employed 8 million people, mostly undkilled

• –Garments, roads, hospitals

• –Professionals employed for special studies

 2^nd New Deal –
Improving Labor Conditions

• §SC had ruled the NIRA unconst (had some provisions for protecting workers)

• §IN response, Congress passed Wagner Act, bringing collective bargaining back:

• §So joining unions and collective bargaining was now supported by the federal gov

• §Set up NLRB

• §SOC SECURITY:

1. old age 2. Unemployment 3. Aid to families with dependent children

Women

• §Frances Perkins, first female cabinet member

• §1936  80% of Americans believed wife shouldn’t work if husband did

• §NRA set lower wages for females

African Americans

• §A. Philip Randolph, organized nation’s first all-black union

• §Mary McLeod Bethune—an educator who dedicated herself to promoting opportunities for young African Americans—was one such appointee. Hired by the president to head the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration

• §Bethune also helped organize a “Black Cabinet” of influential African Americans to advise the Roosevelt administration on racial issues..

• §Never before had so many African Americans had a voice in the White House.

• §Marian Anderson, DAR, Eleanor Roosevelt

Mexican Americans

§They received fewer benefits than African Americans, but still supported the New Deal.

Native Americans

• §Gained citizenship in 1924,

• §John Collier commissioner of Indian Affairs. 

• §Moved away from assimilation to autonomy.  

• §Native American lands belonged to the whole tribe, they could have elected councils,  

• §Fewer boarding schools, they could attend on the reservation.

 FDR fails to support Civil Rights

• §Why?  Did not want to alienate S Dems

• §He refused to approve a federal antilynching law and an end to the poll tax, two key goals of the civil rights movement.

• §Also, New Deal agencies discriminated against African Americans

The New Deal Coalition

• §Southern whites

• §Urban groups

• §African Americans

• §Religious and ethnic groups: Catholic, Irish, Jews, Italians, Irish, Polish

 Unions part of the Coalition

• §Unionized industrial workers. 33 to 41 union membership went from 3 million to 10.  FDR was a “friend of labor”

• §AFL was craft unions

• §CIO (Congress for Industrial Organizations) was industrial unions; unskilled and semi-skilled

• §AFL and CIO split until 1955

• §The sit-down strike

• §Republic Steel Plant, 1937, (Memorial Day Massacre) violent; 10 killed, 84 wounded

• §NLRB required Republic to negotiate