Earwig's Copyvio Detector

FDR 1944 Color Portrait.tif

32nd President of the United States

John Nance Garner (1933–41)

Henry A. Wallace (1941–45)

Harry S. Truman (1945)

Democratic Eleanor Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt served as the 32nd President of the United States, from 1933 to 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and dominated his party after 1932 as a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic depression and total war. His program for relief, recovery and reform, known as the New Deal, involved a great expansion of the role of the federal government in the economy. As a dominant leader of the Democratic Party, he built the New Deal Coalition that brought together and united labor unions, big city machines, white ethnics, African Americans, and rural white Southerners in support of the party. The Coalition significantly realigned American politics after 1932, creating the Fifth Party System and defining American liberalism throughout the middle third of the 20th century.

In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt successfully defeated incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover to win the presidency of the United States. In his first hundred days in office, which began March 4, 1933, Roosevelt spearheaded unprecedented major legislation and issued a profusion of executive orders that instituted the New Deal—a variety of programs designed to produce relief (government jobs for the unemployed), recovery (economic growth), and reform (through regulation of Wall Street, banks and transportation). He created numerous programs to support the unemployed and farmers, and to encourage labor union growth while more closely regulating business and high finance. The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 added to his popularity, helping him win re-election by a landslide in 1936. The economy improved rapidly from 1933 to 1937, but then relapsed into a deep recession in 1937–38. The bipartisan Conservative Coalition that formed in 1937 prevented his packing the Supreme Court, and blocked almost all proposals for major liberal legislation (except the minimum wage, which did pass). When the war began and unemployment ended, conservatives in Congress repealed the two major relief programs, the WPA and CCC. However, they kept most of the regulations on business. Along with several smaller programs, major surviving programs include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Wagner Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Social Security.

As World War II loomed after 1938, with the Japanese invasion of China and the aggression of Nazi Germany, Roosevelt gave strong diplomatic and financial support to China and the United Kingdom, while remaining officially neutral. His goal was to make America the "Arsenal of Democracy", which would supply munitions to the Allies. In March 1941, Roosevelt, with Congressional approval, provided Lend-Lease aid to Britain and China. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which he called "a date which will live in infamy", Roosevelt sought and obtained the quick approval, on December 8, of the United States Congress to declare war on Japan and, a few days later, on Germany. (Hitler had already declared war on the US in support of Japan). Assisted by his top aide Harry Hopkins, and with very strong national support, he worked closely with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek in leading the Allies against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan in World War II. He supervised the mobilization of the U.S. economy to support the war effort, and also ordered the internment of 100,000 Japanese American civilians. As an active military leader, Roosevelt implemented a war strategy on two fronts that ended in the defeat of the Axis Powers and the development of the world's first nuclear bomb. His work also influenced the later creation of the United Nations and Bretton Woods. During the war, unemployment dropped to 2%, relief programs largely ended, and the industrial economy grew rapidly to new heights as millions of people moved to wartime factory jobs or entered military service. Roosevelt's health seriously declined during the war years, and he died three months into his fourth term. He is often rated by scholars as one of the top three U.S. Presidents, along with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

Personnel Henry Agard Wallace Harry H. Woodring Homer S. Cummings Francis B. Biddle Frank C. Walker James V. Forrestal Cabinet and personnel

Roosevelt was the first president to have more than two vice presidents. Former Speaker of the House John Nance Garner of Texas, his first vice president, was added to the ticket as part of a deal at the 1932 Democratic National Convention which clinched the presidential nomination for Roosevelt. Garner and Postmaster General (and former Roosevelt campaign manager) James Farley tried to challenge Roosevelt for the presidential nomination at the 1940 Democratic National Convention, but Roosevelt won the nomination and chose Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace as his running mate. Wallace was unpopular among many Democrats, who successfully replaced Wallace with Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri at the 1944 Democratic National Convention. Truman would succeed Roosevelt as president after Roosevelt's death in April 1945.

Roosevelt appointed powerful men to top positions but made certain he made all the major decisions, regardless of delays, inefficiency or resentment. Analyzing the president's administrative style, historian James MacGregor Burns concludes:

The president stayed in charge of his administration...by drawing fully on his formal and informal powers as Chief Executive; by raising goals, creating momentum, inspiring a personal loyalty, getting the best out of people...by deliberately fostering among his aides a sense of competition and a clash of wills that led to disarray, heartbreak, and anger but also set off pulses of executive energy and sparks of creativity...by handing out one job to several men and several jobs to one man, thus strengthening his own position as a court of appeals, as a depository of information, and as a tool of co-ordination; by ignoring or bypassing collective decision-making agencies, such as the Cabinet...and always by persuading, flattering, juggling, improvising, reshuffling, harmonizing, conciliating, manipulating.

Judicial appointments Supreme Court appointments

Franklin D. Roosevelt Supreme Court candidates

Roosevelt's New Deal policies often ran into opposition from the Supreme Court, especially from the conservative Four Horsemen. The more conservative members of the court upheld the principles of the Lochner era, which saw numerous economic regulations struck down on the basis of freedom of contract. Roosevelt attempted to increase the size of the Court so that he could appoint more favorable justices, but Roosevelt's plan was defeated by his own party. However, starting with the 1937 West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, the court began to take a more favorable view of economic regulations, and most of the conservative justices left the court after 1937. By 1941, eight of the nine Justices were Roosevelt appointees, and Roosevelt appointed more justices than any president other than George Washington. Of the justices on the court when Roosevelt took office, only Owen Roberts and Harlan Fiske Stone (who Roosevelt elevated to Chief Justice) outlasted Roosevelt.

Roosevelt's appointees upheld his policies, but often disagreed in other areas, especially after Roosevelt's death. Douglas and Black served until the 1970s and joined or wrote many of the major decisions of the Warren Court, while Jackson and Frankfurter advocated judicial restraint and deference to elected officials.

Other judicial nominees

List of Presidents of the United States by judicial appointments

Roosevelt made 51 appointments to the United States courts of appeals and 134 appointments to the United States district courts. He made more appointments to either court than any of his predecessors.

First and second terms

When Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933, the U.S. was at the nadir of the worst depression in its history. Following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the relative prosperity of the "Roaring Twenties" gave way to what became known as the Great Depression, a severe worldwide depression. A quarter of the American workforce was unemployed. Farmers were in deep trouble as prices fell by 60%. Industrial production had fallen by more than half since 1929. Two million people were homeless. By the evening of March 4, 32 of the 48 states – as well as the District of Columbia – had closed their banks. The New York Federal Reserve Bank was unable to open on the 5th, as huge sums had been withdrawn by panicky customers in previous days. Beginning with his inauguration address, Roosevelt began blaming the economic crisis on bankers and financiers, the quest for profit, and the self-interest basis of capitalism:

Primarily this is because rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence... The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Historians categorized Roosevelt's program as "relief, recovery and reform." Relief was urgently needed by tens of millions of unemployed. Recovery meant boosting the economy back to normal. Reform meant long-term fixes of what was wrong, especially with the financial and banking systems. Through Roosevelt's series of radio talks, known as fireside chats, he presented his proposals directly to the American public.

First New Deal, 1933–34

Roosevelt's "First 100 Days" concentrated on the first part of his strategy: immediate relief. From March 9 to June 16, 1933, he sent Congress a record number of bills, all of which passed easily. To propose programs, Roosevelt relied on leading Senators such as George Norris, Robert F. Wagner, and Hugo Black, as well as his Brain Trust of academic advisers. Like Hoover, he saw the Depression caused in part by people no longer spending or investing because they were afraid.

Roosevelt's inauguration on March 4, 1933, occurred in the middle of a bank panic, hence the backdrop for his famous words: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The very next day he declared a "bank holiday" and called for a special session of Congress to start March 9, at which Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act. This was his first proposed step to recovery. To give Americans confidence in the banks, Roosevelt signed the Glass–Steagall Act that created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to underwrite savings deposits.

Sample of the Inaugural speech from FDR

Relief measures included the continuation of Hoover's major relief program for the unemployed under its new name: Federal Emergency Relief Administration. The most popular of all New Deal agencies – and Roosevelt's favorite – was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which hired 250,000 unemployed young men to work on rural local projects.

Congress also gave the Federal Trade Commission broad new regulatory powers and provided mortgage relief to millions of farmers and homeowners. Roosevelt expanded a Hoover agency, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, making it a major source of financing for railroads and industry. Roosevelt made agricultural relief a high priority and set up the first Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). The AAA tried to force higher prices for commodities by paying farmers to take land out of crops and to cut herds.

Reform of the economy was the goal of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933. It tried to end cutthroat competition by forcing industries to come up with codes that established the rules of operation for all firms within specific industries, such as minimum prices, agreements not to compete, and production restrictions. Industry leaders negotiated the codes which were approved by NIRA officials. Industry needed to raise wages as a condition for approval. Provisions encouraged unions and suspended anti-trust laws. The NIRA was found to be unconstitutional by unanimous decision of the US Supreme Court on May 27, 1935. Roosevelt opposed the decision, saying, "The fundamental purposes and principles of the NIRA are sound. To abandon them is unthinkable. It would spell the return to industrial and labor chaos." In 1933, major new banking regulations were passed. In 1934, the Securities and Exchange Commission was created to regulate Wall Street, with 1932 campaign fundraiser Joseph P. Kennedy in charge.

Recovery was pursued through "pump-priming" (that is, federal spending). The NIRA included $3.3 billion of spending through the Public Works Administration to stimulate the economy, which was to be handled by Interior Secretary Harold Ickes. Roosevelt worked with Republican Senator George Norris to create the largest government-owned industrial enterprise in American history — the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) — which built dams and power stations, controlled floods, and modernized agriculture and home conditions in the poverty-stricken Tennessee Valley. The repeal of prohibition also brought in new tax revenues and helped Roosevelt keep a major campaign promise. Executive Order 6102 declared that all privately held gold of American citizens was to be sold to the US Treasury and the price raised from $20 to $35 per ounce. The goal was to counter the deflation which was paralyzing the economy.

Roosevelt tried to keep his campaign promise by cutting the federal budget — including a reduction in military spending from $752 million in 1932 to $531 million in 1934 and a 40% cut in spending on veterans' benefits — by removing 500,000 veterans and widows from the pension rolls and reducing benefits for the remainder, as well as cutting the salaries of federal employees and reducing spending on research and education. But, the veterans were well organized and strongly protested; most benefits were restored or increased by 1934, but FDR vetoed their efforts to get a cash bonus. The benefit cuts also did not last. In June 1933, Roosevelt restored $50 million in pension payments, and Congress added another $46 million more. Veterans groups such as the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars won their campaign to transform their benefits from payments due in 1945 to immediate cash when Congress overrode the President's veto and passed the Bonus Act in January 1936. It pumped sums equal to 2% of the GDP into the consumer economy and had a major stimulus effect.

Roosevelt also kept his promise to push for repeal of Prohibition. On March 23, 1933, he signed the Cullen–Harrison Act redefining 3.2% alcohol as the maximum allowed. That act was preceded by Congressional action in the drafting and passage of the 21st Amendment, which was ratified later that year.

Roosevelt was a hero to major minority groups, especially African Americans, Catholics, and Jews, and was highly successful in attracting large majorities of these voters into his New Deal coalition. African Americans and Native Americans fared well in two New Deal relief programs, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Indian Reorganization Act, respectively. Sitkoff reported that the WPA "provided an economic floor for the whole black community in the 1930s, rivaling both agriculture and domestic service as the chief source" of income. However, Roosevelt needed the support of the powerful white Southern Democrats for his New Deal programs, and blacks were still disenfranchised in the South. He decided against pushing for federal anti-lynching legislation. It was not likely to pass and the political fight might threaten his ability to pass his highest priority programs—though he did denounce lynchings as "a vile form of collective murder". The frequency of lynchings had declined since the early decades of the century, in part due to the African Americans' Great Migration out of the South; millions were still leaving it behind.

Second New Deal, 1935–36

After the 1934 Congressional elections, which gave Roosevelt large majorities in both houses, his administration drafted a fresh surge of New Deal legislation. The most important program of 1935, and perhaps the New Deal as a whole, was the Social Security Act, drafted by Frances Perkins. It established a permanent system of universal retirement pensions (Social Security), unemployment insurance, and welfare benefits for the handicapped and needy children in families without a father present. The United States had been the only modern industrial country where people faced the Depression without any national system of social security, though a handful of states had old age insurance laws. Roosevelt insisted that it should be funded by payroll taxes rather than from the general fund; he said, "We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program." Compared with the social security systems in western European countries, the Social Security Act of 1935 was rather conservative. But for the first time the federal government took responsibility for the economic security of the aged, the temporarily unemployed, dependent children and the handicapped.

Roosevelt nationalized unemployment relief through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), headed by close friend Harry Hopkins. Roosevelt had insisted that the projects had to be costly in terms of labor, long-term beneficial, and the WPA was forbidden to compete with private enterprises (therefore the workers had to be paid smaller wages). The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created to return the unemployed to the work force. The WPA financed a variety of projects such as hospitals, schools, and roads, and employed more than 8.5 million workers who built 650,000 miles of highways and roads, 125,000 public buildings, as well as bridges, reservoirs, irrigation systems, and other projects.

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, guaranteed workers the rights to collective bargaining through unions of their own choice. The Act also established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to facilitate wage agreements and to suppress the repeated labor disturbances. The Wagner Act did not compel employers to reach agreement with their employees, but it opened possibilities for American labor. The result was a tremendous growth of membership in the labor unions, especially in the mass-production sector, composing the American Federation of Labor. Labor thus became a major component of the New Deal political coalition.

While the First New Deal of 1933 had broad support from most sectors, the Second New Deal challenged the business community. Conservative Democrats, led by Al Smith, fought back with the American Liberty League, savagely attacking Roosevelt and equating him with Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. But Smith overplayed his hand, and his boisterous rhetoric let Roosevelt isolate his opponents and identify them with the wealthy vested interests that opposed the New Deal, strengthening Roosevelt for the 1936 landslide. By contrast, the labor unions, energized by the Wagner Act, signed up millions of new members and became a major backer of Roosevelt's reelections in 1936, 1940 and 1944.

Second term

In contrast to his first term, little major legislation was passed during Roosevelt's second term. There was the Housing Act of 1937, a second Agricultural Adjustment Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938, which created the minimum wage and was the last major domestic reform measure of the New Deal. When the economy began to deteriorate again in late 1937, Roosevelt asked Congress for $5 billion in WPA relief and public works funding. This managed to eventually create as many as 3.3 million WPA jobs by 1938. Projects accomplished under the WPA ranged from new federal courthouses and post offices, to facilities and infrastructure for national parks, bridges and other infrastructure across the country, and architectural surveys and archeological excavations — investments to construct facilities and preserve important resources. Beyond this, however, Roosevelt recommended to a special congressional session only a permanent national farm act, administrative reorganization and regional planning measures, which were leftovers from a regular session. According to Burns, this attempt illustrated Roosevelt's inability to decide on a basic economic program.

The Supreme Court became Roosevelt's primary focus during his second term, after the court overturned many of his programs. In particular in 1935, the Court unanimously ruled that the National Recovery Act (NRA) was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the president. Roosevelt stunned Congress in early 1937 by proposing a law to allow him to appoint up to six new justices, what he referred to as a "persistent infusion of new blood." This "court packing" plan ran into intense political opposition from his own party, led by Vice President Garner, since it upset the separation of powers and gave the President control over the Court. Roosevelt's proposal to expand the court failed; but by 1941, Roosevelt had appointed seven of the nine justices of the court, a change in membership which resulted in a court that began to ratify his policies.

Roosevelt at first had massive support from the rapidly growing labor unions, but they split into bitterly feuding AFL and CIO factions, the latter led by John L. Lewis. Roosevelt pronounced a "plague on both your houses," but labor's disunity weakened the party in the elections from 1938 through 1946.

Economic policies

Great Depression in the United States#Effects

Government spending increased from 8.0% of gross national product (GNP) under Hoover in 1932 to 10.2% of the GNP in 1936. The national debt as a percentage of the GNP had more than doubled under Hoover from 16% to 40% of the GNP in early 1933. It held steady at close to 40% as late as fall 1941, then grew rapidly during the war.

Deficit spending had been recommended by some economists, most notably by John Maynard Keynes of Britain. The GNP was 34% higher in 1936 than in 1932 and 58% higher in 1940 on the eve of war. That is, the economy grew 58% from 1932 to 1940 in 8 years of peacetime, and then grew 56% from 1940 to 1945 in 5 years of wartime.

Unemployment fell dramatically in Roosevelt's first term, from 25% when he took office to 14.3% in 1937. However, it increased slightly to 19.0% in 1938 ("a depression within a depression") and fell to 17.2% in 1939, and then dropped again to 14.6% in 1940 until it reached 1.9% in 1945 during World War II. Total employment during Roosevelt's term expanded by 18.31 million jobs, with an average annual increase in jobs during his administration of 5.3%. Roosevelt considered his New Deal policies as central to his legacy, and in his 1944 State of the Union Address, he advocated that Americans should think of basic economic rights as a Second Bill of Rights.

Roosevelt did not raise income taxes before World War II began; however payroll taxes were introduced to fund the new Social Security program in 1937. He also convinced Congress to spend more on many various programs never before seen in American history. Under the revenue pressures brought on by the depression, most states added or increased taxes, including sales as well as income taxes. Roosevelt's proposal for new taxes on corporate savings were highly controversial in 1936–37, and were rejected by Congress. During the war he pushed for even higher income tax rates for individuals (reaching a marginal tax rate of 91%) and corporations and a cap on high salaries for executives. He also issued Executive Order 9250 in October 1942, later to be rescinded by Congress, which raised the marginal tax rate for salaries exceeding $25,000 (after tax) to 100%, thereby limiting salaries to $25,000 (about $ today). To fund the war, Congress not only broadened the base so that almost every employee paid federal income taxes, but also introduced withholding taxes in 1943.

Conservation and the environment

Roosevelt had a lifelong interest in the environment and conservation starting with his youthful interest in forestry on his family estate. As governor and president, he launched numerous projects for conservation, in the name of protecting the environment, and providing beauty and jobs for the people. He was strengthened in his resolve by the model of his cousin Theodore Roosevelt. Although FDR was never an outdoorsman or sportsman on TR's scale, his growth of the national systems were comparable. FDR created 140 national wildlife refuges (especially for birds) and established 29 national forests and 29 national parks and monuments. He thereby achieved the vision he had set out in 1931:

Heretofore our conservation policy has been merely to preserve as much as possible of the existing forests. Our new policy goes a step further. It will not only preserve the existing forests, but create new ones.

As president he was active in expanding, funding, and promoting the National Park and National Forest systems. He used relief agencies to upgrade the facilities. Their popularity soared, from three million visitors a year at the start of the decade, to 15.5 million in 1939. His favorite agency was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which expended most of its effort on environmental projects. The CCC in a dozen years enrolled 3.4 million young men; they built 13,000 miles of trails, planted two billion trees and upgraded 125,000 miles of dirt roads. Every state had its own state parks, and Roosevelt made sure that WPA and CCC projects were set up to upgrade them as well as the national systems. Roosevelt heavily funded the system of dams to provide flood control, electricity, and modernization of rural communities through the Tennessee Valley Authority, as well as less famous projects transforming western rivers. He was a great dam builder, although 21st century critics would see this as the antithesis of conservation.

Foreign policy

Under President Woodrow Wilson, the United States had entered World War I on the side of the Entente, but the rejection of the League of Nations treaty in 1919 marked the dominance of isolationism from world organizations in American foreign policy. Despite Roosevelt's Wilsonian background, he and Secretary of State Cordell Hull acted with great care not to provoke isolationist sentiment. Roosevelt's "bombshell" message to the world monetary conference in 1933 effectively ended any major efforts by the world powers to collaborate on ending the worldwide depression, and allowed Roosevelt a free hand in economic policy. Roosevelt was a lifelong free-trader and anti-imperialist. Ending European colonialism was one of his objectives.

The main foreign policy initiative of Roosevelt's first term was the Good Neighbor Policy, which was a move toward a more non-interventionist U.S. policy in Latin America. Since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, this area had been seen as an American sphere of influence. American forces were withdrawn from Haiti, and new treaties with Cuba and Panama ended their status as U.S. protectorates. In December 1933, Roosevelt signed the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, renouncing the right to intervene unilaterally in the affairs of Latin American countries.

The isolationist movement was bolstered in the early to mid-1930s by U.S. Senator Gerald Nye and others who succeeded in their effort to stop the "merchants of death" in the U.S. from selling arms abroad. This effort took the form of the Neutrality Acts; the president asked for, but was refused, a provision to give him the discretion to allow the sale of arms to victims of aggression. In the interim, Italy under Benito Mussolini proceeded to overcome Ethiopia, and the Italians joined Nazi Germany in supporting the General Franco and the Nationalist cause in the Spanish Civil War. In 1936 Germany and Japan signed a Anti-Comintern Pact, but they never coordinated their strategies. Congress passed, and the president signed, a mandatory arms embargo at a time when dictators in Europe and Asia were girding for world war. When Japan invaded China in 1937, public opinion strongly favored China, and Roosevelt found various ways to assist that nation. Meanwhile, he secretly stepped up a program to build long-range submarines that could blockade Japan.

In 1938, Germany demanded the annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia, resulting in the Munich Agreement among the great powers of Europe. At the time of the Munich Agreement, Roosevelt said the country would not join a "stop-Hitler bloc" under any circumstances. He made it quite clear that, in the event of German aggression against Czechoslovakia, the U.S. would remain neutral. Roosevelt said in 1939 that France and Britain were America's "first line of defense" and needed American aid, but because of widespread isolationist sentiment, he reiterated the US itself would not go to war. In the spring of 1939, Roosevelt allowed the French to place huge orders with the American aircraft industry on a cash-and-carry basis, as allowed by law. Most of the aircraft ordered had not arrived in France by the time of its collapse in May 1940, so Roosevelt arranged in June 1940 for French orders to be sold to the British.

In August 1939, Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein sent the Einstein–Szilárd letter to Roosevelt, warning the United States of the possibiity of a German project to develop nuclear weapons. Szilard realized that the recently-discovered process of nuclear fission could be used to create a nuclear chain reaction that could be used as a weapon of mass destruction. Roosevelt established the S-1 Uranium Committee, which eventually evolved into the Manhattan Project, which created the first nuclear weapons.

World War II began in September 1939 with Germany's invasion of Poland, with France and Britain declaring war on Germany after the beginning of the invasion. Roosevelt sought ways to assist Britain and France militarily. At first he gave only covert support to repeal of the arms embargo provisions of the Neutrality Act. He began a regular secret correspondence with the First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill in September 1939 — the first of 1,700 letters and telegrams between them — discussing ways of supporting Britain. Roosevelt forged a close personal relationship with Churchill, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in May 1940. In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, followed by invasions of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France in May. After German victory in the Battle of France, Britain became the lone major power at war with Germany. In September 1940, Germany, Japan, and Italy signed the Tripartite Pact, and the three countries became known as the Axis powers.

Roosevelt, who was determined that Britain not be defeated, took advantage of the rapid shifts of public opinion. The fall of Paris shocked American opinion, and isolationist sentiment declined. A consensus was clear that military spending had to be dramatically expanded. There was no consensus on how much the US should risk war in helping Britain. In July 1940, FDR appointed two interventionist Republican leaders, Henry L. Stimson and Frank Knox, as Secretaries of War and the Navy, respectively. Both parties gave support to his plans for a rapid build-up the American military, but the isolationists warned that Roosevelt would get the nation into an unnecessary war with Germany. Congress authorized the nation's first peacetime draft.

Roosevelt used his personal charisma to build support for intervention. America should be the "Arsenal of Democracy", he told his fireside audience. On September 2, 1940, Roosevelt openly defied the Neutrality Acts by passing the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, which, in exchange for military base rights in the British Caribbean Islands, gave 50 WWI American destroyers to Britain. The U.S. also received free base rights in Bermuda and Newfoundland, allowing British forces to be moved to the sharper end of the war; the idea of an exchange of warships for bases such as these originated in the cabinet. Hitler and Mussolini responded to the deal by joining with Japan in the Tripartite Pact.

The agreement with Britain was a precursor of the March 1941 Lend-Lease agreement, which began to direct massive military and economic aid to Britain, the Republic of China, and later the Soviet Union. For foreign policy advice, Roosevelt turned to Harry Hopkins, who became his chief wartime advisor. They sought innovative ways short of going to war to help Britain, whose financial resources were exhausted by the end of 1940. Congress, where isolationist sentiment was waning, passed the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941, allowing the U.S. to give Wales, England, Scotland, China, and later the Soviet Union military supplies. The legislation had hit a logjam until Senators Byrd, Byrnes and Taft added a provision subjecting it to appropriation by Congress. Congress voted to commit to spend $50 billion on military supplies from 1941 to 1945. In sharp contrast to the loans of World War I, there would be no repayment after the war. Until late in 1941, Roosevelt refused Churchill's urgent requests for armed escort of ships bound for Britain, insisting on a more passive patrolling function in the western Atlantic.

Third term and fourth terms

State of the Union (Four Freedoms) (January 6, 1941) FDR's 1941 State of the Union (Four Freedoms speech) Edit 1.ogg Franklin Delano Roosevelt's January 6, 1941 State of the Union Address introducing the theme of the Four Freedoms (starting at 32:02)

Roosevelt's third and fourth terms were dominated by World War II. Roosevelt slowly began re-armament in 1938, although he was facing strong isolationist sentiment from leaders like Senators William Borah and Robert A. Taft. By 1940, re-armament was in high gear, with bipartisan support, partly to expand and re-equip the Army and Navy and partly to become the "Arsenal of Democracy" supporting Britain, France, China and (after June 1941), the Soviet Union. As Roosevelt took a firmer stance against the Axis Powers, American isolationists (including Charles Lindbergh and America First) vehemently attacked the President as an irresponsible warmonger. Roosevelt initiated FBI and Internal Revenue Service investigations of his loudest critics, though no legal actions resulted. Unfazed by these criticisms and confident in the wisdom of his foreign policy initiatives, FDR continued his twin policies of preparedness and aid to the Allied coalition. On December 29, 1940, he delivered his Arsenal of Democracy fireside chat, in which he made the case for involvement in the war directly to the American people. A week later he delivered his famous Four Freedoms speech laying out the case for an American defense of basic rights throughout the world.

Prelude to war

When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Roosevelt agreed to extend Lend-Lease to the Soviets. Thus, Roosevelt had committed the U.S. to the Allied side with a policy of "all aid short of war." Execution of the aid fell victim to foot dragging in the administration so FDR appointed a special assistant, Wayne Coy, to expedite matters. Later that year, a German submarine fired on the U.S. destroyer Greer, and Roosevelt declared that the U.S. Navy would assume an escort role for Allied convoys in the Atlantic as far east as Great Britain and would fire upon German ships or submarines (U-boats) of the Kriegsmarine if they entered the U.S. Navy zone. This "shoot on sight" policy effectively declared naval war on Germany and was favored by Americans by a margin of 2-to-1.

Roosevelt and Churchill conducted a highly secret bilateral meeting in Argentia, Newfoundland, and on August 14, 1941, drafted the Atlantic Charter, conceptually outlining global wartime and postwar goals. All the Allies endorsed it. This was the first of several wartime conferences; Churchill and Roosevelt would meet ten more times in person. In July 1941, Roosevelt had ordered Secretary of War Henry Stimson, to begin planning for total American military involvement. The resulting "Victory Program" provided the Army's estimates necessary for the total mobilization of manpower, industry, and logistics to defeat Germany and Japan. The program also planned to dramatically increase aid to the Allied nations and to have ten million men in arms, half of whom would be ready for deployment abroad in 1943. Roosevelt was firmly committed to the Allied cause, and these plans were formulated before Japan's Attack on Pearl Harbor.

Congress was debating a modification of the Neutrality Act in October 1941, when the USS Kearny, along with other ships, engaged a number of U-boats south of Iceland; the Kearny took fire and lost eleven crewmen. As a result, the amendment of the Neutrality Act to permit the arming of the merchant marine passed both houses, though by a slim margin.

In his role as the leader of the United States before and during World War II, Roosevelt tried to avoid repeating what he saw as Woodrow Wilson's mistakes in World War I. He often made exactly the opposite decision. Wilson called for neutrality in thought and deed, while Roosevelt made it clear his administration strongly favored Britain and China. Unlike the loans in World War I, the United States made large-scale grants of military and economic aid to the Allies through Lend-Lease, with little expectation of repayment. Wilson did not greatly expand war production before the declaration of war; Roosevelt did. Wilson waited for the declaration to begin a draft; Roosevelt started one in 1940. Wilson never made the United States an official ally but Roosevelt did. Wilson never met with the top Allied leaders but Roosevelt did. Wilson proclaimed independent policy, as seen in the 14 Points, while Roosevelt sought a collaborative policy with the Allies. In 1917, United States declared war on Germany; in 1941, Roosevelt waited until the enemy attacked at Pearl Harbor. Wilson refused to collaborate with the Republicans; Roosevelt named leading Republicans to head the War Department and the Navy Department. Wilson let General George Pershing make the major military decisions; Roosevelt made the major decisions in his war including the "Europe first" strategy. He rejected the idea of an armistice and demanded unconditional surrender. Roosevelt often mentioned his role as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Wilson administration, but added that he had profited more from Wilson's errors than from his successes.

Entrance into the war

Events leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor

Franklin Roosevelt signing declaration of war against Japan.jpg Franklin Roosevelt signing declaration of war against Germany.jpg Roosevelt signing declaration of war against Japan (left) on December 8 and against Germany (right) on December 11, 1941.

When Japan occupied northern French Indochina in late 1940, FDR authorized increased aid to the Republic of China, a policy that won widespread popular support. In July 1941, after Japan occupied the remainder of Indo-China, he cut off the sale of oil to Japan, which thus lost more than 95 percent of its oil supply. Roosevelt continued negotiations with the Japanese government, primarily through Secretary Hull. Japan Premier Fumimaro Konoye desired a summit conference with FDR which the US rejected. Konoye was replaced with Minister of War Hideki Tojo. Meanwhile, Roosevelt started sending long-range B-17 bombers to the Philippines.

FDR felt that an attack by the Japanese was probable – most likely in the Dutch East Indies or Thailand. On December 4, 1941, The Chicago Tribune published the complete text of "Rainbow Five", a top-secret war plan drawn up by the War Department. It dealt chiefly with mobilization issues, calling for a 10-million-man army. The great majority of scholars have rejected the conspiracy thesis that Roosevelt, or any other high government officials, knew in advance about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had kept their secrets closely guarded. Senior American officials were aware that war was imminent, but they did not expect an attack on Pearl Harbor.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese struck the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor with a surprise attack, knocking out the main American battleship fleet and killing 2,403 American servicemen and civilians. Roosevelt called for war in his famous "Infamy Speech" to Congress, in which he said: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."

After Pearl Harbor, antiwar sentiment in the United States evaporated overnight. On December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, which responded in kind. Roosevelt and his military advisers implemented a war strategy with the objectives of halting the German advances in the Soviet Union and in North Africa; launching an invasion of western Europe with the aim of crushing Nazi Germany between two fronts; and saving China and defeating Japan. Public opinion, however, gave priority to the destruction of Japan, so American forces were sent chiefly to the Pacific in 1942.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan conquered the Philippines, and the British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia, capturing Singapore in February 1942. Furthermore, Japan cut off the overland supply route to China.

Roosevelt met with Churchill in late December and planned a broad informal alliance among the U.S., Britain, China and the Soviet Union. This included Churchill's initial plan to invade North Africa (called Operation Gymnast) and the primary plan of the U.S. generals for a western Europe invasion, focused directly on Germany (Operation Sledgehammer). An agreement was also reached for a centralized command and offensive in the Pacific theater called ABDA (American, British, Dutch, Australian) to save China and defeat Japan. Nevertheless, the Atlantic First strategy was intact, to Churchill's great satisfaction. On New Year's Day 1942, Churchill and FDR issued the "Declaration by United Nations", representing 26 countries in opposition to the Tripartite Pact of Germany, Italy and Japan.

Homefront

United States home front during World War II

The homefront was subject to dynamic social changes throughout the war, though domestic issues were no longer Roosevelt's most urgent policy concern. The military buildup spurred economic growth. Unemployment fell in half from 7.7 million in spring 1940 (when the first accurate statistics were compiled) to 3.4 million in fall 1941 and fell in half again to 1.5 million in fall 1942, out of a labor force of 54 million. WPA workers were counted as unemployed. There was a growing labor shortage, accelerating the second wave of the Great Migration of African Americans, farmers and rural populations to manufacturing centers. African Americans from the South went to California and other West Coast states for new jobs in the defense industry. To pay for increased government spending, in 1941 FDR proposed that Congress enact an income tax rate of 99.5% on all income over $100,000; when the proposal failed, he issued an executive order imposing an income tax of 100% on income over $25,000, which Congress rescinded.

In June 1941, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, forbidding discrimination on account of "race, creed, color, or national origin" in the hiring of workers in defense related industries. This was a precursor to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to come decades later. Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practices Committee to implement Executive Order 8802. This was the first national program directed against employment discrimination. African Americans who gained defense industry jobs in the 1940s shared in the higher wages; in the 1950s they had gained in relative economic position, about 14% higher than other blacks who were not in such industries. Their moves into manufacturing positions were critical to their success.

In 1942, with the United States now in the conflict, war production increased dramatically, but fell short of the goals established by the President, due in part to manpower shortages. The effort was also hindered by numerous strikes by union workers, especially in the coal mining and railroad industries, which lasted well into 1944. The White House became the ultimate site for labor mediation, conciliation or arbitration. One particular battle royal occurred, between Vice-President Wallace, who headed the Board of Economic Warfare, and Jesse Jones, in charge of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation; both agencies assumed responsibility for acquisition of rubber supplies and came to loggerheads over funding. FDR resolved the dispute by dissolving both agencies.

In 1944, the President requested that Congress enact legislation which would tax all unreasonable profits, both corporate and individual, and thereby support his declared need for over $10 billion in revenue for the war and other government measures. The Congress passed a revenue bill raising $2 billion, which FDR vetoed, though Congress in turn overrode him.

Internment of Germans, Japanese and Italians

When the war began, the danger of a Japanese attack on the coast led to growing pressure to move people of Japanese descent away from the coastal region. This pressure grew due to fears of terrorism, espionage, and/or sabotage; it was also related to anti-Japanese competition and discrimination. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which relocated hundreds of thousands of the "Issei" (first generation of Japanese immigrants who did not have U.S. citizenship) and their children, "Nisei" (who had dual citizenship). They were forced to give up their properties and businesses, and transported to hastily built camps in interior, harsh locations. After both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on the United States in December 1941, many German and Italian citizens who had not taken out American citizenship were arrested or interned.

War strategy

The "Big Three" (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Joseph Stalin), together with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, cooperated informally on a plan in which American and British troops concentrated in the West; Soviet troops fought on the Eastern front; and Chinese, British and American troops fought in Asia and the Pacific. The Allies formulated strategy in a series of high-profile conferences as well as contact through diplomatic and military channels. Roosevelt guaranteed that the U.S. would be the "Arsenal of Democracy" by shipping $50 billion of Lend Lease supplies, primarily to Britain and to the USSR, China and other Allies. Roosevelt coined the term "Four Policemen" to refer this "Big Four" Allied powers of World War II, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and China.

In 1942 Roosevelt set up a new military command structure with Admiral Ernest J. King as Chief of Naval Operations in complete control of the Navy and Marines; General George C. Marshall in charge of the Army and in nominal control of the Air Force, which in practice was commanded by General Hap Arnold. Roosevelt formed a new body, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which made the final decisions on American military strategy. The Joint Chiefs was a White House agency and was chaired by Admiral William D. Leahy. When dealing with Europe, the Joint Chiefs met with their British counterparts and formed the Combined Chiefs of Staff. Unlike the political leaders of the other major powers, Roosevelt rarely overrode his military advisors. His civilian appointees handled the draft and procurement of men and equipment, but no civilians – not even the secretaries of War or Navy, had a voice in strategy. Secretary of War Stimson did control decisions about building and the use of the atomic bomb. Roosevelt avoided the State Department and conducted high level diplomacy through his aides, especially Harry Hopkins. Since Hopkins also controlled $50 billion in Lend Lease funds given to the Allies, they paid attention to him.

The Allies undertook the invasions of French Morocco and Algeria (Operation Torch) in November 1942. FDR very much desired the assault be initiated before election day, but did not order it. FDR and Churchill had another war conference in Casablanca in January 1943; Stalin declined an invitation. The Allies agreed strategically that the Mediterranean focus be continued, with the cross-channel invasion coming later, followed by concentration of efforts in the Pacific. Roosevelt also championed General Henri Giraud as leader of Free France against General Charles de Gaulle. Hitler reinforced his military in North Africa, with the result that the Allied efforts there suffered a temporary setback; Allied attempts to counterbalance this were successful, but resulted in war supplies to the USSR being delayed, as well as the second war front. Later, their assault pursued into Sicily (Operation Husky) followed in July 1943, and of Italy (Operation Avalanche) in September 1943. In 1943, it was apparent to FDR that Stalin, while bearing the brunt of Germany's offensive, had not had sufficient opportunity to participate in war conferences. The President made a concerted effort to arrange a one-on-one meeting with Stalin, in Fairbanks. However, when Stalin learned that Roosevelt and Churchill had postponed the cross-channel invasion a second time, he cancelled. The strategic bombing campaign was escalated in 1944, pulverizing all major German cities and cutting off oil supplies. It was a 50–50 British-American operation. Roosevelt picked Dwight D. Eisenhower, and not George Marshall, to head the Allied cross-channel invasion, Operation Overlord that began on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Some of the most costly battles of the war ensued after the invasion, and the Allies were blocked on the German border in the "Battle of the Bulge" in December 1944. When Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, Allied forces were closing in on Berlin.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific, the Japanese advance reached its maximum extent by June 1942, when the U.S. Navy scored a decisive victory at the Battle of Midway. American and Australian forces then began a slow and costly progress called island hopping or leapfrogging through the Pacific Islands, with the objective of gaining bases from which strategic airpower could be brought to bear on Japan and from which Japan could ultimately be invaded. In contrast to Hitler, Roosevelt took no direct part in the tactical naval operations, though he approved strategic decisions. FDR gave way in part to insistent demands from the public and Congress that more effort be devoted against Japan; he always insisted on Germany first.

Post-war planning

By late 1943, it was apparent that the Allies would ultimately defeat the enemy, so it became increasingly important to make high-level political decisions about the course of the war and the postwar future of Europe. Roosevelt met with Churchill and the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek at the Cairo Conference in November 1943, and then went to the Tehran Conference to confer with Churchill and Stalin. While Churchill warned of potential domination by a Stalin dictatorship over eastern Europe, Roosevelt responded with a statement summarizing his rationale for relations with Stalin: "I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. [...] I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace." At the Tehran Conference, Roosevelt and Churchill discussed plans for a postwar international organization. For his part, Stalin insisted on redrawing the frontiers of Poland. Stalin supported Roosevelt's plan for the United Nations and promised to enter the war against Japan 90 days after Germany was defeated. The 1944 Bretton Woods Conference laid the foundation for economic cooperation after the war.

By the beginning of 1945, with the Allied armies advancing into Germany and the Soviets in control of Poland, the postwar issues came into the open. In February, Roosevelt met with Churchill at Malta and traveled to Yalta, in Crimea, to meet again with Stalin and Churchill. While Roosevelt maintained his confidence that Stalin would keep his Yalta promises regarding free elections in eastern Europe, one month after Yalta ended, Roosevelt's Ambassador to the USSR Averell Harriman cabled Roosevelt that "we must come clearly to realize that the Soviet program is the establishment of totalitarianism, ending personal liberty and democracy as we know it." Two days later, Roosevelt began to admit that his view of Stalin had been excessively optimistic and that "Averell is right."

Fourth term and death

Roosevelt meets with King Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia on board the USS Quincy at the Great Bitter Lake (February 14, 1945)

Last photograph of Roosevelt, taken the day before his death (April 11, 1945)

Franklin Roosevelt funeral procession 1945.jpg

Roosevelt's funeral procession in Washington, D.C., watched by 300,000 spectators (April 14, 1945)

The President left the Yalta Conference on February 12, 1945, flew to Egypt and boarded the USS Quincy operating on the Great Bitter Lake near the Suez Canal. Aboard Quincy, the next day he met with Farouk I, king of Egypt, and Haile Selassie, emperor of Ethiopia. On February 14, he held a historic meeting with King Abdulaziz, the founder of Saudi Arabia, a meeting some historians believe holds profound significance in U.S.–Saudi relations even today. After a final meeting between Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Quincy steamed for Algiers, arriving February 18, at which time Roosevelt conferred with American ambassadors to Britain, France and Italy. At Yalta, Lord Moran, Winston Churchill's physician, commenting on Roosevelt's ill health, said that he was a dying man.

When Roosevelt returned to the United States, he addressed Congress on March 1 about the Yalta Conference, and many were shocked to see how old, thin and frail he looked. He spoke while seated in the well of the House, an unprecedented concession to his physical incapacity. Roosevelt opened his speech by saying, "I hope that you will pardon me for this unusual posture of sitting down during the presentation of what I want to say, but... it makes it a lot easier for me not to have to carry about ten pounds of steel around on the bottom of my legs." Still in full command mentally, he firmly stated "The Crimean Conference ought to spell the end of a system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries– and have always failed. We propose to substitute for all these, a universal organization in which all peace-loving nations will finally have a chance to join."

Roosevelt, who was a chain-smoker, had been in declining health since at least 1940, and by 1944 he was noticeably fatigued. In March 1944, shortly after his 62nd birthday, he underwent testing at Bethesda Hospital and was found to have high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease causing angina pectoris, and congestive heart failure. Hospital physicians and two outside specialists ordered Roosevelt to rest. His personal physician, Admiral Ross McIntire, created a daily schedule that banned business guests for lunch and incorporated two hours of rest each day. During the 1944 election campaign, McIntire denied several times that Roosevelt's health was poor; on October 12, for example, he announced that "The President's health is perfectly OK. There are absolutely no organic difficulties at all." Prior to the election, Roosevelt may have used his authority over the Office of Censorship to quash press reports of his declining physical health.

On March 29, 1945, Roosevelt went to the Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia, to rest before his anticipated appearance at the founding conference of the United Nations. On the afternoon of April 12, Roosevelt said, "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head." He then slumped forward in his chair, unconscious, and was carried into his bedroom. The president's attending cardiologist, Dr. Howard Bruenn, diagnosed a massive cerebral hemorrhage (stroke). At 3:35 p.m. that day, Roosevelt died. As Allen Drury later said, "so ended an era, and so began another." After Roosevelt's death, an editorial by The New York Times declared, "Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House".

On the morning of April 13, Roosevelt's body was placed in a flag-draped coffin and loaded onto the presidential train. After a White House funeral on April 14, Roosevelt was transported back to Hyde Park by train. As was his wish, Roosevelt was buried in the Rose Garden of the Springwood estate, the Roosevelt family home in Hyde Park on April 15. Roosevelt's death was met with shock and grief across the US and around the world. His declining health had not been known to the general public.

Less than a month after his death, on May 8, the war in Europe ended. President Harry S. Truman dedicated Victory in Europe Day and its celebrations to Roosevelt's memory, and kept the flags across the U.S. at half-staff for the remainder of the 30-day mourning period, saying that his only wish was "that Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived to witness this day." World War II ended in September 1945 with the surrender of Japan.

Elections 1934 midterm elections

Although midterm elections normally see the party in control of the presidency lose seats in Congress, the 1934 elections resulted in major Democratic gains in the Senate and minor gains in the House. Roosevelt's New Deal policies were bolstered and several Democrats won in Northern, urban areas as outside of the party's traditional base in the South. After the elections, the Democratic Party controlled over 2/3 of the seats in both the House and the Senate.

1936 re-election

United States presidential election, 1936

In the 1936 presidential election, Roosevelt campaigned on his New Deal programs against Kansas Governor Alf Landon, who accepted much of the New Deal but objected that it was hostile to business and involved too much waste. Roosevelt and Garner won 60.8% of the vote and carried every state except Maine and Vermont. The New Deal Democrats won even larger majorities in Congress. Roosevelt was backed by a coalition of voters which included traditional Democrats across the country, small farmers, the "Solid South" (mostly white Democrats), Catholics, big city political machines, labor unions, northern African Americans, Jews, intellectuals and political liberals. This coalition, frequently referred to as the New Deal coalition, remained largely intact for the Democratic Party until the 1960s.

1938 midterm elections

Roosevelt had always belonged to the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party. He sought a realignment that would solidify liberal dominance by means of landslides in 1932, 1934 and 1936. During the 1932 campaign he predicted privately, "I'll be in the White House for eight years. When those years are over, there'll be a Progressive party. It may not be Democratic, but it will be Progressive." When the third consecutive landslide in 1936 failed to produce major legislation in 1937, his recourse was to purge his conservative opponents in 1938.

Roosevelt became involved in the 1938 Democratic primaries, actively campaigning for challengers who were more supportive of New Deal reform. His targets denounced Roosevelt for trying to take over the Democratic party and to win reelection, using the argument that they were independent. Roosevelt failed badly, managing to defeat only one target, a conservative Democrat from New York City.

In the November 1938 election, Democrats lost six Senate seats and 71 House seats. Losses were concentrated among pro-New Deal Democrats. When Congress reconvened in 1939, Republicans under Senator Robert Taft formed a conservative coalition with Southern Democrats, virtually ending Roosevelt's ability to get his domestic proposals enacted into law. The minimum wage law of 1938 was the last substantial New Deal reform act passed by Congress. Following the autumn Congressional elections in 1938, Congress was now dominated by conservatives, many of whom feared that Roosevelt was "aiming at a dictatorship," according to the historian Hugh Brogan.

1940 re-election

United States presidential election, 1940

The two-term tradition had been an unwritten rule (until the 22nd Amendment after Roosevelt's presidency) since George Washington declined to run for a third term in 1796. Both Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt were attacked for trying to obtain a third non-consecutive term. Roosevelt systematically undercut prominent Democrats who were angling for the nomination, including Vice President John Nance Garner and two cabinet members, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and James Farley, Roosevelt's campaign manager in 1932 and 1936, the Postmaster General and the Democratic Party chairman. Roosevelt moved the convention to Chicago where he had strong support from the city machine (which controlled the auditorium sound system). At the convention the opposition was poorly organized, but Farley had packed the galleries. Roosevelt sent a message saying that he would not run unless he was drafted, and that the delegates were free to vote for anyone. The delegates were stunned; then the loudspeaker screamed "We want Roosevelt... The world wants Roosevelt!" The delegates went wild and he was nominated by 946 to 147 on the first ballot. The tactic employed by Roosevelt was not entirely successful, as his goal had been to be drafted by acclamation. The new vice-presidential nominee was Henry Agard Wallace, a liberal intellectual who was Secretary of Agriculture.

In his campaign against Republican Wendell Willkie, Roosevelt stressed both his proven leadership experience and his intention to do everything possible to keep the United States out of war. In one of his speeches he declared to potential recruits that "you boys are not going to be sent into any foreign war." He won the 1940 election with 55% of the popular vote and 38 of the 48 states, and thus winning almost 85% of the electoral vote (449 to 82).

1942 midterm elections

The 1942 midterm election saw sizable Republican gains in both houses of Congress, particularly the House of Representatives. The election bolstered the strength of the conservative coalition. Voter turnout was just 33.9%, lower than any subsequent national election (as of 2014).

1944 re-election

United States presidential election, 1944

Roosevelt faced little opposition from his own party during his 1944 re-election campaign. He easily won the presidential nomination of the 1944 Democratic National Convention, making him the first person to serve as a major party nominee in four separate presidential elections. However, party leaders insisted that Roosevelt drop Henry A. Wallace, who had been erratic as Vice President. James F. Byrnes of South Carolina, a top FDR aide, was considered ineligible because he had left the Catholic Church and many Catholic voters would not vote for him. Roosevelt replaced Wallace with Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman, best known for his battle against corruption and inefficiency in wartime spending. The Republicans nominated Thomas E. Dewey, the liberal governor of New York. The opposition lambasted FDR and his administration for domestic corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, tolerance of Communism, and military blunders. Labor unions, which had grown rapidly in the war, threw their all-out support behind Roosevelt. Roosevelt and Truman won the 1944 election by a comfortable margin, defeating Dewey and his running mate John W. Bricker with 53.4% of the popular vote and 432 out of the 531 electoral votes. The President campaigned in favor of a strong United Nations, so his victory symbolized support for the nation's future participation in the international community.

Legacy

The rapid expansion of government programs that occurred during Roosevelt's term redefined the role of the government in the United States, and Roosevelt's advocacy of government social programs was instrumental in redefining liberalism for coming generations. Roosevelt also firmly established the United States' leadership role on the world stage, with his role in shaping and financing World War II. His isolationist critics faded away, and even the Republicans joined in his overall policies. After his death, his widow continued to be a forceful presence in US and world politics, serving as delegate to the conference which established the United Nations and championing civil rights and liberalism generally. Many members of his administration played leading roles in the administrations of Truman, Kennedy and Johnson, each of whom embraced Roosevelt's political legacy.

A majority of polls rank Roosevelt as the second or third greatest president, consistent with other surveys. Roosevelt is the sixth most admired person from the 20th century by U.S. citizens, according to Gallup. Roosevelt was also widely beloved for his role in repealing Prohibition.

Both during and after his terms, critics of Roosevelt questioned not only his policies and positions, but even more so the consolidation of power in the White House at a time when dictators were taking over Europe and Asia. Many of the New Deal programs were abolished during the war by FDR's opponents. The powerful new wartime agencies were set up to be temporary and expire at war's end.

See also

Criticism of Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt's record on civil rights

References Bibliography Biographical

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom https://books.google.com/books?id=lYVCi70HaigC .

Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt : despite the title, a highly favorable biography by scholar. Plus Author Webcast Interview at the Pritzker Military Library on January 22, 2009

Roosevelt: the soldier of freedom http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00626 .

: the most detailed scholarly biography; ends in 1934.

https://archive.org/details/rooseveltinretro00gunt

The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly

A Companion to Franklin D. Roosevelt ; 35 essays by scholars. online

Scholarly topical studies

The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope .

Brinkley, Douglas G. Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America (2016) excerpt; On hisenvironmental and conservation beliefs & policies.

FDR, Dewey, and the Election of 1944 .

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940

.

From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War

A Companion to Franklin D. Roosevelt , 768 pages; essays by scholars covering major historiographical themes. online

, the classic narrative history. Strongly supports FDR.

Foreign policy and World War II

Warlords: An Extraordinary Re-creation of World War II Through the Eyes and Minds of Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin

The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman, and the destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941–1945

Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom

The Grand Alliance

Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945

Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War . Detailed history of how FDR handled the war.

Churchill and Roosevelt at War: The War They Fought and the Peace They Hoped to Make

Roosevelt and Hopkins: an Intimate History http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.00749 , Pulitzer Prize.

Criticism

Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt's Foreign Policies, 1933–1945 . 248 pp.

, former FDR supporter condemns all aspects of FDR.

by libertarian economist who blames both Hoover and FDR.

--> New Deal Home › Unlabelled › New Deal

Rabu, 10 Desember 2014

New Deal Diposting oleh Unknown - 16.00 - The New Deal

was a series of domestic programs enacted in the United States between 1933 and 1938, and a few that came later. They included both laws passed by Congress as well as presidential executive orders during the first term (1933â€"37) of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were in response to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call the "3 Rs": Relief, Recovery, and Reform. That is Relief for the unemployed and poor; Recovery of the economy to normal

levels; and Reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression.

The New Deal produced a political realignment, making the Democratic Party the majority (as well as the party that held the White House for seven out of nine Presidential terms from 1933 to 1969), with its base in liberal ideas, the white South, traditional Democrats, big city machines, and the newly empowered labor unions and ethnic minorities. The Republicans were split, with conservatives opposing the entire New Deal as an enemy of business and growth, and liberals accepting some of it and promising to make it more efficient. The realignment crystallized into the New Deal Coalition that dominated most presidential elections into the 1960s, while the opposition Conservative Coalition largely controlled Congress from 1937 to 1963. By 1936 the term "liberal" typically was used for supporters of the New Deal, and "conservative" for its opponents. As noted by Alexander Hicks, "Roosevelt, backed by rare, non-Southern Democrat majoritiesâ€"270 non-Southern Democrat representatives and 71 non-Southern Democrat senatorsâ€"spelled Second New Deal reform."

Many historians distinguish between a "First New Deal" (1933â€"34) and a "Second New Deal" (1935â€"38), with the second one more liberal and more controversial. The "First New Deal" (1933â€"34) dealt with diverse groups, from banking and railroads to industry and farming, all of which demanded help for economic survival. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration, for instance, provided $500 million for relief operations by states and cities, while the short-lived CWA (Civil Works Administration) gave localities money to operate make-work projects in 1933â€"34.

The "Second New Deal" in 1935â€"38 included the Wagner Act to promote labor unions, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief program (which made the federal government by far the largest single employer in the nation), the Social Security Act, and new programs to aid tenant farmers and migrant workers. The final major items of New Deal legislation were the creation of the United States Housing Authority and Farm Security Administration, both in 1937, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which set maximum hours and minimum wages for most categories of workers.

The economic downturn of 1937â€"38, and the bitter split between the AFL and CIO labor unions led to major Republican gains in Congress in 1938. Conservative Republicans and Democrats in Congress joined in the informal Conservative Coalition. By 1942â€"43 they shut down relief programs such as the WPA and CCC and blocked major liberal proposals. Roosevelt himself turned his attention to the war effort, and won reelection in 1940 and 1944. The Supreme Court declared the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the first version of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) unconstitutional, however the AAA was rewritten and then upheld. As the first Republican president elected after FDR, Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953â€"61) left the New Deal largely intact, even expanding it in some areas. In the 1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society used the New Deal as inspiration for a dramatic expansion of liberal programs, which Republican Richard M. Nixon generally retained. After 1974, however, the call for deregulation of the economy gained bipartisan support. The New Deal regulation of banking (Glassâ€"Steagall Act) was suspended in the 1990s. Many New Deal programs remain active, with some still operating under the original names, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The largest programs still in existence today are the Social Security System and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Origins Economic collapse (1929â€"1933)

From 1929 to 1933 manufacturing output decreased by one third. Prices fell by 20%, causing deflation that made repaying debts much harder. Unemployment in the U.S. increased from 4% to 25%. Additionally, one-third of all employed persons were downgraded to working part-time on much smaller paychecks. In the aggregate, almost 50% of the nation's human work-power was going unused.

Before the New Deal, there was no insurance on deposits at banks. When thousands of banks closed, depositors lost their savings. At that time there was no national safety net, no public unemployment insurance, and no Social Security. Relief for the poor was the responsibility of families, private charity, and local governments, but as conditions worsened year by year, demand skyrocketed and their combined resources increasingly fell far short of demand.

The depression had devastated the nation. As Roosevelt took the oath of office at noon on March 4, 1933, the state governors had closed every bank in the nation; no one could cash a check or get at their savings. The unemployment rate was about 25% and higher in major industrial and mining centers. Farm income had fallen by over 50% since 1929. 844,000 nonfarm mortgages had been foreclosed, 1930â€"33, out of five million in all. Political and business leaders feared revolution and anarchy. Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., who remained wealthy during the Depression, stated years later that "in those days I felt and said I would be willing to part with half of what I had if I could be sure of keeping, under law and order, the other half".

New Deal (1933â€"1938)

Upon accepting the 1932 Democratic nomination for president, Franklin Roosevelt promised "a new deal for the American people".

Roosevelt entered office without a specific set of plans for dealing with the Great Depression; so he improvised as Congress listened to a very wide variety of voices. Among Roosevelt's more famous advisers was an informal "Brain Trust": a group that tended to view pragmatic government intervention in the economy positively. His choice for Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, greatly influenced his initiatives. Her list of what her priorities would be if she took the job illustrates: "a forty-hour workweek, a minimum wage, worker's compensation, unemployment compensation, a federal law banning child labor, direct federal aid for unemployment relief, Social Security, a revitalized public employment service and health insurance."

The New Deal policies drew from many different ideas proposed earlier in the 20th century. Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold led efforts that hearkened back to an anti-monopoly tradition rooted in American politics by figures such as Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, an influential adviser to many New Dealers, argued that "bigness" (referring, presumably, to corporations) was a negative economic force, producing waste and inefficiency. However, the anti-monopoly group never had a major impact on New Deal policy. Other leaders such as Hugh S. Johnson of the NRA took ideas from the Woodrow Wilson Administration, advocating techniques used to mobilize the economy for World War I. They brought ideas and experience from the government controls and spending of 1917â€"18. Other New Deal planners revived experiments suggested in the 1920s, such as the TVA.

The "First New Deal" (1933â€"34) encompassed the proposals offered by a wide spectrum of groups. (Not included was the Socialist Party, whose influence was all but destroyed.) This first phase of the New Deal was also characterized by fiscal conservatism (see Economy Act, below) and experimentation with several different, sometimes contradictory, cures for economic ills. The consequences were uneven. Some programs, especially the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the silver program, have been widely seen as failures. Other programs lasted about a decade; some became permanent. The economy shot upward, with FDR's first term marking one of the fastest periods of GDP growth in history. Though a downturn in 1937â€"38 raised questions about just how successful the policies were, the great majority of economists and historians agree that they were an overall benefit.

The New Deal faced some vocal conservative opposition. The first organized opposition in 1934 came from the American Liberty League led by conservative Democrats such as 1924 and 1928 presidential candidates John W. Davis and Al Smith. There was also a large but loosely affiliated group of New Deal opponents, who are commonly called the Old Right. This group included politicians, intellectuals, writers, and newspaper editors of various philosophical persuasions including classical liberals and conservatives, both Democrats and Republicans.

The New Deal represented a significant shift in politics and domestic policy. It especially led to greatly increased federal regulation of the economy. It also marked the beginning of complex social programs and growing power of labor unions. The effects of the New Deal remain a source of controversy and debate among economists and historians.

First New Deal (1933â€"1934)

The First Hundred Days (1933)

The American people were generally extremely dissatisfied with the crumbling economy, mass unemployment, declining wages and profits and especially Hoover's policies such as the Smootâ€"Hawley Tariff Act and the Revenue Act of 1932. Roosevelt entered office with enormous political capital. Americans of all political persuasions were demanding immediate action, and Roosevelt responded with a remarkable series of new programs in the "first hundred days" of the administration, in which he met with Congress for 100 days. During those 100 days of lawmaking, Congress granted every request Roosevelt asked, and passed a few programs (such as the FDIC to insure bank accounts) that he opposed. Ever since, presidents have been judged against FDR for what they accomplished in their first 100 days. Walter Lippmann famously noted:

At the end of February we were a congeries of disorderly panic-stricken mobs and factions. In the hundred days from March to June we became again an organized nation confident of our power to provide for our own security and to control our own destiny.

The economy had hit bottom in March 1933 and then started to expand. Economic indicators show the economy reached nadir in the first days of March, then began a steady, sharp upward recovery. Thus the Federal Reserve Index of Industrial Production sank to its lowest point of 52.8 in July 1932 (with 1935â€"39 = 100) and was practically unchanged at 54.3 in March 1933; however by July 1933, it reached 85.5, a dramatic rebound of 57% in four months. Recovery was steady and strong until 1937. Except for employment, the economy by 1937 surpassed the levels of the late 1920s. The Recession of 1937 was a temporary downturn. Private sector employment, especially in manufacturing, recovered to the level of the 1920s but failed to advance further until the war. Chart 2 shows the growth in employment without adjusting for population growth. The U.S. population was 124,840,471 in 1932 and 128,824,829 in 1937, an increase of 3,984,468. The ratio of these numbers, times the number of jobs in 1932, means there was a need for 938,000 more 1937 jobs to maintain the same employment level.

Fiscal policy

The Economy Act, drafted by Budget Director Lewis Williams Douglas, was passed on March 14, 1933. The act proposed to balance the "regular" (non-emergency) federal budget by cutting the salaries of government employees and cutting pensions to veterans by fifteen percent. It saved $500 million per year and reassured deficit hawks, such as Douglas, that the new President was fiscally conservative. Roosevelt argued there were two budgets: the "regular" federal budget, which he balanced, and the

emergency budget

, which was needed to defeat the depression. It was imbalanced on a temporary basis.

Roosevelt initially favored balancing the budget, but soon found himself running spending deficits to fund his numerous programs. Douglas, howeverâ€"rejecting the distinction between a regular and emergency budgetâ€"resigned in 1934 and became an outspoken critic of the New Deal. Roosevelt strenuously opposed the Bonus Bill that would give World War I veterans a cash bonus. Congress finally passed it over his veto in 1936, and the Treasury distributed $1.5 billion in cash as bonus welfare benefits to 4 million veterans just before the 1936 election.

New Dealers never accepted the Keynesian argument for government spending as a vehicle for recovery. Most economists of the era, along with Henry Morgenthau of the Treasury Department, rejected Keynesian solutions and favored balanced budgets.

Banking reform

At the beginning of the Great Depression the economy was destabilized by bank failures followed by credit crunches. The initial reasons were substantial losses in investment banking, followed by bank runs. Bank runs occurred when a large number of customers withdrew their deposits because they believed the bank might become insolvent. As the bank run progressed, it generated a self-fulfilling prophecy: as more people withdraw their deposits, the likelihood of default increased, and this encouraged further withdrawals. It destabilized many banks to the point where they faced bankruptcy. Between 1929 and 1933 40% of all banks (9.490 out of 23.697 banks) went bankrupt. Much of the Great Depression's economic damage was caused directly by bank runs.

Herbert Hoover had already considered a

bank holiday

to prevent further bank runs, but rejected the idea because he was afraid to trip a panic. Roosevelt, however, gave a radio address, held in the atmosphere of a Fireside Chat, and explained to the public in simple terms the causes of the banking crisis, what the government will do and how the population could help. He closed all the banks in the country and kept them all closed until he could pass new legislation.

On March 9, Roosevelt sent to Congress the Emergency Banking Act, drafted in large part by Hoover's top advisors. The act was passed and signed into law the same day. It provided for a system of reopening sound banks under Treasury supervision, with federal loans available if needed. Three-quarters of the banks in the Federal Reserve System reopened within the next three days. Billions of dollars in hoarded currency and gold flowed back into them within a month, thus stabilizing the banking system. By the end of 1933, 4,004 small local banks were permanently closed and merged into larger banks. Their deposits totalled $3.6 billion; depositors lost a total of $540 million, and eventually received on average 85 cents on the dollar of their deposits; it is a common myth that they received nothing back. The Glassâ€"Steagall Act limited commercial bank securities activities and affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms to regulate speculations. It also established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insured deposits for up to $2,500, ending the risk of runs on banks.

This banking reform offered unprecedented stability: While throughout the 1920s more than five hundred banks failed per year; it was less than ten banks per year after 1933.

Monetary reform

Under the gold standard, the United States kept the Dollar convertible to gold. The FED would have had to execute an expansionary monetary policy to fight the deflation and to inject liquidity into the banking system to prevent it from crumblingâ€"but lower interest rates would have led to an gold outflow. Under the gold standards priceâ€"specie flow mechanism countries that lost gold but nevertheless wanted to maintain the gold standard had to permit their money supply to decrease and the domestic price level to decline (deflation). As long as the FED had to defend the gold parity of the Dollar it had to sit idle while the banking system crumbled.

In March and April in a series of laws and executive orders, the government suspended the gold standard. Roosevelt stopped the outflow of gold by forbidding the export of gold except under license from the Treasury. Anyone holding significant amounts of gold coinage was mandated to exchange it for the existing fixed price of US dollars. The Treasury no longer paid out gold in exchange for dollars, and gold would no longer be considered valid legal tender for debts in private and public contracts.

The dollar was allowed to float freely on foreign exchange markets with no guaranteed price in gold. With the passage of the Gold Reserve Act in 1934 the nominal price of gold was changed from $20.67 per troy ounce to $35. These measures enabled the Fed to increase the amount of money in circulation to the level the economy needed. Markets immediately responded well to the suspension, in the hope that the decline in prices would finally end. In her work

What ended the Great Depression?

(1992) Christina Romer argued that this policy raised industrial production by 25% until 1937 and by 50% until 1942.

Securities regulation

Before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, there was no regulation of securities at the federal level. Even firms whose securities were publicly traded published no regular reports or even worse rather misleading reports based on arbitrarily selected data. To avoid another Wall Street Crash the Securities Act of 1933 was enacted. It required the disclosure of the balance sheet, profit and loss statement, the names and compensations of corporate officers, about firms whose securities were traded. Additionally those reports had to be verified by independent auditors. In 1934 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was established to regulate the stock market and prevent corporate abuses relating to the sale of securities and corporate reporting.

Repeal of Prohibition

In a measure that garnered substantial popular support for his New Deal, Roosevelt moved to put to rest one of the most divisive cultural issues of the 1920s. He signed the bill to legalize the manufacture and sale of alcohol, an interim measure pending the repeal of Prohibition, for which a constitutional amendment of repeal (the 21st) was already in process. The repeal amendment was ratified later in 1933. States and cities gained additional new revenue, and Roosevelt secured his popularity especially in the cities and ethnic areas by helping the beer start flowing.

Relief

Relief was the immediate effort to help the one-third of the population that was hardest hit by the depression. Also, relief was aimed at providing temporary help to suffering and unemployed Americans.

Public works

To prime the pump and cut unemployment, the NIRA created the Public Works Administration (PWA), a major program of public works, which organized and provided funds for the building of useful works such as government buildings, airports, hospitals, schools, roads, bridges, and dams. From 1933 to 1935 PWA spent $3.3 billion with private companies to build 34,599 projects, many of them quite large.

Under Roosevelt, many unemployed persons were put to work on a wide range of government financed public works projects, building bridges, airports, dams, post offices, courthouses, and thousands of miles of road. Through reforestation and flood control, they reclaimed millions of hectares of soil from erosion and devastation. As noted by one authority, Roosevelt's New Deal "was literally stamped on the American landscape".

Farm and rural programs

Rural America was a high priority for Roosevelt and his energetic Secretary of Agriculture, Henry A. Wallace. FDR believed that full economic recovery depended upon the recovery of agriculture, and raising farm prices was a major tool, even though it meant higher food prices for the poor living in cities.

Many rural people lived in severe poverty, especially in the South. Major programs addressed to their needs included the Resettlement Administration (RA), the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), rural welfare projects sponsored by the WPA, National Youth Administration (NYA), Forest Service and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), including school lunches, building new schools, opening roads in remote areas, reforestation, and purchase of marginal lands to enlarge national forests. In 1933, the Administration launched the Tennessee Valley Authority, a project involving dam construction planning on an unprecedented scale to curb flooding, generate electricity, and modernize poor farms in the Tennessee Valley region of the Southern United States. Under the Farmers' Relief Act of 1933, the government paid compensation to farmers who reduced output, thereby rising prices. As a result of this legislation, the average income of farmers almost doubled by 1937.

In the 1920s farm production had increased dramatically thanks to mechanization, more potent insecticides and increased use of fertilizer. Due to an overproduction of agricultural products farmers faced a severe and chronic agricultural depression throughout the 1920s. The Depression even worsened the agricultural crises. At the beginning of 1933 agricultural markets nearly faced collapse. Farm prices were so low that for example in Montana wheat was rotting in the fields because it could not be profitably harvested. In Oregon sheep were slaughtered and left to the buzzards because meat prices were not sufficient to warrant transportation to markets.

Roosevelt was keenly interested in farm issues and believed that true prosperity would not return until farming was prosperous. Many different programs were directed at farmers. The first 100 days produced the Farm Security Act to raise farm incomes by raising the prices farmers received, which was achieved by reducing total farm output. The Agricultural Adjustment Act created the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) in May 1933. The act reflected the demands of leaders of major farm organizations, especially the Farm Bureau, and reflected debates among Roosevelt's farm advisers such as Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace, M.L. Wilson, Rexford Tugwell, and George Peek.

The AAA aimed to raise prices for commodities through artificial scarcity. The AAA used a system of

domestic allotments

, setting total output of corn, cotton, dairy products, hogs, rice, tobacco, and wheat. The farmers themselves had a voice in the process of using government to benefit their incomes. The AAA paid land owners subsidies for leaving some of their land idle with funds provided by a new tax on food processing. To force up farm prices to the point of "parity" 10Â million acres (40,000Â km

2

) of growing cotton was plowed up, bountiful crops were left to rot, and six million piglets were killed and discarded.

The idea was to give farmers a "fair exchange value" for their products in relation to the general economy ("parity level"). Farm incomes and the income for the general population recovered fast since the Beginning of 1933. Still, food prices remained well below the 1929 peak.

The AAA established an important and long-lasting federal role in the planning on the entire agricultural sector of the economy and was the first program on such a scale on behalf of the troubled agricultural economy. The original AAA did not provide for any sharecroppers or tenants or farm laborers who might become unemployed, but there were other New Deal programs especially for them.

A Gallup Poll printed in the

Washington Post

revealed that a majority of the American public opposed the AAA. In 1936, the Supreme Court declared the AAA to be unconstitutional, stating that "a statutory plan to regulate and control agricultural production, [is] a matter beyond the powers delegated to the federal government". The AAA was replaced by a similar program that did win Court approval. Instead of paying farmers for letting fields lie barren, this program instead subsidized them for planting soil enriching crops such as alfalfa that would not be sold on the market. Federal regulation of agricultural production has been modified many times since then, but together with large subsidies is still in effect in 2012.

The Farm Tenancy Act in 1937 was the last major New Deal legislation that concerned farming. It, in turn, created the Farm Security Administration (FSA), which replaced the Resettlement Administration.

The Food Stamp Planâ€"a major new welfare program for urban poorâ€"was established in 1939 to provide stamps to poor people who could use them to purchase food at retail outlets. The program ended during wartime prosperity in 1943, but was restored in 1961. It survived into the 21st century with little controversy because it was seen to benefit the urban poor, food producers, grocers and wholesalers, as well as farmers. Thus it gained support from both liberal and conservative Congressmen. In 2013, however, Tea Party activists in the House tried to end the program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, while the Senate fought to preserve it.

Recovery

Recovery was the effort in numerous programs to restore the economy to normal health. By most economic indicators this was achieved by 1937â€"except for unemployment, which remained stubbornly high until World War II began. Recovery was designed to help the economy bounce back from depression.

NRA "Blue Eagle" campaign

Roosevelt's advisers believed, that excessive competition and technical progress had led to overproduction and lowered wages and prices, which they believed lowered demand and employment (Deflation). He argued that government economic planning was necessary to remedy this:

...A mere builder of more industrial plants, a creator of more railroad systems, an organizer of more corporations, is as likely to be a danger as a help. Our task is not ... necessarily producing more goods. It is the soberer, less dramatic business of administering resources and plants already in hand.

From 1929 to 1933, the industrial economy had been suffering from a vicious cycle of deflation. Since 1931, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the voice of the nation's organized business, promoted an anti-deflationary scheme that would permit trade associations to cooperate in government-instigated cartels to stabilize prices within their industries. While existing antitrust laws clearly forbade such practices, organized business found a receptive ear in the Roosevelt Administration.

New Deal economists argued that cut-throat competition had hurt many businesses and that with prices having fallen 20% and more, "deflation" exacerbated the burden of debt and would delay recovery. They rejected a strong move in Congress to limit the workweek to 30 hours. Instead their remedy, designed in cooperation with big business, was the NIRA. It included stimulus funds for the WPA to spend, and sought to raise prices, give more bargaining power for unions (so the workers could purchase more) and reduce harmful competition. At the center of the NIRA was the National Recovery Administration (NRA), headed by former General Hugh S. Johnson, who had been a senior economic official in World War I. Johnson called on every business establishment in the nation to accept a stopgap "blanket code": a minimum wage of between 20 and 45 cents per hour, a maximum workweek of 35â€"45 hours, and the abolition of child labor. Johnson and Roosevelt contended that the "blanket code" would raise consumer purchasing power and increase employment.

To mobilize political support for the NRA, Johnson launched the "NRA Blue Eagle" publicity campaign to boost what he called "industrial self-government". The NRA brought together leaders in each industry to design specific sets of codes for that industry; the most important provisions were anti-deflationary floors below which no company would lower prices or wages, and agreements on maintaining employment and production. In a remarkably short time, the NRA announced agreements from almost every major industry in the nation. By March 1934, industrial production was 45% higher than in March 1933. Donald Richberg, who soon replaced Johnson as the head of the NRA, said:

There is no choice presented to American business between intelligently planned and uncontrolled industrial operations and a return to the gold-plated anarchy that masqueraded as "rugged individualism" ... Unless industry is sufficiently socialized by its private owners and managers so that great essential industries are operated under public obligation appropriate to the public interest in them, the advance of political control over private industry is inevitable.

By the time NRA ended in May 1935, industrial production was 55% higher than in May 1933. In addition, well over 2 million employers accepted the new standards laid down by the NRA, which had introduced a minimum wage and an eight-hour workday, together with abolishing child labor. On May 27, 1935, the NRA was found to be unconstitutional by a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of

Schechter v. United States

. On that same day, the Court unanimously struck down the Frazier-Lemke Act portion of the New Deal as unconstitutional. After the end of the NRA quotas in the oil industry were fixed by the Railroad Commission of Texas with Tom Connally's federal Hot Oil Act of 1935, which guaranteed that illegal "hot oil" would not be sold.

Employment in private sector factories recovered to the level of the late 1920s by 1937 but did not grow much bigger until the war came and manufacturing employment leaped from 11 million in 1940 to 18 million in 1943.

Housing Sector

The New Deal had an important impact in the housing field. The New Deal followed and increased President Hoover's lead and seek measures. The New Deal sought to stimulate the private home building industry and increase the number of individuals who owned homes. The New Deal implemented two new housing agencies; Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). HOLC set uniform national appraisal methods and simplified the mortgage process. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) created national standards for home construction.

The New Deal helped increase the number of Americans who owned homes. Before the New Deal only four out of 10 Americans owned homes; this was because the standard mortgage lasted only five to 10 years and had interest as high as 8%. These conditions severely limited the accessibility to housing for most Americans. Under the New Deal, Americans had access to 30-year mortgages, the standardized appraisal and construction standards helped open up the housing market to more Americans.

Reform

Reform was based on the assumption that the depression was caused by the inherent instability of the market and that government intervention was necessary to rationalize and stabilize the economy, and to balance the interests of farmers, business and labor. Reforms targeted the causes of the depression and sought to prevent a crisis like it from happening again. In other words, financially rebuilding the U.S. while ensuring not to repeat history.

Trade liberalization

There is consensus amongst economic historians that protectionist policies, culminating in the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 worsened the Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt already spoke against the act while campaigning for president during 1932. In 1934 the Reciprocal Tariff Act was drafted by Cordell Hull. It gave the president power to negotiate bilateral, reciprocal trade agreements with other countries. The act enabled Roosevelt to liberalize American trade policy around the globe. It is widely credited with ushering in the era of liberal trade policy that persists to this day.

Puerto Rico

A separate set of programs operated in Puerto Rico, headed by the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration. It promoted land reform and helped small farms; it set up farm cooperatives, promoted crop diversification, and helped local industry. The Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration was directed by Juan Pablo Montoya Sr. from 1935 to 1937.

Second New Deal (1935â€"1938)

In the spring of 1935, responding to the setbacks in the Court, a new skepticism in Congress, and the growing popular clamour for more dramatic action, the Administration proposed or endorsed several important new initiatives. Historians refer to them as the "Second New Deal" and note that it was more liberal and more controversial than the "First New Deal" of 1933â€"34.

Social Security Act

Until 1935 there were just a dozen states that had old age insurance laws but these programs were woefully underfunded and therefore almost worthless. Just one state (Wisconsin) had an insurance program. The United States was the only modern industrial country, where people faced the Depression without any national system of social security. Even the work programs of the "First New Deal" were just meant as immediate relief, destined to run less than a decade.

The most important program of 1935, and perhaps the New Deal as a whole, was the Social Security Act, drafted by Frances Perkins. It established a permanent system of universal retirement pensions (Social Security), unemployment insurance, and welfare benefits for the handicapped and needy children in families without father present. It established the framework for the U.S. welfare system. Roosevelt insisted that it should be funded by payroll taxes rather than from the general fund; he said, "We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program."

Compared with the social security systems in western European countries, the Social Security Act of 1935 was rather conservative. But for the first time the federal government took responsibility for the economic security of the aged, the temporarily unemployed, dependent children and the handicapped.

Labor relations

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, finally guaranteed workers the rights to collective bargaining through unions of their own choice. The Act also established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to facilitate wage agreements and to suppress the repeated labor disturbances. The Wagner Act did not compel employers to reach agreement with their employees, but it opened possibilities for American labor. The result was a tremendous growth of membership in the labor unions, especially in the mass-production sector, composing the American Federation of Labor. Labor thus became a major component of the New Deal political coalition.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set maximum hours (44 per week) and minimum wages (25 cents per hour) for most categories of workers. Child labour of children under the age of 16 was forbidden, children under 18 years were forbidden to work in hazardous employment. As a result the wages of 300,000 people were increased and the hours of 1.3 million were reduced. It was the last major New Deal legislation that Roosevelt succeeded in enacting into law before the Conservative Coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats won control of Congress that year. While he could usually use the veto to restrain Congress, it could block any Roosevelt legislation it disliked.

Works Progress Administration

Roosevelt nationalized unemployment relief through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), headed by close friend Harry Hopkins. Roosevelt had insisted that the projects had to be costly in terms of labor, long-term beneficial, and the WPA was forbidden to compete with private enterprises (therefore the workers had to be paid smaller wages). The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created to return the unemployed to the work force. The WPA financed a variety of projects such as hospitals, schools, and roads, and employed more than 8.5 million workers who built 650,000 miles of highways and roads, 125,000 public buildings, as well as bridges, reservoirs, irrigation systems, parks, playgrounds and so on.

Prominent projects were the Lincoln Tunnel, the Triborough Bridge, the LaGuardia Airport, the Overseas Highway and the San Francisco â€" Oakland Bay Bridge. The Rural Electrification Administration used co-ops to bring electricity to rural areas, many of which still operate. The National Youth Administration was another the semi-autonomous WPA program for youth. Its Texas director, Lyndon Baines Johnson, later used the NYA as a model for some of his Great Society programs in the 1960s. The WPA was organized by states, but New York City had its own branch Federal One, which created jobs for writers, musicians, artists, and theater personnel. It became a hunting ground for conservatives searching for Communist employees.

The Federal Writers' Project operated in every state, where it created a famous guide book; it also catalogued local archives and hired many writers, including Margaret Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anzia Yezierska, to document folklore. Other writers interviewed elderly ex-slaves and recorded their stories. Under the Federal Theater Project, headed by charismatic Hallie Flanagan, actresses and actors, technicians, writers, and directors put on stage productions. The tickets were inexpensive or sometimes free, making theater available to audiences unaccustomed to attending plays. One Federal Art Project paid 162 trained woman artists on relief to paint murals or create statues for newly built post offices and courthouses. Many of these works of art can still be seen in public buildings around the country, along with murals sponsored by the Treasury Relief Art Project of the Treasury Department. During its existence, the Federal Theatre Project provided jobs for circus people, musicians, actors, artists, and playwrights, together with increasing public appreciation of the arts.

Tax policy

In 1935, Roosevelt called for a tax program called the

Wealth Tax Act

(Revenue Act of 1935) to redistribute wealth. But there was more rhetoric than revenue in that proposal. The bill imposed an income tax of 79% on incomes over $5 million. Since that was an extraordinary high income in the 1930s, the highest tax rate actually covered just one individual â€" John D. Rockefeller. The bill was expected to raise only about $250 million in additional funds, so revenue was not the primary goal. Morgenthau called it "more or less a campaign document". In a private conversation with Raymond Moley, Roosevelt admitted that the purpose of the bill was "stealing Huey Long's thunder" by making Long's supporters his own. At the same time, it raised the bitterness of the rich who called Roosevelt "a traitor to his class" and the wealth tax act a "soak the rich tax".

A tax called the undistributed profits tax was enacted in 1936. This time the primary purpose was revenue, since Congress had enacted the Adjusted Compensation Payment Act, calling for payments of $2 billion to World War I veterans. The bill established the persisting principle that retained corporate earnings could be taxed. Paid dividends were tax deductible by corporations. Its proponents intended the bill to replace all other corporation taxesâ€"believing this would stimulate corporations to distribute earnings and thus put more cash and spending power in the hands of individuals. In the end, Congress watered down the bill, setting the tax rates at 7 to 27% and largely exempting small enterprises. Facing widespread and fierce criticism, the tax deduction of paid dividends was repealed in 1938.

Housing Act of 1937

One of the last New Deal agencies was the United States Housing Authority, created in 1937 with some Republican support to abolish slums.

Court-packing plan and jurisprudential shift

When Roosevelt took office a majority of the nine judges of the Supreme Court were appointed by Republican Party Presidents. Four especially conservative judges (nicknamed the Four Horsemen) often managed to convince the fifth judge Owen Roberts to strike down progressive legislation. Roosevelt increasingly saw the issue of the Supreme Court as one of unelected officials stifling the work of a democratically elected government. Early in the year 1937, he asked Congress to pass the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937. That proposal would have given the president the power to appoint a new justice whenever an existing judge reached the age of 70 and failed to retire within six months. In that way Roosevelt hoped to preserve the New Deal legislation. But he had stirred up a hornet`s nest since many congressmen feared he might start to retire them at 70 next. Many congressmen considered the proposal unconstitutional. In the end the proposal failed.

In one sense, however, it succeeded: Justice Owen Roberts switched positions and began voting to uphold New Deal measures, effectively creating a liberal majority in

West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish

and

National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation

, thus departing from the

Lochner v. New York

era and giving the government more power in questions of economic policies. Journalists called this change "the switch in time that saved nine". Recent scholars have noted that since the vote in Parrish took place several months before the court-packing plan was announced, other factors, like evolving jurisprudence, must have contributed to the Court's swing. The opinions handed down in the spring of 1937, favorable to the government, also contributed to the downfall of the plan. In any case, the "court packing plan", as it was known, did lasting political damage to Roosevelt.

With the retirement of Justice Willis Van Devanter, the Court's composition began to move solidly in support of Roosevelt's legislative agenda. In the end Roosevelt had lost the battle for the Judiciary Reorganization Bill but won the war for control of the Supreme Court in a constitutional way. Since he managed to serve in office for more than twelve years he got the chance to appoint eight of the nine Justices of the Court. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist noted that in this way the Constitution provides for ultimate responsibility of the Court to the political branches of government.

Recession of 1937 and recovery

The Roosevelt Administration was under assault during FDR's second term, which presided over a new dip in the Great Depression in the fall of 1937 that continued until most of 1938. Production and profits declined sharply. Unemployment jumped from 14.3% in 1937 to 19.0% in 1938. The downturn was perhaps due to nothing more than the familiar rhythms of the business cycle. But until 1937 Roosevelt had claimed responsibility for the excellent economic performance. That backfired in the recession and the heated political atmosphere of 1937.

Business-oriented conservatives explained the recession by arguing that the New Deal had been very hostile to business expansion in 1935â€"37, had threatened massive anti-trust legal attacks on big corporations and by the huge strikes caused by the organizing activities of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The recovery was explained by the conservatives in terms of the diminishing of those threats sharply after 1938. For example, the antitrust efforts fizzled out without major cases. The CIO and AFL unions started battling each other more than corporations, and tax policy became more favorable to long-term growth.

"When The Gallup Organization's poll in 1939 asked, 'Do you think the attitude of the Roosevelt administration toward business is delaying business recovery?' the American people responded 'yes' by a margin of more than two-to-one. The business community felt even more strongly so."

Fortune'

s Roper poll found in May 1939 that 39% of Americans thought the administration had been delaying recovery by undermining business confidence, while 37% thought it had not. But it also found that opinions on the issue were highly polarized by economic status and occupation. In addition, AIPO found in the same time that 57% believed that business attitudes toward the administration were delaying recovery, while 26% thought they were not, emphasizing that fairly subtle differences in wording can evoke substantially different polling responses.

Keynesian economists stated that the recession of 1937 was a result of a premature effort to curb government spending and balance the budget.

Roosevelt had been cautious not to run large deficits. In 1937 he actually achieved a balanced budget. Therefore he did not fully utilize deficit spending. Between 1933 and 1941 the average federal budget deficit was 3% per year.

In November 1937 Roosevelt decided that big business were trying to ruin the New Deal by causing another depression that voters would react against by voting Republican. It was a "capital strike" said Roosevelt, and he ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation to look for a criminal conspiracy (they found none). Roosevelt moved left and unleashed a rhetorical campaign against monopoly power, which was cast as the cause of the new crisis. Ickes attacked automaker Henry Ford, steelmaker Tom Girdler, and the super rich "Sixty Families" who supposedly comprised "the living center of the modern industrial oligarchy which dominates the United States".

Left unchecked, Ickes warned, they would create "big-business Fascist Americaâ€"an enslaved America". The President appointed Robert Jackson as the aggressive new director of the antitrust division of the Justice Department, but this effort lost its effectiveness once World War II began and big business was urgently needed to produce war supplies. But the Administration's other response to the 1937 dip that stalled recovery from the Great Depression had more tangible results.

Ignoring the requests of the Treasury Department and responding to the urgings of the converts to Keynesian economics and others in his Administration, Roosevelt embarked on an antidote to the depression, reluctantly abandoning his efforts to balance the budget and launching a $5 billion spending program in the spring of 1938, an effort to increase mass purchasing power. Roosevelt explained his program in a fireside chat in which he told the American people that it was up to the government to "create an economic upturn" by making "additions to the purchasing power of the nation".

World War II and full employment

The U.S. reached full employment after entering World War II in December 1941. Under the special circumstances of war mobilization, massive war spending doubled the GNP (Gross National Product). Military Keynesianism brought full employment. Federal contracts were cost-plus. Instead of competitive bidding to get lower prices, the government gave out contracts that promised to pay all the expenses plus a modest profit. Factories hired everyone they could find regardless of their lack of skills; they simplified work tasks and trained the workers, with the federal government paying all the costs. Millions of farmers left marginal operations, students quit school, and housewives joined the labor force.

The emphasis was for war supplies as soon as possible, regardless of cost and inefficiencies. Industry quickly absorbed the slack in the labor force, and the tables turned such that employers needed to actively and aggressively recruit workers. As the military grew, new labor sources were needed to replace the 12 million men serving in the military. Propaganda campaigns pleading for people to work in the war factories. The barriers for married women, the old, the unskilledâ€"and (in the North and West) the barriers for racial minoritiesâ€"were lowered.

In 1929, federal expenditures accounted for only 3% of GNP. Between 1933 and 1939, federal expenditure tripled, but the national debt as percent of GNP hardly changed. However, spending on the New Deal was far smaller than spending on the war effort, which passed 40% of GNP in 1944. The war economy grew so fast after deemphasizing free enterprise and imposing strict controls on prices and wages, as a result of government/business cooperation, with government subsidizing business, directly and indirectly.

Despite conservative domination of Congress during the early 1940s, a number of progressive measures supported by business in the name of efficiency and safety were legislated. The Coal Mines Inspection and Investigation Act of 1941 significantly reduced fatality rates in the coal-mining industry, while the Servicemen's Dependents Allowance Act of 1942 provided family allowances for dependents of enlisted men of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard, while emergency grants to States were authorized that same year for programs for day care for children of working mothers. In 1944, pensions were authorized for all physically or mentally helpless children of deceased veterans regardless of the age of the child at the date the claim was filed or at the time of the veteran's death, provided the child was disabled at the age of sixteen and that the disability continued to the date of the claim. The Public Health Service Act, which was passed that same year, expanded Federal-State public health programs, and increased the annual amount for grants for public health services. In response to the March on Washington Movement led by A. Philip Randolph, Roosevelt promulgated Executive Order 8802 in June 1941, which established the President's Committee on Fair Employment Practices (FEPC) "to receive and investigate complaints of discrimination" so that "there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin." The Community Facilities Act of 1941 (the Lanham Act) provided federal funds to defense-impacted communities for the building of recreational facilities, water and sanitation plants, hospitals, day care centers, schools, and houses, while the Emergency Maternity and Infant Care Program, introduced in March 1943, provided free maternity care and medical treatment during an infant’s first year “for the wives and children of military personnel in the four lowest enlisted pay grades.”

The New Dealers wanted benefits for everyone according to need. Conservatives, however, proposed benefits based on national service, and their approach won out. The "G.I. Bill" (Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944) was a landmark piece of legislation, providing 16 million returning veterans with benefits such as housing, educational, and unemployment assistance, and played a major role in the postwar expansion of the American middle class.

A major result of the full employment at high wages was a sharp, long lasting decrease in the level of income inequality (Great Compression). The gap between rich and poor narrowed dramatically in the area of nutrition, because food rationing and price controls provided a reasonably priced diet to everyone. White collar workers did not typically receive overtime and therefore the gap between white collar and blue collar income narrowed. Large families that had been poor during the 1930s had four or more wage earners, and these families shot to the top one-third income bracket. Overtime provided large paychecks in war industries, and average living standards rose steadily, with real wages rising by 44% in the four years of war, while the percentage of families with an annual income of less than $2,000 fell from 75% to 25% of the population.

In 1941, 40% of all American families lived on less than the $1,500 per year defined as necessary by the Works Progress Administration for a modest standard of living. The median income stood at $2,000 a year, while 8 million workers eared below the legal minimum. From 1939 to 1944, however, wages and salaries more than doubled, with overtime pay and the expansion of jobs leading to a 70% rise in average weekly earnings during the course of the war. Membership in organized labor increased by 50% between 1941 and 1945, and because the War Labor Board sought labor-management peace, new workers were encouraged to participate in the existing labor organizations, thereby receiving all the benefits of union membership such as improved working conditions, better fringe benefits, and higher wages. As noted by William H. Chafe

"with full employment, higher wages and social welfare benefits provided under government regulations, American workers experienced a level of well-being that, for many, had never occurred before."

As a result of the new prosperity, consumer expenditures rose by nearly 50%, from $61.7 billion at the start of the war to $98.5 billion by 1944. Individual savings accounts climbed almost sevenfold during the course of the war. The share of total income held by the top 5% of wage earners fell from 22% to 17%, while the bottom 40% increased their share of the economic pie. In addition, during the course of the war, the proportion of the American population earning less than $3,000 (in 1968 dollars) fell by half.

Legacy

Analysts agree the New Deal produced a new political coalition that sustained the Democratic Party as the majority party in national politics into the 1960s.

However there is disagreement about whether it marked a permanent change in values. Cowie and Salvatore in 2008 argued that it was a response to depression and did not mark a commitment to a welfare state because America has always been too individualistic. MacLean rejected the idea of a definitive political culture. She says they overemphasized individualism and ignored the enormous power of big capital wields, the Constitutional restraints on radicalism, and the role of racism, antifeminism, and homophobia. She warns that accepting Cowie and Salvatore's argument that conservatism's ascendancy is inevitable would dismay and discourage activists on the left. Klein responds that the New Deal did not die a natural death; it was killed off in the 1970s by a business coalition mobilized by such groups as the Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce, trade organizations, conservative think tanks, and decades of sustained legal and political attacks.

Historians generally agree that during Roosevelt's 12 years in office, there was a dramatic increase in the power of the federal government as a whole. Roosevelt also established the presidency as the prominent center of authority within the federal government. Roosevelt created a large array of agencies protecting various groups of citizensâ€"workers, farmers, and othersâ€"who suffered from the crisis, and thus enabled them to challenge the powers of the corporations. In this way, the Roosevelt Administration generated a set of political ideasâ€"known as New Deal liberalismâ€"that remained a source of inspiration and controversy for decades. New Deal liberalism lay the foundation of a new consensus. Between 1940 and 1980 there was the liberal consensus about the prospects for the widespread distribution of prosperity within an expanding capitalist economy. Especially Harry S. Trumans Fair Deal and in the 1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society used the New Deal as inspiration for a dramatic expansion of liberal programs.

The New Deal's enduring appeal on voters fostered its acceptance by moderate and liberal Republicans.

As the first Republican president elected after FDR, Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953â€"61) built on the New Deal in a manner that embodied his thoughts on efficiency and cost-effectiveness. He sanctioned a major expansion of Social Security by a self-financed program. He supported such New Deal programs as the minimum wage and public housing; he greatly expanded federal aid to education and built the Interstate Highway system primarily as defense programs (rather than jobs program). In a private letter Eisenhower wrote:

Should any party attempt to abolish social security and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course, that believes you can do these things ... Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

In 1964 Barry Goldwater, an unreconstructed anti-New Dealer, was the Republican presidential candidate on a platform that attacked the New Deal. The Democrats under Lyndon B. Johnson won a massive landslide and Johnson's Great Society programs extended the New Deal. However the supporters of Goldwater formed the New Right which helped to bring Ronald Reagan into the White House in the 1980 presidential election. Reagan, at the time an ardent New Dealer, had turned against the New Deal and moved the nation in new directions, with his emphasis on government as the problem, not the solution.

Historiography and evaluation of New Deal policies

Historians debating the New Deal have generally divided between liberals who support it, conservatives who oppose it, and some New Left historians who complain it was too favorable to capitalism and did too little for minorities. There is consensus on only a few points, with most commentators favorable toward the CCC and hostile toward the NRA.

Consensus historians of the 1950s, such as Richard Hofstadter, according to Lary May:

believed that the prosperity and apparent class harmony of the post-World War II era reflected a return to the true Americanism rooted in liberal capitalism and the pursuit of individual opportunity that had made fundamental conflicts over resources a thing of the past. They argued that the New Deal was a conservative movement that built a welfare state, guided by experts, that saved rather than transformed liberal capitalism.

Liberal historians argue that Roosevelt restored hope and self-respect to tens of millions of desperate people, built labor unions, upgraded the national infrastructure and saved capitalism in his first term when he could have destroyed it and easily nationalized the banks and the railroads. Historians generally agree that, apart from building up labor unions, the New Deal did not substantially alter the distribution of power within American capitalism. "The New Deal brought about limited change in the nation's power structure." The New Deal preserved democracy in the United States in a historic period of uncertainty and crises when in many other countries democracy failed.

The most common arguments can be summarized as follows:

Harmful :

The New Deal greatly increased the national debt (Billington and Ridge) while liberal Keynesians criticize that the federal deficit between 1933 and 1939 averaged only 3.7% which was not enough to offset the reduction in private sector spending during the Great Depression

caused a growth of class consciousness among farmers and manual workers (Billington and Ridge)

promoted bureaucracy and inefficiency (Billington and Ridge) and enlarged the powers of the federal government

slowed the merit system and civil service by adding many jobs outside the system (Billington and Ridge)

infringed on the rights of businessmen (Billington and Ridge)

raise the issue of how far economic regulation can be extended without sacrificing the liberties of the people (Billington and Ridge)

rescued capitalism when the opportunity was at hand to nationalize banking, railroads and other industries (New Left critique)

Beneficial:

the nation came through its greatest depression without undermining the capitalist system (Billington and Ridge)

making the capitalist system more beneficial by enacting banking and stock market regulations to avoid abuses and providing greater financial security through, for example the introduction of Social Security or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (David M. Kennedy)

created a better balance among labor, agriculture and industry (Billington and Ridge)

produced a more equal distribution of wealth (Billington and Ridge)

help conserve natural resources (Billington and Ridge)

permanently established the principle that the national government should take action to rehabilitate and preserve America's human resources (Billington and Ridge)

Fiscal policy

Julian Zelizer (2000) has argued that fiscal conservatism was a key component of the New Deal. A fiscally conservative approach was supported by Wall Street and local investors and most of the business community; mainstream academic economists believed in it, as apparently did the majority of the public. Conservative southern Democrats, who favored balanced budgets and opposed new taxes, controlled Congress and its major committees. Even liberal Democrats at the time regarded balanced budgets as essential to economic stability in the long run, although they were more willing to accept short-term deficits. As Zelizer notes, public opinion polls consistently showed public opposition to deficits and debt. Throughout his terms, Roosevelt recruited fiscal conservatives to serve in his Administration, most notably Lewis Douglas the Director of Budget in 1933â€"1934, and Henry Morgenthau Jr., Secretary of the Treasury from 1934 to 1945. They defined policy in terms of budgetary cost and tax burdens rather than needs, rights, obligations, or political benefits. Personally the President embraced their fiscal conservatism. Politically, he realized that fiscal conservatism enjoyed a strong wide base of support among voters, leading Democrats, and businessmen. On the other hand, there was enormous pressure to act â€" and spending money on high visibility work programs with millions of paychecks a week.

Douglas proved too inflexible, and he quit in 1934. Morgenthau made it his highest priority to stay close to Roosevelt, no matter what. Douglas's position, like many of the Old Right, was grounded in a basic distrust of politicians and the deeply ingrained fear that government spending always involved a degree of patronage and corruption that offended his Progressive sense of efficiency. The Economy Act of 1933, passed early in the Hundred Days, was Douglas's great achievement. It reduced federal expenditures by $500 million, to be achieved by reducing veterans' payments and federal salaries. Douglas cut government spending through executive orders that cut the military budget by $125 million, $75 million from the Post Office, $12 million from Commerce, $75 million from government salaries, and $100 million from staff layoffs. As Freidel concludes, "The economy program was not a minor aberration of the spring of 1933, or a hypocritical concession to delighted conservatives. Rather it was an integral part of Roosevelt's overall New Deal."

Revenues were so low that borrowing was necessary (only the richest 3% paid any income tax between 1926 and 1940). Douglas therefore hated the relief programs, which he said reduced business confidence, threatened the government's future credit, and had the "destructive psychological effects of making mendicants of self-respecting American citizens". Roosevelt was pulled toward greater spending by Hopkins and Ickes, and as the 1936 election approached he decided to gain votes by attacking big business.

Morgenthau shifted with FDR, but at all times tried to inject fiscal responsibility; he deeply believed in balanced budgets, stable currency, reduction of the national debt, and the need for more private investment. The Wagner Act met Morgenthau's requirement because it strengthened the party's political base and involved no new spending. In contrast to Douglas, Morgenthau accepted Roosevelt's double budget as legitimate â€" that is a balanced regular budget, and an "emergency" budget for agencies, like the WPA, PWA and CCC, that would be temporary until full recovery was at hand. He fought against the veterans' bonus until Congress finally overrode Roosevelt's veto and gave out $2.2 billion in 1936. His biggest success was the new Social Security program; he managed to reverse the proposals to fund it from general revenue and insisted it be funded by new taxes on employees. It was Morgenthau who insisted on excluding farm workers and domestic servants from Social Security because workers outside industry would not be paying their way.

Relief

The New Deal expanded the role of the federal government, particularly to help the poor, the unemployed, youth, the elderly, and stranded rural communities. The Hoover administration started the system of funding state relief programs, whereby the states hired people on relief. With the CCC in 1933 and the WPA in 1935 the federal government now became involved in directly hiring people on relief. in granting direct relief or benefits. Total federal, state and local spending on relief rose from 3.9% of GNP in 1929, to 6.4% in 1932, and 9.7% in 1934; the return of prosperity in 1944 lowered the rate to 4.1%. In 1935â€"40, welfare spending accounted for 49% of the federal, state and local government budgets. In his memoirs, Milton Friedman said that the New Deal relief programs were an appropriate response. He and his wife were not on relief but they were employed by the WPA as statisticians. Friedman said that programs like the CCC and WPA were justified as temporary responses to an emergency. Friedman said that Roosevelt deserved considerable credit for relieving immediate distress and restoring confidence.

Recovery Keynesian interpretation

At the beginning of the Great Depression many economists traditionally argued against deficit spending that government spending would "crowd out" private investment and spending and thus not have any effect on the economy, a proposition known as the Treasury view. Keynesian economics rejected that view. They argued that by spending vastly more moneyâ€"using fiscal policyâ€"the government could provide the needed stimulus through the multiplier effect. Without that stimulus business simply would not hire more people, especially the low skilled and supposedly "untrainable" men who had been unemployed for years and lost any job skill they once had. Keynes visited the White House in 1934 to urge President Roosevelt to increase deficit spending. Roosevelt afterwards complained that, "he left a whole rigmarole of figures â€" he must be a mathematician rather than a political economist."

The New Deal tried public works, farm subsidies, and other devices to reduce unemployment, but Roosevelt never completely gave up trying to balance the budget. Between 1933 and 1941 the average federal budget deficit was 3% per year. Roosevelt did not fully utilize deficit spending. The effects of federal public works spending were largely offset by Herbert Hoovers large tax increase in 1932, whose full effects for the first time were felt in 1933, and it was undercut by spending cuts especially the economy act. According to Keynesians like Paul Krugman the New Deal therefore was not as successful in the short run as it was in the long run.

Monetarist interpretation

In recent years more influential among economists has been the monetarist interpretation of Milton Friedman, which did include a full-scale monetary history of what he calls the "Great Contraction". Friedman concentrated on the failures before 1933. He pointed out that between 1929 and 1932, the Federal Reserve allowed the money supply to fall by a third which is seen as the major cause that turned a normal recession into a Great Depression. Friedman specially criticized the decisions of Hoover and the Fed not to save banks going bankrupt. Monetarists state that the banking and monetary reforms were a necessary and sufficient response to the crises. They reject the approach of Keynesian deficit spending.

Economic growth and unemployment (1933â€"1941)

In the years 1933 to 1941 the economy expanded at an average rate of 7.7% per year. Despite high economic growth rates unemployment fell slowly.

John Maynard Keynes explained that situation as an Underemployment equilibrium where skeptic business prospects prevent companies from hiring new employees. It was seen as a form of cyclical unemployment.

There are different assumptions as well. According to Richard L. Jensen cyclical unemployment was a grave matter primarily until 1935. Between 1935 und 1941 structural unemployment became the bigger problem. Especially the unions successes in demanding higher wages pushed management into introducing new efficiency-oriented hiring standards. It ended inefficient labor such as child labor, casual unskilled work for subminimum wages, and sweatshop conditions. In the long term the shift to efficiancy wages led to high productivity, high wages and a high standard of living. But it necessitated a well-educated, well-trained, hard-working labor force. It was not before war time brought full employment that the supply of unskilled labor (that caused structural unemployment) downsized.

Effect on the Depression

Following the Keynesian consensus (that lasted until the 1970s) the traditional view was that federal deficit spending associated with the war brought full-employment output while monetary policy was just aiding the process.

Challenging the traditional view monetarists like J. Bradford DeLong, Lawrence Summers and Christina Romer argued that recovery was essentially complete prior to 1942 and that monetary policy was the crucial source of pre-1942 recovery. The extraordinary growth in money supply beginning in 1933 lowered real interest rates and stimulated investment spending. According to Bernanke there was also a debt-deflation effect of the depression which was clearly offset by a reflation through the growth in money supply. But before 1992 scholars did not realize that the New Deal provided for a huge aggregate demand stimulus through a de facto easing of monetary policy. While Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz argued in "Monetary History of the United States" (1963) that the Federal Reserve System had made no attempt to increase the quantity in high-powered money and thus failed to foster recovery they somehow did not investigate the impact of the monetary policy of the New Deal. Ben Bernanke and Martin Parkinson declared in "Unemployment, Inflation, and Wages in the American Depression" (1989) that ″the New Deal is better characterized as having cleared the way for a natural recovery ... rather than as being the source of recovery itself.″ In 1992 Christina Romer explained in "What Ended the Great Depression?" that the rapid growth in money supply beginning in 1933 can be traced back to a large unsterilized gold inflow to the US which was partly due to political instability in Europe but to a larger degree to the revaluation of gold through the Gold Reserve Act. The Roosevelt administration had chosen not to sterilize the gold inflow precisely because they hoped that the growth of money supply would stimulate the economy.

Replying to DeLong et al. in the

Journal of Economic History

, J.R. Vernon argues that deficit spending leading up to and during World War II still played a large part in the overall recovery, noting "half or more of the recovery occurred during 1941 and 1942."

According to Peter Temin, Barry Wigmore, Gauti B. Eggertsson and Christina Romer the biggest primary impact of the New Deal on the economy and the key to recovery and to end the Great Depression was brought about by a successful management of public expectations. Before the first New Deal measures people expected a contractionary economic situation (recession, deflation) to persist. Roosevelt's fiscal and monetary policy regime change helped to make his policy objectives credible. Expectations changed towards an expansionary development (economic growth, inflation). The expectation of higher future income and higher future inflation stimulated demand and investments. The analysis suggests that the elimination of the policy dogmas of the gold standard, balanced budget and small government led endogenously to a large shift in expectation that accounts for about 70â€"80 percent of the recovery of output and prices from 1933 to 1937. If the regime change had not happened and the Hoover policy had continued, the economy would have continued its free fall in 1933, and output would have been 30 percent lower in 1937 than in 1933.

Others believe that the New Deal caused the Depression to persist longer than it would otherwise have. Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian argued in a study that the "New Deal labor and industrial policies did not lift the economy out of the Depression as President Roosevelt and his economic planners had hoped," but that the "New Deal policies are an important contributing factor to the persistence of the Great Depression." They claim that the New Deal "cartelization policies are a key factor behind the weak recovery". They say that the "abandonment of these policies coincided with the strong economic recovery of the 1940s". Cole and Ohanian claimed that FDR's policies prolonged the Depression by 7 years. However, Cole and Ohanian's argument relies on hypotheticals, including an unprecedented growth rate necessary to end the Depression by 1936, and by not counting workers employed through New Deal programs. Such programs built or renovated 2,500 hospitals, 45,000 schools, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 7,800 bridges, 700,000 miles (1,100,000 km) of roads, 1,000 airfields and employed 50,000 teachers through programs that rebuilt the country's entire rural school system. Lowell E. Gallaway and Richard K. Vedder argue that the "Great Depression was very significantly prolonged in both its duration and its magnitude by the impact of New Deal programs." They suggest that without Social Security, work relief, unemployment insurance, mandatory minimum wages, and without special government-granted privileges for labor unions, business would have hired more workers and the unemployment rate during the New Deal years would have been 6.7% instead of 17.2%. In reply, economic historian Brad DeLong wrote that there is "literally nothing" to the arguments made by Gallaway and Vedder, and the duo made "flawed conclusions" based on "flawed foundations", and the entire foundation "is made out of mud". Amity Shlaes praised some aspects of the New Deal, however she believed that the New Deal, like Hoover’s policies, prevented recovery and led the economy into the 1937 and 1938 recession. Shlaes said that the NRA was misguided because it used price setting to fix monetary problems. According to Shlaes, Roosevelt’s experimentation frightened business into inaction. “From 1929 to 1940, from Hoover to Roosevelt, government intervention helped to make the Depression Great.” Eric Rauchway showed that Shlaes tried to diminish the economic growth by referring to the unrepresentative Dow Jones Industrial Average. He continued that usually a historian or economist would have referred to the gross domestic product which according to the Historical Statistics of the United States grew impressively by 9% annually during Roosevelts first term and by 11% annually after the short recession of 1937-38.

In a survey of economic historians conducted by Robert Whaples, Professor of Economics at Wake Forest University, anonymous questionnaires were sent to members of the

Economic History Association

. Members were asked to either

disagree , agree , or agree with provisos

with the statement that read: "Taken as a whole, government policies of the New Deal served to lengthen and deepen the Great Depression." While only 6% of economic historians who worked in the history department of their universities agreed with the statement, 27% of those that work in the economics department agreed. Almost an identical percent of the two groups (21% and 22%) agreed with the statement "with provisos" (a conditional stipulation), while 74% of those who worked in the history department, and 51% in the economic department disagreed with the statement outright.

Reform

The economic reforms were mainly intended to rescue the capitalist system by providing a more rational framework in which it could operate. The banking system was made less vulnerable. The regulation of the stock market and the prevention of some corporate abuses relating to the sale of securities and corporate reporting addressed the worst excesses. Roosevelt allowed trade unions to take their place in labor relations and created the triangular partnership between employers, employees and government.

David M. Kennedy wrote that "the achievements of the New Deal years surely played a role in determining the degree and the duration of the postwar prosperity".

Paul Krugman stated that the institutions built by the New Deal remain the bedrock of the United States economic stability. Against the background of the 2007â€"2012 global financial crisis he explained that the financial crises would have been much worse if the New Deals Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation had not insured most bank deposits and older Americans would have felt much more insecure without Social Security. Libertarian economist Milton Friedman after 1960 attacked Social Security from a free market view stating that it had created welfare dependency.

Impact on federal government and states

While it is essentially consensus among historians and academics that the New Deal brought about a large increase in the power of the federal government, there has been some scholarly debate concerning the results of this federal expansion. Historians like Arthur M. Schlesinger and James T. Patterson have argued that the augmentation of the federal government exacerbated tensions between the federal and state governments. However, contemporaries such as Ira Katznelson have suggested that, due to certain conditions on the allocation of federal funds, namely that the individual states get to control them, the federal government managed to avoid any tension with states over their rights. This is a prominent debate concerning the historiography of federalism in the United States and, as Schlesinger and Patterson have observed, the New Deal marked an era when the federal-state power balance shifted further in favor of the federal government, which heightened tensions between the two levels of government in the United States.

Ira Katznelson has argued that although the federal government expanded its power and began providing welfare benefits on a scale previously unknown in the United States, it often allowed individual states to control the allocation of the funds provided for such welfare. This meant that the states controlled who had access to these funds, which in turn meant many southern states were able to racially segregate â€" or in some cases, like a number of counties in Georgia, completely exclude African-Americans â€" the allocation of federal funds. This enabled these states to continue to relatively exercise their rights and also to preserve the institutionalization of the racist order of their societies. While Katznelson has conceded that the expansion of the federal government had the potential to lead to federal-state tension, he has argued it was avoided as these states managed to retain some control. As Katznelson has observed, “furthermore, they [state governments in the South] had to manage the strain that potentially might be placed on local practices by investing authority in federal bureaucracies… To guard against this outcome, they key mechanism deployed was a separation of the source of funding from decisions about how to spend the new monies.”

However, Schlesinger has disputed Katznelson’s claim and has argued that the increase in the power of the federal government was perceived to come at the cost of states’ rights, thereby aggravating state governments, which exacerbated federal-state tensions. Schlesinger has utilized quotes from the time to highlight this point, for example, Schlesinger has observed, “the actions of the New Deal, [Ogden L.] Mills said, “abolish the sovereignty of the States. They make of a government of limited powers one of unlimited authority over the lives of us all.”

Moreover, Schlesinger has argued that this federal-state tension was not a one-way street, and that the federal government became just as aggravated with the state governments, as they did with it. State governments were often guilty of inhibiting or delaying federal policies. Whether through intentional methods, like sabotage, or unintentional ones, like simple administrative overload; either way these problems aggravated the federal government and thus heightened federal-state tensions. As Schlesinger has also noted, “students of public administration have never taken sufficient account of the capacity of lower levels of government to sabotage or defy even a masterful President.”

James T. Patterson has reiterated this argument, however he observes that this increased tension can be accounted for not just from a political perspective, but from an economic one, too. Patterson has argued that the tension between the federal and state governments also, at least partly, resulted from the economic strain under which the states had been put by the federal government’s various policies and agencies. Some states were either simply unable to cope with the federal government’s demand, and thus refused to work with them, or admonished the economic restraints and actively decided to sabotage federal policies. This was demonstrated, Patterson has noted, with the handling of federal relief money by Ohio governor, Martin L. Davey. The case in Ohio became so detrimental to the federal government that Harry Hopkins, supervisor of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, had to federalize Ohio relief. Although this argument differs somewhat from Schlesinger’s, the source of federal-state tension remained the growth of the federal government. As Patterson has asserted, “though the record of the FERA was remarkably good â€" almost revolutionary â€" in these respects, it was inevitable, given the financial requirements imposed on deficit-ridden states, that friction would develop between governors and federal officials.”

In this dispute it can be inferred that Katznelson and, Schlesinger and Patterson, have only disagreed on their inference of the historical evidence. While both parties have agreed that the federal government expanded and, even, that states had a degree of control over the allocation of federal funds, they have disputed the consequences of these claims. Katznelson has asserted that it created mutual acquiescence between the levels of government, while Schlesinger and Patterson have suggested that it provoked contempt for the state governments on the part of the federal government, and vice versa, thus exacerbating their relations. In short, irrespective of the interpretation this era marked an important time in the historiography of federalism and also nevertheless provided some narrative on the legacy of federal-state relations.

Race and Gender African Americans

While many Americans suffered economically during the Great Depression, African Americans also had to deal with social ills, such as racism, discrimination, and segregation. Black workers were especially vulnerable to the economic downturn since most of them worked the most marginal jobs such as unskilled or service-oriented work. Therefore they were the first to be discharged. Additionally many employers preferred white workers. When jobs were scarce some employers even dismissed blacks to create jobs for whites. In the end there were three times more African American workers on public assistance or relief than white workers.

The WPA, NYA, and CCC relief programs allocated 10% of their budgets to blacks (who comprised about 10% of the total population, and 20% of the poor). They operated separate all-black units with the same pay and conditions as white units. Some leading white New Dealers, especially Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, and Aubrey Williams worked to ensure blacks received at least 10% of welfare assistance payments. However, these benefits were small in comparison to the economic and political advantages that whites received. Most unions excluded blacks from joining. Enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in the South was virtually impossible, especially since most blacks worked in hospitality and agricultural sectors.

The New Deal programs put millions of Americans immediately back to work or at least helped them to survive. The programs were not specifically targeted to alleviate the much higher unemployment rate of blacks. Some aspects of the programs were even unfavorable to blacks. The Agricultural Adjustment Acts for example helped farmers which were predominantly white but reduced the need of farmers to hire tenant farmers or sharecroppers which were predominantely black. While the AAA stipulated that a farmer had to share the payments with those who worked the land this policy was never enforced. The Farm Service Agency (FSA), a government relief agency for tenant farmers, created in 1937, made efforts to empower African Americans by appointing them to agency committees in the South. Senator James F. Byrnes of South Carolina raised opposition to the appointments because he stood for white farmers who were threatened by an agency that could organize and empower tenant farmers. Initially, the FSA stood behind their appointments, but after feeling national pressure FSA was forced to release the African Americans of their positions. The goals of the FSA were notoriously liberal and not cohesive with the southern voting elite. Some New Deal measures inadvertently discriminated against harmed blacks. Thousands of blacks were thrown out of work and replaced by whites on jobs where they were paid less than the NRA’s wage minimums because some white employers considered the NRA’s minimum wage “too much money for Negroes.” By August 1933, blacks called the NRA the “Negro Removal Act.” An NRA study found that the NIRA put 500,000 African Americans out of work.

But since blacks felt the sting of the depression´s wrath even more severely than whites they welcomed any help. Until 1936 almost all African Americans (and many whites) shifted from the "Party of Lincoln" to the Democratic Party. This was a sharp realignment from 1932, when most African Americans voted the Republican ticket. New Deal policies helped establish a political alliance between blacks and the Democratic Party that survives into the 21st century.

There was no attempt whatsoever to end segregation, or to increase black rights in the South. Roosevelt appointed an unprecedented number of blacks to second-level positions in his administration; these appointees were collectively called the Black Cabinet.

The wartime FEPC executive orders that forbade job discrimination against African Americans, women, and ethnic groups was a major breakthrough that brought better jobs and pay to millions of minority Americans. Historians usually treat FEPC as part of the war effort and not part of the New Deal itself.

Women and the New Deal

At first the New Deal created programs primarily for men. It was assumed that the husband was the "breadwinner" (the provider) and if they had jobs, whole families would benefit. It was the social norm for women to give up jobs when they married; in many states there were laws that prevented both husband and wife holding regular jobs with the government. So too in the relief world, it was rare for both husband and wife to have a relief job on FERA or the WPA. This prevailing social norm of the breadwinner failed to take into account the numerous households headed by women, but it soon became clear that the government needed to help women as well.

Many women were employed on FERA projects run by the states with federal funds. The first New Deal program to directly assist women was the Works Progress Administration (WPA), begun in 1935. It hired single women, widows, or women with disabled or absent husbands. While men were given unskilled manual labor jobs, usually on construction projects, women were assigned mostly to sewing projects. They made clothing and bedding to be given away to charities and hospitals. Women also were hired for the WPA's school lunch program.

Both men and women were hired for the arts programs (such as music, theater and writing). The Social Security program was designed to help retired workers and widows, but did not include domestic workers, farmers or farm laborers, the jobs most often held by blacks. Social Security however was not a relief program and it was not designed for short-term needs, as very few people received benefits before 1942.

Charges Charges of fascism

Worldwide, the Great Depression had the most profound impact in the German Reich and the United States. In both countries the pressure to reform and the perception of the economic crisis were strikingly similar. When Hitler came to power he was faced with exactly the same task that faced Roosevelt, overcoming mass unemployment and the global Depression. The political responses to the crises were essentially different: while American democracy remained strong, Germany replaced democracy with a Nazi dictatorship.

The initial perception of the New Deal was mixed. On the one hand the eyes of the world were upon America, because many democrats in Europe and the United States saw in Roosevelt´s reform program a positive counterweight to the seductive powers of the two great alternative systems, communism and fascism. As the historian Isaiah Berlin wrote in 1955, ″The only light in the darkness was the administration of Mr. Roosevelt and the New Deal in the United States.″

By contrast, enemies of the New Deal sometimes called it "fascist", but they meant very different things. Communists denounced the New Deal in 1933 and 1934 as fascist, meaning it was under the control of big business. They dropped that line of thought when Stalin switched to the "Popular Front" plan of cooperation with liberals. Libertarian Murray Rothbard described the NRA as fascist because it imposed "compulsory cartelization of American business."

In 1934, Roosevelt defended himself against those critics in a "fireside chat". Some people, he said:

[Some] will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it 'Fascism', sometimes 'Communism', sometimes 'Regimentation', sometimes 'Socialism'. But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical.... Plausible self-seekers and theoretical die-hards will tell you of the loss of individual liberty. Answer this question out of the facts of your own life. Have you lost any of your rights or liberty or constitutional freedom of action and choice?

After 1945 only few observers continued to see similarities. Later on some scholars such as Kiran Klaus Patel, Heinrich August Winkler and John Garraty came to the conclusion that comparisons of the alternative systems don´t have to end in an apology for Nazism since comparisons rely on the examination of both similarities and differences. Their preliminary studies on the origins of the fascist dictatorships and the American (reformed) democracy came to the conclusion that besides essential differences "the crises led to a limited degree of convergence" on the level of economic and social policy. The most important cause was the growth of state interventionism since in the face of the catastrophic economic situation both societies no longer counted on the power of the market to heal itself.

John Garraty wrote that the National Recovery Administration (NRA) was based on economic experiments in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, without establishing a totalitarian dictatorship. Contrary to that historians such as Hawley have examined the origins of the NRA in detail, showing the main inspiration came from Senators Hugo Black and Robert F. Wagner and from American business leaders such as the Chamber of Commerce. The model for the NRA was Woodrow Wilson's War Industries Board, in which Johnson had been involved too. Historians argue that direct comparisons between Fascism and New Deal are invalid since there is no distinctive form of fascist economic organization. Gerald Feldman wrote that fascism has not contributed anything to economic thought and had no original vision of a new economic order replacing capitalism. His argument correlates with Mason´s that economic factors alone are an insufficient approach to understand fascism and that decisions taken by fascists in power cannot be explained within a logical economic framework. In economic terms both ideas were within the general tendency of the 1930s to intervene in the free-market capitalist economy, at the price of its laissez-faire character, "to protect the capitalist structure endangered by endogenous crises tendencies and processes of impaired self-regulation".

Stanley Payne, a historian of fascism, examined possible fascist influences in the United States by looking at the KKK and its offshoots, and movements led by Father Coughlin and Huey Long. He concluded that "the various populist, nativist, and rightist movements in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s fell distinctly short of fascism." According to Kevin Passmore, lecturer in History at Cardiff University, the failure of fascism in the United States was due to the social policies of the New Deal that channelled anti-establishment populism into the left rather than the extreme right.

Charges of conservatism

For decades the New Deal was generally held in very high regard in the scholarship and the textbooks. That changed in the 1960s when New Left historians began a revisionist critique that said the New Deal was a bandaid for a patient that needed radical surgery to reform capitalism, put private property in its place, and lift up workers, women and minorities. The New Left believed in participatory democracy and therefore rejected the autocratic machine politics typical of the big city Democratic organizations.

In the 1960s, "New Left" historians have been among the New Deal's harsh critics. Barton J. Bernstein, in a 1968 essay, compiled a chronicle of missed opportunities and inadequate responses to problems. The New Deal may have saved capitalism from itself, Bernstein charged, but it had failed to help â€" and in many cases actually harmed â€" those groups most in need of assistance. Paul K. Conkin in

The New Deal

(1967) similarly chastised the government of the 1930s for its weak policies toward marginal farmers, for its failure to institute sufficiently progressive tax reform, and its excessive generosity toward select business interests. Howard Zinn, in 1966, criticized the New Deal for working actively to actually preserve the worst evils of capitalism.

By the 1970s liberal historians were responding with a defense of the New Deal based on numerous local and microscopic studies. Praise increasingly focused on Eleanor Roosevelt, seen as a more appropriate crusading reformer than her husband. Since then research on the New Deal has been less interested in the question of whether the New Deal was a "conservative", "liberal", or "revolutionary" phenomenon than in the question of constraints within which it was operating.

Political sociologist Theda Skocpol, in a series of articles, has emphasized the issue of "state capacity" as an often-crippling constraint. Ambitious reform ideas often failed, she argued, because of the absence of a government bureaucracy with significant strength and expertise to administer them. Other more recent works have stressed the political constraints that the New Deal encountered. Conservative skepticism about the efficacy of government was strong both in Congress and among many citizens. Thus some scholars have stressed that the New Deal was not just a product of its liberal backers, but also a product of the pressures of its conservative opponents.

Communists in government

During the New Deal the Communists established a network of a dozen or so members working for the government. Harold Ware led the largest group which worked in the Agriculture Adjustment Administration (AAA). Secretary of Agriculture Wallace got rid of them all in a famous purge in 1935. Ware died in 1935 and some individuals such as Alger Hiss moved to other government jobs. Other Communists worked for the National Labor Relations Board, the National Youth Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the Federal Theater Project, the Treasury, and the Department of State.

The issue of Communists in government became a favorite conservative attacking point in the late 1930s. In 1938 Congressman Martin Dies, a Texas Democrat, and his newly created House Un-American Activities Committee investigated Communist subversion of labor unions and gained national headlines. In 1935â€"39, American Communist followed Stalin's "Popular front" approach and supported the New Deal. The Party's membership grew as it exercised greater influence and achieved new acceptance; it operated as a pressure group on the New Deal political coalition. The most important Party base in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), but by 1937 the CIO was spending much of its energy battling the older, more conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL). Klehr (1984) argues that the American Communist Party of the 1930s obediently followed directives from Moscow and suppressed individual initiative. In 1939 the Communists suddenly reversed course within days of the agreement between Hitler and Stalin in August that signaled friendship between the two bitter enemies. The Communists now denounced all enemies of Hitler and especially attacked President Roosevelt as a war-monger for his support for Britain in its war against Germany. Many members quit the Party in disgust.

Political metaphor

Since 1933, politicians and pundits have often called for a "new deal" regarding an object. That is, they demand a completely new, large-scale approach to a project. As Arthur A. Ekirch Jr. (1971) has shown, the New Deal stimulated utopianism in American political and social thought on a wide range of issues. In Canada, Conservative Prime Minister Richard B. Bennett in 1935 proposed a "new deal" of regulation, taxation, and social insurance that was a copy of the American program; Bennett's proposals were not enacted, and he was defeated for reelection in October 1935. In accordance with the rise of the use of U.S. political phraseology in Britain, the Labour Government of Tony Blair has termed some of its employment programs "new deal", in contrast to the Conservative Party's promise of the 'British Dream'.

The works of art and music

The Works Progress Administration subsidized artists, musicians, painters and writers on relief with a group of projects called Federal One. While the WPA program was by far the most widespread, it was preceded by three programs administered by the US Treasury which hired commercial artists at usual commissions to add murals and sculptures to federal buildings. The first of these efforts was the short-lived Public Works of Art Project, organized by Edward Bruce, an American businessman and artist. Bruce also led the Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture (later renamed the Section of Fine Arts) and the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP). The Resettlement Administration (RA) and Farm Security Administration (FSA) had major photography programs. The New Deal arts programs emphasized regionalism, social realism, class conflict, proletarian interpretations, and audience participation. The unstoppable collective powers of common man, contrasted to the failure of individualism, was a favorite theme.

Post Office murals and other public art, painted by artists in this time, can still be found at many locations around the U.S. The New Deal particularly helped American novelists. For journalists, and the novelists who wrote non-fiction, the agencies and programs that the New Deal provided, allowed these writers to describe about what they really saw around the country.

Many writers chose to write about the New Deal, and whether they were for or against it, and if it was helping the country out. Some of these writers were Ruth McKenney, Edmund Wilson, and Scott Fitzgerald. Another subject that was very popular for novelists was the condition of labor. They ranged from subjects on social protest, to strikes.

Under the WPA, the Federal Theatre project flourished. Countless theatre productions around the country were staged. This allowed thousands of actors and directors to be employed, among them were Orson Welles, and John Huston.

The FSA photography project is most responsible for creating the image of the Depression in the U.S. Many of the images appeared in popular magazines. The photographers were under instruction from Washington as to what overall impression the New Deal wanted to give out. Director Roy Stryker's agenda focused on his faith in social engineering, the poor conditions among cotton tenant farmers, and the very poor conditions among migrant farm workers; above all he was committed to social reform through New Deal intervention in people's lives. Stryker demanded photographs that "related people to the land and vice versa" because these photographs reinforced the RA's position that poverty could be controlled by "changing land practices". Though Stryker did not dictate to his photographers how they should compose the shots, he did send them lists of desirable themes, such as "church", "court day", "barns".

Films of the late New Deal era such as

Citizen Kane

(1941) ridiculed so-called "great men", while the heroism of the common man appeared in numerous movies, such as

The Grapes of Wrath

(1940). Thus in Frank Capra's famous films, including

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

(1939), Meet John Doe (1941) and

It's a Wonderful Life

(1946), the common people come together to battle and overcome villains who are corrupt politicians controlled by very rich, greedy capitalists.

By contrast there was also a smaller but influential stream of anti-New Deal art. Thus Gutzon Borglum's sculptures on Mount Rushmore emphasized great men in history (his designs had the approval of Calvin Coolidge). Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway disliked the New Deal and celebrated the organic autonomy of perfected written work in opposition to the New Deal trope of writing as performative labor. The Southern Agrarians celebrated a premodern regionalism and opposed the TVA as a modernizing, disruptive force. Cass Gilbert, a conservative who believed architecture should reflect historic traditions and the established social order, designed the new Supreme Court building (1935). Its classical lines and small size contrasted sharply with the gargantuan modernistic federal buildings going up in the Washington Mall that he detested. Hollywood managed to synthesize liberal and conservative streams, as in Busby Berkeley's

Gold Digger

musicals, where the storylines exalt individual autonomy while the spectacular musical numbers show abstract populations of interchangeable dancers securely contained within patterns beyond their control.

New Deal Programs

The New Deal had many programs and new agencies, most of which were universally known by their initials. Most were abolished during World War II; others remain in operation today. They included the following:

National Youth Administration (NYA)

Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) a Hoover agency expanded under Jesse Holman Jones to make large loans to big business. Ended in 1954.

Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) a Hoover program to create unskilled jobs for relief; expanded by FDR and Harry Hopkins; replaced by WPA in 1935.

United States bank holiday, 1933: closed all banks until they became certified by federal reviewers

Abandonment of gold standard, 1933: gold reserves no longer backed currency; still exists

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 1933â€"1942: employed young men to perform unskilled work in rural areas; under United States Army supervision; separate program for Native Americans

Homeowners Loan Corporation (HOLC) helped people keep their homes, the government bought properties from the bank allowing people to pay the government instead of the banks in installments they could afford, keeping people in their homes and banks afloat.

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 1933: effort to modernize very poor region (most of Tennessee), centered on dams that generated electricity on the Tennessee River; still exists

Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), 1933: raised farm prices by cutting total farm output of major crops and livestock; replaced by a new AAA because the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.

National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), 1933: industries set up codes to reduce unfair competition, raise wages and prices; ended 1935. The US Supreme Court ruled the NIRA unconstitutional

Public Works Administration (PWA), 1933: built large public works projects; used private contractors (did not directly hire unemployed). Ended 1938.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insures bank deposits and supervises state banks; still exists

Glassâ€"Steagall Act regulates investment banking; repealed 1999

Securities Act of 1933, created the SEC, 1933: codified standards for sale and purchase of stock, required awareness of investments to be accurately disclosed; still exists

Civil Works Administration (CWA), 1933â€"34: provided temporary jobs to millions of unemployed

Indian Reorganization Act, 1934: moved away from assimilation; policy dropped

Social Security Act (SSA), 1935: provided financial assistance to: elderly, handicapped, paid for by employee and employer payroll contributions; required 7 years contributions, so first payouts were in 1942; still exists

Works Progress Administration (WPA), 1935: a national labor program for more than 2 million unemployed; created useful construction work for unskilled men; also sewing projects for women and arts projects for unemployed artists, musicians and writers; ended 1943.

National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) / Wagner Act, 1935: set up National Labor Relations Board to supervise labor-management relations; In the 1930s, it strongly favored labor unions. Modified by the Taft-Hartley Act (1947); still exists

Judicial Reorganization Bill, 1937: gave the President power to appoint a new Supreme Court judge for every judge 70 years or older; failed to pass Congress

Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), 1938: Insures crops and livestock against loss of production or revenue. Was restructured during the creation of the Risk Management Agency in 1996 but continues to exist.

Surplus Commodities Program (1936); gives away food to poor; still exists as Food Stamp Program

Fair Labor Standards Act 1938: established a maximum normal work week of 44 hours and a minimum wage of 40 cents/hour and outlawed most forms of child labor; still exists, hours have been lowered to 40 hours over the years.

Rural Electrification Administration (REA), one of the federal executive departments of the United States government charged with providing public utilities (electricity, telephone, water, sewer) to rural areas in the U.S. via public-private partnerships. still exists.

Resettlement Administration (RA), Resettled poor tenant farmers; replaced by Farm Security Administration in 1935.

Farm Security Administration (FSA), Helped poor farmers by a variety of economic and educational programs; some programs still exists as part of the Farmers Home Administration.

Statistics Depression statistics

"Most indexes worsened until the summer of 1932, which may be called the low point of the depression economically and psychologically." Economic indicators show the American economy reached nadir in summer 1932 to February 1933, then began recovering until the recession of 1937â€"1938. Thus the Federal Reserve Industrial Production Index hit its low of 52.8 on 1932-07-01 and was practically unchanged at 54.3 on 1933-03-01; however by 1933-07-01, it reached 85.5 (with 1935â€"39 = 100, and for comparison 2005 = 1,342). In Roosevelt's 12 years in office, the economy had an 8.5% compound annual growth of GDP, the highest growth rate in the history of any industrial country, however, recovery was slow; by 1939, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per adult was still 27% below trend.

(1) in 1929 dollars

(2) 1935â€"39 = 100

Darby counts WPA workers as employed; Lebergott as unemployed

Source: Historical Statistics US

(1976) series D-86; Smiley 1983

Relief statistics Share this Share on Facebook Tweet on Twitter Plus on Google+ ‹ Newer Post Older Post › Beranda Langganan: Posting Komentar (Atom) Artikel Populer

Keyboard Layout - Standard Computer Keyboard Layout

A keyboard layout is any specific mechanical , visual , or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respe...

Voice Frequency - Human Voice Frequency Chart

A voice frequency (VF) or voice band is one of the frequencies, within part of the audio range, that is being used for the transmission of...

Not cheap 10 simple little house decorations!

Not cheap 10 simple little house decorations! Source : https://www.dekoruma.com/artikel/53323/dekorasi-rumah-kecil-sederhana-murah

Design of 7 natural village houses that make you want to move!

Inspiration for a village house in harmony with nature Have you ever imag

List Of School Districts In Oregon - School Districts Oregon

This is a list of public school districts in Oregon , a U.S. state. The Oregon Department of Education has authority over public schools, an...

Quality Time #BisaDiRumah Use these 7 comfortable living room sofas!

Family room sofa model for relaxing at home Who says it's boring to be isolated at home?In fact, you can do a lot at home

Greer Garson - Greer Garson Diet

Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson , CBE (29 September 1904 â€" 6 April 1996) was a British-American actress popular during the Second World Wa...

Streetcars In New Orleans - Nola Car

Streetcars in New Orleans, Louisiana have been an integral part of the city's public transportation network since the first half of the ...

ENIAC - First Electric Computer

ENIAC ( or ; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer ) was amongst the earliest electronic general-purpose computers made. It was Tur...

Red Lion Hotels Corporation - Red Lion Inn Oregon

Red Lion Hotels Corporation is an American hospitality corporation that primarily engages in the franchising, management and ownership of u...

AdsTopRight Blog Archive ► 2022 (539) ► Februari (389) ► Januari (150) ► 2018 (1249) ► Juli (68) ► Juni (71) ► Mei (26) ► April (278) ► Maret (467) ► Februari (243) ► Januari (96) ► 2017 (1561) ► Desember (98) ► November (601) ► Oktober (658) ► September (204) ▼ 2014 (907) ▼ Desember (513) Rib

Women%27s suffrage in the United States

Yalta Conference Causes of cancer Plague (disease) Renal cell carcinoma Corynebacterium diphtheriae China Hawaiian language Background radiation Daylight saving time Indian Psychiatric Society Alexia (condition) HIV Airborne disease Lymphocytic choriomeningitis Non-24-hour sleep%E2%80%93wake disorder United States (disambiguation) Adult-onset Still%27s disease Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis Folic acid Zygomycosis Tinea cruris Carcinogenesis Tinea versicolor Myopathy Diseases Database ISO 3166 Carcinogen Legionella pneumophila

Nuclear weapons and the United States

Trichophyton tonsurans Junin virus Aspergillus Cephalic disorder Alcohol withdrawal syndrome

Infectious causes of cancer

U.S. state

Anarchism in the United States

Germans The Virginia Gazette Battle of Gettysburg Mobile phone

Attack on Pearl Harbor

United Nations Charter Tropical spastic paraparesis Bolivian hemorrhagic fever Pneumocystis jirovecii Syphilis Gaucher%27s disease Parietal lobe Streptococcus Behavioral medicine

Orphan Drug Act of 1983

Hepatitis D American (word) Asperger syndrome Fatal familial insomnia Duchenne muscular dystrophy Schistosoma Ascaris lumbricoides Treaty of Versailles Cryptococcosis Breast cancer 1p36 deletion syndrome Tourette syndrome Cherokee Nation Flavivirus Bubonic plague Sapovirus Ellis Island First Great Awakening

Hong Kong College of Psychiatrists

Bacteroides Helminthiasis Pleomorphic undifferentiated sarcoma Quartz African American California Gold Rush Lymphadenopathy Astrocytoma Genetic testing Alkylating antineoplastic agent Chronic myelogenous leukemia Leukodystrophy Colorado tick fever Wilson%27s disease Brain Neuroregeneration 17q21.31 microdeletion syndrome Uterine sarcoma Discrimination Kidney Hydrocephalus Evolution

Outline of the psychiatric survivors movement

Pancreas Maine Klinefelter syndrome Rhinovirus ► November (394) About Contact Privacy Policy Sitemaps

Copyright © 2017. All Rights Reserved

Sponsored Links