Hitler, 1933

Bonus Army

Bonus Army town burning

FDR

1932 election in a nutshell

Hoover's platform: continuing to be uniquely qualified to be President.

FDR's platform: not being Herbert Hoover.

Roosevelt in office:

Two New Deals

The First New Deal (1933-35): Culmination of Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt's vision of a managed state.

The Second New Deal (1935-1940): Creation of a new social contract between government and the people.

The First New Deal: immediate measures of desparation.

• Emergency Banking Act (stabilizing banking system).
• Economy Act (cuts spending--antithetical to everything Roosevelt will do later)
• Beer-Wine Act (ends parts of prohibition)

The first New Deal

• Agricultural Adjustment Act/Thomas Amendment

Dust Bowl

Evicted Sharecroppers

Evicted Sharecroppers

Evicted Sharecroppers

Evicted Sharecroppers

Thomas and Father Coughlin: triumph of the Bryanites

The first New Deal

• Agricultural Adjustment Act/Thomas Amendment
• Federal Emergency Relief Administration (Jobs)
• Civilian Conservation Corps (Work relief on fixing environmental landscapes)
• Glass-Steagal (Separation of commercial and investment banking)
• Tennessee Valley Authority (Electric Power, development aid to South).

The first New Deal

• Agricultural Adjustment Act/Thomas Amendment
• Federal Emergency Relief Administration
• Civilian Conservation Corps
• Glass-Steagal
• Tennessee Valley Authority
  
• National Industrial Recovery Act

National Recovery Act

• Suspension of anti-monopoly laws and drafting of industry-wide codes for prices and labor
• Provisions for labor unions
• Public Works (jobs)

Frances Perkins

Adolf Berle

Berle on the New Deal

The American solution is running in a current almost directly counter to some of the solutions which are proposed elsewhere in the world. In the United States, so far from desiring to enthrone the proletariat in any of these movements, the real objective is to abolish the proletariat, or rather to make it wholly unncessary by lifting it into a different state.

Dr. Francis Townsend

Coughlin

Huey Long

Long's Populism

• Confiscation of fortunes
• Steep progressive taxes
• Distributing a "household estate" of $5,000 to every American; enough for a home, a car, and a radio.
• Annual income guaranteed of $2,500 a year.
• Shorter working hours, old age pensions.

The Second New Deal

1. The "Big Bill"
   • Works Progress Administration (WPA). You can confuse it with the PWA if you want!
   • Rural Electrification Administration
   • Resettlement Administration

Florida Keys Highway

The Second New Deal

1. The "Big Bill"
   • Works Progress Administration
   • Rural Electrification Administration
   • Resettlement Administration
2. Social Security Administration

Frances Perkins

The Second New Deal

1. The "Big Bill"
   • Works Progress Administration
   • Rural Electrification Administration
   • Resettlement Administration
2. Social Security Administration

• Senior pensions
• Unemployment insurance
• Support for families without fathers

First Social Security Check

Roosevelt on the Social Security taxes:

I guess you're right on the economics, but those taxes were never a problem of economics. They are politics all the way through. We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.

Excluded from social security:

• Farm laborers
• Domestic servants
• Workers in establishments with fewer than 10 employees.

Wagner Act

• Right to trade unions, collective bargaining, and strikes.
• National Labor Relations Board oversees elections to determine union representation.

Senator Robert Wagner, NY

Second New Deal: Major initiatives

1. Big Bill
2. Social Security
3. Wagner Act
4. Tax Reform

Marginal Tax rates, 1910-2010

Arthur Mitchell

Eleanor Roosevelt

The "New Deal" Democratic Coalition

1. Southern Whites
2. Poorer Farmers
3. African Americans
4. Urban ethnic working class
5. Organized Labor
6. Urban intellectuals