The New Deal: Impact on American Society

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The New Deal Impact on American Society
Note ND stands for New Deal
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Thesis

• Look beyond the federal programs consider
  broader changes.
• New Deal set in motion dramatic growth in federal
  bureaucracy and opened unprecedented
  opportunities for new groups to participate in
  public life.
• Expanded federal presence in the economy and in
  the lives of ordinary citizens.

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Part I New Deal Constituencies and the Broker
State

• Definition of Broker State federal govt as a
  mediator (i.e. a broker) between contending
  groups seeking power and influence.

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Origins

• Changes underway since early 20th c
  w/Progressives (expanding federal role)
• What examples can you list?
• New federal bureaucrats w/budgets of
  unprecedented size
• Deficit climbed

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What the Broker State was

• More people organized into pressure groups
• Democrats realized importance of satisfying
  certain blocs of voters to cement party
  allegiance.
• Pre-Depression, Democrat alliance of urban
  political machines and white ethnic voters.
• In the 1930s, organized labor, women,
  African-Americans, and other groups joined that
  coalitionreceiving more attention from the
  Democrats and the federal govt which the Dems
  controlled

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Part IIOrganized Labor
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Organized Labor

• In the 30s, labor relations became a legitimate
  arena for federal action and intervention
• Precedents Progressive Era WWI
• Specific Examples?
• Union successes
• Recognition
• Higher wages
• seniority systems
• Grievance procedures

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Growth during New Deal Era

• Why?
• Inadequacy of welfare capitalism during
  Depression (welfare capitalism is the idea that
  businesses should provide services to employees
  --higher wages, health care, housing, pensions --
  pioneered by Ford G. Pullman)
• NIRA Wagner Act
• Rise of CIO
• Growing militancy of average worker
• By end of 30s, unionized workers tripled to
  almost 9 million! (25 of non-farm workforce)

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The CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations

• Promoted industrial unionism all workers in a
  single industry
• At odds with AFL craft-by-craft approach
• Attracted lots of NEW groups
• Mex-Amer blacks b/c CIO committed to racial
  justice
• Women found a limited welcome
• BUT none of these groups held leadership
  positions
• UAW told women strikers to go back home after
  the strike ended

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Upon the CIOs creation John L. Lewis said,

• "The millions of workers in our mass production
  industries have a right to membership in
  effective labor organizations and to the
  enjoyment of industrial freedom. They are
  entitled to a place in the American economic
  sunlight.
• If the labor movement and American democracy are
  to endure, these workers should have the
  opportunity to support their families under
  conditions of health, decency, and comfort, to
  own their own home, to educate their children,
  and possess sufficient leisure to take part in
  wholesome social and political activities."

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CIO Tactics

• Sit-down strikes
• Alienated the middle class who saw this as an
  attack on private property
• Banned by Supreme Court in 1939
• Biggest strike at Flint, MI against General
  Motors in attempt to form UAW (United Auto
  Workers)

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Memorial Day Massacre
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Limits of Labor Movement

• Organized labor wasnt a priority for FDR
• Many workers still indifferent or hostile to
  unions
• Unions didnt ultimately redistribute power in
  American industry
• Social programs of New Deal diffused radical
  spirit

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Part IIIWomen
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Gains during the New Deal

• Women were offered policymaker and middle-level
  bureaucrat positions
• Francis Perkins -Secretary of Labor
• Molly Dewson -social reformer turned politician
  headed Womens Division of DNC

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Eleanor Roosevelt

• 1st active First Lady
• Held press conferences
• Wrote syndicated column My Day
• Traveled extensively featured in popular
  magazines like Life.
• Reached out to women, poor, African-Americans,
  children
• Embraced a civil rights agenda which accepted
  segregation and championed equal opportunity.
  Quality education became her top public priority
  .

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Yet,

• WPA hired some women even offered equal pay for
  same jobs held by men women!
• Women work within programs, departments, and
  agencies to facilitate change (just like
  African-Americans did)

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But ND programs often excluded or limited women

• NRA lower minimum wage for women
• CWA and PWA jobs almost all to men
• Soc Sec Act and Fair Labor Standards Act didnt
  cover jobs traditionally held by women (like
  domestic service)
• CCC excluded women wheres the she-she-she?

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Part IVAfrican-Americans
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African-Americans

• Just as ND didnt seriously challenge gender
  inequalities, it didnt battle racial
  discrimination either.
• In the 1930s, civil rights not considered a
  legitimate area for govt action.
• Programs often reflected prevailing racist
  attitudes
• CCC segregated
• NRA codes didnt protect black workers
• FDR refused to support federal lynching law

• Segregated CCC unit repairing a tractor. The CCC
  held that "segregation is not discrimination"

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• A sharecroppers yard evicted sharecroppers
  in MO. The marginal and oppressive economy of
  sharecropping largely collapsed during the Great
  Depression. Tenant farmers sharecroppers were
  evicted when Southern farm owners used cutbacks
  in production as an opportunity to discriminate
  against African-Americans. In 1932, unemployment
  among African- Americans was about 50, twice the
  national average.

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African-Americans

• BUT, there were some benefits
• Resettlement Administration to aid in
  resettlement of sharecroppers and tenant farmers
  onto more productive land
• Most of all relief programs directed to helping
  poorregardless of race and ethnicity. For
  example, 18 of WPA beneficiaries were
  African-Americans
• Appointed to federal office
• Led by Mary McCleod Bethune, the Black Cabinet
  worked for fairer treatment of blacks in agencies
  aided by Eleanor Roosevelt. It openly and
  actively called for treatment before the law.

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Eleanor Roosevelt Civil Rights

• When the Daughters of American Revolution
  (DAR) refused to allow black opera singer Marian
  Anderson to perform at Constitution Hall, Eleanor
  ultimately intervened.
• She resigned from DAR and used her newspaper
  column "My Day" as a forum for the announcement
  --which was printed in hundreds of newspapers
  across the country transformed the incident
  from a local slight to one of national
  importance.
• The First Lady then had the concert location
  changed to the symbolic Lincoln Memorial --an
  event which she pressured radio stations to cover
  live.

"In this great auditorium under the sky all of us
are free."
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African-Americans

• Since Civil War, African-Americans voted w/the
  party of Lincoln. Democrats association with
  the KKK dissuaded African-Americans from voting
  for Dems
• BUT, by 1936 (in a 4 year span!), voted Dem bloc
• Harshness of the depression caused
• National politics to assume a new relevance for
  black Americans outside the South (due to the
  Great Migration)

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Part VMexican-Americans
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As a result of the New Deal,

• Mex-Amer were more encouraged to become citizens
  and they identified more w/US than MX
• Put into context Repatriation of MX citizens
  their American-born children/adults from
  1928-1932.
• Joined CIO other unions saw as key step in
  becoming American
• Felt a personal connection to FDR someone who
  had struggled/adversity

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• Squatters in Mexican section in San Antonio,
  Texas. The house was built of scrap material in
  vacant lot.

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Part VINative Americans
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Native Americans

• Most disadvantaged and powerless minority
• CCC helped by bringing needed money and projects
  to reservations
• FERA and CWA helped too
• Problems so severe though that changes did little
  to improve lives or reinvigorate tribal
  communities

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Indian Reorganization Act (1934)

• Part of 1st ND
• Reversed Dawes Act of 1887
• Promoted more extensive self-govt through tribal
  councils and constitutions
• Govt abandoned attempt to force assimilation in
  favor of promoting cultural pluralism
• Pledged to help preserve Indian languages, arts,
  and traditions

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Part VIILand

• Changes to societys relationship with the land

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• Land was a big motif and visible legacy
• TVAmost extensive environmental project
• Rural Electrification Administration (1935)
• Brought power to farmers in attempt to improve
  the quality and productivity of rural life

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The ND

• Encouraged urban dwellers to return to rural
  areas in back to land approach of the
  Greenbelt movement outside D.C, Cincinnati, and
  Milwaukee
• CCC was nicknamed the tree army w/tons of
  projects everywhere

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Dust Bowl New Deal Changes

• The Dust Bowl called attention to environmental
  problems
• Agents from Soil Conservation Service in the
  Department of Agriculture taught farmers proper
  technique for tilling hillsides (no more
  dry-farming method)
• Govt agricultural-experts tried to remove
  marginally productive land from cultivation and
  prevent soil erosion in Shelterbelt Program

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Part VII the Arts
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ND and the Arts

• The Depression had dried up traditional sources
  of private patronage and creative artists nowhere
  to turn
• ND sponsored Art for the millions so no longer
  be the province of the elite
• The WPAs Federal One project provided relief
  BUT spirit was well beyond putting unemployed
  artists, actors, and writers to work wanted to
  re-define relationship between artists and the
  community.

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Under the WPA

• Federal Art Project painters, muralists, and
  sculptors
• American folk art
• Murals for public buildings and post offices
• Federal Music Project
• Govt-sponsored touring orchestras
• Free concerts of classical and popular
  musicemphasizing American themes
• Cataloged hundreds of American folk songs

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Also under the WPA

• Federal Theatre Project most ambitious (only
  time federally sponsored theater in US
  historyunlike in Europe)
• Lots of talented directors, playwrights, and
  actors found employment
• BUT often leftists canned funding!
• Federal Writers Project
• Employed young writers
• Conducted oral histories (slave narratives)
• State and territorial guidebooks

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Documentary Impulse

• Was a broader artistic trend of the ND era
• Seen in Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath
• John Dos Passos USA Trilogy
• My sympathies lie with the private in the front
  line against the brass hat with the sodcarrier
  against the strawboss, or the walking delegate
  for that matter with the laboratory worker
  against the stuffed shirt in a mortarboard with
  the criminal against the cop.
• Popular March of Time newsreels, Life and Look
  magazines
• Govt hired photographers to just document images
  of timesbest visual record of Depression

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Conclusion
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BIG PICTURE of Legacy

• The ND set in motion far-reaching changes and
  notably the growth of a modern state of
  significant size.
• Most people now experienced govt as a concrete
  part of everyday life. 1/3 of population received
  direct govt assistance from new federal
  programs.
• Remember how this began during the Civil War??
• Govt made a commitment to intervene in the
  economy when the private sector couldnt
  guaranteed economic stability.

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BIG PICTURE of Legacy

• Laid the foundations of American welfare
  state-federal governments acceptance of primary
  responsibility for the individual and collective
  welfare of the people
• Though ND helped so many, the ND safety net had
  lots of holes by excluding a large minority of
  the population (women and minorities)
• Not until LBJs Great Society in the 1960s would
  social welfare programs reach significant numbers
  of Americas poor.
• Reformers assumed programs would end when
  Depression did, but didnt.

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BIG PICTURE of Legacy

• Brilliant politics Democratic Party found
  allegiance from those who benefited (voting
  blocs)
• Democratic Party attracted more than the down and
  out
• FDRs charismatic personality and dispersal of ND
  benefits to families throughout social structure
  brought middle-class voters into Democratic fold.
• Coalition which began in 1920s reflected the
  interests of ethnic groups, city dwellers,
  organized labor, blacks, and a broad
  cross-section of the middle classforming the
  backbone of the Democratic coalition.

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