‘There was nothing new about the New Deal’. Discuss.

Intro:

- While the New Deal had roots in progressive society and past presidential regimes, it was
the active, sustained adoption of policies that was new

Federal involvement in governmental policy

This had wartime precedent – Roosevelt invoked this directly

- Roosevelt termed the power he wanted in conceptions Americans could understand –

wartime mobilisation which had occurred before, enabling the preservation of American
democracy in spirit of emergency – ‘’I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining
instrument to meet the crisis – broad Executive power to wage a war against the
emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by
a foreign foe’’ – HOWEVER the war powers were temporary whereas Roosevelt’s
implemented changes were intended to be permanent
- Overman Act (1918) granted Wilson sweeping power to reorganise government agencies

However, this was temporary while Roosevelt intended to make this permanent

- The purpose of Wilson’s board was justified by the Committee on Public Information, set up
announcing silent propaganda films like ‘’to hell with the kaiser’’ and the 75,000 four-minute
men, and thus rapidly unnecessary in peacetime
- Conversely, Roosevelt established the power to intervene wherever necessary – the Thomas
Amendment as part of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, signed on 12 May 1933, enabled
Roosevelt to pass $3 billion of federally backed ‘’greenbacks’’ into American circulation, and
thus gain the ability to artificially inflate the currency
- This set the precedent for executive intervention in fiscal policy, which would justify the
further expansion of American power with the
- The ‘second new deal’ focussed more on recovery, beginning with the Emergency Relief
Appropriations act, authorising $4.8 billion, most of which was spent by the WPA hiring 3
million men to work
- This placed the onus for recovery on the federal government, and while 96% of state
projects were sponsored by states between July 1935 and August 1937 indicating a
semblance of cooperation, the reliance on the federal government created a dependency
which would only deepen over time

Social Security

Progressive rooted legislation directly inspired the social security act

- Had progressive roots - States, however, supported the idea of maternalism in social
politics – Mothers Aid or Mothers Pension laws – first in Illinois and Missouri (1911),
before extending to 46/48 states by 1930
- Mothers Pensions would later become the foundation for Aid to Dependent Children
(ADC) of the Social Security Act (1935)
- ADC was targeted at white women raising children when male workers had died,
disappeared or were disabled – Linda Gordon: the irony of ADC was that its basis was not
in misogynistic politicians in backrooms of Washington, but in moralistic Progressives
 propelling maternal feminism to keep women out of the workplace and in the care of
children

State focus was retained

- Because black families were more likely to be headed by women, their need for ADC was
greater
- 14% of children in the ADC program were black
- In the South, local governors used the condition that ADC grants need go to ‘’suitable’’
homes, reducing the number of black families included – in Louisiana, 37% of state
children were black, 26% were ADC clients – Texas, Kentucky and Mississippi chose not to
participate and thus went without this aid
- ADC was less generous than FERA

However, the federalisation of ADC provided newness both in its national potential, even if this was
not fully realised

Eligible African Americans did gain a great deal from the Social Security Act

- In 1940, nearly 2.3 million black workers were eligible for old age insurance
- Although assistance was calculated based on previous wages, once again disadvantaging
blacks against whites, it was nevertheless an unprecedented injection of federal support for
blacks
- A married couple without children who earned under $50 a month qualified for a grant of
$31.50 each month

Old age pension

- Had huge scope to help the African-American community – the national character of relief
standardised reform, when over 50% of black men in the labour market against 33% of white
men remained after 75

There was potential, even if it was limited here in preserving the Jim Crow system, whereas on a
state-by-state basis, it was effectively nullified

Labour legislation

Government hostility towards collective action

- Militancy of the American Federation of Labor, founded in 1886 – rather than intending to
only defend skilled, white, male, native-born tradesmen, the AFL’s ‘’pure and simple’’
ideology was a reactionary policy from a repressive state
- Founding AFL president Samuel Gompers began his career believing in class struggle, but
drew back his ambitions from fighting to change the system to bargaining through narrow
craft-based trade unionism
- Samuel Gompers argued the ‘’best thing the State can do for Labour is to leave labour
alone’’
- As a vision for working class America, Gompers’ idea fell short and hit only an ‘aristocracy’
of working class – unions had to adapt to state pressure that supported corporations, and
unions themselves felt they were still struggling against industrial feudalism
- Eugene Debs believed that if the state was hostile to workers, workers must take federal
powers over peacefully and electorally – the advancement of Republican values lay at
 working class power that could challenge the rise of corporate power through the ballot box
1910 election where Debs received 6% of the vote
- Both Debs and Gompers responded to the state’s hostility to their interest – one through
tactical retreat, the other through attempts to redefine the workings of American
democracy
- Debs’ popularity after jail rested on his ability to articulate and symbolise something of the
severe dislocation experiences by all Americans in the transformation to industrial capitalism

Wartime Labour board – advocated the 8 hour day, collective bargaining, and workers initiated
90% of disputes, giving them a voice – 1,245 cases

Link to collective bargaining actively encouraged by section 7a of the National Industrial Recovery
Act – 17 May 1933, and the enforcement of this through the later 1935 Wagner Act which created
the National Labour Relations Board, almost a carbon copy of wartime legislation

However, the wartime board was temporary, while the industrial legislation of the New Deal was
intended to redefine the extent of ‘individualism’ in America

- America worked on a ‘free labour’ individualism which had its roots in staticness
- Roosevelt worked with Dewey’s 1930 ideas – individualism could only be on ones own,
guiding federal policy against collective bargaining –
- E.g. the New York State Bakeshop Act – passed to regulate the number of hours bakers could
work (trying to thwart immigrant workers willing to work more than 10 hours per day and 60
hours per week) – Lochner v. New York (1905) -the Supreme Court ruled that New York’s
rules were in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment as an ‘’unreasonable, unnecessary and
arbitrary interference with the right and liberty of the individual to contract’’ – Began the
- John Dewey (1930) sought to redefine individualism in Individualism Old And New –
sought a reconfigured individualism which proclaimed the centrality of democratic debate
and decision making – derived individualism from collective and individualistic values of a
democratic nation
- Individualism was not monolithic but could exist alongside collective bargaining – this
dynamic interpretation Roosevelt’s policies aimed to answer ‘’what was the role of the
individual in the mass industrial era’’- suggested economic collectivism was not a sacrifice
of individuality

The Imperial Presidency

Presidents have always used popular culture to support their policies and beliefs

- E.g. Theodore Roosevelt used his October 1905 publication of ‘’outdoor pastimes of an
American Hunter’’ to propel the ‘’rough rider’’ image of his own manifest destiny and
frontier persona, explaining how ‘’this fiction serves a useful purpose in many ways’’ – a
hidden purpose of politics
- Wilson screened Birth of a Nation on 21 March 1915 at the White House – established his
racist agenda by watching a film that falsified reconstruction by presenting African
Americans as attempting to dominate whites and sexually force themselves upon them –
endorsement of the KKK Wilson – ‘’it is all so terribly true’’
- Thus, Roosevelt’s endorsement of culture in the New Deal seemed to fit into this – the Public
Works of Art project which employed 3,749 artists producing 15,633 works of art for public
institutions – e.g. Diego Rivera, depicting the mechanisations of life in the 1920s – Detroit
Industry to chronicle life but also the perseverance of American spirit during the depression
However, Denning’s cultural front – this was a concerted use of popular culture to direct
government policy, rather than the continual interaction with it as Leroy Anderson suggests

- However, the Fireside Chats – made Roosevelt an approachable figure - Carl Carmer, 14
April, 1945 – ‘’I never saw him – but I knew him. Can you have forgotten how, with his voice,
he came into our house, the President of these United States, calling us friends…?’’
- Thousands responded to Roosevelt’s addresses with letters – White House mail jumped
from 5,000 letters a week to 50,000
- Blurred the institution of the presidency with his personality and made him a more
approachable figure, creating trust – utilised by further figures like Jimmy Carter in 1977,
sitting by the Whitehouse ‘fireplace’ in talks about stagflation to borrow from the same
precedent of trust
- Also fit into wider popular culture – the president as a human – e.g.
- Will Rogers quipped about Roosevelt’s fireside chats that ‘’he made everybody understand
it, even the bankers’’
- Will Rogers, the ‘’Number One New Dealer’’ – although he died in 1935, his comedic radio
commentaries of the early New Deal reached 40 million Americans championing an open
America, ‘’I have a different slant on things… for my ancestors did not come over on the
Mayflower. They met the boat’’ – ‘’why is it alright for these Wall Street boys to bet
millions and make that bet affect the fellow plowing a field in Claremore, Oklahoma’’ –
identified a pluralistic nation for radio audiences in the Depression, even when its impacts
were limiting it
- Fit into a wider network of popular culture