The Federal Emergency Relief Administration provided grants to states to feed and clothe the needy. An agricultural recovery program helped beleaguered farmers. The National Recovery Administration forged an alliance between industry and government to promote recovery and gave a boost to the labor movement until the Supreme Court declared the NRA unconstitutional in The Civil Works Administration and later the more extensive Works Progress Administration put millions of unemployed to work on activities ranging from road-building to painting murals on government buildings.
Of all the New Deal reform and relief programs, the most important and durable was Social Security, and without Frances Perkins it might never have been enacted.
Long a proponent of public old-age insurance, Perkins had only accepted her post at the Labor Department on the condition that FDR would back her in seeking this goal. She led a campaign to convince the nation that a pension system would both be humanitarian and also help prevent future depressions.
By public opinion was thoroughly in favor of the idea. So was the Congress, goaded by fear of demagogues such as Francis Townsend who were mobilizing millions of despairing elderly citizens with plans for large, guaranteed federal pensions. The Social Security Act passed in and provided direct aid for the destitute elderly and a pension program for many, but far from all, workers.
It also provided federal funding for state-operated unemployment insurance programs, as well as aid for the handicapped and for mothers with dependent children. An independent Social Security Board ran the entire system. Although Perkins' activities and accomplishments ranged far outside the Department, there was a great deal of importance happening there too. The Wagner-Peyser Act of established the U. Employment Service, building on the existing service and adding more resources and so that the USES could maintain, in cooperation with the states, an effective nation-wide system of employment offices.
The USES also provided placement and recruitment for programs for the unemployed, including those on unemployment insurance under the Social Security Act. One of the important economic recovery provisions of the NRA set minimum wages and maximum hours per week. Even before the Supreme Court decision overturning the NRA, Perkins had the Department draft a bill setting wage and hour standards for work on federal contracts.
With this bill and a related one up her sleeve, she told FDR not to worry about the NRA because she had two bills "locked in the lower left-hand drawer of my desk against an emergency. The Walsh-Healey Act eventually had a major effect on wages and hours for contract workers, but its main immediate impact was to prepare the way for much broader wage and hour legislation. The second bill in Perkins' desk was a "fair labor standards" bill providing for the setting of minimum wages and maximum work hours for most industrial workers.
FDR was fearful that the conservative Supreme Court would overturn such a far-reaching bill if enacted, as it had the NRA, and he embarked on his famous attempt to "pack" the Court. The Congress refused to go along, so he had to leave the fair labor standards bill to its fate. The more restricted Walsh-Healey Act had passed fairly easily, but Congress balked at this broader legislation.
Administered by the Department of Labor, the Act set a minimum wage of 25 cents per hour and a maximum workweek of 40 hours to be phased in by for most workers in manufacturing.
The hour week has not changed in 50 years, but the wage level has risen steadily and the coverage has broadened to include most salaried workers. One of the projects Perkins discussed with Roosevelt before accepting her appointment was to have the Department of Labor help state governments deal with labor problems. In July she held at the Department a very successful conference of 16 state minimum wage boards some of the states had minimum wage laws long before the Federal Government. Spurred by this experience, the next year she held a two-day conference on state labor legislation at which 39 states were represented.
State officials in attendance were gratified that the U. Department of Labor was showing interest in their problems. They called on Perkins to make the labor legislation conferences an annual event. She did so and participated actively in them every year until she left office. The conferences continued under Labor Department auspices for another ten years, by which time they had largely accomplished their goal of improving and standardizing state labor laws and administration.
To institutionalize the work she was trying to accomplish with these conferences, Perkins created the Division of Labor Standards later redesignated a bureau in as a service agency and informational clearinghouse for state governments and other federal agencies. Its goal was to promote, through voluntary means, improved conditions of work. The Division offered many services in addition to helping the states deal with administrative problems. It offered training for factory inspectors.
It attracted national attention to the area of workers' health with a series of conferences on silicosis. This wide-spread lung disease had been dramatized by the "Gauley Bridge Disaster" in which hundreds of tunnel workers died from breathing silica-filled air. The Division also worked with unions, whose support was needed in passing labor legislation in the States. The unions around the country received a tremendous boost from Washington when the National Labor Relations Act of , known as the Wagner Act, gave federal sanction to the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively.
The FCC continues to function under the Communications Act of , but today deals with new issues related to digital technology and the internet, such as net neutrality.
The law creates a centralized regulatory authority, the Federal Communications Commission , to oversee the communications industry. The bursting of the housing bubble of the s was a major contributor to the onset of the Great Depression. Millions of Americans lost their homes and millions more were in danger of doing so.
The construction industry ground to a halt and the building trades were hit particularly hard. FHA regulations were responsible for the standardization of the year, low interest mortgage. To further facilitate the flow of capital into housing, the FHA encouraged the development of a secondary market in which mortgages could be sold to investors [3].
The National Housing Act succeeded in two major ways. First, it helped stimulate the revival of the construction industry and reemployment of workers in the building trades. The FHA lasted until , when its functions and duties were taken over by the newly-created Department of Housing and Urban Development [10].
Fannie Mae still exists and was a major player in the mortgage bubble and crisis of the s. See also Freund, note 2 above. The canal is a U. Bureau of Reclamation project and one of the many Bureau water delivery projects made possible with funding assistance from the Public Works Administration PWA.
Today, the canal still provides irrigation water for hundreds of thousands of acres and also produces hydroelectric power. Between and , this art program creates over 1, murals and over sculptures for federal buildings, e. A large dust storm on May 11, swept fine soil particles over Washington, D. In addition to the disaster of the Dust Bowl, prominent figures like President Roosevelt and soil expert Hugh Bennett pushed natural resource conservation to the forefront.
In , the nation further refined its soil and agricultural policy with the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act, which amended the Soil Conservation Act in order to enhance federal-state coordination, discourage the over-use of land, assist tenants and sharecroppers, and help create stable and adequate prices for farm goods [8]. Bennett and W. Department of Agriculture, Circular No. Government Printing Office, April, , pp.
The SCS remains active for the next fifty years and helps facilitate the creation of thousands of state-level soil conservation districts, which still operate today. The RA is created to resettle destitute Americans, address environmental issues, and make loans to farmers. The program ends in , with many duties and responsibilities taken over by the newly-created Farm Security Administration FSA. The WPA employs over 8. May 11, : With Executive Order No.
May 27, : The U. The offending section of the law had imposed a system of codes on American businesses, controlling things such as production and wages. The program is designed to provide work, education, and job training for unemployed young men and women. It employs 4. June 28, President Roosevelt signs the Taylor Grazing Act Efforts to control unlimited grazing on private and public lands began in the late 19th century after the cattle boom of the s in the Great Plains and the catastrophic drought, freeze and die-off of The long drought across the western United States from the late s well into the s provoked a new round of debate over land policy and grazing in the west.
Yet, as the Dust Bowl worsened in the early s, early legislation failed under President Herbert Hoover. Grazing legislation was quickly introduced, but took two years to wend its way through Congress.
The Division of Grazing was organized into 59 grazing districts, which soon oversaw around million acres of federal land and million acres of private and state land [6].
The name of the Division of Grazing was changed to the U. Grazing Service in Although it does not fall under the Taylor Grazing Act, the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture regulates grazing within national forests, which include millions of acres of grassland. While cattlemen have too often grazed land too hard due to economic pressures and bad weather, it is also true that range science has been plagued by errors and has not always been a reliable guide to public policy [8].
New York: Oxford University Press, Roosevelt and the Land of America. It lasts until , but the bulk of its employment is from to The law was wide-ranging. While most Americans know Social Security for its old-age pension system, the act also addressed unemployment benefits, aid to dependent children, maternal and child welfare, public health services, and aid to the blind [1].
As a result, the poverty rate among senior citizens was extremely high and a huge burden on state welfare funds.
So President Roosevelt created the Committee on Economic Security in to study the problem and make recommendations. In the end, the Social Security Act emerged from Congress with compromises on several fronts, including the absence of employment assurance, disability benefits and health insurance disability and health provisions would be added decades later.
A major restriction was that funding came from a regressive tax on employers and employees, rather than progressive income taxes. Nevertheless, the Social Security Act was a watershed in American life. Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last…This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens….
As of , over 52 million Americans were receiving some type of Social Security benefit [6]. Unfortunately, despite its effectiveness and popularity, Social Security has repeatedly been questioned by conservative forces that seek to cut benefits on the false argument that the Social Security Trust Fund is going bankrupt it is not. Wall Street financiers have long wished to privatize the system, promising higher returns if the funds were invested in capital markets [7].
This argument, too, is bogus, as proven by the massive losses suffered by private retirement funds in the market crises of and One of the most popular and enduring programs of the New Deal, the law creates an old age pension system and other social safety net programs that have been a rock of economic security for Americans ever since.
It also reorganized leadership positions and titles, gave the Federal Reserve more independence from the executive branch, established a more secure Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and cemented earlier reform efforts [2].
The Banking Act of was largely crafted by Marriner Eccles, chairman of the Federal Reserve from to , and a man often credited for being Keynesian i. Most economists believe that the bank has been better at regulating monetary policy since the s than it was before, but controversy has swirled over such policies as a drastic tightening of credit in which helped trigger the sharp recession of and the loose financial leash of the s and s which promoted the credit bubbles that ended in the recessions of and [4].
The Banking Act made it a stronger Federal Reserve, but, unfortunately, one that could more easily be co-opted by the private banking interests once Eccles was gone…Over the past two decades, evidence has mounted that suggests the Federal Reserve is largely in the hands of powerful private financial institutions and their representatives…This may help explain why the Federal Reserve failed to regulate or supervise the declining lending standards of the biggest banks prior to the crash.
It also helps explain why the Fed under Ben Bernanke appeared to be in no rush to exercise its full authority to lend to business enterprises and infrastructure projects as it did under the enlightened leadership of Marriner Eccles in the s and 40s. In Sheila D. Collins and Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg Ed. Collectively, these programs created hundreds of thousands of artworks, performances, books, plays, historical inventories, and more. During : The unemployment rate is down to January 6, : In United States v.
Butler , the U. Supreme Court finds the Agricultural Adjustment Act of unconstitutional, ruling that the control of agriculture is a state function, not a federal one. The Rural Electrification Administration REA had been created a year earlier, but new legislation was needed to address problems that the agency had encountered e.
The RPA came into being in dramatic fashion, with congressional hearings and widespread public discussion about the impact of large chain stores on American retailing. The problem is that chains can use their superior purchasing power to buy goods at bulk discounts and then undercut the prices offered by small distributors and retailers.
The RPA is still the law, but has been markedly weakened over the years by corporate strategy, diminished regulatory action and evolving jurisprudence. Second, the Federal Trade Commission has been intentionally weakened since the Reagan Administration.
As a result, the dominance of large chain stores still prevails in the United States. So, in the spring of , Roosevelt launched a second, more aggressive series of federal programs, sometimes called the Second New Deal. The WPA also gave work to artists, writers, theater directors and musicians.
In July , the National Labor Relations Act , also known as the Wagner Act, created the National Labor Relations Board to supervise union elections and prevent businesses from treating their workers unfairly.
In August, FDR signed the Social Security Act of , which guaranteed pensions to millions of Americans, set up a system of unemployment insurance and stipulated that the federal government would help care for dependent children and the disabled. This FDR had come a long way from his earlier repudiation of class-based politics and was promising a much more aggressive fight against the people who were profiting from the Depression-era troubles of ordinary Americans.
He won the election by a landslide. Still, the Great Depression dragged on. Workers grew more militant: In December , for example, the United Auto Workers strike at a GM plant in Flint, Michigan lasted for 44 days and spread to some , autoworkers in 35 cities. By , to the dismay of most corporate leaders, some 8 million workers had joined unions and were loudly demanding their rights.
Meanwhile, the New Deal itself confronted one political setback after another. Arguing that they represented an unconstitutional extension of federal authority, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court had already invalidated reform initiatives like the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration.
That same year, the economy slipped back into a recession when the government reduced its stimulus spending. Despite this seeming vindication of New Deal policies, increasing anti-Roosevelt sentiment made it difficult for him to enact any new programs. The war effort stimulated American industry and, as a result, effectively ended the Great Depression.
They created a brand-new, if tenuous, political coalition that included white working people, African Americans and left-wing intellectuals. More women entered the workforce as Roosevelt expanded the number of secretarial roles in government. These groups rarely shared the same interests—at least, they rarely thought they did— but they did share a powerful belief that an interventionist government was good for their families, the economy and the nation.
Their coalition has splintered over time, but many of the New Deal programs that bound them together—Social Security, unemployment insurance and federal agricultural subsidies, for instance—are still with us today.
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