APUSH – 2/29/16 5 Agenda: FDR Notes Interpretation Exercise Agency Chart

5 HW: Agency Chart

5 Extra Credit: WWII Video on Website

Election of 1932 5 Voters in an ugly mood – want change!

5 Republican - President Herbert Hoover

Platform – anti-Depression policies

5 Democrats - Franklin Delano Roosevelt (TR’s 5th cousin) Platform – no prohibition, attack “Hoover Depression,”

promised balanced budget “I pledge you, I pledge myself to a New Deal for the

American people.” “Out of the Red with Roosevelt”

Campaign 5 FDR took the offensive – attacked Hoover 5 Speeches written by the “Brain Trust” – small

group of reform-minded young college professors Kitchen Cabinet

5 “Happy Days Are Here Again” – theme song 5 New Deal Coalition – Democratic party interest

groups including labor unions, minorities, Catholics and Jews, W. Southerners, farmers

5 Hoover said “the Worst is Past” and “It might have been worse” Gave speeches of faith in free enterprise,

individual initiative, repeal of tariff

Result

5 Votes: 472 to 59 5 Distinct shift of blacks to the Democratic party

Worst sufferers of the GD 5 Hoover still President for 4 mo. – couldn’t enact

long-range policies w/o FDR okay FDR was uncooperative – worse GD so he could

look like a savior? 5 Economy came to a halt – 25% unemployed, banks

closed, $ in mattresses 5 Feb 15, 1933 assassination attempt – killed Chicago

mayor instead

Election of 1932

Roosevelt (Democrat): 472 Electoral Votes Hoover (Republican): 59 Electoral Votes

The relationship between Hoover and FDR during the “lame duck” period had become so strained that Hoover did not speak a word to Roosevelt on the ride from the White House to the Capitol Building.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933-1945 Democrat

Presidential Rankings: C-Span Survey, 2009

1. Abraham Lincoln 2. Franklin Roosevelt 3. George Washington 4. Theodore Roosevelt 5. Harry Truman 6. John Kennedy 7. Thomas Jefferson 8. Dwight Eisenhower 9. Woodrow Wilson 10. Ronald Reagan 11. Lyndon Johnson 12. James Polk 13. Andrew Jackson 14. James Monroe

15. Bill Clinton 16. William McKinley 17. John Adams 18. George H.W. Bush 19. John Quincy Adams 20. James Madison 21. Grover Cleveland 22. Gerald Ford 23. Ulysses Grant 24. William Taft 25. Jimmy Carter 26. Calvin Coolidge 27. Richard Nixon 28. James Garfield

29. Zachary Taylor 30. Benjamin Harrison 31. Martin Van Buren 32. Chester Arthur 33. Rutherford Hayes 34. Herbert Hoover 35. John Tyler 36. George W. Bush 37. Millard Fillmore 38. Warren Harding 39. William Harrison 40. Franklin Pierce 41. Andrew Johnson 42. James Buchanan

Characteristics 5 Wealthy family, Harvard grad, Asst. Sec of Navy, unelected

VP 5 Contracted polio in 1921 – paralyzed waist down = wheelchair 5 Suffering humbled him – patience, tolerance, compassion,

strength of will 5 Political appeal, commanding presence, great speaking voice 5 NY Governor – heavy govt spending to relieve human suffering

$ is expendable, not humanity Concern for the “forgotten man”

5 Eleanor Roosevelt – distant cousin and wife

Battled for impoverished and oppressed Traveled with FDR – speeches and newspaper column Most active First Lady ever Birmingham, AL – straddled aisle separating black and

white seating sections Rocky relationship – his occasional infidelity

A rare photo of FDR in a wheelchair. The media did not publish such photos during Roosevelt’s presidency and the public never knew the extent of the president’s handicap until after his death.

Press photos often showed Roosevelt as a picture of health and vigor even though he was physically handicapped.

Three R’s: Relief, Recovery, & Reform

5 Inauguration Day - “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

5 Bank Holiday - March 6 – 10 - to eliminate paranoid bank withdrawals

5 First New Deal - First Hundred Days – special session of Congress - Several new acts put into play (March 9-June 16) Similar to progressive movement

5 Three R’s: Relief, Recovery, Reform Relieve the depression and help people Help the economy recover Permanently reform things

Three R’s: Relief, Recovery, & Reform

5 Congress – green and panicky – gave FDR whatever he wanted FDR got legislative authority FDR did lots on intuition – off-the-cuff Any movement seemed better than none

5 Most of legislation stemmed from progressive era Unemployment insurance, old-age insurance,

minimum wage regulations, conservation, restrictions on child labor

Many W. European countries already did this – US was a backward nation

1st New Deal – 1933-1935 2nd New Deal – 1935 - 1938

Banking and Finance 5 Emergency Banking Relief Act of 1933 – Pres

has power to regulate banking transactions, foreign exchange, reopen banks

5 Fireside Chats on the radio – assured people that banks were now safe

5 Federal Securities Act (“Truth in Securities Act”) - required promoters to transmit to the investor sworn information regarding the soundness of their stocks and bonds.

5 Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act - provided the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) - insured individual deposits up to $5000 Restored faith in banks

5 FDR took country off the gold standard and ordered Congress to buy gold at increasingly higher prices. Went to paper money – more $ in circulation Gold only used for international trade

Bank Failures and the Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act of 1933

Unemployment 5 Used federal money to assist the unemployed 5 Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) - employment

in fresh-air government camps for 3 million uniformed youg men They reforested areas, fought fires, drained

swamps, controlled floods, etc. Had to send most of $ to parents Complaints of FDR militarizing youth Most popular of all “alphabet agencies”

5 Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA)- help adult unemployment Aim - immediate relief rather than long-term

alleviation Federal Emergency Relief Administration

(FERA) - Harry L. Hopkins (NY social worker) Granted $3 bil to states for payments of wages on work

projects

CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) Camp and the woodpile in Rocky Mountain National Park, May 26, 1933

Unemployment 5 Public Works Administration (PWA) – industrial

recovery, unemployment relief – long-term! Sec of Interior – Harold L. Ickes $4 bil spent on 34,000 projects – buildings, roads, parks Grand Coulee Dam on Columbia River – largest man-made

structure since Great Wall – folly? Made irrigation possible of millions of acres of farmland –

don’t need more surplus More electrical power to a region that didn’t need it WWII – dam was genius – transformed region

Unemployment 5 Civil Works Administration (CWA)- provide

temporary jobs during the winter emergency Frivolous jobs (called “boondoggling”)

5 Response to criticism: Works Progress Administration

(WPA) Objective – employment on useful projects $11 bil on public buildings, bridges, roads Over 8 years, 9 mil given jobs National Youth Administration (NYA) - Part-time work for

high school and college students Work to unemployed workers like actors, musicians, writers Many criticisms – crazy or not-useful jobs John Steinbeck – counted dogs in county Control crickets, build monkey pens, murals in post offices, tap

dancing lessons

Critics 5 Still unemployment and suffering

5 Father Charles Coughlin – Catholic priest in Michigan

Broadcasted on radio, slogan = Social Justice Anti-New Deal, anti-Semitic, fascist Silenced by church superiors

5 Senator Huey Long (LA) – “Share Our Wealth” program

Make “Every Man a King” – give $5000 to every family, taken from the rich

Shot in 1935 – fear of him becoming a fascist dictator FDR said he was “one of the 2 most dangerous men in

the country”

5 Dr. Francis E. Townsend (CA) - retired physician, lost life savings Plan – each senior citizen should get $200 a month, all

must be spent in that month

African American flood victims in Louisville, Kentucky stand in front of an outdated billboard while waiting for assistance.

New Roles for Women

5 Sec. of Labor Frances Perkins – 1st female cabinet member

5 Mary McLeod Bethune – director of Office of Minority Affairs in the NYA (Nat. Youth Admin) Highest ranking Afr. American in FDR admin

5 Anthropologist Ruth Benedict – Patterns of Culture -developed the “culture and personality movement” Each culture has pattern of thought and action Student - Margaret Mead focused on

adolescents 5 Pearl S. Buck – novelist, raised in China

The Good Earth – Chinese peasant society, Nobel Prize

New Amendments (1933)

5 20th amendment - cut the lame-duck period down to six weeks – Inauguration Day now January 20 not March 4.

5 21st amendment – repealed prohibition (18th) Needed to recover Liquor Industry Raise federal revenue and raise employment Legalized light wine and beer – 3.2% content Tax of $5 on barrel

Farmers/Rural Areas 5 Suffering from low prices and overproduction 5 Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) - $ to help

farmers meet mortgages

5 Electric-power industry attacked – excessive rates 5 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) (1933) -

discover how much money it took to produce electricity and then keep electricity rates reasonable Most revolutionary of all New Deal programs Built dams on Tenn. River Full employment in area, cheap electric power,

low-cost housing, restored soil, flood control

TVA Area

Farmers/Rural Areas 5 Agricultural Adjustment Administration –

amendment to AAA paid farmers to reduce their crop acreage =

less surplus; kill excess livestock Established “parity” prices – value it would

have been in 1909-1914 $ raised from taxes on farm product

processors (flour millers, etc) The Supreme Court killed it in 1936 – taxes are

unconstitutional (US v. Butler) 5 Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act - suspended

mortgage foreclosures for five years - voided in 1935 by the Supreme Court Later changed to 3 years

The Dust Bowl & Other Farming Acts 5 1933 – drought in Great Plains 5 Rainless weeks followed by furious winds, topsoil torn from

homesteads = Dust Bowl 5 Another cause – WWI high grain prices = more acres under

cultivation dry-farming and use of steam tractor/disk plow = powdery

topsoil 5 Protective masks, suffocation, apocalypse? 5 350,000 Okies and Arkies fled to California

Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath Farm Security Administration – set up camps for Okies in

California – “Okievilles”

5 Resettlement Administration – removed farmers to better land CCC planted 200 mil trees as windbreaks

5 Second Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 – paid farmers who

limited acreage on cotton and wheat and other crops (took out tax)

A house covered with dust, 1935

Buried machinery in barn lot in Dallas, South Dakota, United States during the Dust Bowl, an agricultural, ecological, and economic

disaster in the Great Plains region of North America in 1936

Dorothea Lange

Industry and Labor 5 National Recovery Administration (NRA) - assist industry, labor,

and the unemployed Most complex and far-reaching effort (all 3 R’s) 200+ industries to work out codes of “fair competition” Reduced hours of labor so employment can spread over more

people Right to organize and bargain collectively, choosing own

representatives Restrictions on child labor, yellow-dog contracts forbidden Blue Eagle is symbol, stores had signs “We Do Our Part” Philadelphia Eagles were named after this act Asked for too much self-sacrifice expected of labor, industry,

and the public Businesses began secretly violating codes Sup Ct Schechter “sick chicken” case – ended NRA

Congress can’t give legislative power to President – separation of powers

Can’t regulate poultry industry within states

Industry and Labor 5 1934 – many walkouts, general strike in San Francisco 5 Wagner Act (AKA, National Labor Relations Act) -

guaranteed the right of unions to organize and to collectively bargain with management National Labor Relations Board urged unskilled workers to

begin organizing into unions

CIO 5 John L. Lewis – boss of United Mine Workers – formed

Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) within the AFL Friction between the two (skilled v. unskilled) CIO used new technique – sit-down strike o General Motors in Flint, MI – prevented scabs from coming in o General Motors agreed to use CIO as sole bargaining agency for

workers US Steel Company granted unionization rights to CIO employees o Smaller steel companies upset – Memorial Day Massacre at Republic

Steel Co. in Chicago o Police fired on picketers and workers = some dead

Strikers guarding window entrance to Fisher body plant number three. Flint, Michigan. The 1936-37 strike led to the successful

unionization of workers throughout the automobile industry

5 Fair Labor Standards Act (AKA the “Wages and Hours Bill”) – interstate commerce industries had to set up minimum wage and maximum hours Goal – 40 cents a day & 40 hour week Labor under 16 forbidden Excluded agricultural service and blacks,

Mexicans, and Women 5 Roosevelt enjoyed immense support from the labor

unions. 5 CIO broke completely with the AF of L in 1938

- renamed itself the Congress of Industrial Organizations (the new CIO) Lewis is President, 4 mil members

Housing 5 Home Owner’s Loan Corporation Act (HOLC) – refinance

mortgages on non-farm houses Middle class now loyal to Democrats

5 Federal Housing Administration (FHA)- small loans to householders – improve dwellings and build new ones

5 U.S. Housing Authority (USHA) -lent money to states or communities for low-cost construction. Opposed by real estate promoters, builders, etc

Retirement 5 Social Security Act (1935) - created pension and insurance

for the old-aged Retired workers get regular payments ($10-85 a month)

– raised from taxes on employers/employees Insurance for the blind, the physically handicapped,

delinquent children, and other dependents Example taken from Europe

Native Americans 5 Commissioner of Indian Affairs - John Collier – wanted to reverse

Dawes Act and forced assimilation 5 Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (the Indian “New Deal”) -

encouraged tribes to establish local self-govt and preserve their culture and traditions Stop loss of Indian lands Some Indians unhappy – “back-to-the-blanket” plan, steps back 200+ tribes did create tribal governments

Election of 1936

5 Dem – FDR Platform – New Deal

5 Republican - Kansas Governor Alfred M. Landon Weak on the radio and weaker in person Platform – anti-New Deal of Franklin “Deficit” Roosevelt American Liberty League - conservative Democrats and

wealthy Republicans - fight “socialistic” New Deal schemes (Hoover was one)

5 Votes: 523 to 8 5 Congress mostly Democrat 5 Election showed class warfare 5 FDR still appealed to “forgotten man” 5 FDR interpreted his victory as a mandate to continue New

Deal reforms 5 People aren’t “going to bite the hand that feeds them” 5 “No one shoots Santa Claus”

Election of 1936

Roosevelt (Democrat): 523 Electoral Votes Landon (Republican): 8 Electoral Votes

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Court Packing Scheme 5 Court-Packing Scheme – asked Congress for

legislation to permit him to add a new justice for every member over 70 who wouldn’t retire (6 more) 5 Shocked country and Congress

5 Reason - Supreme Court stood in the way of progress Thwarted 7 of 9 major New Deal acts Ultraconservative, 6 of 9 were 70+ years old,

none appointed by FDR Not in line with what the people want (says FDR)

5 FDR a dictator? Breaking checks and balances, basic liberties in

jeopardy

The Court Changes Course

5 Some justices did begin voting liberally Upheld minimum wage for women,

Wagner Act and Social Security Act 5 Congress granted full pay for those over

70 who retired 5 Court Reform Bill – applied to lower courts 5 Goal achieved – Court more friendly to

New Deal Deaths and resignations allowed FDR to

make appointments 5 Aroused conservatives in both parties –

few New Deal reforms passed after this

End of the New Deal 5 15% unemployment still – recovery modest, inching toward

economic health 5 1937- “Roosevelt Recession” - another brief downturn

caused by government policies. Social Security taxes cut into payrolls, less govt

spending due to balanced budget 5 John Maynard Keynes – British economist – ideas adopted

to stimulate economy through deficit spending (becomes US policy for decades)

5 Reorganization Act(1939) - gave President limited powers for administrative reforms - new Executive Office in the White House.

5 Hatch Act of 1939 - barred federal administrative officials, except the highest policy-making officers, from active political campaigning and soliciting.

– No use of govt funds for political purposes, no campaign contributions from those who took relief checks

– 1940 – limits on contributions and expenditures for campaigns

Positives 5 Goal was relief, which it did 5 Govt had to involve itself – morally bound to

prevent mass starvation 5 Fairer distribution of income achieved 5 Purged capitalism of worst abuses

He could’ve been MORE radical 5 Bold reform w/o bloody revolution (unlike foreign

nations) Euros thought US would come communist or

fascist 5 Showed value of powerful presidential leadership 5 Preserved democracy when it was disappearing

abroad

Negatives 5 FDR too friendly with Communists and Jews 5 “Try anything” approach criticized 5 Debt grew from $19.5 bil to $40 bil (1939) 5 Federal bureaucracy grew 5 Old virtues of thrift and initiative undermined

Americans had a case of the “gimmies” 5 Criticized FDR as a one-man supergovernment 5 Criticized the “federal pill for every ill” 5 Biggest criticism – didn’t cure depression 5 It took World War II, though, to really lower

unemployment. But, the war also created a heavier debt than before (258 billion)