Essay Test on the New Deal

Roosevelt said, “Never in history have the interests of all the people been so united in a single economic problem. … Danger to one is danger to all” (Roosevelt, p. 25). The New Deal was a time of change in the role of the federal government. Changes were rapidly happening during the New Deal. First, the lasting impact of the great depression on the daily lives of the common people in this country was remembered for decades. Second, the New Deal should be viewed as the abandonment of laissez faire. Third, the New Deal should also be viewed as a “new” deal not an “old” deal. Fourth, our society still lives in the shadow of the New Deal. Fifth, the New Deal should also be seen as a “revolution.” Sixth, the New Deal was in between the economic systems of capitalism and socialism. Seventh, the New Deal put the federal government in the lives of the people. Eighth, the New Deal changed who was in the top-level positions of the government.

First, the lasting impact of the great depression on the daily lives of the common people in this country was remembered for decades. Allen notes that people were in breadlines by writing the following: “First, the breadlines in the poorer districts. Second, those bleak settlements … in the outskirts and on vacant lots—groups of makeshift shacks constructed out of packing boxes, scrap iron, anything that could be picked up free in a diligent combing of the city dumps…” (Allen, p. 7). Allen describes the condition of strikers by writing the following: “`Reporters from the more liberal metropolitan papers found them huddled on the mountainsides, crowed three or four families together in one-room shacks, living on dandelions and wild weedroots. Half of them were sick, but no local doctor would care for the evicted strikers. All of them were hungry and many were dying of … diseases which enable welfare authorities to claim that no one has starved’” (Allen, 9). Heline states that food was being burned when prices were low: “Grain was being burned. It was cheaper than coal. Corn was being burned. … In South Dakota, the county elevator listed corn as minus three cents” (Heline, p. 21). Heline states that people were upset with judges for granting deficiency judgement by writing the following: “He wouldn’t listen. He threatened them. So they drug him from his chair, pulled him down the steps of the courthouse, and shook a rope in front of his face. Then, tarred and feathered him. The Governor called out the National Guard” (Heline, p. 23). Roosevelt said, “To my mind, they want two things: work, with all the moral and spiritual values that go with it; and with work, a reasonable measure of security—security for themselves and for their wives and children” (Roosevelt, p. 26).

Second, the New Deal should be viewed as the abandonment of laissez faire. Harold Ickes wrote the following in his diary: “`The great and the mighty in the business world were there in force,’ he rather gleefully noted in his diary, ‘and I couldn’t help thinking how so many of these great and mighty were crawling to Washington on their hands and knees these days to beg the Government to run their businesses for them” (Degler, p. 46). Degler then goes on to write the following: “It is true, of course, that the rejection of laissez faire had a long history; certainly the Populists worked to undermine it. But with the depression the nation at large accepted the government as a permanent influence in the economy” (Degler, p. 47). To support his claim he wrote that: “Much of what is taken for granted today as the legitimate function of government and the social responsibility of business began only with the legislation of these turbulent years. … The lesson of Black Tuesday in 1929 had not been forgotten; the classic free market itself—the Exchange—was hereafter to be under continuous governmental scrutiny” (Degler, p. 48). The AAA helped to increase prices of crops by reducing the amount of land planted with crops. “Widespread unemployment, permeating all ranks and stations in society, drove the American people and their government into some of their most determined and deliberate departures from the hallowed policy of ‘hands off.’ … The governmental policies of the 1930’s never appreciably diminished the horde of unemployed—only the war prosperity of 1940 and after did that—but the providing of jobs by the federal government was a reflection of the people’s new conviction that the government had a responsibility to alleviate economic disaster” (Degler, p. 49).

Third, the New Deal should also be viewed as a “new” deal not an “old” deal. Degler presents more evidence and examples of his programs as a “new” deal instead of an “old” deal. “Historians and commentators on the American scene have not yet reached a firm agreement—if they ever will—as to whether the New Deal was conservative or radical in character. … `The New Deal is an old deal—as old as the earliest aspirations of humanity for liberty and justice and the good life,’ he declared in 1934. ‘It was this administration,’ he told a Chicago audience in 1936, ‘which saved the system of private profit and free enterprise after it had been dragged to the brink of ruin. …’” (Degler, p. 51). Degler notes that Roosevelt had an open mind by writing that: “Roosevelt was at heart a conservative, as his lifelong interest in history, among other things, suggests. But he was without dogma in his conservatism, which was heavily interlaced with genuine concern for people. He did not shy away from new means and new approaches to problems when circumstances demanded it. His willingness to experiment, to listen to his university-bred Brains Trust, to accept a measure like the TVA, reveal the flexibility in his thought” (Degler, p. 51). Degler notes that Roosevelt was willing to regulate the stock market by writing that: “The Progressive impulse was narrowly reformist: it limited business, it assisted agriculture, it freed labor from some of the shackles imposed by the courts, but it continued to conceive of the state as police-man or judge and nothing more. The New Deal, on the other hand, was more than a regulator—though it was more than a regulator—though it was that too, as shown by the SEC and the reinvigoration of the antitrust division of the Justice Department. … Its primary and general innovation was the guaranteeing of a minimum standard of welfare for the people of the nation” (Degler, p. 52). Degler notes that Roosevelt had helped in the rise of unions in this country by writing that: “But the guarantor state as it developed under the New Deal was more active and positive than this. It was a vigorous and dynamic force in the society, energizing and, if necessary, supplanting private enterprise when the general welfare required it. With the Wagner Act, for example, the government served notice that it would actively participate in securing the unionization of the American worker; the state was no longer to be impartial policeman merely keeping order; it now declared for the side of labor” (Degler, p. 52).

Fourth, our society still lives in the shadow of the New Deal. “Unable to devise a method for expanding markets to absorb the excess, the government turned to restriction of output as the only feasible alternative. … Thus was inaugurated the singular phenomenon, which is still a part of the American answer to the agricultural surplus, of paying farmers for not growing crops” (Degler, p. 48). Degler then adds the following: “Furthermore, the depression has taught most Americans—and western Europeans as well—that a free market is not only a rarity in the modern world, but that it is sometimes inimical to a stable and lasting prosperity” (Degler, p. 48). Degler describes the impact of Social Security by writing the following: “Apart from being a minimum protection for the individual and society against the dry rot of industrial idleness, unemployment insurance is now recognized as one of the major devices for warding off another depression” (Degler, p. 49). Degler writes the following about the Civil Works Administration and the Works Progress Administration: “First, since these agencies constituted America’s principal weapon against unemployment, some form of them will surely be utilized if a depression should occur again. Second, the various relief agencies of the period afford the best examples of the new welfare outlook, which was then in the process of formation” (Degler, p. 50). Johnson’s New Society program is a very good example of the New Deal’s lasting effect on our society. Leuchtenburg describes the impact of the Supreme Court by writing the following: “Before 1937 the Supreme Court stood as a formidable barrier to social reform. Since 1937 not one piece of significant social legislation has been invalidated, and the Court has shifted its docket instead to civil rights and civil liberties” (Leuchtenburg, p. 91). Leuchtenburg describes the impact of the New Deal on future presidents by writing the following: “Successive administrations extended the provisions of statutes like the Social Security Act, adopted New Deal attitudes toward intervention in the economy to cope with recessions, and put New Deal ideas to modern purposes, as when the Civilian Conservation Corps served as the basis for both the Peace Corps and the VISTA program of the War on Poverty” (Leuchtenburg, p. 92).

Fifth, the New Deal should also be seen as a “revolution.” The Tennessee Valley Authority and Social Security are two examples of this. Degler describes the TVA by writing the following: “It was social planning of the most humane sort, where even the dead were carefully removed from cemeteries before the waters backed up behind the dams. It brought new ideas, new wealth, new skills, new hope into a wasted, tired, and discouraged region” (Degler, p. 48). Degler notes that Eisenhower was unable to challenge or end the TVA by writing the following: “And despite Eisenhower’s unfortunate reference to it as ‘creeping socialism,’ the TVA has been absorbed into the new American Way fashioned by the experimentalism of the American people out of the wreckage of the Great Depression. … Undoubtedly social security deserves the appellation ‘revolutionary’ quite as much as the TVA; it brought government into the lives of people as nothing had since the draft and the income tax” (Degler, p. 49). Degler notes that the New Deal was changing the country in the depressions by writing the following: “`Those who are on relief and in close contact otherwise with public matters realize that what has happened to the country is a bloodless revolution,’ wrote an anonymous relief recipient in Harper’s in 1936. The government, he said, has assumed a new role in depressions, and only the rich might still be oblivious to it. But they too ‘will know it by 1940. And in time,’ they will ‘come to approve the idea of everyone having enough to eat’” (Degler, p. 50). Degler states that the depression was the third revolution of our country by writing the following: “The conclusion seems inescapable that, traditional as the words may have been in which the New Deal expressed itself, in actually it was truly a revolution in ideas, institutions and practices, when one compares it with the political and social world that preceded it. … And as the Civil War constituted a watershed in American thought, so the depression and its New Deal marked the crossing of a divide from which it would seem, there could be no turning back” (Degler, p. 53).

Sixth, the New Deal was in between the economic systems of capitalism and socialism. Schlesinger notes that the people wanted a government that would take action by writing the following: “Many Americans, refusing to be intimidated by abstractions or to be overawed by ideology, responded by doing things. The whole point of the New Deal lay in its belief in activism, its faith in gradualness, its rejection of catastrophism, its indifference to ideology, its conviction that a managed and modified capitalist order achieved by piecemeal experiment could combine personal freedom and economic growth” (Schlesinger, p. 70). Schlesinger notes that Roosevelt tried to be a little left of the middle of the political views of Americans by writing the following: “Roosevelt himself, of course, was the liberal pragmatist par excellence. His aim was to steer between the extremes of chaos and tyranny by moving always, in his phrase, ‘slightly to the left of center’” (Schlesinger, p. 70). Schlesinger states that the supporters of Roosevelt were the only people willing to take action by using the trail and error method by writing the following: “In a world intoxicated with abstractions, Roosevelt and the New Dealers stood almost alone in a stubborn faith in rational experiment, in trail and error” (Schlesinger, p. 71). Schlesinger states that the New Deal was pragmatic by writing the following: “The New Deal was thus able to approach the agony of mass unemployment and depression in the pragmatic spirit, in the spirit which guaranteed the survival rather than the extinction of freedom, in the spirit which in time rekindled hope across the world that free men could manage their own economic destiny” (Schlesinger, p. 71).

Seventh, the New Deal put the federal government in the lives of the people. Leuchtenburg notes the impact of the New Deal on the role of the government by writing the following: “Washington rarely affected people’s lives directly. There was no national old-age pension system, no federal unemployment compensation, no aid to dependent children, no federal housing, no regulation of the stock market, no withholding tax, no federal school lunch, no farm subsidy, no national minimum wage law, no welfare state” (Leuchtenburg, p. 83). Leuchtenburg describes the impact that the growth of the government had on the office of the president by writing the following: “This vast expansion of government led inevitably to the concentration of much greater power in the presidency, whose authority was greatly augmented under FDR” (Leuchtenburg, p. 84). Leuchtenburg notes the role of the government on the economy by writing the following: “The Banking Act of 1935 gave the United States what other industrial nations had long had, but America lacked—central banking” (Leuchtenburg, p. 85). Leuchtenburg describes the role of the government on the stock market by writing the following: “The Holding Company Act of 1935 levelled some of the utility pyramids, dissolving all utility holding companies that were more than twice removed from their operating companies, and increased the regulatory powers of the SEC over public utilities” (Leuchtenburg, p. 85). Leuchtenburg notes the role of the government on the growth of unions by writing the following: “When in 1937 the Wagner-Steagall Act created the U.S. Housing Authority, it assured public housing a permanent place in American life” (Leuchtenburg, p. 86). Leuchtenburg notes the role of the government on the growth of unions by writing the following: “The New Deal profoundly altered industrial relations by throwing the weight of the government behind efforts to unionize workers” (Leuchtenburg, p. 86). Leuchtenburg notes the role of government on public welfare by writing the following: “During the ten years between 1929 and 1939, one scholar has written, ‘more progress was made in public welfare and relief than in the three hundred years after this country was first settled’” (Leuchtenburg, p. 87). Leuchtenburg notes the role of the government on bringing electricity by writing the following: “In the Roosevelt years, too, the Rural Electrification Administration literally brought rural America out of darkness” (Leuchtenburg, p. 89).

Eighth, the New Deal changed who was in the top-level positions of the government. Leuchtenburg notes that Roosevelt employed academics by writing the following: “To staff the national agencies, Roosevelt turned to a new class of people: the university-trained experts. … As a consequence, they adopted measures to discipline corporations, to require a sharing of authority with government and unions, and to hold businessmen accountable” (Leuchtenburg, p. 84). Leuchtenburg notes about the group of people in the government by writing the following: “Before 1933, the government had paid heed primarily to a single group –white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males” (Leuchtenburg, p. 89). Leuchtenburg notes that Roosevelt had Jews, Catholics, females and blacks in high places in the government.