New Deal

1. The set of programs and policies designed to promote economic recovery and social reform introduced during the 1930s by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
2. The period during which these programs and policies were developed.

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Collection of political and economic policies and programs promulgated by the first two administrations of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The New Deal policies were aimed at combating the economic miseries of the Great Depression.

The term New Deal refers to the domestic program of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, or in a more general sense, to his first two terms of office (1933–1941). The Supreme Court had a great impact on the New Deal—and vice versa.

Roosevelt's approach to the crisis of the Great Depression was characterized by an attitude of experimentation and a confidence that sufficient constitutional power already existed to enable the states and the nation to surmount economic difficulties. The Constitution was “so simple and practical,” Roosevelt averred in a fireside chat, “that it can always meet extraordinary needs.” The first hundred days of Roosevelt's administration produced a freshet of federal regulatory agencies and legislation, including the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 (AAA) and the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA).

Despite the presence of a conservative bloc dubbed by journalists the “Four Horsemen” (from Revelation 6:2–8)—Justices Willis Van Devanter, James C. McReynolds, Pierce Butler, and George Sutherland—the Court at first accepted some New Deal initiatives as well as important state regulatory legislation (Home Building and Loan Association v. Blaisdell, 1934; Nebbia v. New York, 1934). Federal measures included Congress's action voiding contractual clauses providing for payment in specie, upheld for private contracts in the so‐called Gold Clause Cases of 1935, and creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, sustained in Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority (1936).

But the conservative bloc, with the accession of Justice Owen Roberts, and joined sometimes by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, struck powerful blows at the New Deal program in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935), voiding the NIRA, and United States v. Butler (1936), voiding the AAA. Carter v. Carter Coal Co. (1936) exhumed the discredited United States v. *E.C. Knight Co. (1895) to strike down an exercise of commerce power. Together with decisions negating state regulatory efforts (e.g., Morehead v. New York ex rel. Tipaldo, 1936), these decisions justified reasonable observers' concluding that the Court was likely to be blindly obstructive to all efforts to cope with the Depression and to be wedded to the obsolete and regressive precedents of the Lochner era.

Roosevelt responded with the ill‐conceived court‐packing plan of 1937, which, although a tactical failure, was strategically successful in accomplishing a turnabout in the Court's judicial direction. Beginning with West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937), the Court accepted state and federal regulatory legislation. It systematically dismantled the entire structure of laissez‐faire constitutionalism (including Lochner and Knight), and with it the dogmas of substantive due process and freedom of contract. The members of the conservative bloc (as well as Justices Benjamin N. Cardozo, Louis D. Brandeis, and Chief Justice Hughes) retired, enabling Roosevelt to make a string of judicial appointments that solidified the triumph of New Deal experimentation: Hugo L. Black, Felix Frankurter, William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy, Stanley F. Reed, and Robert H. Jackson.

— William M. Wiecek

In 1932 Franklin Roosevelt in accepting the Democratic nomination for the Presidency said, ‘I pledge you, I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people’. At the time this was little more than campaign rhetoric, but the New Deal was subsequently widely used as an umbrella term to characterize the domestic reform programmes of the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s. These included banking and finance reform, various relief programmes for the unemployed, agriculture recovery legislation, the National Industrial Recovery Act, the act setting up the Tennessee Valley Authority, the National Labor Relations Act, the Social Security Act providing unemployment insurance and old age pensions, and much else besides. The phrase ‘New Deal coalition’ is often used to denote the coalition of blue-collar workers, blacks, ‘ethnic’ (non-Anglo-Saxon) white Americans, and Southerners which continued to support the Democrats until the 1960s.

— David Mervin

The New Deal was the term used by Franklin D. Roosevelt to describe his domestic program. “I pledge to you,” Roosevelt told the Democratic national convention in Chicago in his 1932 acceptance speech, “I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.” According to speech writers Raymond Moley and Samuel Rosenman, both of whom used the term in drafts of the speech, neither they nor Roosevelt had any idea that the phrase, designed simply as campaign rhetoric, would become so significant. The term had been used earlier at the convention, when John McDuffie of Alabama nominated John Nance Garner for Vice President with the words, “There is a demand for a new deal in the management of the affairs of the American people.”

The phrase may have been borrowed from the British campaign of David Lloyd George, who ran for prime minister in 1919 with the slogan “A New Deal for Everyone.” American reformers had also used the phrase, including Senator Carl Schurz of Missouri in 1871, Woodrow Wilson in his campaign for New Jersey governor in 1910, and Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin in 1912.

The New Deal involved three activities: First, Roosevelt had to restore confidence in the banking system and end the panicked withdrawals of funds that threatened thousands of banks. Then he had to stabilize prices in order to encourage businesses and farmers to resume production. Finally, he had to provide new federal assistance to those he described in his second inaugural address as the third of the nation that was “ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.”

Roosevelt's efforts began on March 6, 1933, when he proclaimed a bank holiday and called Congress into special session. In the hundred days of that session, from March 9 through June 15, Congress passed Roosevelt's program: the Emergency Banking Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and the National Industrial Recovery Act, as well as the bills creating the Tennessee Valley Authority (which built dams and power stations to provide power in a six-state region), the Home Owners Loan Corporation (which made mortgage loans to encourage home owning), and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (which provided funds to the jobless). Roosevelt also took the United States off the gold standard to prevent a run on government gold reserves by people worried about the value of the currency.

Later New Deal laws created public housing for workers, unemployment insurance, and Social Security benefits (pensions) for workers when they retired. Other laws made federal grants to states to provide welfare for needy families with children and established a legal framework for organizing labor unions and for collective bargaining with management (to discourage companies from breaking strikes by employing nonunion labor or intimidating workers from joining unions). New Deal legislation also created public service jobs for the unemployed, including the Civilian Conservation Corps for youths and the Works Progress Administration, which sponsored environmental and cultural public works projects. Other new government agencies included the Federal Communications Commission (which regulated radio broadcasting and telephone companies), the Securities and Exchange Commission (which regulated stock markets to ensure fair trading practices), the National Labor Relations Board (which ensured the rights of workers to unionize and bargain collectively with management), the Federal Housing Administration (which constructed public housing), and the Rural Electrification Administration (which brought electric lines to rural areas that had never had power before).

See also Brains Trust; Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Sources

• Melvyn Dubofsky and Stephen Burwood, eds., The New Deal (New York: Garland, 1990).
• Robert Eden, ed., The New Deal and Its Legacy (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1989).
• Katie Louchheim, ed., The Making of the New Deal (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).
• Robert S. McElvaine, The Depression and New Deal: A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)

The New Deal was a defining moment in American history comparable in impact to the Civil War. Never before had so much change in legislation and policy emanated from the federal government, which, in the process, became the center of American political authority. The progressive surge was also unique because it came at a time of economic collapse. Previously, in such crises government curtailed reform and reduced spending to balance the budget and so provide the stability thought necessary to help economic progress resume. The activist New Deal reversed that pattern in its effort to lift the country out of hard times and so altered American social and economic policy forever.

Origin and Design

Three factors stand out as the impetus for revolutionary change. First, the nation in the 1930s had sunk into the deepest economic depression in its history, an unprecedented catastrophe that called for measures that would necessarily break down old constraints on the use of federal powers. Second, an arsenal of progressive reform ideas that had been frustrated during the conservative years following World War I was available to resolve depression issues. Third, large numbers of racial and ethnic minorities had gained a strong enough position in American life to be ready to redress their long-standing grievances and disadvantages. By adding disaffected Republican victims of the Great Depression, reformers, and minorities, mostly in northern cities, to the traditional working-class and southern Democratic constituency, the New Deal forged an irresistible voting bloc.

The unwieldy coalition of sometimes rival interests and beliefs found the leadership it needed in Franklin Roosevelt, the most adept and inspiring president since Abraham Lincoln. Roosevelt rooted his approach in a simple set of moral precepts that he summed up in answering a question about his beliefs: "I am a Christian and a democrat, that's all." By Christian Roosevelt meant the social gospel message of shared service to those in need that he had absorbed in his youth, and by democrat, fealty to a similar progressive reform ethic. That outlook spanned both political parties. Raised a privileged only child on a large Hudson River estate at Hyde Park, New York, Franklin followed his father's lead in everything, including membership in the Democratic Party. But he was also the admiring cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, Republican president and leader of the Progressive movement in the early twentieth century. In 1910 Franklin made his successful entry into politics as a state senator devoted to reform of urban political corruption. Two years later, in support of Woodrow Wilson's campaign for the presidency, he began devising the formula that would envelop both Democratic and Republican progressive traditions.

Roosevelt's youth in the countryside and his admiration for Thomas Jefferson tied him to the decentralized ideal proclaimed in Wilson's New Freedom platform of a nation rooted in small towns and family farms. But he also accepted Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism argument that large concentrations of economic power were a feature of modern life that the government through expert guidance should harness to serve the general welfare. From these competing visions Franklin Roosevelt sought cooperative means to realize the ideal balance between individual liberty and democratic institutions that had eluded the nation from its beginning. In the popular term of the day, Roosevelt was an advocate of a cooperative commonwealth, and in approaching economic and political life he thought far more in terms of interdependence than of competition.

Roosevelt's political education was rounded out by his wife, Eleanor. It was she, serious, bookish, compassionate, who showed Franklin the terrible conditions she had discovered as a settlement house worker in lower Manhattan and introduced him to the remarkable women volunteers who were leading the fight to improve the lives of the poor and outcast. In drawing Franklin deeper into the lower-class world, Eleanor was able to convince him that he should learn to work with big-city machines, like Tammany Hall, as the only effective fighters for the interests of ethnic and immigrant groups. Throughout Roosevelt's presidency Eleanor would continue to stretch the inclusiveness of the New Deal by forcefully pressing for action that would serve the rights and needs of minorities, women, children, and others who usually had little influence on practical politics.

During his victorious campaign for the presidency in 1932, Roosevelt gathered a group of advisers around him who became known as the Brains Trust because they were mostly drawn from universities. Rexford Tugwell and Adolf Berle led the way in pressing for a planned approach to economic recovery and reform. Their ideas reflected a broad progressive band of thought, some of it drawn from European cooperative ventures and national systems of social insurance. Behind Tugwell's plans for a "concert of interests" lay the tutelage of Simon Patten at the University of Pennsylvania, whose advocacy of an economy of abundance early in the century opened the way for challenging orthodox conceptions of chronic scarcity and a competitive free marketplace. Berle used the devotion to facts and practical experience pressed upon him by institutional economists like John Commons and Charles Van Hise to carry out the monumental study The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932) with his Harvard colleague Gardiner Means, which showed that control of America's large corporations had fallen into the hands of a small group of managers. Either that concentration should be broken up, concluded those who read the highly acclaimed book, or, as Berle thought, the bigness driving modern economic life should be made to benefit the public through careful control by the democratic government that alone was responsible for the general welfare. At the center of interest in planning was the memory of how the nation's productive capacity had been mobilized in World War I. The popular economist Stuart Chase captured the mood by calling for a Peace Industries Board to defeat the depression as the War Industries Board had defeated the Germans.

In his inaugural address Roosevelt promised "a New Deal for the American people" and rightly concluded that "this nation asks for action, and action now." With 13 million people, or one-quarter of the workforce, unemployed, and the local and private means relied upon to help the victims nearing collapse, the general public was ready for the torrent of legislation that flowed immediately from the White House and its congressional allies.

The New Deal in Action

Guiding the torrent during what came to be known as the Hundred Days was a remarkable group of bright, mostly young, people who wanted to be part of the promised action. It was they, as well as Roosevelt, who gave the New Deal its air of optimistic excitement. As one observer noted, "they have transformed [Washington] from a placid leisurely Southern town … into a breezy, sophisticated and metropolitan center." Within the new buzz of activity, the New Deal had first to revive and change the banking system that had almost completely stopped functioning. On 6 March a "bank holiday" was declared, and three days later Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act, empowering the secretary of the Treasury to decide which banks were stable enough to reopen and authorizing federal funds to restart banking operations. To make the revived system safe, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was created to insure bank deposits. The stage was then set to help the millions of unemployed. On 31 March Congress enacted Roosevelt's favorite program, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), to enroll idle youth in conserving natural resources, and followed up on May 12 with the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which distributed cash payments to those unable to work.

Having addressed the immediate emergency, the New Deal could proceed with its comprehensive designs for planned reform. The Agricultural Administration Act (AAA), passed on 12 May, permanently altered American agriculture through its provision to pay farmers to keep land out of production and so raise prices by making commodities scarcer. Roosevelt's intent to stress conservation as a national priority received its greatest boost on 18 May from the passage of the Tennessee Valley Authority Act (TVA), which authorized dams on the Tennessee River that would provide the hydroelectric power needed to transform vast portions of Tennessee and adjoining states from abject poverty into the prosperity of model towns and reclaimed farmland. Most central to the integrative design, though, because industry and commerce had long been the focal point for planners, including those in the Brains Trust, was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), enacted on 16 June, which sought to create a system of fair practice for the nation's business firms. With parades and other promotional fanfare to drum up support, the National Recovery Administration (NRA) spread the New Deal activist spirit nationwide and persuaded most of the nation's businesses to devise codes to govern working conditions and prices.

Resistance and Realignment

Despite enthusiasm for New Deal initiatives, registered in sweeping Democratic victories in Congress in 1934, the New Deal suffered setbacks. Many businesses slanted their NRA codes to provide higher profits rather than the better wages for labor and lower prices for consumers that the cooperative design called for. In agriculture large farms garnered most of the benefits of payments for reducing crops. And within the Supreme Court a majority of justices regarded some New Deal measures as unconstitutional invasions of state authority and free enterprise. Taking the opposite view, radicals of left and right criticized the New Deal for not changing the capitalistic system more drastically.

New Dealers were willing to concede that the rise in gross national product from $56 billion in 1933 to $72 billion in 1935 was a slow pace, and they were particularly disturbed that over 10 million people were still without jobs. To spur the economy toward full employment and a decent standard of living for the "common man," the administration in 1935 made three successful proposals to Congress. First, a $4.8 billion fund to create the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was rushed through Congress. Then to care for those unable to work, the Social Security Administration was formed on the model of an insurance company, using payroll deductions from workers for a trust fund that would provide unemployment insurance, aid for dependent mothers, children, and the blind, and a monthly income to those over sixty-five who had contributed to the system. Finally, after reluctantly giving up hope for agreement between labor and management within the NRA, Roosevelt supported the passage on 5 July 1935 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), or Wagner Act after its sponsor, Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York, guaranteeing the right of labor to bargain collectively and have disputes with management decided by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The Wagner Act, labor's "Magna Carta," indicated how pressures were forcing the administration to change its approach to what some historians have described as the Second New Deal. Even as the Wagner Act conferred on labor means to contend against management rather than futilely attempting to cooperate with it, the New Deal faced a need to cope with forces determined to thwart its planning designs. In 1936 the Supreme Court invalidated the AAA and the NRA as unconstitutional delegations of power to the federal government. Business leaders echoed conservative judges with attacks on the New Deal as a threat to individual liberty, while critics on the radical left and right contradicted those charges by rejecting the New Deal as too closely tied to the prevailing capitalist system to enact necessary reforms. In response Roosevelt set aside his preference for cooperative inclusiveness. During his reelection campaign in 1936, he ignored the left as a minor threat and excoriated the "economic royalists" on the right, bent on blocking plans to share America's wealth and opportunity with those who had been left out. The shift of the New Deal focus from a fully cooperative system of all elements in society to advancement of the fortunes of members of the New Deal coalition against those in opposition caused some historians to conclude that the New Deal had become a "broker state," trading favors with special interests rather than acting in the full national interest. However, Roosevelt never lost his intent to find some way to achieve his cooperative commonwealth ideal.

Enthused by his overwhelming reelection, Roosevelt moved quickly to drag the Supreme Court out of the "horse and buggy" era by sending Congress a plan to enlarge the Court with a new justice for every old justice over seventy. The rebuff that followed indicated that Roosevelt had failed to realize the public's reverence for the Court. Congress shelved the "court packing" plan, and only the chance to replace retiring justices with more liberal judges saved the New Deal from further court disasters. The administration then compounded its problems. An ill-advised attempt by Roosevelt, urged on him by his fiscally conservative secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, to cut spending and balance the budget threw the country into a recession in 1937 that almost wiped out the economic gains made since 1933.

Roosevelt sought to reverse the downslide by establishing the Temporary National Economic Committee (TNEC) in 1938 to investigate industry practices that might be retarding recovery. In support of that move he appointed Thurman Arnold, an influential critic of what he called the symbols of government and folklore of capitalism, to carry out the most extensive campaign to break up monopolies ever undertaken. Roosevelt also attempted to strengthen his political coalition by supporting candidates running against Democratic congressmen who had opposed New Deal initiatives. But the New Deal had lost much of its focus and leverage. The TNEC could not agree on what ailed the economy, Arnold's campaign alienated business, and the attempt to purge anti–New Deal congressmen bagged only Representative John Taber of New York. Congressional conservatism also showed its rising force in the defeat of an antilynching bill and the reduction of progressive taxes on high income and capital gains, which the New Deal Revenue Act of 1938 proposed to fund recovery and distribute income more equitably.

Congress did agree to several important measures. In 1937 the Resettlement Administration (established in 1935) was transformed into the Farm Security Administration (FSA) with broadened powers to move poor farmers to better land; a new AAA was drafted that passed muster with a liberalized Supreme Court; a weak National Housing Act was passed in 1937 to provide low-income housing; and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established a minimum wage and a forty-hour week for many workers and at last prohibited child labor.

The Final Phase

Especially significant for the way it signaled an important shift in New Deal economic thinking was the $3 billion Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1938, designed to combat the recession with increased relief work for the unemployed. Preceding the passage of the act was a contentious discussion of how to regain momentum toward full recovery. Against Morgenthau's orthodox argument that a balanced budget and increased credit for business investment would place the economy on a firm footing, a growing number of advisers pressed for spending on public projects, even if it meant deficits, and using antitrust action to break up big businesses that refused to contribute to the general recovery. There was some awareness within their midst of the publication in 1936 of the most important economic work of the century, John Maynard Keynes's A General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, but the strongest impetus came from Keynes's American counterparts, who decried the resistance of business leaders to planning. In their manifesto, An Economic Program for American Democracy (1938), a team of Harvard and Tufts economists proclaimed that "Here in America we can save our free democratic institutions only by using them to expand our national income." Government action was essential, for "private enterprise, left to its own devices, is no longer capable of achieving anything." Especially to be checked were businessmen who seemed "obsessed with a devil theory of government" that might tempt them to try replacing democracy with a plutocratic dictatorship. Roosevelt had long looked at businessmen that way but was only finally persuaded to the Keynesian case when the chairman of the New York Federal Reserve, Beardsley Ruml, reminded him that governmental stimulation of business was an old story, stretching back to nineteenth-century grants to railroads, the distribution of public lands, and the setting of tariffs.

In another important departure from past practice in the direction of greater executive authority, Congress acceded to Roosevelt's urging in 1939 to pass the Administration Reorganization Act, which, in the name of streamlined efficiency, placed many government agencies under the president's control. By also transferring the Bureau of the Budget to the executive office and creating a National Resources Planning Board, Roosevelt further expanded the scope of the executive branch to a degree that has prompted some historians to call that development the Third New Deal, bent on using expanded executive power to revive the original New Deal ardor for cooperative planning.

Significant reform initiatives did not follow, however, partly because of conservative resistance, partly because the approach of World War II diverted attention to foreign dangers. Industrial recovery continued to lag and unemployment remained high. Only the entry of America into the war ended the impasse. Mobilization of resources and manpower eliminated the most central and persistent curse of the Great Depression by absorbing the jobless so thoroughly that the WPA could be phased out in 1943. Wartime pressures did not, however, lay the groundwork for completion of New Deal plans to end hardship and injustice by assuring full employment at good wages, extend the Social Security system to include those originally denied coverage, enact a national health system, and revise the law to grant civil rights and fair opportunity to women and minorities.

Despite these shortfalls, the New Deal changed America from a nation whose political focus was in regional localities and offered little in the way of welfare or national planning. In the wake of New Deal activism, Americans came to assume that the government would take significant responsibility for their material and spiritual needs. That expectation has remained intact even though the New Deal coalition has weakened as the prosperity it promoted moved many of its members from inner-city New Deal strongholds to the conservative suburbs, where reformist zeal and ethnic and labor union solidarity ebbed. Civil rights reform had a similarly ironic outcome. As the desegregation movement advanced in the 1960s, bearing the New Deal social justice spirit with it, many southerners rejected their traditional loyalty to the Democratic Party and joined in the Republican Party's continuing efforts to check New Deal reform in the name of states' rights and free enterprise.

An overall assessment of the New Deal's effectiveness indicates that most of its problems stemmed from not carrying its policies far enough to achieve a planned economy of abundance for all Americans, partly because of traditional individualism and to a lesser extent because the New Dealers themselves wished to revitalize the system, not displace it. Thus New Deal initiatives tended to stall. The NRA did not get enough money in the hands of consumers for them to support a fully productive economy. Commitment to deficit spending toward the end of the 1930s was not sufficient to end unemployment. New taxes on the wealthy did not go far enough to redistribute income to the desperate have-nots. Relief spending never reached more than 40 percent of those in need. And Social Security excluded several categories of needy people. In some cases, New Deal policies had unwanted results. The agricultural price support system did not eliminate the surplus and funneled payments mainly to large-scale farms. Nor were hopes for urban revitalization realized. Housing policies did not achieve the New Deal goal of eliminating city slums but instead encouraged flight to the suburbs, away from the meager low-cost housing that underfunded New Deal programs were able to build.

Yet the New Deal had lasting success in establishing the principle Lincoln enunciated that the federal government should do for people what they cannot do for themselves. Thus the NRA enacted a minimum wage standard and the right of workers to join unions of their own choosing. Regulation stabilized banking and finance. Civil rights became a significant part of the Democratic and then national agenda. And to extend recovery to mind and spirit, the WPA devised an arts program that inspired the later creation of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. From the socially conscious art, regional guides, and documentary film and photography sponsored by the program has come a significant share of what Americans have learned about their history and culture.

Roosevelt stated at the outset that his New Deal would be a war on depression miseries comparable to previous military wars. But in the end it was the actuality of World War II, which the nation avoided as long as it could, that ended the depression by generating the economic stimulus the New Deal had not gone far enough to provide. In the years since the depression ended, admiration for the New Deal has remained high; but debate has also persisted as to whether the New Deal devotion to planned cooperation is a necessary part of maintaining a stable and prosperous American democracy.

Bibliography

Allswang, John M. The New Deal and American Politics: A Study in Political Change. New York: Wiley, 1978. A convincing explanation of the formation of the New Deal coalition, buttressed by detailed case studies.

Badger, Anthony J. The New Deal. The Depression Years, 1933–40. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989. Provides a thorough account of the history and historiography of the New Deal.

Bernstein, Irving. A Caring Society: The New Deal, the Worker, and the Great Depression. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

Brinkley, Alan. The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War. New York: Knopf, 1995.

Brock, William R. Welfare, Democracy, and the New Deal. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Fite, Gilbert C. American Farmers: The New Majority. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981. The most incisive overview of New Deal agricultural policy and its effects.

Harris, Jonathan. Federal Art and National Culture: The Politics of Identity in New Deal America. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995. The most tightly drawn account of the links between the social populism of the New Deal and the Federal Arts Projects.

Hawley, Ellis W. The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966. The cornerstone for understanding the New Deal's relations with business.

Leuchtenburg, William E. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940. New York: Harper and Row, 1963. Still the best one-volume account. Detailed but highly readable.

Patterson, James T. The Welfare State in America, 1930–1980. Durham, U.K.: British Association for American Studies, 1981.The best, brief discussion of the creation and evolution of Social Security.

Reagan, Patrick D. Designing a New America: The Origins of New Deal Planning, 1890–1943. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. Engaging portraits of the architects of national planning in modern America.

Rodgers, Daniel T. "New Deal." In Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. An erudite and sweeping discussion of the European influences on American progressive reform thought.

Rosenof, Theodore. Economics in the Long Run: New Deal Theorists and Their Legacies, 1933–1993. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. A uniquely valuable account of how New Deal economic policy drew upon the changing economic thought of the time.

Schlesinger, Arthur S., Jr. The Age of Roosevelt. 3 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956–1960. An epic account of the New Deal era by a master of panoramic synthesis.

Sitkoff, Harvard. A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Tugwell, R. G. The Brains Trust. New York: Viking, 1968. A shrewd appraisal that has special value because it is by an insider.

Ware, Susan. Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981.

"I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." In July 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt said these words to the delegates at the Democratic National Convention, who had just elected him the party's candidate for president of the United States.

Roosevelt's New Deal was a response to the tumultuous events of the years leading to his nomination. After World War I, the people of the United States experienced unprecedented prosperity. Consumers of all incomes were buying goods "on time" by putting a few dollars down and paying a few dollars a month. Record numbers of people were also using the installment buying concept to purchase stocks. The number of stockbrokers grew from fewer than thirty thousand in 1920 to more than seventy thousand in 1929. Stockbrokers allowed their clients to "buy on margin," meaning that a customer only had to pay 10-15 percent down on a stock, with the broker lending the client the rest and being repaid when the stock went up in value. By 1929 the skyrocketing prices in the stock market indicated continued prosperity to some economists, but to others it signaled impending doom. So much investment had been done on the margin that stockbrokers had borrowed money from banks that were now also heavily in debt. Stock prices began rapidly dropping in September 1929, and on "Black Thursday," October 24, 1929, they plummeted beyond all belief, devastating thousands of brokerage houses. By the following Tuesday, October 29, virtually all stocks were worthless. Millionaires became paupers overnight. People who had invested their savings woke up to find themselves penniless. This was the start of the Great Depression.

Herbert Hoover was the president at the time of the great stock market crash. He initially refused to believe that there was a problem, and even in April 1930, when more than three million people had lost their jobs, he continued in vain to reassure people that everything was fine. Because people were afraid of losing their jobs and running out of money, they refused to engage in the free-spending ways of the past and chose to save rather than spend their money. This in turn created a new cycle of problems. Because many banks had failed during the crash, people no longer trusted them and kept their money at home, which depleted the supply of capital that banks needed. People also refused to buy new products, and instead repaired old ones. Because few people were buying new products, companies were forced to close and to lay off employees. Many people were evicted from their homes for failing to make payments, and often several members of extended families lived together. The number of homeless soared, as did cases of malnutrition. President Hoover still remained firm in his stance that government aid was not an option. He believed that private charity could take care of those individuals who could not take care of themselves and that the ingenuity of private business would cure the ills of the country, not government intrusion. The American people resented President Hoover's attitude. The camps of makeshift shacks in which many people lived after being evicted were called Hoovervilles, and slogans such as Hard Times Are Hoover-ing over Us were heard everywhere. By December 1931 the unemployment rate was more than 13.6 million, a third of the labor force. When President Hoover called out military troops, armed with bayonets and tear gas, to disband a group of World War I veterans known as the Bonus Army that had come to Washington to seek early payment of a promised bonus for fighting in the war, the American people had had enough.

Although the Republicans knew that whomever the Democrats nominated for president would more than likely win, they nominated Hoover for president again in 1932. The Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt won all but six states and received twenty-two million votes to Hoover's fifteen million. Roosevelt came from a wealthy family, had served as assistant secretary of the Navy and as governor of New York, and had battled polio courageously. His promised "new deal" was anxiously awaited.

The day after he was inaugurated, Roosevelt requested a special session of Congress to convene and declared a bank holiday for a week. He guaranteed that at the end of one week's time banks that the government found to be sound and secure would reopen. Roosevelt also announced a moratorium on the export of gold. Because foreign investors required trading to be done in gold (paper money was believed to be too risky) the combination of the moratorium and the bank holiday effectively put the economy of the United States on hold. After the week had passed, Roosevelt held the first of his famous "fireside chats" via the radio to reassure the American people. As promised, the majority of the banks reopened. Many people followed Roosevelt's advice and again placed their money in the banks. During those same first weeks, Roosevelt and Congress worked together to repeal Prohibition, allowing the sale and consumption of alcohol to resume.

These moves were only the beginning of what is referred to as the Hundred Days. More legislation was passed during the first hundred days of Roosevelt's presidency than had been passed in any similar period of any previous presidency. Roosevelt worked with young lawyers, professors, and social workers to create legislation to get people working and spending once again. To relieve the immediate need for food and shelter, Roosevelt ushered through Congress the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which granted $500 million in aid to the states for distribution to people in need.

Next came congressional approval of Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps Act (ch. 383, 50 Stat. 319). The government paid young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five for six months to one year to do construction or conservation work. The men built bridges, dams, and roads and planted more than seventeen million acres of new forests. They were paid $30 each month, and were required to send most of their money home to their families.

The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 (AAA), 7 U.S.C.A. § 601 et seq., also was passed during these first hundred days. Farmers were growing huge surpluses of crops such as wheat and corn, and these surpluses drove prices down even though the farmers' expenses were rising. The AAA sought to reduce the surplus of crops by paying farmers not to grow them. Although some Americans questioned this practice because so many people were starving, the theory of the plan bore out, and by 1936 farmers were receiving $1.02 per bushel of wheat compared with the 38¢ per bushel they received in 1932.

Toward the end of the hundred days, Congress enacted the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA), (ch. 90, 48 Stat. 195) and created the National Industrial Recovery Administration to implement the act's goals. The legislation's main goal was to stimulate dormant factories and industries and get people back to work. The National Industrial Recovery Administration believed that the best way to do this was to create a series of codes (746 in all) that companies had to follow in the marketplace. These codes regulated everything from a minimum hourly wage to the maximum number of hours a week an employee could work and controlled advertising and business production and output. Fearing a return of the high unemployment rate, one code forbade industry from developing technological advances that would lead to employee layoffs.

NIRA represents the first direct government involvement in business operations. NIRA allowed industries and business to engage in previously prohibited monopolistic price-fixing so that one manufacturer could not underprice its goods to drive a competitor out of business. The legislation allowed workers to unionize and collectively bargain for better pay and working conditions. This was all done with the goal of increasing business profits, which in turn would create more jobs and more spending. However, NIRA posed difficulties for many business owners, who were forced to restructure their business operations.

One of the most popular programs of the New Deal was the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which created more than 250,000 projects, putting millions of people to work. Most of the money and effort went to public construction of bridges, roads, and government buildings such as post offices. Writers were employed to interview town residents and compile local histories. Actors and musicians were hired to bring theater and live music to residents of rural towns, who otherwise had little opportunity to see live performances.

After the first eighteen months of the New Deal, five million previously unemployed people had found work. However, Roosevelt and his New Deal were not without their critics. When wealthy people realized that Roosevelt was not intending to return the country to the pre-crash status quo but sought to reform the entire national economic structure, they soon turned on him, calling him a traitor to his class. They disliked Roosevelt for the new taxes imposed on them, and some believed rumors that Roosevelt wanted to make the United States a socialist state under his dictatorship. The leaders of big business, once beholden to Roosevelt for getting their businesses back on track, were now among his most forceful critics.

Wealthy people were not Roosevelt's only critics. People to the political left of Roosevelt thought that he had let down the common man. Socialists such as Upton Sinclair and some Democrats such as Huey Long, the senator from Louisiana, complained that Roosevelt and his New Deal did not do enough for the lower and middle classes of society. Despite criticism from many angles, the majority of U.S. citizens loved Roosevelt, reelecting him by a landslide in 1936 over the Republican nominee, Alfred M. Landon.

A big reason for Roosevelt's huge popularity was the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935 (42 U.S.C.A. § 301 et seq.) — the first piece of legislation in the history of the United States to deal with social welfare. The legislation provided people over the age of sixty-five with a monthly pension from the federal government. It also contained provisions for unemployment insurance and for aid for children. Though this form of government charity also had its critics, Roosevelt was pleased with it because it was proof that he had not forgotten the common man.

The early successes of the New Deal created a boldness that eventually led to its demise. The beginning of the end was Roosevelt's court packing plan. In Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495, 55 S. Ct. 837, 79 L. Ed. 1570 (1935), the Supreme Court struck down the heart of Roosevelt's New Deal legislation, NIRA, declaring it unconstitutional. The Schechter brothers were wholesale kosher poultry distributors who did business within the state of New York. They were convicted of violating the Live Poultry Code, including wage and hour violations. The Court unanimously held that the federal government could only control trade between states, not trade within one state. Even liberal justices on the Court who had supported previous New Deal legislation found the challenged provisions unconstitutional.

Many legal actions against other New Deal legislation were piling up, and in a fast and furious move, Roosevelt proposed a restructuring of the Supreme Court through the addition of a new justice to the Court for each justice over the age of seventy. Roosevelt tried to place a nonpolitical spin on his proposal, citing instances where changes to the composition of the Court had been made before and citing the heavy workload for nine justices, but he could not disguise his blatant attempt to pack the Court with liberal justices who saw things his way. Roosevelt refused to concede, which resulted in months of Senate debates that cost him many supporters. Rather than exploding, the controversy fizzled away as the Court began supporting many pieces of New Deal legislation, including the Social Security Act. Additionally, several justices retired, allowing Roosevelt to choose their replacements. Although, in the end, the makeup of the Court was just as Roosevelt wanted, he suffered losses in support and confidence that he never regained. Many people thought that the New Deal legislation had granted labor too much power and were resentful of the unionization efforts, which led to strikes that were often violent. Finally, the unemployment rate in late 1937 to mid-1938 soared from five million to eleven million. Roosevelt and his vision for a New Deal lost Congressional support. No further reform legislation was passed during Roosevelt's time in the White House. Although the country was much better off than it had been when he took office in 1932, the Great Depression continued. It ended not by legislation, but by the coming of World War II.

The political machine of the New Deal and its dominant social policy continued for decades after the last piece of its legislation was passed. Although its demise can't be traced to one single event, by the time Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, the era of the New Deal was effectively over.

See: Agricultural Law; Agriculture Subsidies; Banks and Banking; Labor Law; Labor Union; Social Security; Supreme Court of the United States; Welfare.

A group of government programs and policies established under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s; the New Deal was designed to improve conditions for persons suffering in the Great Depression. The projects of the New Deal included the Social Security System, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Works Progress Administration.

This article is about the United States economic programs of the 1930's. For other uses, see New Deal (disambiguation).

Top left: The Tennessee Valley Authority, part of the New Deal, being signed into law in 1933.
Top right: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was responsible for initiatives and programs collectively known as the New Deal.
Bottom: A public mural from one of the artists employed by the New Deal.

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The New Deal was the name that United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave to his complex package of economic programs 1933-36 with the goals of what historians call the 3 Rs, of giving Relief to the unemployed and badly hurt farmers, Reform of business and financial practices, and promoting Recovery of the economy during the Great Depression.

The Great Depression had devastated the nation by the time Roosevelt took office in 1933. Every bank in the nation had closed its doors and no one could cash a check or get at their savings.^[1] The unemployment rate was 25% and higher in major industrial and mining centers. Farm prices had fallen by 50%. Thousands of mortgages closed down.^[2]

Historians distinguish a "First New Deal" (1933) and a "Second New Deal" (1934-36). Some programs were declared unconstitutional, and others were repealed during World War II; in early 1937 almost no new programs were initiated because of the opposition of the new Conservative Coalition.^[3]

The "First New Deal" (March 4, 1933) dealt with groups; from banking and railroads to industry and farming.

A "Second New Deal" in 1934-35 included the Wagner Act to promote labor unions, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief program, the Social Security Act, and new programs to aid tenant farmers and migrant workers. The Supreme Court ruled several programs unconstitutional; however, most were soon replaced, with the exception of the NRA. After 1936, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was the only major legislation; it set maximum hours and minimum wages for most categories of workers.^[4]

The WPA, CCC and other relief programs were shut down during World War II by the Conservative Coalition (i.e., the opponents of the New Deal in Congress); they argued the return of full employment made them superfluous. Many regulations were ended during the wave of deregulation from 1975 to 1989. Several New Deal programs remain active, with some still operating under the original names, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The largest programs still in existence today are the Social Security System, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Fannie Mae.

Contents 1 Origins 1.1 World comparisons 2 The First Hundred Days 3 Depression statistics 3.1 Relief statistics 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links

Origins

Chart 1: GDP annual pattern and long-term trend, 1920-1940, in billions of constant dollars.^[5]

The New Deal represented a significant shift in political and domestic policy in the U.S., its more lasting changes being increased federal government control over the economy and money supply, intervention to control prices and agricultural production. It also marked the beginning of complex social programs and growing power of labor unions.^[6] The effects of the New Deal still remain a source of controversy and debate amongst economists and historians.^[7]

The crash of the U.S. stock market occurred on Thursday October 24, 1929; then, on "Black Tuesday" October 29, the stock market fell even more than it had the week before. These events were a harbinger of a worldwide economic depression that was to come.

Economists debate the causes of the depression and the effect of the equity market crash is seen as a signal of the underlying economic issues, as opposed to a trigger for the crisis. Federal Reserve interest rate policy, the monetary rigidity of the gold standard, and overproduction are seen as key contributing ingredients in actually causing the depression.

From 1929 to 1933, unemployment in the U.S. increased from 4% to 25%, manufacturing output decreased by approximately a third. Prices fell causing a deflation of currency values, which made the repayments of debts much harder. The mining, lumber, and agriculture industries were hit especially hard by the drop in values. The impact was much less severe in white collar and service sectors.

Upon accepting the 1932 Democratic nomination for president, Franklin Roosevelt promised "a new deal for the American people."^[8]:

“

Throughout the nation men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government, look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth… I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people. This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms.[9]

”

Roosevelt entered office without a specific set of plans for dealing with the Great Depression; so he improvised as Congress to a very wide variety of voices.^[10] The "First New Deal" (1933-34) encompassed the proposals offered by a wide spectrum of groups. (Not included was the Socialist Party, whose influence was all but destroyed.^[11]) This first phase of the New Deal was also characterized by fiscal conservatism (see Economy Act, below) and experimentation with several different, sometimes contradictory, cures for economic ills. The consequences were uneven. Some programs, especially the NRA and the silver program, have been widely seen as failures. Other programs lasted about a decade; some became permanent. The economy shot upward, with FDR's first term marking one of the fastest periods of GDP growth in history. However another downturn came in 1937-38, so whether the New Deal can be credited with the economy's recovery, or blamed for impeding it, thus remains a complicated, and highly controversial, question.

The New Deal policies drew from many different ideas proposed earlier in the 20th century. Some opponents of bigness, led by assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold, went back to the anti-monopoly tradition that stretched back to Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, an influential adviser to many New Dealers, argued that bigness was a negative economic force, producing waste and inefficiency. However, the anti-monopoly group never had a major impact on New Deal policy.^[12] Other leaders such as Hugh Johnson of the NRA took ideas from the Wilson Administration, advocating techniques used to mobilize the economy for World War I. They brought ideas and experience from the government controls and spending of 1917-18. Other New Deal planners revived experiments suggested in the 1920s, such as the TVA.

Roosevelt listened to an informal "Brain Trust," which advocated more government regulation. Donald Richberg, the second head of the NRA, said "A nationally planned economy is the only salvation of our present situation and the only hope for the future."^[13]

The New Deal faced some vocal conservative opposition. The first organized opposition in 1934 came from the American Liberty League led by conservative Democrats such as 1924 and 1928 presidential candidates John W. Davis and Al Smith. There was also a large but loosely affiliated group of New Deal opponents, who are commonly called the Old Right. This group included politicians, intellectuals, writers, and newspaper editors of various philosophical persuasions including classical liberals, and conservatives, both Democrats and Republicans.

World comparisons

Europe

• Britain was unable to agree on major programs to stop its depression. This led to the collapse of the Labour Party government and replacement in 1931 by a National Coalition dominated by Conservatives. However, the Depression affected Britain less than most countries due to Britain's exit from the gold standard in 1931 (which devalued sterling) and the policy of 'cheap money' which supported the money supply. Britain did not suffer from many of the structural weaknesses of the US and so as a result there was no equivalent of the "New Deal" in Britain.
• France was in political crisis and its Third Republic very much contested. The "Front Populaire" government, led by Léon Blum, in power 1936–1938, instigated hefty social reforms. As the coalition united representatives from the center-left to the communist party, right-wing opposition was very strong and social turmoil marred the Front Populaire term. This division left the country bitterly divided in 1938–1939.
• In Germany during the Weimar Republic, the economy spiraled down, leading to a political crisis and the rise to power of the Nazis in January 1933. Economic recovery was pursued through autarchy, wage controls, price controls, and spending programs such as public works and, especially, military spending.
• Spain endured mounting political crises that led in 1936 to civil war.
• In Benito Mussolini's Italy, the economic controls of his corporate state were tightened; economic growth ended.
• The USSR was mostly isolated from the world trading system during the 1930s.

Canada & the Caribbean

• In Canada, the Conservative Prime Minister R. B. Bennett raised tariffs against the U.S. but lowered them on British Empire goods. This exacerbated the Depression and contributed to the growth of Hooverville-like camps of the unemployed in Canada. Belatedly, in 1935, Bennett proposed a series of programs that resembled the New Deal; they met with disfavor from both the courts and the populace, and led to his defeat in the elections of 1935.^[14]
• The Caribbean saw its greatest unemployment during the 1930s because of a decline in exports to the U.S., and a fall in export prices.

Asia

• China was at war with Japan during most of the 1930s, in addition to internal struggles between Chiang Kai Shek's nationalists and Mao Zedong's communists.
• Japan's economy expanded at the rate of 5% of GDP per year after the years of modernization. Manufacturing and mining came to account for more than 30% of GDP, more than twice the value for the agricultural sector. Most industrial growth, however, was geared toward expanding the nation's military power. Beginning in 1937 with significant land seizures in China, and then to a much greater extent after 1941, which saw annexations and invasions all across Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Japan seized and developed natural resources such as: sugarcane in the Philippines; petroleum from the Dutch East Indies and Burma; tin and bauxite from the Dutch East Indies and Malaya; and coal in China (where they increased production from 15 million metric tonnes in 1936, to 58 million metric tonnes in 1942)[citation needed]. During the early stages of Japan's expansion, the Japanese economy expanded considerably. Japanese iron production rose from 3,355,000 tonnes in 1937 to 6,148,000 tonnes in 1943.[citation needed] Steel production rose from 6,442,000 tonnes to 8,838,000 tonnes over the same time period. In 1941 Japanese aircraft industries had capacity to manufacture 10,000 aircraft per year. From 1941 to September 1944 defense production (including airplanes and vessels) rose by 94%.[citation needed]

Australia & New Zealand

• In Australia, conservative and Labor governments applied orthodox economic principles during the 1930s, cutting government spending and reducing the national debt. It was not until World War II that the government (first conservative, then Labor) introduced Keynesian policies similar to the New Deal such as increasing government taxation and spending; imposing economic regulation; and petrol rationing. These and similar measures remained in place after the war. Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley outlined these policies in his "The light on the hill" speech.
• In New Zealand, a series of economic and social policies similar to the New Deal were adopted after the election of the first Labour Government in 1935.^[15]

The First Hundred Days

The New Deal had countless programs, labeled an "alphabet soup" by its detractors. Among the New Deal acts were the following, most of them passed within the first 100 days of Roosevelt's Administration. Most were abolished around 1933; others remain in operation today:

• Reconstruction Finance Corporation a Hoover agency expanded under Jesse Holman Jones to make large loans to big business. Ended in 1954.
• Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) a Hoover program to create unskilled jobs for relief; replaced by WPA in 1935.
• United States bank holiday, 1933: closed all banks until they became certified by federal reviewers
• Abandonment of gold standard, 1933: gold reserves no longer backed currency; still exists
• Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 1933-1942: employed young men to perform unskilled work in rural areas; under United States Army supervision; separate program for Native Americans
• Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 1933: effort to modernize very poor region (most of Tennessee), centered on dams that generated electricity on the Tennessee River; still exists
• Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), 1933: raised farm prices by cutting total farm output of major crops and livestock
• National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), 1933: industries set up codes to reduce unfair competition, raise wages and prices;
• Public Works Administration (PWA), 1933: built large public works projects; used private contractors (did not directly hire unemployed)
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) / Glass-Steagall Act: insures deposits in banks in order to restore public confidence in banks; still exists (although the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999)
• Securities Act of 1933, created the SEC, 1933: codified standards for sale and purchase of stock, required risk of investments to be accurately disclosed; still exists
• Civil Works Administration (CWA), 1933-34: provided temporary jobs to millions of unemployed
• Indian Reorganization Act, 1934: moved away from assimilation
• Social Security Act (SSA), 1935: provided financial assistance to: elderly, handicapped, paid for by employee and employer payroll contributions; required years contributions, so first payouts were in 1942; still exists
• Works Progress Administration (WPA), 1935: a national labor program for more than 2 million unemployed; created useful construction work for unskilled men; also sewing projects for women and arts projects for unemployed artists, musicians and writers.
• National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) / Wagner Act, 1935: set up National Labor Relations Board to supervise labor-management relations; In the 1930s, it strongly favored labor unions. Modified by the Taft-Hartley Act (1947); still exists
• Judicial Reorganization Bill, 1937: gave the President power to appoint a new Supreme Court judge for every judge 70 years or older; failed to pass Congress
• Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, 1938: Insures crops and livestock against loss of production or revenue. Was restructured during the creation of the Risk Management Agency in 1996 but continues to exist.

Surplus Commodities Program (1936).

• Fair Labor Standards Act (29 U.S. Code Chapter 8^{[dead link]}), 1938: established a maximum normal work week of 40 hours and a minimum wage of 40 cents/hour and outlawed most forms of child labor; still exists
• Federal Surplus Relief Corporation, later changed to the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation, named the Agriculture Secretary, Administrator of Agricultural Adjustment Administration, and Governor of Farm Credit Administration as its Board of Directors. It was continued as an agency under the Secretary of Agriculture by acts of June 28, 1937 (50 Stat. 323) and February 16, 1938 (52 Stat. 38), consolidated in 1940 with the Division of Marketing and Marketing Agreements into the Surplus Marketing Administration, and finally merged into the Agricultural Marketing Administration by Executive Order 9069 of February 23, 1942.

Depression statistics

"Most indexes worsened until the summer of 1932, which may be called the low point of the depression economically and psychologically."^[16] Economic indicators show the American economy reached nadir in summer 1932 to February 1933, then began recovering until the recession of 1937–1938. Thus the Federal Reserve Industrial Production Index hit its low of 52.8 on 1932-07-01 and was practically unchanged at 54.3 on 1933-03-01; however by 1933-07-01, it reached 85.5 (with 1935-39 = 100, and for comparison 2005 = 1,342).^[17] In Roosevelt's twelve years in office the economy had an 8.5% compound annual growth of GDP,^[18] the highest growth rate in the history of any industrial country,^[19] however, recovery was slow—by 1939 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per adult was still 27% below trend.^[20]

Table 1: Statistics^[21]

	1929	1931	1933	1937	1938	1940
Real Gross National Product (GNP) (1)	101.4	84.3	68.3	103.9	96.7	113.0
Consumer Price Index (2)	122.5	108.7	92.4	102.7	99.4	100.2
Index of Industrial Production (2)	109	75	69	112	89	126
Money Supply M2 ($ billions)	46.6	42.7	32.2	45.7	49.3	55.2
Exports ($ billions)	5.24	2.42	1.67	3.35	3.18	4.02
Unemployment (% of civilian work force)	3.1	16.1	25.2	13.8	16.5	13.9

• (1) in 1929 dollars
• (2) 1935-39 = 100

Table 2: Unemployment
(% labor force)

Year	Lebergott	Darby
1933	24.9	20.6
1934	21.7	16.0
1935	20.1	14.2
1936	16.9	9.9
1937	14.3	9.1
1938	19.0	12.5
1939	17.2	11.3
1940	14.6	9.5
1941	9.9	8.0
1942	4.7	4.7
1943	1.9	1.9
1944	1.2	1.2
1945	1.9	1.9

• Darby counts WPA workers as employed; Lebergott as unemployed
• Source: Historical Statistics US (1976) series D-86; Smiley 1983^[22]

Relief statistics

Families on Relief 1936-41
Relief Cases 1936–1941 (monthly average in 1,000)

	1936	1937	1938	1939	1940	1941
Workers employed:
WPA	1,995	2,227	1,932	2,911	1,971	1,638
CCC and NYA	712	801	643	793	877	919
Other federal work projects	554	663	452	488	468	681
Public assistance cases:
Social security programs	602	1,306	1,852	2,132	2,308	2,517
General relief	2,946	1,484	1,611	1,647	1,570	1,206
Total families helped	5,886	5,660	5,474	6,751	5,860	5,167
Unemployed workers (Bur Lab Stat)	9,030	7,700	10,390	9,480	8,120	5,560
Coverage (cases/unemployed)	65%	74%	53%	71%	72%	93%

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: New Deal

• Arthurdale, West Virginia, New Deal planned community.
• Brain Trust, advisers to President Roosevelt
• Critics of the New Deal
• Fireside chats
• Great Depression
• Great Society, President Lyndon Johnson's economic policy
• Interest group democracy
• New Deal coalition
• World War II

References

1. ^ Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The Coming of the New Deal (1959), p, 3
2. ^ Jonathan Alter, The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, esp. ch 31. (2007)
3. ^ The exception was a minimum wage law in 1938, which also finally abolished child labor. William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (1963) p. 262-63
4. ^ Kennedym Freedom from Fear (1999) ch 12
5. ^ based on data in Susan Carter, ed. Historical Statistics of the US: Millennial Edition (2006) series Ca9
6. ^ The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought, William Outhwaite, 2003, Blackwell Publishing
7. ^ Kennedy, David M (1999). Freedom From Fear: The American people in Depression and War, 1929–1945. Oxford University Press. pp. 364. ISBN 0-19-503834-7. 
8. ^ The phrase was perhaps borrowed from the title of Stuart Chase's book A New Deal published earlier that year.
9. ^ The Roosevelt Week, Time, July 11, 1932
10. ^ Leuchtenburg pp 33–35
11. ^ Leuchtenburg p. 188
12. ^ Leuchtenburg p. 34
13. ^ Leuchtenburg p. 58
14. ^ Ralph Allen, Ordeal by Fire: Canada, 1910–1945, (1961) ch 37.
15. ^ "HISTORY, ECONOMIC - Labour Policy - 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand". Teara.govt.nz. http://www.teara.govt.nz/1966/H/HistoryEconomic/LabourPolicy/en. Retrieved 2008-10-11. 
16. ^ Mitchell, p. 404.
17. ^ Industrial Production Index
18. ^ Historical Statistics of the United States (1976) series F31
19. ^ Angus Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics (OECD 2003); Japan is close, see p 174
20. ^ Cole, Harold L and Ohanian, Lee E. New Deal Policies and the Persistence of the Great Depression: A General Equilibrium Analysis, 2004.
21. ^ U.S. Dept of Commerce, National Income and Product AccountsReal GDP and GNP; Mitchell 446, 449, 451;Consumer Price Index AND M2 Money Supply: 1800–2003
22. ^ Smiley, Gene, "Recent Unemployment Rate Estimates for the 1920s and 1930s," Journal of Economic History, June 1983, 43, 487-93.

• Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1951 (1951) full of useful data; online
• Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (1976)
• Cantril, Hadley and Mildred Strunk, eds. Public Opinion, 1935–1946 (1951), massive compilation of many public opinion polls
• Carter, Susan B. et al. eds. The Historical Statistics of the United States (6 vol: Cambridge UP, 2006); huge compilation of statistical data; online at some universities
• Gallup, George Horace, ed. The Gallup Poll; Public Opinion, 1935–1971 3 vol (1972) summarizes results of each poll.
• Lowitt, Richard and Beardsley Maurice, eds. One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickock Reports on the Great Depression (1981)
• Moley, Raymond. After Seven Years (1939), conservative memoir by ex-Brain Truster
• Nixon, Edgar B. ed. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs (3 vol 1969), covers 1933-37. 2nd series 1937-39 available on microfiche and in a 14 vol print edition at some academic libraries.
• Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Rosenman, Samuel Irving, ed. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (13 vol, 1938, 1945); public material only (no letters); covers 1928–1945.
• Documentary History of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration^{[dead link]} 20 vol. available in some large academic libraries.
• Zinn, Howard, ed. New Deal Thought (1966), a compilation of primary sources.
• Manchester, William (1975). The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932–1972. Joseph. ISBN 0718113861. 
• California's Living New Deal Project, a comprehensive and continually updated database of the lasting effects of projects generated by the New Deal in California. Developed by the California Historical Society in partnership with U.C. Berkeley's Institute for Research in Labor and Employment Library and the California Studies Center.

Further reading

• Allswang, John. The New Deal and American Politics (1978), voting analysis
• Alter, Jonathan. The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (2006), popular account
• Badger, Anthony J. The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933–1940. (2002) general survey from British perspective
• Beasley, Maurine H., Holly C. Shulman, Henry R. Beasley. The Eleanor Roosevelt Encyclopedia (2001)
• Bernstein, Barton J. "The New Deal: The Conservative Achievements of Liberal Reform." In Barton J. Bernstein, ed., Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History, pp. 263–88. (1968), an influential New Left attack on the New Deal.
• Bernstein, Irving. Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933–1941 (1970), cover labor unions
• Best, Gary Dean. The Critical Press and the New Deal: The Press Versus Presidential Power, 1933–1938 (1993) ISBN 027594350X
• Best, Gary Dean. Pride, Prejudice, and Politics: Roosevelt Versus Recovery, 1933–1938. (1990) ISBN 0275935248
• Best, Gary Dean. Retreat from Liberalism: Collectivists versus Progressives in the New Deal Years (2002) ISBN 0275946568
• Blumberg Barbara. The New Deal and the Unemployed: The View from New York City (1977).
• Bremer William W. "Along the American Way: The New Deal's Work Relief Programs for the Unemployed." Journal of American History 62 (December 1975): 636-652. online at JSTOR in most academic libraries
• Brock William R. Welfare, Democracy and the New Deal (1988), a British view
• Brinkley, Alan. The End Of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War. (1995) what happened after 1937
• Burns, Helen M. The American Banking Community and New Deal Banking Reforms, 1933–1935 (1974)
• Chafe, William H. ed. The Achievement of American Liberalism: The New Deal and its Legacies (2003)
• Charles, Searle F. Minister of Relief: Harry Hopkins and the Depression (1963)
• Cobb, James and Michael Namaroto, eds. The New Deal and the South (1984).
• Cohen, Adam, Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America (2009)
• Conkin, Paul K. The New Deal. (1967), a brief New Left critique.
• Dubofsky, Melvyn, ed. The New Deal: Conflicting Interpretations and Shifting Perspectives. (1992), reader
• Eden, Robert, ed. New Deal and Its Legacy: Critique and Reappraisal (1989), essays by scholars
• Ekirch Jr., Arthur A. Ideologies and Utopias: The Impact of the New Deal on American Thought (1971)
• Folsom, Burton. New Deal or Raw Deal? : How FDR's Economic Legacy has Damaged America (2008) ISBN 1416592229
• Fraser, Steve and Gary Gerstle, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, (1989), essays focused on the long-term results.
• Garraty, John A. "The New Deal, National Socialism, and the Great Depression," American Historical Review, 78, 4 (1973), pp. 907–44. in JSTOR
• Goldman, Eric F. Rendezvous with Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform. New York : Alfred A. Knopf (1952) ISBN 1566633699
• Gordon, Colin. New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics, 1920–1935 (1994)
• Graham, Otis L. and Meghan Robinson Wander, eds. Franklin D. Roosevelt: His Life and Times. (1985). An encyclopedic reference.
• Grant, Michael Johnston. Down and Out on the Family Farm: Rural Rehabilitation in the Great Plains, 1929–1945 (2002)
• Hawley, Ellis W. The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly (1966)
• Higgs, Robert. Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (1987), libertarian critique
• Howard, Donald S. The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (1943)
• Ingalls, Robert P. Herbert H. Lehman and New York's Little New Deal (1975)
• Jensen, Richard J. "The Causes and Cures of Unemployment in the Great Depression," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 19 (1989) 553-83. online at JSTOR
• Kennedy, David M. Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. (1999), survey
• Kirkendall, Richard S. "The New Deal As Watershed: The Recent Literature," The Journal of American History, Vol. 54, No. 4. (Mar., 1968), pp. 839–852. in JSTOR, historiography
• Ladd, Everett Carll and Charles D. Hadley. Transformations of the American Party System: Political Coalitions from the New Deal to the 1970s (1975), voting behavior
• Leff, Mark H. The Limits of Symbolic Reform: The New Deal and Taxation (1984)
• Leuchtenburg, William E. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940. (1963). A standard interpretive history.
• Lindley, Betty Grimes and Ernest K. Lindley. A New Deal for Youth: The Story of the National Youth Administration (1938)
• Lowitt, Richard. The New Deal and the West (1984).
• McElvaine Robert S. The Great Depression 2nd ed (1993), social history
• Neil M. Maher, Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
• Manza; Jeff. "Political Sociological Models of the U.S. New Deal" Annual Review of Sociology: 2000, 26 (2000): 297-322.
• Mathews, Jane De Hart. "Arts and the People: The New Deal Quest for a Cultural Democracy," Journal of American History 62 (1975): 316-39, in JSTOR
• Malamud; Deborah C. "'Who They Are - or Were': Middle-Class Welfare in the Early New Deal" University of Pennsylvania Law Review v 151 #6 2003. pp 2019+.
• McKinzie, Richard. The New Deal for Artists (1984), well illustrated scholarly study
• Meriam; Lewis. Relief and Social Security The Brookings Institution. 1946. Highly detailed analysis and statistical summary of all New Deal relief programs
• Milkis, Sidney M. and Jerome M. Mileur, eds. The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism (2002)
• Mitchell, Broadus. Depression Decade: From New Era through New Deal, 1929–1941 (1947), survey by economic historian
• Parker, Randall E. Reflections on the Great Depression (2002) interviews with 11 leading economists
• Patterson, James T. The New Deal and the States: Federalism in Transition (Princeton UP, 1969).
• Powell, Jim FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression (2003) ISBN 0761501657
• Polenberg, Richard. "The Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933–1945 A Brief History with Documents" ISBN 0312133103
• Rosenof, Theodore. Economics in the Long Run: New Deal Theorists and Their Legacies, 1933–1993 (1997)
• Rosen, Elliot A. Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and the Economics of Recovery (2005) ISBN 0813923689
• [1] Rothbard, Murray. America's Great Depression (1963).
• Saloutos, Theodore. The American Farmer and the New Deal (1982).
• Savage, James D. Balanced Budgets & American Politics. Cornell University Press. 1988.
• Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, 3 vols, (1957–1960), the classic narrative history. Online at vol 2 vol 3
• Singleton, Jeff. The American Dole: Unemployment Relief and the Welfare State in the Great Depression (2000)
• Sitkoff, Harvard. A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue: The Depression Decade (2008)
• Sitkoff, Harvard. ed. Fifty Years Later: The New Deal Evaluated. (New York; McGraw Hill, 1984). A friendly liberal evaluation.
• Skocpol, Theda, and Kenneth Finegold. "State Capacity and Economic Intervention in the Early New Deal." Political Science Quarterly 97 (1982): 255-78. Online at JSTOR .
• Skocpol, Theda, and Kenneth Finegold. "Explaining New Deal Labor Policy" American Political Science Review (1990) 84:1297–1304 online at JSTOR
• Smith, Jason Scott. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933–1956 (2005).
• Sternsher, Bernard ed., Hitting Home: The Great Depression in Town and Country (1970), essays by scholars on local history
• Szalay, Michael. New Deal Modernism: American Literature and the Invention of the Welfare State (2000)
• Tindall George B. The Emergence of the New South, 1915–1945 (1967). survey of entire South
• Trout Charles H. Boston, the Great Depression, and the New Deal (1977)
• Ware, Susan. Beyond Suffrage: Women and the New Deal (1981)
• Wecter, Dixon. The Age of the Great Depression, 1929–1941 (1948), social history
• Zelizer; Julian E. "The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal: Fiscal Conservatism and the Roosevelt Administration, 1933–1938" Presidential Studies Quarterly . Volume: 30. Issue: 2. pp: 331+. (2000)

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: New Deal

• The Smithsonian American Art Museum's Exhibition "1934: A New Deal for Artists"
• The New Deal Original reports and pictures from The Times
• Art, Culture, and Government: The New Deal at 75 Library of Congress, American Folklife Center Documentation of March 13-14, 2008 Symposium including webcasts of presentations
• New Deal Programs: Selected Library of Congress Resources Library of Congress
• Lessons from the New Deal Public Employment Programs by Nancy E. Rose, Monthly Review, October 2009

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