EXAM Depth Study- America 1930s

Question 1

What were Hoovervilles?

Answer 1

• ‘Hoovervilles’ was the name given to the shantytowns which sprang up in and around the outskirts of major cities in the USA during the Great Depression.
• Improvised from tents, corrugated metal, cardboard and whatever else lay to hand, they were populated largely by the unemployed and the evicted, and they were often located near soup kitchens (which were for most inhabitants the only source of food), and near rivers (which were the only available source of water).
• The shantytowns were named after the serving Republican president, Herbert Hoover. “Hoovervilles” was a pejorative term, coined by the Democrats’ publicity officer, but it stuck because it seemed true to life as most people perceived it at the time (i.e. that Hoover was to blame for the Great Depression and that he was indifferent to people’s suffering).
• Life in a Hooverville involved over-crowding (entire families were often crowded into a single improvised tent or shack) and poor sanitation, due to dirt, lack of access to clean water and proper latrine facilities.
• Life was also uncertain because although Hoovervilles were often tolerated by the authorities, they might be closed down if built on private or government land.
• Where a Hooverville was allowed to exist for some time, residents might attempt to feed themselves with a vegetable garden.
• Some dwellings within Hoovervilles might be stone-built (for example, if the evicted resident was a stone-mason) and have a small stove and basic kitchen utensils, but these were the exception, not the rule.
• For bedding, residents used newspapers (“Hoover blankets”) and when their shoes were worn through, they lined them with cardboard “Hoover leather”).
• The larger, longer-established Hoovervilles sometimes elected a spokesperson to represent them to the authorities and the wider community.
• Perhaps the most infamous ‘Hooverville’ was set up by the ‘Bonus Army’ of WWI veterans on Anacostia Flats in 1932. Hoover ordered General MacArthur to destroy it; a fatal electoral blunder which only confirmed the popular view that Hoover was callous and uncaring.

Question 2

What were Breadlines and Soup Kitchens?

Answer 2

• The term ‘Breadlines’ refers to the enormously long queues of people (several thousand at a time, stretching back over several blocks) which formed in American cities after the Wall St Crash and during the Great Depression to receive free bread from charitable organizations.
• There have been breadlines since (for example, during the ‘double-dip’ recession), but the Great Depression breadlines were the worst, and made the deepest impression on American folk memory. The first recorded breadline was set up in Detroit shortly after the double-blow of ‘Black Thursday’ and ‘Black Tuesday’ on the stock exchange.
• Soup kitchens were initially set up by charities and churches but eventually they were run by the government as well.
• Many people relied entirely on soup kitchens for their food; for others, who could provide at least a little food for themselves, the soup kitchens and breadlines were a key source of additional food.
• Al Capone ran a soup kitchen in Chicago to improve his public image, providing three meals a day for thousands of people and a Thanksgiving Dinner for five thousand people.
• Capone’s good publicity in The Chicago Tribune was Hoover’s bad publicity: people wondered what it said about the lack of government help during the Great Depression that they were forced to turn to a murderous gangster for food. In reality, the soup kitchen cost Capone little: most of the soup, bread, coffee and doughnuts he served had been extorted from local traders.

Question 3

What were Hoover’s responses to the Great Depression?

Answer 3

• It is better to think in terms of Hoover’s responses to the Great Depression, rather than a single response, because his approach changed (or at least modified) over time; it is a mistake to write as if he only had a single approach that he stuck to between 1929 and 1933, when he finally left office.
• Hoover was a self-made millionaire who believed that ‘rugged individualism’ and the pioneer spirit had made America great. He believed in limited government involvement in business and in citizens’ lives. His first response to the Great Depression was denial: for several months, he made confident pronouncements about the underlying health of the US economy, genuinely believing that the Wall St Crash was a temporary ‘blip’; markets did make a brief recovery.
• When, in 1930, markets collapsed utterly and the Great Depression became an undeniable fact, Hoover’s response was consistent with his deepest convictions that the role of government was to help people to help themselves: he called for ‘volunteerism’ to alleviate the crisis (i.e. he called for charities to help the needy, and for volunteer agreements between workers and business on pay levels) rather than federal aid, genuinely believing that the government hand-outs would weaken the moral fibre of US citizens.
• He encouraged relief at state and local level and made government loans to help it (note: they were expected to be paid back, and most were) but he stopped short of providing direct relief.
• In 1930, Hoover also signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which aimed to protect American producers from foreign goods. It raised tariffs to their highest level ever, and proved hugely counter-productive: instead of helping alleviate the effects of the Great Depression, it actually made them far worse, adversely affecting exports and imports by as much as 67%.
• Another factor which explains Hoover’s response was his hatred of Socialism and Communism. It is important to understand that Hoover considered himself an expert on the negative effects of these political ideologies because he had organised famine relief in Russia after the Civil War which followed the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, so he believed he had seen for himself where communism led. Hoover was convinced that direct government relief would lead to disaster.
• In the final years of his presidency, Hoover did modify his approach to a degree. He set up the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932, to provide government loans at state and local government level to try to encourage business recovery and re-hiring of workers: this is why RFC loans were often made to banks; the idea was that the banks would be sufficiently sound to enable them to lend to businessmen.
• Ultimately, such measures were too little and too late and Hoover never overcame his ideological and emotional opposition to direct government spending on a massive scale.

Question 4

What was the context for the 1932 Presidential Election?

Answer 4

• US History shows that during a depression, the party in government loses the election, unless a security crisis occurs, like a war, in which case the nation may rally patriotically behind the serving president. In 1932, nothing like this happened.
• In 1932, the economic situation was so critical as to guarantee that Hoover would lose, no matter who his opponent was: there were at least 12 million unemployed in the USA, and unemployment was increasing at the rate of 12,000 a day.
• Hoover’s economic policies (above all, his signing of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill and his reluctance to spend significant amounts of money to increase demand and reverse the spiral of decline) had helped to turn the recession into a full-blown depression.
• If a party has been in power for a long time, people may (even in normal circumstances), feel it is time for a change. These were not normal circumstances. Voters wanted a change not just from Hoover, but from twelve years of Republican rule. In the context of the Great Depression, it tended to be the worst features of the Harding/Coolidge and Hoover presidencies that were remembered, such as the Teapot Dome Scandal. These seemed to fit a pattern of Republican selfishness, greed, corruption and callousness.

Question 5

What were Roosevelt’s campaign promises?

Answer 5

Direct government relief 
‘Bold persistent experimentation’ 
Repeal of Prohibition 
Assistance for the farm sector 
Balanced budget

Question 6

What were Hoover’s campaign promises?

Answer 6

No direct government relief 
Laissez-faire economic policy 
Repeal of Prohibition
No direct government assistance for f/s 
Balanced Budget
Protective tariffs

Question 7

How did Hoover and Roosevelt compare and contrast?

Answer 7

• Hoover lacked personal charm and charisma; Roosevelt had immense charisma and charm. He was a gifted communicator who (as his ‘fireside chats’ later proved) could talk the language of ordinary people.
• Hoover was associated in the public mind with despair; Roosevelt projected himself successfully as the candidate of hope, with his upbeat campaign song “Happy Days are Here Again”.
• Another problem Hoover could not overcome was public perceptions: we now know that Hoover was working fourteen-hour days to try to combat the Depression, but at the time people thought (a) that he was doing nothing, and (b) that he did not care about the sufferings of the mass of the American people. Perceptions are crucial in politics, and the public’s perception of Hoover was negative.

Question 8

What events took place during the campaign year of 1932?

Answer 8

• The negative perceptions of Hoover seemed confirmed by his callous treatment in 1932 of the ‘Bonus Army’ camped in Washington to ask for advanced payment of promised pay arrears for WWI. Hoover was unlucky that Douglas Macarthur, a career-soldier with presidential ambitions, exceeded his orders and used gas and tanks to clear the veterans and their families, and then saddled Hoover with the blame, but Roosevelt’s response to hearing about it was that the election was as good as one: the event came to symbolise the callousness of Hoover’s administration.
• Perhaps perceptions of class came into it, too, in a way that helped Roosevelt and harmed Hoover: the American electorate may have looked at the background of these two men and decided that in a time of extreme crisis, it was better to be ruled by a patrician Democrat than a Republican self-made millionaire. Roosevelt, the rich, benevolent father-figure, proved the more attractive choice.

Question 9

What new voting patterns appeared in 1932?

Answer 9

• Despite winning the 1928 election, the Republicans had lost of lot of farmers’ votes, as the long-suffering rural masses began switching to the Democrats. In 1932, after four more years of misery, they switched in even greater numbers.
• In 1932, Blacks, who had always voted Republican since Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War, switched to the Democrats in significant numbers.

Question 10

What was the result of the 1932 election?

Answer 10

Hoover lost by seven million votes and won only a five states in the Republican north-east. Of those states, only Pennsylvania was a major state. In other words, Roosevelt won by a ‘landslide’.

Question 11

What was the Bonus army scandal?

Answer 11

• The Bonus Expeditionary Force (BEF for short) was an organization of US ex-servicemen who had fought in WWI. These soldiers had lost out on wages in industry during the war (which could be ten times what a soldier earned). They had been promised benefits for their service (despite a presidential veto by Calvin Coolidge), but they were not due to receive them until 1945, which earned them the nickname of the “tombstone bonus”. In 1932, the ex-servicemen came to Washington, D.C. to try to obtain their benefits early. They set up a ‘Hooverville’ on Anacostia Flats.
• The ex-servicemen did not call themselves the “Bonus Army”. The term was coined by Republicans opposed to giving them any compensation for loss of earnings in WWI. The Republicans argued that soldiers fighting for their country should not look for a ‘bonus’, and used this term to discredit the protesters. As far as the protesters were concerned, they were seeking compensation, and they were entitled to it.
• The Bonus Army made a great impression. Americans were proud of their veterans, and many men wore medals they had won in WWI. They marched through the city, and protested on the steps of the capitol building. A “Bonus Bill” which would have given them compensation was passed in the House of Representatives, but defeated in the Senate. Many veterans went home, but thousands stayed in Washington, where the authorities feared they might turn violent.
• After a month, President Hoover ordered the army to clear the ‘Boners’ off Anacostia Flats. Command was given to General Douglas Macarthur, a ruthless self-promoter. On a white horse, and using tanks, gas and cavalry, Macarthur attacked the veterans and drove them over the Anacostia River. Hoover ordered him to halt, but Macarthur continued the assault beyond the River and many veterans were injured. Some were killed.

Question 12

What were the consequences of the Bonus army scandal?

Answer 12

• Roosevelt’s grasped instantly the political significance of Hoover’s treatment of the ‘Bonus Army’: “That’s it”, he said, “We’ve won!” The event came to symbolise the callousness of Hoover’s administration. The episode was interpreted as further evidence that Hoover did not care about Americans who were suffering from the effects of the Great Depression – even if they had fought for their country. His apparent callousness seemed to fit a Republican pattern: Calvin Coolidge had earlier vetoed compensation for the ex- servicemen.
• President Hoover has to take responsibility for the initial decision to remove the protesters from Anacostia Flats, but Macarthur was at fault for ignoring a Presidential order to halt. Unfortunately for Hoover, he received all the blame. This was partly because Macarthur, who understood the importance of ‘PR’, gave a press conference immediately after the incident, cunningly praising Hoover for his “decisive action”. This gave the misleading impression that Macarthur had only been obeying orders, when in fact he had been exceeding them.
• Images of the army attacking the ex-servicemen were shown on newsreels all across America. It was a PR disaster for the President, and with an election only a few months away, he could not afford it.
• Hoover’s treatment of the “Bonus Army” was not the main reason he lost the election of 1932 to Roosevelt (that was the state of the economy following the Great Depression, with one quarter to one third of the workforce unemployed), but it was one of the reasons he lost; the final, confirmatory straw.

Question 13

What were the aims of Roosevelt’s New Deal?

Answer 13

• The basic aims of the New Deal were expressed at the time in what were known as Roosevelt’s three Rs: Relief – to help people cope with the Great Depression; Recovery – to help end the Great Depression, and Reform – to prevent future Great Depressions
• For example, Roosevelt aimed to reform the banking system so that only solvent banks could re-open open for business: this would restore public trust and make possible the loans that were needed to end the spiral of economic depression.
• He aimed to provide immediate relief in the form of cash and short-term employment in ‘alphabet agencies’ like the CCC.
• Recovery measures included the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which tried to solve bitter disputes between labour and business and to create large monopolies which (Roosevelt believed) would employ thousands of workers in massive projects.

Question 14

What was Roosevelt’s ‘the Hundred Days’ and what did he do?

Answer 14

• Any newly-elected President enjoys a so-called ‘honeymoon period’, when most people give him the benefit of the doubt and when the press is not as critical of him as it will be later on, so it is important to take full advantage of this period and Roosevelt did. Roosevelt introduced fifteen major pieces of legislation during the so-called ‘hundred days’:
• First and foremost, he introduced the Emergency Banking Act, which was crucial to economic recovery.
• In the Farm Relief Bill, he attempted to keep his campaign promise to provide relief for poor farmers.
• The Civilian Conservation Corps was targeted at young males who might drift towards paramilitary extremist groups (like those in Italy and Germany) if not given work relief and a sense of purpose.
• The Tennessee Valley Authority Act sought to revitalise a vast area touching seven states.
• The Federal Emergency Relief Administration was an attempt to boost economic recovery by allowing local authorities to dispense government grants to relief projects they thought would work.
• The National Industrial Recovery Act attempted to enshrine in law fair employment and trading practices.
• Finally, for a ‘feelgood factor’ (and also because it had been a disastrous policy), FDR repealed Prohibition.

Question 15

What was Roosevelt’s handling of the banking crisis?

Answer 15

• On his second day in office, Roosevelt called a special session of Congress and proposed an unprecedented four-day bank holiday to allow him to sort out the banking crisis (this was urgently needed, as 40% of the banks had gone bankrupt). Congress agreed to this more easily than he thought it would: the measure passed in a single day:
• The Emergency Banking Act allowed banks to re-open after the bank holiday only under the supervision of the Treasury.
• Over four thousand small banks were closed on government orders. Some were closed permanently, others were allowed to re-open only when they merged with other banks to create larger, more viable units.
• Roosevelt understood that these measures meant nothing unless he could restore public confidence in the banking system and persuade people to put money back in instead of taking it out.
• The very first of his so-called ‘fireside chats’ was devoted to this topic, explaining in clear, simple language the reasons for his banking measures and making the American people part of the policy (“Together, we cannot fail.”) It worked: next day, 70% of the banks deemed viable re- opened and deposits exceeded withdrawals for the first time since the crisis had developed.
• FDR’s measures created stability. After 1933, fewer than 10 banks closed per year. People trusted the banking system again, and banks could lend to stimulate the economy. This was an effective, timely measure.

Question 16

What were Roosevelt’s fireside chats?

Answer 16

• FDR was a brilliant communicator, a master not just of the ‘stump speech’ but of the relatively new medium of radio. Though a patrician, he had the common touch: he had the ability to explain complex ideas in simple terms and to make citizens feel that he was speaking to them directly rather than talking down to them. FDR received an average of roughly 8,000 letters a week during his presidency and he read a representative sample, so he knew what people’s hopes and fears were, and this knowledge informed both the content and the delivery of his broadcasts:
• His ‘fireside chats’ had the benefit of providing a clear, comprehensible explanation and justification of his ‘New Deal’ policies to the American people. This was important because so many of the policies were unprecedented.
• The ‘fireside chats’ also helped to replace despair with hope and optimism. FDR could make people feel that their president was approachable and cared about them. This was important during the Great Depression because despair was so powerful that suicide rates had risen rapidly. Many American people had lost faith and confidence in their institutions and in their American way of life; Roosevelt, who appreciated that liberal democratic capitalism was in a precarious position, used his ‘fireside’ chats as one of his means of restoring this faith and confidence.
One additional benefit of the ‘fireside chats’ was their rarity. Whereas Roosevelt’s opponent Father Charles Coughlin gave weekly broadcasts, Roosevelt gave only sixteen during his first two terms as president: this helped to give them a sense of importance and also to prevent familiarity breeding contempt: Americans tuned in to listen when they knew their president was going to talk to them because it did not happen very often.

Question 17

What were the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)?

Answer 17

• The Civilian Conservation Corps was an alphabet agency fully funded by the federal government to provide young, unemployed and unmarried men aged 18-25 (later widened to 17-28) with work relief in a residential camp, run by the US Army.
• Accepted applicants received bed, board and $30 a month, $25 of which they sent home to their families.
• After work, they received schooling (this was when some young Americans learned to read and write).
• They were also taught trades, such as carpentry, masonry and auto- mechanics, to boost their future employment prospects.

Question 18

What was the CCC’s preventative motive?

Answer 18

The CCC is one of the most important ‘alphabet agencies’, set up in March 1933 at the personal instigation of Roosevelt himself. FDR monitored European politics closely: he knew that young, unemployed males in Italy, Germany and several other countries had gravitated towards right-wing paramilitary groups, and been used to undermine and in some countries overthrow democracy. With unemployment in the USA running at between 25% and 33%, he knew there was a real danger of regime change. Roosevelt calculated that if he could provide bed, board, work and a positive sense of purpose to America’s young men (they wore a uniform, but it was government-issue), he would maximise his chances of preventing the drift towards extremism that had plagued Europe.

Question 19

What was the CCC’s accomplishment motive?

Answer 19

Conservation was an issue close to Roosevelt’s heart, partly because his cousin, the former President Teddy Roosevelt, had a reputation as a conservationist, having established national parks and supported the creation of Yosemite. More pressingly in 1933, trees needed to be planted on a large scale to prevent soil erosion and to repair damage done by forest fires. Dams needed to be built to improve flood control and marshes drained to conserve valuable natural resources and to reclaim land; trails and roads needed to be built to improve the infra-structure on government and state-owned land; wildlife shelters needed to be built to ensure species’ survival.

Question 20

Describe the work of the CCC?

Answer 20

• The CCC planted an estimated three billion trees to prevent soil erosion and repair the damage of large-scale forest fires (this is why the CCC was sometimes referred to as ‘Roosevelt’s tree army’).
• The CCC built dams, improving flood control on government and state-owned land
• The CCC drained marshes, which reclaimed thousands of acres of land for cultivation
• The CCC built national parks, like Shenandoah
• The CCC built over 30,000 wildlife shelters to protect species and lookout
towers to promote rapid response to forest fires

Question 21

What was the impact of the CCC?

Answer 21

The CCC is widely regarded as the most successful ‘alphabet agency’. In total, between 1933 and 1942, close to three million young men served in it, in 2,900 camps across America, making lasting improvements to federal and state-owned land: this was its environmental legacy. Its contribution to the survival of liberal democracy in the USA was its political legacy. Reflecting on the achievement of both of Roosevelt’s aims in creating the CCC, historian Hugh Brogan observes: “the land was reclaimed, so were the boys”. The money the CCC members sent back to their families ($25 out of $30) helped those families to survive. Also, CCC members spent some of their $5 in the local towns near where their camps were built, which also helped those communities to survive.

Question 22

What was the Tennessee Valley Authority?

Answer 22

• The ‘TVA’ as it was known, was a corporation set up and owned by the federal government.

• It provided hydro-electric power, improved soil conservation and helped provide flood control in these states.
• Diseases like malaria were eradicated in the area, and electricity was provided in homes for the first time in many cases. The coming of electricity to this backward region also attracted industry, which in turn provided jobs, helping to stimulate demand.
• Many Republicans were bitterly opposed to the scheme, and it was not without its human cost, as many farmers were displaced and had to abandon the homes where their ancestors were buried (sometimes going all the way back to the Civil War).
• Nevertheless, the setting up of the Tennessee Valley Authority was a major project which made tremendous improvements to the quality of life in seven southern states.

Question 23

What was the National Industry Recovery Act (NIRA)?

Answer 23

• The NIRA was the last major piece of legislation of FDR’s ‘Hundred Days’. It was a well-intentioned but overly-ambitious attempt to boost industrial production on a large-scale. It aimed to achieve government direction of industrial recovery by securing the co-operation of business and labour.
• The Act set up the National Recovery Administration (NRA) to make it easier to create monopolies, with a view to organizing large-scale public works programmes.
• Roosevelt did not want businesses engaging in cut-throat competition, because jobs would suffer; in return for voluntarily signing up to codes of conduct which determined prices, quality of product and production levels, companies would be exempt from anti-trust laws.
• To protect workers, the codes also fixed minimum wage levels and maximum hours (a 40-hour week) and collective bargaining rights. The NRA also tried to eliminate child labour, which was still a problem in America in the 1930s.
• Roosevelt – who was neither left nor right wing in his politics – seems to have seen only the positive side of the NIRA measures, thinking that they would lead to big public (and private) works projects, which would employ thousands of people and help to stimulate the economy. Jobs would increase, workers would spend their wages, and the economy would recover.
• The NRA adopted a blue eagle as its symbol, with the patriotic motto ‘We do our part’: businesses who had signed up were given the symbol to display and the public was asked to show preference in its buying choices to companies displaying the symbol.

Question 24

Why did unemployment persist throughout the New Deal era?

Answer 24

• Firstly, the economic problems created and intensified by the Great Depression were too serious to be solved by a single president of a single country, even as big a country as the US; it is unrealistic to judge Roosevelt against a yardstick of perfection and argue that as he failed to achieve what economists term ‘full employment’, he failed completely. What made full employment possible was WW2.
• Secondly, a near-inevitable consequence of FDR’s promise of ‘bold, persistent experimentation’ was that some of the New Dealers’ ideas did not work, or else they worked in the opposite ways from those intended. A good example is the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). Even before it was rejected by the Supreme Court, NIRA was creating harmful, exploitative monopolies rather than the benign, high-employing ones that Roosevelt had thought it would create.
• Thirdly, many among the millions of unemployed were Black, Native American or Hispanic. The New Dealers were well-intentioned but political realities in Southern states like Alabama prevented them from fully implementing their policies, because racism at local government level could still ensure that the ‘last hired, first fired’ policy which worked to the disadvantage of racial minorities was maintained.
• Fourthly, many of the jobs created by the New Deal’s high levels of government spending were never intended to be permanent, but only to provide short-term relief. A good example of this is the Civilian Conservation Corps: millions of young Americans gained valuable work experience while it lasted, but they did not gain permanent employment.
• Finally, Liberal or left-leaning economists like J.M. Keynes who argued that Roosevelt was not spending enough were the exception, not the rule: during his second term in office, Roosevelt briefly lost his nerve as a result of incessant accusations of fiscal irresponsibility from Republicans, businessmen and the rich. He cut government spending, with the result that the unemployment figures rose rapidly to nine million.

Question 25

What was the ‘Dust Bowl?’

Answer 25

• The ‘Dust Bowl’ is a popular term for the phenomenon which devastated several rural states in the USA from 1934 onwards, lasting in some areas for a decade.
• Sustained drought produced severe dust storms on the Great Plains. The storms impacted most seriously on the Texas and Oklahoma ‘panhandles’ (i.e. inland peninsulas) but also wrought havoc in New Mexico, Kansas and Colorado.
• Much of the population had no choice but to uproot and become migrant workers, travelling to other states (e.g. California, as in Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath) to look for work, often unsuccessfully.

Question 26

Why was the ‘Dust Bowl’ such a serious issue?

Answer 26

• It impacted on the Midwest, which was the USAs ‘breadbasket’ region and it did so at a time when the region was already suffering from the so-called ‘hidden depression’ which had afflicted farmers since the recovery of the European agricultural sector after WWI.
• It rendered farming impossible for thousands of Americans, as it covered farms in sand dunes, rendered farm machinery useless and choked livestock to death.
• Once-proud farmers lost their land (foreclosures tripled during this period) and became migrant workers rather than seasonal labourers, as they could not stay in their own areas any longer (this was particularly true in the worst- hit areas, such as the Texas and Oklahoma ‘panhandles’). This amounted to a serious loss of status and identity and also to rural de-population on a serious scale, as many counties lost 50% of their population.
• As depicted in the novel and film The Grapes of Wrath, families piled into ‘jalopies’ (i.e. trucks) and headed for California, looking for work as fruit pickers. A lucky few got it; most did not.
• The ‘Dust Bowl’ made it much harder for the New Dealers to provide effective help for farmers, despite their best intentions, though by a cruel irony, the reduction in food production caused farm prices to rise, but viewed as a whole, the impacts of the ‘Dust Bowl’ were devastating. New Deal resources needed to be diverted from attempts to achieve lasting reform to providing immediate relief, as in the federal-run migrant camps set up in California, conditions in which contrasted sharply with exploitative conditions in privately-owned camps.

Question 27

How did the New Deal effect industry?

Answer 27

• The New Deal tried to help industry immediately by solving the banking crisis; unless the banking sector was stabilised, there would be no lending to firms seeking to expand or to start up.
• As its name suggests, the last major piece of legislation of the ‘Hundred Days’, the National Industrial Recovery Act, tried to promote industrial recovery by creating the National Recovery Administration (NRA) to oversee a process whereby the often violent disputes between labour and business would end, and major companies, freed from anti-trust legislation, could hire enough workers to deliver industrial produce on a large scale. Businesses were invited to sign up to codes concerning minimum wages and maximum hours (40 per week) and in return were not subject to monopoly restrictions.

Question 28

What was the Sick Chicken case?

Answer 28

• The ‘Sick Chicken’ case - strictly speaking, Schechter Poultry Corporation versus United States (May 1935) - was a famous/infamous court case which took place during the New Deal era as a direct result of one of FDRs New Deal policies.
• It is known as the ‘Sick Chicken’ case because it involved a firm called Schechter Poultry Corporation, who were arrested in 1934 on 60 counts of violating the code for selling poultry in New York that had been drawn up as part of the New Deal’s National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), out of which came the National Recovery Administration (NRA). These NRA codes were intended to create fair trading conditions, and so improve the lives of
millions of workers who were suffering during the Great Depression.
• One of the 60 counts that the Schechter brothers were accused of was selling bad meat to a butcher, hence the name ‘Sick Chicken’ case. Other counts included failing to provide a minimum wage, and to observe the codes relating to the maximum number of hours that employees could be made to work.
• The Schechter brothers were convicted on 20 in total of the 60 counts, but when they appealed, the Supreme Court agreed to rule on their case. On 27th May 1935 (known as the New Deal’s ‘Black Monday’), all nine Chief Justices of the Supreme Court declared the NRA unconstitutional.
• It is significant that the vote was unanimous, because it means that even the liberal judges on the court (whom the American press called the ‘Three Musketeers’) voted with the conservative judges (whom the press called the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’) to defeat FDR.
• The arguments of the Supreme Court were: (1) while the US Constitution gave Congress “Power…to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”, it did not give Congress or the President the right to interfere in intra-state trade (i.e. trade within a state, rather than between states (2) FDR’s claim that the NRA codes were justified by the ‘extraordinary conditions’ of the Great Depression was false: Chief Justice Hughes wrote: “Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power”. His argument was unanswerable.

Question 29

Why was the Sick Chicken case significant?

Answer 29

• The decision of the Supreme Court in Schechter Poultry Corporation versus the United States (May, 1935) was a major blow to Roosevelt because the NIRA was the last major piece of legislation introduced during the ‘hundred days’ and was viewed as its centrepiece, but it would be naïve to think that it came as a complete surprise to him.
• FDR and his closest advisers knew during the ‘Hundred Days’ of rapid- fire legislation in 1933 that the really significant dates lay two years down the line, because that was how long it would take for cases brought against New Deal legislation to reach the Supreme Court.
• For four days, he said nothing in public. He then accused the Court of having an out-of-date view of the right of Congress to direct Commerce. He had meetings behind the scenes with Court members, but these not did change attitudes on either side. In 1936, the Supreme Court rejected more New Deal legislation. Once he was re-elected by a landslide in 1936, FDR believed he had a mandate from the American people to challenge the Court.
• It led to the collapse of the NIRA, which was the main piece of FDR’s ‘Hundred Days’ legislation designed to protect workers from the worst effects of the Great Depression, and to guarantee protection in the future
• It is the most high-profile of several defeats at the hands of the Supreme Court which led Roosevelt to devise the Supreme Court ‘Packing Plan’, which aimed to create six extra Justices, to ensure New Deal legislation was enacted.
• This plan, too, was defeated, and though the Court, which got a fright, began to pass his legislation, he split the Democratic Party on the issue, lost his reputation for invincibility, and gave the Republican Party a new lease of life.

Question 30

How was the importance of the sick Chicken case overstated?

Answer 30

• If it was a victory for the Schechter brothers, it was a pyrrhic victory, because they were financially ruined
• Though the NIRA codes failed in 1935, Roosevelt was able to devise new and better legislation in his second term which included a lot of the original protections for workers, and to get those laws passed
• The Supreme Court ruling did not affect related ‘alphabet agencies’ like the PWA (Public Works Administration), which gave work to hundreds of thousands of people

Question 31

What were the Farm Relief Bill and agricultural Adjustment Act?

Answer 31

Once the banking crisis had been solved, Roosevelt agreed with many leading New Dealers that the key to economic recovery was the restoration of the purchasing power of the rural sector.
• Roosevelt wanted to keep his election promises to the farming sector and he was also under pressure to do so: the farmers were threatening to strike in May 1933
• The farming sector had been in the so-called ‘hidden depression’ throughout the 1920s. The recovery of European farming after WW1 meant that American farmers could no longer export their crops. Over-production had led to a collapse in prices, mortgages could not be paid and foreclosures were commonplace.
• Roosevelt and his ‘brain trust’ of university professors like Rex Tugwell believed that if farmers had money to spend again, demand for industrial produce would rise, and the economy would begin to recover.

• After 1934, when the dust-bowl further devastated US farming, relief was needed more than ever.
• The most important part of the Farm Relief Bill was the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which paid farmers to reduce production of low-priced crops such as corn, tobacco, wheat and cotton, to cut back on the raising of pigs and lambs, and also on dairy products. The money was provided by a tax on companies which used farm-produced goods. The economic thinking behind it was that a reduction in output must lead to a rise in prices, earning the farmers a higher income.
• The plan worked in its main aim but at a human cost which attracted bitter criticism: at a time when many city-dwellers were starving, livestock which might have fed them was being slaughtered on a large scale, and corn was ploughed under on government orders. Another negative unintended consequence of ‘planned scarcity’ was that because the government paid farmers to reduce the land they farmed, black sharecroppers and tenant farmers were evicted, leaving them homeless and unemployed.
• In 1936, the Supreme Court declared the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional, by a 6-3 majority, and Roosevelt was obliged to re- introduce a revised version of the Act in 1938, which did not have the tax.

Question 32

Why did republicans oppose Roosevelt?

Answer 32

The Republicans had grown used to power, as three Republican presidents in a row (Harding, Coolidge and Hoover) had occupied the White House since the last democrat, Woodrow Wilson. The Republicans wanted to return to power: they hated Roosevelt and feared his personal popularity and the popularity of the New Deal.
• Many Republicans genuinely feared the growth of executive power under Roosevelt, as they believed that tyranny might result from an imbalance of power in favour of the executive branch of government, at the expense of the legislative and judicial.
• Most Republicans believed in ‘rugged individualism’ and laissez-faire economics: they were opposed on principle to government intervention in the US economy and feared that FDRs unprecedented increase of government involvement would ruin the economy.
• Most Republicans were fiscal conservatives, and they feared the long-term economic consequences of FDRs policy of deficit spending: they wanted a balanced budget and a lower inflation rate.
• Many Republicans – (e.g. self-made millionaires or success-stories) feared the consequences for the work force – and society itself – of FDR’s proposals for creating a welfare state. They feared it would weaken the moral fibre of the nation by breeding a ‘dependency culture’. They also feared that it would create labour shortages, because poor people would rather accept a government ‘dole’ than work.
• Some ultra-rich Republicans, particularly from the upper class, hated Roosevelt personally and regarded him as a class traitor because of his policies to help the lower classes, particularly his work relief for the poor and his Social Security measures in 1935, and his taxes on the rich. They even refused to say his name at dinner parties, referring to him as ‘that man in the White House’, or sometimes even ‘that cripple’. Rich businessmen hated NIRA, the centrepiece of the ‘First’ New Deal, because they thought that sticking to its requirements on fair labour practices would cut into their profits.
• When Roosevelt revealed his ‘packing plan’ for the Supreme Court, most Republicans opposed it on constitutional grounds: they feared (or saw political advantage in pretending to fear) that Roosevelt was trying to make himself a dictator along European lines, by tampering with the ‘separation of powers’ principle on which US government was based.

Question 33

Was Republican opposition to the New Deal effective?

Answer 33

• Republican opposition to FDR was largely ineffective. The ‘Grand Old Party’ failed to prevent Roosevelt gaining power in 1932 and retaining power in 1936 and 1940. In three successive elections within the period covered by the Depth Study, the Republicans failed to produce a candidate strong enough to defeat FDR: Herbert Hoover was defeated by a landslide in 1932, Alf Landon by a landslide in 1936 and Wendell Willkie by a near-landslide in 1940. Neither of these men came close to matching Roosevelt’s political skill, his charm and charisma and ability to connect with the ordinary American.
• The Republicans failed to prevent ‘First’ New Deal legislation being passed partly because, unusually, the mid-term elections returned more Democrats to power, giving Roosevelt a majority in both the Senate and the House of representatives. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition attracted support from groups which had previously voted Republican (e.g. blacks had always voted Republican, out of a sense of gratitude to Abraham Lincoln, but they swung solidly behind FDR and the New Deal, as it had benefited them, at least to an extent, during his first term, and seemed likely to benefit them even more if he got a second term)
• Far more than any action the Republican Party took, what hamstrung Roosevelt and the New Deal during his second term in office was the split in the Democratic Party which occurred as a result of Roosevelt’s battle with the Supreme Court. FDRs political misjudgement did far more damage to the New Deal than Republican opposition, and the renewed political energy and sense of purpose the Republican Party gained after 1936-7 was directly traceable to Roosevelt’s miscalculation. Yet even so, the Republicans were still heavily defeated by Roosevelt in 1940: the Democrats won 38 states, the Republicans only 10.

Alf Landon by a landslide in 1936 and Wendell Willkie by a near-landslide in 1940. Neither of these men came close to matching Roosevelt’s political skill, his charm and charisma and ability to connect with the ordinary American.

Question 34

Why was there opposition to Roosevelt from among the rich?

Answer 34

• Some ultra-rich Republicans, particularly from the upper class, hated Roosevelt personally because they regarded him as a class traitor (FDR was an ‘old money’ aristocrat from the Hudson River Valley, and would have been expected to be a Republican) because of his policies to help the lower classes, particularly his provision of work relief for the poor and his Social Security measures in 1935, and his taxes on the rich, which cut into their incomes.
• Some rich Republicans even refused to say his name at fashionable dinner parties in the North East, referring to him as ‘that man in the White House’, or sometimes even ‘that cripple’.
• Rich businessmen hated NIRA, the centrepiece of the ‘First’ New Deal, because they thought that sticking to its requirements on fair labour practices would cut into their profits.
• Some rich Americans hated Roosevelt because they felt he baited them during the election campaign of 1936 when, three days before his landslide victory, he famously said “I welcome their hatred!” in a speech at Madison Square Garden.
• One rich man who opposed Roosevelt was the world-famous aviator, Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic. Lindbergh hated Roosevelt, viewing him as a demagogue who pandered to the crowd. Lindbergh also hated Roosevelt for attacking commercial airlines (in which Lindbergh owned shares) for corruption and incompetence. When FDR had the air force deliver America’s mail instead of commercial airlines, Lindbergh correctly predicted crashes and loss of life. Roosevelt was forced to reverse the policy.

• FDR tried to buy Lindbergh’s future silence by offering him a post within his administration, but the high-minded Lindbergh saw through it and declined. Lindbergh, nicknamed ‘Lone Eagle’, was too disdainful of the political game to harm FDR on more than a single-issue basis; by the late 1930s and early 1940s, his open admiration for Hitler seemed increasingly hard to square with the Fuhrer’s aggression in Europe. Lindbergh’s attacks on Roosevelt as a would-be dictator rang hollow when Americans could see for themselves how real dictators behaved.

Question 35

Why did business interests oppose Roosevelt?

Answer 35

Fear is an umbrella term which should appear in your answer, but you need to explain why so many businessmen were scared:
• Most businessmen believed in ‘rugged individualism’ and laissez-faire economics: they were opposed on principle to government intervention in the US economy and feared that FDRs unprecedented increase of government involvement would ruin the economy.
• Many businessmen did not understand that FDR was trying to preserve the capitalist system in the USA, not to destroy it. Roosevelt understood that things had to change if the businessmen wanted them to remain the same: not all businessmen had the same level of insight. So this particular fear was based on misunderstanding.
• Several New Deal measures seemed likely to reduce profits (e.g. increased government regulation of business, which businessmen saw as ‘intrusive’, higher taxes on wealth, the right to form trades union). Put simply, businessmen were scared of losing a lot of money, and with it their status in society. FDR viewed this as opposition based on greed.
• During the New Deal era, big business did not have as much influence in Washington DC as it had grown used to having during the Roaring 20s, when three Republican presidents in a row were in the White House – businessmen feared that this loss of influence in the capital would be permanent.
• Most businessmen were fiscal conservatives, and they feared the long-term economic consequences of FDRs policy of deficit spending: many businessmen wanted a balanced budget and a lower inflation rate.
• Many businessmen – (e.g. self-made millionaires or success-stories) feared the consequences for the work force – and society itself – of FDR’s proposals for creating a welfare state. They feared it would weaken the moral fibre of the nation by breeding a ‘dependency culture’. They also feared that it would create labour shortages, because poor people would rather accept a government ‘dole’ than work.
• Many businessmen feared the growth of executive power under Roosevelt, as they believed that tyranny might result from an imbalance of power in favour of the executive branch of government, at the expense of the legislative and judicial.

Question 36

In what ways did businessmen oppose FDR?

Answer 36

• Businessmen took FDR to Court (e.g. the famous ‘sick chicken’ case)

• In 1934, a small group of big businessmen formed the Liberty League, nominally to defend the constitution and educate the public about the need to protect private property and individual liberty, but really to prevent FDR being re-elected in 1936. The League, financed by contributions from big businesses like du Pont, lobbied and produced propaganda, which it distributed to the government and to the public.
• Businessmen opposed to the New Deal lionised (i.e. treated as celebrity heroes) the Supreme Court judges who voted against New Deal measures. They also campaigned to try to influence their decisions.
• Businessmen lobbied both Democratic and Republican Congressmen in Washington to try to persuade them to vote against New Deal legislation.
• Businessmen made donations to Republican Party funds to try to help it win the 1936 and 1940 elections
• Businessmen opposed the codes in key New Deal measures like the NRA, finding ways to avoid fulfilling their obligations
• Businessmen battled with the unions made possible by New Deal legislation, using the police, and also violence and threats of sacking.

Question 37

Was business opposition to the New Deal effective?

Answer 37

• Businessmen sometimes won notable victories in court (e.g. the Supreme Court ruling in the ‘sick chicken’ case)
• But on the whole, business opposition proved ineffective: FDR won the 1936 election by a landslide and the election of 1940 in a near-landslide, so almost all forms of business opposition which targeted his defeat (e.g. contributing to the Republican Party election fund) proved utter failures. Significantly, the actions of the Liberty League were drastically scaled-down after 1936 and the organisation ceased to exist in 1940.
• Journalist Thomas Stokes called the Liberty League ‘a very vulnerable straw man’ for the New Dealers. There is a lot of truth in this: it was too easy for FDR to show that the League was not the non-partisan organisation it claimed to be. In fact, it was financed by a few very wealthy businessmen, too many of them from the one organisation (du Pont), and its real aim of preventing FDRs re-election meant that it swam against the tide of popular opinion, especially in 1936.
• The businessmen who lionised the Supreme Court judges who voted against New Deal legislation were ultimately disappointed, as the Court’s two ‘swing voters’ began to switch in 1936 in favour of the New Deal’s measures.

Question 38

How did Huey Pierce Long oppose Roosevelt?

Answer 38

• While Roosevelt faced criticism for his New Deal from right-wingers who said that he was going too far, he also faced opposition from radicals on the left, who said that he wasn’t going far enough. The most dangerous of them, Huey P. Long, had presidential ambitions, making him a potential rival to Roosevelt.
• Long, nicknamed ‘The Kingfish’, became governor of Louisiana in 1928. When state law prevented him from succeeding himself, he became Senator for Louisiana (though he remained de facto governor, as he had a ‘stooge’, O.K. Allen, elected in his place). During the Great Depression, he had provided relief for the poor in his state in much the same way as Roosevelt was to do, spending money on public works like roads and hospitals that the backward state badly needed.
• Though a Democrat and an initial supporter of Roosevelt, he began to distance himself from FDR during the ‘First’ New Deal because he had presidential ambitions of his own (in 1935, he published an imaginary autobiography My First Days in the White House, in which he led America to a prosperous future in which no one had anything to complain about).
• Long was charismatic and in his own way as good a speaker as Roosevelt. He criticized Roosevelt in his speeches. Using the slogan “Every man a king, but no one wears a crown” (a necessary addition in a republic), he proposed a series of populist measures. Some of these were impossible, like confiscating all fortunes over $3 million and dividing the money up between the poor, to allow them to buy a home, a car, and a radio. But other measures were harder to dismiss, such as free education, a national minimum wage, old age pensions, houses for ex-servicemen and cheap food for the poor.
• Roosevelt called Long “one of the two most dangerous men in America” (the other man he had in mind was General Macarthur, who had ignored a presidential order to stop attacking the ‘Bonus Army’ in Washington). This was partly because of the way Long ran Louisiana (he was a virtual dictator, with a huge bodyguard), but also because Long was a political danger to Roosevelt himself.
• By 1935, the year before the presidential election of 1936, Long’s “Share our Wealth” programme was highly attractive. The scheme had as many as five million members (mostly in Louisiana and adjacent states) and it was dangerous to Roosevelt because it provided Long with a power base if he chose to run as an independent candidate rather than a Democrat. Happily for Roosevelt, in September 1935 the son-in-law of a Louisiana judge whom the dictatorial Long was trying to have removed from his position assassinated him.

Question 39

How did Father Charles Coughlin oppose Roosevelt?

Answer 39

Charles Coughlin was a popular Catholic priest. Like Roosevelt, he was a highly effective radio broadcaster, with an audience of 30 million. Like Long, Coughlin had initially supported the New Deal, but he later attacked it on the grounds that it did not go far enough.
• In 1935, Coughlin set up the ‘National Union for Social Justice’, which proposed nationalization of major industries and fair wages and labour rights for the poor. The NUSJ soon had millions of members, which had serious political implications for Roosevelt.
• Coughlin himself could not stand for political office because he was debarred as a priest, but he could lend his backing to a candidate and instruct his supporters to vote for him. In the presidential election of 1936, this was exactly what he did. He joined forces with Huey P. Long’s successor, Gerald Smith, and the popular Old Age Pensions campaigner Francis Townshend, forging a coalition which had the potential to split the Democratic vote and allow the Republicans to win.
• Coughlin was anti-Semitic and an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini. Initially, he used coded language in his radio broadcasts (‘Wall Street capitalists’ and ‘New York bankers’ meant ‘Jews’, but he gradually became more explicit, claiming that his proposed “people’s bank” would protect honest Americans from ‘Shylocks’. Eventually, he referred to the New Deal as the ‘Jew Deal’. Coughlin was becoming an embarrassment to the Catholic Church.
• Roosevelt tried to persuade Coughlin’s bishop to restrain him, but the bishop backed Coughlin. FDR went over both their heads, negotiating with Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) who handled the Vatican’s relations with foreign powers, to put pressure on Coughlin during a two- week visit to the USA. This move was more successful, because FDR had the power to grant something Pacelli wanted: diplomatic recognition for the Vatican (cunningly, FDR appointed a personal envoy to the Vatican, which stopped short of full recognition and did not require Senate approval). The 1936 election results showed that Coughlin made a poor choice of proxy candidate: William Lemke of the NUSJ received less than a million votes.
• As Hitler became more aggressive in his foreign policy, Coughlin’s support for the anti-Semitic dictator became harder to justify. During WWII, Roosevelt used the power of the state to cancel his radio programme and ban his newspaper.

Question 40

How did Francis Townshend oppose Roosevelt?

Answer 40

• Francis Townshend was a single-issue campaigner from California. A retired doctor in a state with 10% of its population aged 65 or over, Townshend proposed that the federal government give $200 a month to all citizens over 60. He proposed a sales tax to finance this.
• Roosevelt had to take him seriously; FDR’s solution was essentially to steal his proposal and make it his own. In Roosevelt’s Social Security Act (1935), he introduced an old age pension. It paid out far less than the amount Townsend had demanded but this shrewd act of political theft boosted Roosevelt’s chances of re-election.

Question 41

Why was there a Second New Deal?

Answer 41

• In 1933, FDR had promised ‘Relief, Reform and Recovery’. He prioritised relief and recovery, with mixed results, but by late 1934, the crisis had stabilised to the point where he could think about keeping his promise to carry out permanent reform with regard to employment, labour relations and rural poverty. FDR’s thinking was that permanent reform was more likely to prevent another Great Depression.
• Secondly, Roosevelt was under pressure from his own party to do more: the party in power usually loses mid-term elections, but the elections in 1934 had returned new Democratic senators and representatives to Washington, many of whom were more radical than FDR’s administration and were calling for further legislation.
• Thirdly, by 1935, Roosevelt had to promise voters more, particularly as demagogic rivals on the left (Father Charles Coughlin and Huey P. Long) and old age pension campaigner Dr Francis Townshend were threatening to seize the political initiative from him. Charismatic and eloquent, Long was the most dangerous of the three: his ‘Share our Wealth’ scheme was proving attractive to voters, despite its impracticality. Coughlin, who, like FDR, was a master of radio with a weekly audience of 30 million (at its peak), favoured nationalising the banks. His National Union for Social Justice, founded in 1934, was growing in membership. Dr Townshend’s proposal for a “Revolving Pension Scheme” was to pay the over-60s a pension of $200 a month, provided they spent it all within the month, funded by a 2% sales tax. Roosevelt had to respond to this idea because it was proving popular not just with those who were both poor and elderly but also with those who were poor and would be elderly in the future. In the Social Security Act of 1935, FDR effectively hijacked Townshend’s policy.
• Finally, Long was assassinated in September 1935, but Coughlin, Townshend and Long’s successor, Gerard K Smith, planned to form a coalition against FDR which, though it could not hope to win the 1936 election outright, might detach enough Democrat voters from Roosevelt to allow the Republicans to win, because it had significant support in both the industrial north-east, the poor southern states and among the old. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) provided short-term work relief for the unemployed; the Soil Conservation Act helped protect farmers: this reduced incentives to vote for the proposed coalition.

Question 42

Why was Roosevelt re-elected in 1936?

Answer 42

• Roosevelt’s Republican opponent in 1936 was the Governor of Kansas, Alf Landon. Compared to Roosevelt, who had immense charisma and personal charm, Landon lacked personal charisma and was an uninspiring orator. He also did relatively little campaigning (not a single public appearance in the two months following his nomination) which contrasted negatively with FDR’s energetic ‘whistle-stop’ tours. Landon was also hampered by the fact that he was a progressive Republican, who actually supported much of the New Deal, arguing until late in the campaign that the Republicans would manage it better, reducing inefficiency and waste. When, in desperation, he switched to more aggressive tactics, accusing Roosevelt of seeking a dictatorship, his attacks did not ring true.
• Roosevelt’s strategy was the right one. Appreciating that by 1936 he had lost of the support of the bankers and businessmen who had backed the early New Deal measures, he did not try to rebuild bridges with them. Shrewdly, he worked hard to build and consolidate a coalition (encompassing Protestants, Catholics and Jews) of northern urban and southern rural poor and directed it against what he called the “economic royalists” (a wounding phrase in a democratic republic which had won its independence from the British monarchy): the millionaire grandees in the Grand Old Party and the Liberty League, and their big business backers like DuPont.
• Roosevelt also benefited from two other factors: voter registration figures rose significantly among Blacks and poor whites and almost all the new voters voted for FDR; Blacks had traditionally voted Republican in gratitude to Lincoln, but the realignment which began in 1932 continued in 1936.
• By 1936, Roosevelt’s opponents on the radical left were not as dangerous as they had seemed in 1935: Huey P Long had been assassinated, Father Coughlin was debarred from standing as he was a Catholic priest; his proxy candidate, William Lemke, proved unattractive to voters, and FDR had negated the danger from Dr Francis Townshend’s supporters by passing the Social Security Act.
• Above all, Roosevelt intuited that the election was about himself: “The people must be for me or against me”. To unpack this, he meant that if most people thought that the ‘New Deal’ he had promised them four years before had benefited them, he would win. His New Deal had not lifted American out of the Great Depression by 1936 but it had created six million jobs. It had also provided life-saving relief for millions of citizens. The election of 1936 was the first to be monitored by George Gallup: his ‘Gallup Poll’ estimated that 84% of relief recipients voted for Roosevelt. The rural poor had benefited from the AAA and the Soil Conservation Act and they did not hold it against FDR that the Supreme Court had declared the AAA unconstitutional.
• The result was an even greater landslide victory for Roosevelt than in 1932. He won over 60% of the popular vote and carried every state except Maine and Vermont. Landon did not even win Kansas, which he governed.

Question 43

What was the ‘Supreme Court Packing Plan’ and why did Roosevelt devise it?

Answer 43

• In 1937, Roosevelt decided to try to alter the number of judges on the Supreme Court for two reasons: (1) It had declared much of his initial New Deal legislation passed during the ‘hundred days’ unconstitutional, most infamously the NIRA in the ‘Sick Chicken case’; (2) It was opposing some legislation he had since revised to take account of earlier objections.
• Roosevelt knew that at least four of the judges on the Supreme Court were Republican in their politics; one of them, McReynolds, hated him personally (McReynolds referred habitually to FDR as “that cripple in the White House”), so FDR had no reason to think that their opposition would cease; as he saw it, the Supreme Court threatened the entire New Deal

• After winning a landslide victory in the presidential election of 1936, Roosevelt felt confident in taking the Supreme Court on; he thought that the voters had given him a mandate to do so (which they hadn’t)
• There were always nine serving judges on the Supreme Court, so that when it was asked to rule on an important matter, there could never be a tie. Roosevelt planned to create six extra judges, appointed by himself, whose politics he knew would make them pro-New Dealers.
• Note: the number of judges was NOT fixed by the Constitution, so Roosevelt planned to argue that his scheme was not unconstitutional.
• To make it look as though it was the efficiency of the Court, and not its
opposition to the New Deal, that he was concerned about, Roosevelt argued that if a judge did not retire at 70, another judge should be appointed alongside him to ensure that all the necessary work was done.

Question 44

Why did Roosevelt’s ‘Packing Plan’ provoke such bitter opposition?

Answer 44

• The Supreme Court is a ‘sacred cow’ in US society: Americans of all political parties do not like it tampered with because it is a symbol of liberty; a president who attempts to alter its composition for political purposes risks being accused of aiming at a tyranny or dictatorship because he is altering the co-equal balance of legislative, executive and judicial branches of government (an American journalist accused Roosevelt of being ‘drunk with power’)
• It was easy to see through and refute FDR’s arguments about the need for reform: (a) The Supreme Court did not need extra judges to help it get through its workload; it had actually cleared its desks of cases requiring judgement by then summer of 1937; (b) It was not completely true that the Supreme Court was full of old Republican reactionaries; the oldest judge on the Court, Louis Brandeis, was in fact its most liberal member; (c) FDR alienated liberal judges on the Supreme Court like Brandeis with his argument that they were too old to do their jobs; Brandeis still had a razor- sharp mind and was coping well with the workload.
• Roosevelt offended Democratic leaders in Congress because he did not consult them first before introducing the plan; they were angry because they felt he had behaved arrogantly towards them in not giving them a chance to change his mind; they also thought it was a sure-fire vote-loser.

Question 45

Was the ‘Supreme Court packing plan’ a complete failure?

Answer 45

• It helped to destroy the Roosevelt myth of political invincibility, proving that he was as capable of serious errors of judgement as the next politician
• FDR’s court-tampering disillusioned many voters who had previously
idolized him because they idolized the constitution and the principle of
the ‘separation of powers’ more
• It helped to widen the division between the northerners and Southerners
in the Democratic Party (Southerners who were already suspicious of Roosevelt due to his limited attempts to improve the lives of Blacks now suspected him of aiming at a dictatorship as well)
• It gave the Republican party a new lease on life, boosting a recovery, even if it was not a strong enough recovery to win an election
• The Supreme Court had been given a serious fright: it started approving FDR’s legislation (including the National Labour Relations Act, a key part of the ‘Second New Deal’), once the legislation was more carefully phrased and more time was taken over its drafting; it could be argued that FDR got what he wanted in the end, though the price he had to pay for it was too high.

Question 46

What factors affected how much Roosevelt could do for African Americans in the New Deal?

Answer 46

• Roosevelt’s own attitude towards African Americans
• Roosevelt’s need to retain power (much of his support at election time and in Congress came from Southern Democrats, many of whom were racist in their beliefs. Some were active members of the Ku Klux Klan). Roosevelt could not afford to alienate a key element of his core support for three main reasons: (1) He would not get his legislation passed; (2) He might lose control of Congress in the mid-term elections (3) He might not be re-elected in 1936.

Question 47

What did the WPA do for African Americans?

Answer 47

The WPA
• By 1935, the WPA (Works Progress Administration) was employing 350,000 people annually, which was about 15% of its total work force.
• The New Deal could therefore be said to have delivered results on the key issue of employment.
• On the other hand, discrimination against African Americans in the labour market continued: they remained “last hired, first fired”.

Question 48

What did the TVA do for African Americans?

Answer 48

The TVA
• The TVA committed itself from its creation in 1933 to ensuring that the percentage of African Americans hired on works projects should not fall below the percentage of the local population that was black. To its credit, the TVA succeeded in maintaining a %age rate slightly higher (11% to 10% overall).
• The TVA did practise racial segregation in its programmes (blacks worked separately from whites), but it should be remembered that the 42,000 square miles of the Tennessee Valley lay in seven different states, one of which was Alabama, a ‘Deep South’ state where racism was particularly strong.
• TVA officials insisted that equal wages were paid to white and black workers, but this did not help the blacks if racial discrimination ensured that relatively few of them were hired for highly skilled and white collar jobs, which tended to pay more.
• The TVA officials defended themselves against criticism by pointing out that they often had to defer to local conditions and power relations in the South, and so did not have a free hand.
• While Blacks living in the Tennessee Valley benefited from the same improvements to quality of life as everyone else (e.g. electricity), new towns like Norris, Tennessee were – as the evidence of the plans opposite shows – designed to be racially segregated in housing and workplaces. Local opposition to blacks was so strong that in the end, blacks were completely excluded from Norris, despite strong protests from the NAACP.

Question 49

What did the FHA do for African Americans?

Answer 49

The FHA
• The Federal Housing Administration, which was established in 1934, chiefly benefited white middle and lower-middle class families, for whom the bulk of the new housing was built. The FHA refused to insure mortgages of African Americans on houses in white residential districts. There is evidence to suggest that even today, this practice continues.
• In Black Harlem in New York (and elsewhere) overcrowding and poor housing remained a serious problem: 350,000 people lived there, at 233 people per acre, as opposed to 133 for the rest of Manhattan. Tuberculosis and other diseases were common. In Harlem Hospital, proportionately twice as many people died as in Bellevue hospital, in the white residential area. Crime and prostitution were near-inevitable consequences of the conditions.

Question 50

What did the CCC do for African Americans?

Answer 50

The CCC
• Young African American males benefited from the CCC, with more being employed each year between 1933 and 1939: the percentage of African Americans earning $30 a month in the CCC rose from 3% to 11% during these years, with a total of 350,000 being employed between 1933 and 1942, when the programme ended as a result of WWII.
• As with the number of Native Americans employed, these numbers are small in relation to the total of three million young men employed by the CCC during its existence, but the programme was still very useful to African Americans during the Great Depression, even if most camps were segregated.

Question 51

What did The New Deal’s Educational and Cultural Programmes do for African Americans?

Answer 51

• The New Deal’s educational programmes taught over one million African American children to read and write and also succeeded in increasing the number of children attending primary school.
• Hundreds of black writers (like Richard Wright, author of Native Son) and composers (like Duke Ellington, left) were employed and paid under the New Deal’s Federal Theatre Project and Writers and Music Projects. The disadvantage was that the writers were subject to censorship, as the federal government was paying them to write. In 1939, funding for these Projects was stopped.

Question 52

Did too many African Americans fall beneath the safety net?

Answer 52

• Four celebrated measures introduced by FDR’s First and Second New Deals were: unemployment insurance, minimum wages, social security and farm subsidies. Black tenant farmers, farm labourers, migrant workers and domestic workers did not qualify for any of these.

Question 53

Was Roosevelt guilty of ‘tokenism?

Answer 53

• Roosevelt did appoint African Americans as advisers – the press labelled his appointments his “black cabinet” and his “black brains trust” but it is important to bear in mind that they were not officially cabinet members. Their role was to advise FDR on employment, civil rights and education issues. On the one hand, this group was something where nothing like it had existed on that scale before, but on the other, the ‘Black Brains Trust’ could not influence Roosevelt to the point where he outlawed lynching or de- segregated the armed forces.

Question 54

A summary of major problems faced by Native Americans in 1929:

Answer 54

•
Large-scale loss of tribal lands, with constant threat of further loss (138 million acres granted as reservations by 1887 had been whittled down to just 48 million acres by 1932)
• By far the worst poverty of any group in the USA
• Very high levels of unemployment
• Very high levels of alcoholism
• Very high vulnerability to disease (e.g. TB)
• An infant mortality rate twice that of the white population • Very low levels of education
Widespread disenfranchisement (i.e. deprived of the vote, in similar ways to those used on African Americans in the South)
Severe integration difficulties (including racism) for Native Americans who left the reservation to live in the cities

Question 55

Native Americans by 1933:

Answer 55

The Great Depression had a devastating effect on Native Americans. Just before the Wall St Crash, a government report (the 1928 Meriam Report) described conditions on the reservations as “deplorable”: alcoholism, vulnerability to disease and low education levels helped, alongside racial discrimination, to explain why 96% of Native Americans earned less than $200 a year. The Great Depression exacerbated these problems

Question 56

What did Roosevelt do for Native Americans?

Answer 56

• In 1933, Roosevelt appointed John Collier Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which he ran from 1933 until 1945. Collier was a sociologist who believed that industrialisation had made modern society too individualistic and profit-driven. He believed strongly in a sense of community; this attracted him to Native American culture; he studied the Pueblo Indians closely. Collier believed that the white man’s policy of assimilation (i.e. trying to transform Native Americans into rugged individuals who sought happiness in the pursuit of property and wealth) was wrong-headed and deeply destructive. Collier was determined to make a lasting difference to the lives of Native Americans.
• Collier’s major piece of New Deal legislation to provide the ‘three Rs’ for Native Americans was the Indian Reorganisation Act of 1934. In addition to other policies aimed at promoting Native American culture, Collier aimed to: (1) provide federal relief to Native Americans (2) give them work in the CCC to promote recovery and (3) provide lasting reform by returning vast tracts of land to them, to be turned to reservations that would be administered by the Native Americans themselves.

Question 57

How did the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) provided work relief for Native Americans

Answer 57

• In 1933, John Collier asked FDR to allow Native Americans to join the CCC; FDR agreed
• Between 1933 and 1942, as many as 85,000 Native Americans were given work relief by the CCC (note: this is out of a total of three million CCC members overall, of which 200,000 were African American)
• They formed a special Native American division (soon known as the ‘CCC Indian Division’), working mostly on the reservations or on adjacent lands beyond the reservations

Question 58

A New Deal for Native Americans, 1933-45? What does the balance-sheet tell us? Credit column:

Answer 58

• For the first time, an effort was made to provide federal relief to Native Americans struggling to cope with the Great Depression; in this sense, the New Deal was the same watershed for Native Americans that it was for whites.
• About 85,000 Native Americans gained relief and valuable work experience in the ‘Indian Division’ of the CCC.
• Native Americans gained more cultural and religious freedom; for example, the ban on peyote (a hallucinogen used in religious ceremonies) was lifted and Native American children no longer had to be educated in Christian schools.
• Collier did succeed in halting the acquisition by whites of reservation land; in the long-term, this was an act of major significance
• Collier also succeeded in re-asserting, as a legal fact, the status of Native American peoples as semi-sovereign, dependent nations. In effect, this meant that unless Congress chose to intervene directly, the Native Americans enjoyed internal sovereignty.

Question 59

A New Deal for Native Americans, 1933-45? What does the balance-sheet tell us? Debit column:

Answer 59

• Congress watered down Collier’s proposals so that the Indian Reorganisation Act that was passed in 1934 did not give Native Americans anywhere near as much help as Roosevelt’s expert knew they needed: Collier’s recovery programmes were usually under-funded by Congress.
• Collier’s policy of stock reduction of Navajo cattle to reduce over-production made sense in the context of the general problem in the West of over- production and under-consumption, but had the unintended consequence of destroying a functioning Native American economy; it also inflicted trauma on a people whose cultural approach to animals and the environment was very different from Collier’s.
• Powerful whites at state level were able to reduce relief to Native Americans to force them to work for a wage that was not a living wage.
• Some of Collier’s well-intentioned measures, such as a secret ballot on reservations, designed to promote democracy, went against Native American traditions of open-voting: thus, Collier was guilty of exactly the kind of ethno- centric thinking of which he accused other whites; modern American methods did not necessarily meet the Native Americans’ needs.
• Poverty persisted on the reservations and remains a major problem in 2018.
• Even as late as 1954, some states still denied Native Americans the vote.

Question 60

Why was Roosevelt re-elected in 1940?

Answer 60

• A big domestic factor motivating FDR’s decision to stand was the desire to protect his New Deal achievements and his awareness that in 1940, the Democrats had no electable figure except himself to defend and extend the New Deal. Voters did not want to see the Republicans elected and the New Deal undone; nor did they wish a more conservative Democratic candidate like Vice-President John Garner to replace Roosevelt because he might reverse the New Deal’s relief and reform measures.
• Roosevelt’s Republican opponent, Iowa businessman Wendell Willkie, was a better candidate than either Hoover or Landon but it hurt him that he had once been a Democrat and a New Deal supporter, deserting it only when the TVA (one of the New Deal’s great achievements) produced cheap electricity which competed with that produced by his own electric power company. Roosevelt was able to depict him as a turncoat ‘economic royalist’ of the sort that was responsible for the Great Depression in the first place.
• The election of 1940 took place in the shadow of the European War, which had broken out in September 1939. Ambition aside, one of FDR’s reasons for running for a third term was that he did not think America should be led by a novice (from either party) at such a dangerous time; many American agreed with him. Also, war was coming and it was better that America fight it sooner rather than later; this might not happen if Republican isolationists were in office. Memories of US involvement in WWI were still vivid: Republican tactics were to argue that FDR, who was providing aid to Britain, planned to lead the US into war, just like Woodrow Wilson. This was a powerful argument; Roosevelt countered it with repeated and persuasive assurances that “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars”. Enough people believed him for Willkie to complain: “That hypocritical son-of-a- bitch; this has cost me the election.”
• The international wartime context aside, it is a tribute to FDR’s perceived indispensability - and to the gratitude felt by millions of Americans who had benefited from the New Deal - that so many voters were willing to grant him a third term in defiance of George Washington’s precedent. By 1940, nine million Americans had been given work relief by FDR’s Second New Deal alphabet agency, the WPA. Also, FDR’s defence measures in 1940 might have allowed the Republicans to accuse him of warmongering, but they created jobs. The majority of the electorate still blamed 12 years of Republican rule for the Wall St Crash and the Great Depression and they were not willing to risk voting for the GOP again.
• The result was another emphatic victory for Roosevelt; only because his previous victories were such landslides does this one seem less impressive; he won almost 55% of the vote and 38 states, as opposed to Willkie’s 10.

Question 61

How did the NIRA fail?

Answer 61

• Unfortunately, while it was supposed to stimulate the construction industry on a massive scale, it had the effect of creating harmful monopolies and alienating a lot of people who had initially supported the New Deal.
• Prices were fixed high and production levels remained low: the opposite of what FDR intended. Price-fixing also meant that the smaller companies could not compete with the bigger ones that had been created.
• The NIRA did nothing for most African American workers, as they worked mostly in the agricultural and domestic sectors, which were not covered by the codes.
• In 1935, in the infamous ‘Sick Chicken case’, the Supreme Court declared the NIRA unconstitutional. This was a major blow to FDR and the New Dealers because the NIRA was viewed as the centrepiece law of the recovery programme.