New Deal

The New Deal was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's legislative program. As implemented during the 1933-1938 period, it included numerous congressional enactments and presidential orders that were intended to provide economic relief, recovery, and reform during the Great Depression.

(For an annotated list of New Deal measures see the addendum subpage)

(For the sequence of New Deal legislative measures see the timelines subpage)

Origins

Roosevelt first promised "a new deal for the American people" in his acceptance speech at the 1932 Democratic National Convention.

(The background to the New Deal is described in the article on the Great Depression in the United States and its economic implications and international context are described in the article on the Great Depression.)

The three Rs

The New Deal had three components: relief, recovery, and reform - The Three RS.

The Relief component was intended to put the unemployed to work and help those hardest hit by the depression. It expanded the previous administration's work relief program, and added an extensive further sequence of employment-generating schemes, followed by the introduction of a number of social security and unemployment insurance systems.

The Recovery component was intended to return the country to prosperity by direct government intervention in its economy. It included programmes of financial assistance to banks and mortgage-lenders, subsidies to farms and busineses, the encouragement of trade union membership, and the maintenace of wage levels.

The Reform component included the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which had the immediate purpose of restoring confidence in the country's banks and the longer term purpose of regulating their conduct; and the setting up of the Securites and Exchange Commission to regulsate other parts of it financial system.

A review of the programs

Emergency measures

The "Bank Holiday" and the Emergency Banking Relief Act

The exceptionally severe US banking crises of 1931-33 led to the failure of large numbers of banks and by March 1933, many of the survivors were on the point of closing their doors to depositors. Just one day into his presidency, Roosevelt declared a "bank holiday," effectively putting all financial transactions to a halt. Four days later, Congress passed his Emergency Banking Relief Act, much of which had been drafted by Hoover administration officials. This legislation provided for reopening sound banks under Treasury Department supervision. Three-quarters of the remaining banks in the Federal Reserve System reopened within the next three days and currency and gold flowed back into them within a month, thus stabilizing the banking system. Despite presidential opposition, Congress also created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insured deposits for up to $5,000, and which put an immediate stop to the Depression Era spate of bank runs.

The Economy Act

As a result of pressure from "deficit-hawks" among its members (who feared that the government's would cause a large departure from the President's election promise of a balanced budget), Congress passed the Economy Act which cut the salaries of government employees and cutting pensions to veterans by 40 percent, and reduced government expenditure by about $500 million a year.

Relief programs

The administration launched a series of programmes and agencies to provide work for the unemployed, the largest of which were the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Civil Works Administration, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration the National Youth Administration, and largest of all, the Works Progress Administration (WPA). (The numbers employed by last-mentioned reached 3.3 million in November 1938. and although there had by then been a major reduction in level of unemployment even then amounted to 12.5% of the working population.)

Other programmes established the concept of a minimum wage, created insurance for the unemployed, sick and old, established healthcare supprt systems, and abolished child labor. However, it is often claimed that the most important of the relief measures that were introduced was the Social Security Act of 1935.

Recovery programmes

The Farm Programs

Several measures were introduced to arrest the fall in agricultural prices that had been causing hardship in the country's farming industy. The first Agricultural Adjustment Act, which was passed enacted on May 12, 1933, created the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. This agency imposed negotiated limits on the production of corn, cotton, dairy products, hogs, rice, tobacco, and wheat, and compensated farmers from funds raised by a tax on food processing. It also ordered crops to be destroyed and livestock to be slaughtered. Over the next three years, food prices rose, and farm incomes increased significantly A Gallup Poll printed in the Washington Post revealed that a majority of the American public opposed the AAA. Several other agencies were also introduced to help the farming community, including the Resettlement Administration, the Farm Security Administration, the Rural Electrification Administration, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. The government also sponsored rural welfare projects such as the provision of school lunches, the building of new schools, the opening of roads in remote areas, and the transfer of marginal lands to national forests.

Infrastructure projects

A number of infrastructure projects were created by the Public Works Administration (PWA) , that had been established by the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the Tennessee Valley Authority . By June 1934 the Public Works Administration had created over 13,000 federal projects and over2,000 non-federal projects, including rural electrification, canals, tunnels, bridges, highways, streets, sewage systems, and housing areas, as well as hospitals, schools, and universities..

Industrial policies

The principal features of the industrial policies adopted were the stimulation of production in commercial organisations by the funding of "public works" projects, the reduction of deflation by stabilisation of prices and wages. In pursuit of the latter objective, New Deal agencies encouraged collusive agreements to refrain from price competition and the strengthening of the bargaining power trade unions in order to improve their wage-bargaining ability. The principal enabling legislation for those policies was the National Industrial Recovery Act, and its main implementing agencies were the Public Works Administration, the National Planning Board and the National Recovery Agency. (When the "National Industrial Recovery Act was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, it was replaced by the National Labor Relations Act - known as the "Wagner Act" - in order to continue the work of strengthening trade union power.)

To prime the pump and cut unemployment, the NIRA created the Public Works Administration (PWA), a major program of public works. From 1933 to 1939 PWA spent $6 billion with private companies to build 34,500 projects, many of them quite large.

Johnson called on every business establishment in the nation to accept a stopgap "blanket code": a minimum wage of between 20 and 40 cents an hour, a maximum workweek of 35 to 40 hours, and the abolition of child labor. Johnson and Roosevelt contended that the "blanket code" would raise consumer purchasing power and increase employment.

Roosevelt nationalized unemployment relief through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), headed by close friend Harry Hopkins. It created hundreds of thousands of low-skilled blue collar jobs for unemployed men (and some for unemployed women and white collar workers).

Constitutional implications

In 1934, the Supreme Court found several parts of the New Deal to be unconstitutional, in 1935, it found the NRA itself to be unconstitutional, and in 1936, it declared the AAA to be "a matter beyond the powers delegated to the federal government...". In 1937 President Roosevelt responded with a proposal to pack the Supreme Court by adding five new justices. The "court packing" proposal failed, but, in the so-called "switch in time that saved nine," the Court began upholding New Deal laws, and by 1942, it had nearly abandoned its earlier "judicial activism."

In the meantime, FDR appointed a three-member Committee on Administrative Management to investigate possible changes to the organization of the executive branch. More commonly known as the Brownlow Commission for its chairmanship by Louis Brownlow, it proposed a plan to reorganize the executive branch in ways that would significantly increase the president's control. Although the original proposal was rejected, an amended version was passed by Congress as the Reorganization Act of 1939.

The achievements of the New Deal

Roosevelt's energetic public personality--"the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," and his "fireside chats" helped restore confidence.

The extent to which the New Deal hastened or hampered America's recovery from the Great Depression is a matter of continuing controversy. There are, nevertheless, a few aspects of the question on which there is some semblance of a consensus. For example, few would now question the proposition that the restoration of confidence in the banking system was a necessary condition for recovery, or the success of Roosevelt's actions in that respect.

(For an examination of the economic consequences of the New Deal, see the article on the Great Depression, and its Tutorials subpage [2] and for a summary of the relevant economic statistics see the Tutorials subpage of the article on the Great Depression in the United States [3].)

---