Chapter 21 condensed notes
Introduction
➔ Grand Coulee Dam → largest man made structure in world history that produced more
than 40% of nation’s hydroelectric power
◆ Had negative effects: salmon vanished resulting in Colville confederated tribes to
lose their fishing, and submerged homes and burial grounds
➔ New Deal → Franklin D. Roosevelt promised that he would combat the Great
Depression with a “new deal”
◆ Built a lot of roads, dams, airports, bridges and houses
➔ Democratic Party transformed into coalition of farmers, industrial workers, reform-minded
urban middle class, liberal intellectuals, northern African Americans, white supremacist
South
◆ All believed that federal government must provide Americans with protection
against dislocations caused by modern capitalism
➔ “Liberalism” → changed from limited government and free-market economics to active
efforts by national government to provide citizens a baseline security against economic
calamity
➔ Freedom changed meaning to guaranteed economic security
◆ Social Security Act → offered aid to unemployed and aged
◆ Fair Labor Standards Act → established national minimum wage
➔ New Deal benefits flowed to industrial workers but not tenant farmers, to men not really
women, to white people more than non-white people
The First New Deal
➔ FDR and the Election of 1932
◆ Advocated balanced federal budget and criticized Hoover for excessive
government spending to enforce unpopular Prohibition law
◆ Democrats and urban, ethnic workers wanted to repeal Prohibition because it
would reopen shuttered industry and raise government revenue, promoting
Roosevelt’s popularity
➔ The Coming of the New Deal
◆ FDR wanted to reconcile democracy, individual liberty, and economic recovery
and development
● Brandeis believed that large corporations had too much power and
contributed to Depression by keeping prices artificially high and failing to
increase workers’ purchasing power
➔ The Banking Crisis
◆ Emergency Banking Act → provided funds to shore up threatened institutions
◆ Glass-Steagall Act → barred commercial banks from becoming involved in
buying and selling of stocks
● Prevented many irresponsible practices that contributed to stock market
crash
● Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation → government system that
insured accounts of individual depositors
● Increased government power over financial system
● Repealed in 1990s
➔ The NRA
◆ Hundred Days → first three months of Roosevelt’s administration in which he
enacted 15 of his New Deal proposals
◆ National Industrial Recovery Act → established National Recovery
Administration which worked with groups of business leaders to establish
industry codes that set standards for output, prices, and working conditions
◆ FDR repudiated older idea of liberty based on idea that best way to encourage
economic activity was allow market competition to operate unrestrained by
government
● Section 7a of new law recognized workers’ right to organize unions
◆ NRA established codes that set standards for production, prices, and wages in
textile, steel, mining, and auto industries
● Large companies used NRA to drive up prices, limit production, lay off
workers, divide markets among themselves
● So NRA did not help economic recovery or tensions between employers
and workers, but did combat pervasive sense that government was doing
nothing to deal with economic crisis
➔ Government Jobs
◆ Hundred Days helped people in need
● Federal Emergency Relief Administration → made grants to local
agencies that aided those impoverished by the Depression
● FDR preferred to create temporary jobs, thereby combating
unemployment while improving nation’s infrastructure of roads, bridges,
public buildings, and parks
◆ Civilian Conservation Corps → set unemployed young men to work on projects
like forest preservation, flood control, and improvement of national parks and
wildlife preserves
➔ Public Works Projects
◆ Public Works Administration → built roads, schools, hospitals, and other public
facilities including New York City’s Triborough Bridge and Overseas Highway
between Miami and Key West
◆ Civil Works Administration → employed more than 4 million people in
construction of highways, tunnels, courthouses, airports
● Was dissolved after people complained that Americans were permanently
dependent on government jobs
◆ Tennessee Valley Authority → built series of dams to prevent floods and
deforestation along Tennessee River and provide cheap electric power for homes
and factories in a seven state region where many families still lived in isolated log
cabins
● Government was in competition with private companies for selling
electricity
➔ The New Deal and Agriculture
◆ There was a disastrous plight of American farmers
◆ Agricultural Adjustment Act → authorized federal government to set
production quotas for major crops and pay farmers to plant less in an attempt to
raise farm prices
● Killed 6 million pigs to raise farm prices and incomes, but money flowed
into property owning farmers
● AAA paid landowning farmers not to grow crops, resulting in eviction of
thousands of poor tenants and sharecroppers
◆ Dust Bowl → areas of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and Colorado that were
affected by a huge drought
● Displaced more than 1 million farmers
➔ The New Deal and Housing
◆ Millions of Americans lived in urban slums or ramshackle rural dwellings
◆ Home Owner’s Loan Corporation and Federal Housing Administration →
insured millions of long-term mortgages issued by private banks
● Saved tens of millions of families
◆ Federal Communications Commission → oversaw nation’s broadcast
airwaves and telephone communications
◆ Securities and Exchange Commission → regulated stock and bond markets
◆ Twenty-first Amendment ratification → repealed Prohibition
◆ Still, more than 20% of workforce was unemployed in 1934
➔ The Court and the New Deal
◆ Supreme Court was still controlled by conservative Republican judges
● Declared NRA unlawful because delegated legislative powers to president
and attempted to regulate local businesses that did not engage in
interstate commerce
◆ United States v. Butler → AAA fell because it exercised congressional power
over local economic activities
The Grassroots Revolt
➔ Labor’s Great Upheaval
◆ Many unions protested against bad conditions and government supported them
this time
◆ American factories were like miniature dictatorships where workers could be
abused and fired at will, management determined length of workday and speed
of assembly line
◆ 2,000 strikes in 1934
➔ The Rise of the CIO
◆ Congress of Industrial Organizations → sought to mobilize all workers in a
given industry such as steel manufacturing
◆ Sit-down strike → remarkably effective tactic that rather than walking out of
Fisher Auto Body plant in Cleveland, workers halted production and sat inside
◆ US Steel recognized Steel Workers Organizing Committee, and union
membership reached 9 million by 1940
➔ Labor and Politics
◆ “Underconsumptionist” explanation of Depression said that lack of sufficient
consumer demand was underlying cause
➔ Voices of Protest
◆ Upton Sinclair won Democratic nomination for governor in 1934 as head of End
Poverty in California movement
● Lost after his haters spread false rumours that he was a communist and
cheated votes
◆ Huey Long became governor of Louisiana and built roads, schools, hospitals to
increase tax burden on Louisiana’s oil companies
● Launched Share Our Wealth movement → called for confiscation of
most of the wealth of the richest Americans to finance immediate grant of
$5,000 and guaranteed job and annual income for all citizens
● Assassinated in 1935
The Second New Deal
➔ Introduction
◆ First New Deal focused on economic recovery, second focused on economic
security, guarantee that Americans would be protected against unemployment
and poverty
◆ People began to think government sould try to redistribute national income to
sustain mass purchasing power in consumer economy instead of planning
business recovery
◆ Rural Electrification Agency → brought electric power to homes that lacked it
to enable more Americans to purchase household appliances
● By 1950, 90% farms had electricity and possessed radios, electric stoves,
refrigerators, mechanical equipment
◆ Second New Deal tried to promote soil conservation and family farming
➔ WPA and Wagner Act
◆ Works Progress Administration → hired 3 million Americans each year until
ended in 1943, constructed thousands of public buildings and bridges, more than
500,000 miles of road, 600 airports, stadiums, swimming pools, sewage
treatment plants
● Employed many artists to decorate public buildings and hired writers to
produce local histories and guidebooks to 48 states and record
recollections of ordinary Americans.
◆ Wagner Act → brought democracy into American workplace by empowering
National Labor Relations Board to supervise elections in which employees voted
on union representation
● Outlawed “unfair labor practices”
➔ The American Welfare State: Social Security
◆ Social Security Act → national government had responsibility to ensure material
well-being of ordinary Americans; created system of unemployment insurance,
old age pensions, aid to people with disabilities, elderly poor, and families with
dependent children
● Excluded many people, especially unmarried women and non-whites
◆ Welfare state → system of income assistance, health coverage, and social
services for all citizens
● American welfare state was more decentralized, involved lower levels of
public spending, covered fewer citizens
◆ New Deal made people believe government should intervene in economy,
question was how.
A Reckoning with Liberty
➔ Introduction
◆ Roosevelt talked so much on the radio his addresses were known as “fireside
chats”
◆ Roosevelt linked freedom with economic security and identified entrenched
economic inequality as greatest enemy
➔ The Election of 1936
◆ Roosevelt won because organized labor, southern White and northern Black
people, Protestant farmers and urban Catholic and Jewish etnics, industrial
workers and middle class home owners, all voted for him
➔ The Court Fight
◆ Court packing plan → FDR said president should be allowed to appoint new
justice for each one who remained on the Court past age seventy
● So he could change balance of power on Court
◆ Congress didn’t approve but justices were scared and bent to FDR’s will
➔ The End of the Second New Deal
◆ United States Housing Act → first major national effort to build homes for
poorest Americans
◆ Fair Labor Standards Bill → banned goods produced by child labor from
interstate commerce, set forty cents as hourly minimum wage, and required
overtime pay for hours of work exceeding forty per week
◆ Economic conditions improved in 1936 so Roosevelt reduced federal funding for
farm subsidies and WPA work relief, resulting in more unemployment
◆ Keynesian economics → John Maynard Keynes preached that large scale
government spending was necessary to sustain purchasing power and stimulate
economic activity
The Limits of Change
➔ The New Deal and American Women
◆ New Deal brought more women into government than ever before including
Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins and Eleanor Roosevelt
● Eleanor Roosevelt transformed role of First Lady into a base for political
action: travelled widely, spoke out on public issues, wrote regular
newspaper column, worked to enlarge scope of New Deal in areas like
civil rights, labor legislation and work relief
◆ Depression inspired widespread demands to remove women from labor market
so unemployed men could work
➔ The Southern Veto
◆ Southerners assumed key leadership positions and insisted Social Security law
to exclude agricultural and domestic workers, large categories of Black
employment
◆ Urban League and NAACP lobbied for system that enabled agricultural and
domestic workers to receive unemployment and old age benefits
● Social Security Act claimed Pittsburgh Courier, a Black newspaper,
reflected power of reactionary elements in the South who cannot bear the
thought of Black people getting pensions and compensations
➔ Stigma of Welfare
◆ Black people were confined to least generous welfare state, identified Black
people as recipients of unearned government assistance and welfare as program
for minorities
➔ The Native American New Deal
◆ First Nations suffered impoverishment, poor health conditions, tuberculosis rates
twice as high as for white Americans
◆ Indian New Deal
● Indian Reorganization Act → abolished government’s campaign dating
back to Dawes Act of forcibly dividing First Nation land into small plots for
individual families and selling off “surplus” lands
◆ Federal conservation called for herd reductions but sheepherding was important
to Navajos. So Navajo rejected IRA
➔ The New Deal and Mexican Americans
◆ Wagner and Social Security Act did not apply to agricultural laborers
◆ Mexican Americans couldn’t develop consistent strategy for their people
◆ Filipino Repatriaton Act → offered free transportation to Filipinos willing to
return to the Phillipines
● Only 2,000 out of 45,000 accepted
➔ A New Deal for Black People
◆ Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from Daughters of the American Revolution when
they discriminated a Black singer, and asked her to sing in Lincoln Memorial for
the country instead
◆ Black people started to like Democrats more instead of Lincoln’s Party
Republicans
➔ Federal Discrimination
◆ Federal housing policy strongly reinforced residential segretation
● People wanted houses to be racially segregated
◆ Jobs also discriminated Black people
A New Conception of America
➔ The Heyday of American Communism
◆ Catholics and Jews began to occupy prominent posts in Roosevelt administration
and new immigrant voters formed important part of electoral support
◆ “Unionism is Americanism”
◆ The left → umbrella term for socialists, communists, labor radicals, many New
Deal liberals
● Enjoyed shaping influence on nation’s politics and culture
◆ CIO and Communist Party became focal point for broad social and intellectual
impulse that helped redraw boundaries of American freedom
● Communist Party grew in population a lot during 1930s not because of
philosophy but because of their activities: demonstrations by unemployed,
struggles for industrial unionism, renewed movement for Black civil rights
◆ Popular Front → period during mid 1930s when Communist Party sought to ally
itself with socialists and New Dealers in movements for social change, urging
reform of capitalist system
➔ Redefining the People
◆ Ethnic and racial diversity became glory of American society
◆ “American way of life” meant unionism and social citizenship
◆ Art about the people became popular
➔ Challenging the Color Line
◆ Scottsboro case → nine young Black men arrested for rape of two white women
in Alabama despite weakness of evidence
◆ Black workers were now being brought into labor movement for the first time and
ran extensive educational campaigns to persuade white workers to recognize
interests they shared
➔ Labor and Civil Liberties
◆ House Un-American Activities Committee → investigated disloyalty
● “Un-American” meant communists, labor radicals, and the left of
Democratic Party
● Smith Act → made it federal crime to teach, advocate or encourage
overthrow of government
➔ The End of the New Deal
◆ The South lagged far behind other parts of country in industrialization and
investment in education and public health
◆ Southern business and political leaders feared continuing federal intervention in
their region would encourage unionization and upset race relations
➔ The New Deal in American History
◆ New Deal failed to address problem of racial inequality and even worsened it
◆ But it expanded federal government’s role in American economy, made it an
independent force in relations between industry and labor
◆ Government influenced what farmers could and could not plant, required
employers to deal with unions, insured bank deposits, regulated stock market,
loaned money to home owners, provided payments to majority of the elderly and
unemployed
◆ Transformed physical environment through hydroelectric dams, reforestation
projects, rural electrification, and construction of innumerable public facilities
◆ Restored faith in democracy and made government directly experienced in
Americans’ daily lives and directly concerned with their welfare
● But more than 15% of workforce remained unemployed in 1940
● Only mobilization of nation’s resources to fight WWII would finally end the
Great Depression
