The New Deal: Crisis Politics and Idealistic Reform

1
The New Deal Crisis Politics and Idealistic
Reform

• History 203
• April 11, 2007

2
Some Websites on the New Deal and Eleanor
Roosevelt

• The New Deal Network a broad set of resources
• Huge selection of FDR editorial cartoons
• Voices from the Dust Bowlabout Great Plains
  drought and migration to the West Coast
• PBS American Experience show on Eleanor
  Roosevelt
• The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers website, with a
  display on her and human rights
• Childrens Letters to Eleanor Roosevelt

3
Assignment on Scopes Trial Paper

• Instructions for the Scopes Trial paper are at
  http//www.uoregon.edu/dapope/203scopes.htm.
• The paper is due at class time on Monday, April
  30.

4
The Great Depression Varied Explanations

• The result of bad policies?
• Money and the economy
• Misguided Federal Reserve Board decisions
• International Factors Was the Great Depression
  Made in the USA?
• The result of fundamental structural flaws?
• Consumption and investment spending
• Saturation and Stagnation
• Birth pangs of a new economy

5
The Great Wars Economic Aftermath Depression?

• Following the 1919 Paris Peace Treaties, American
  and European economic stability was based on a
  three-sided flow of payments
• Defeated Germany had to pay reparations to the
  victorious British and French
• France and Britain had to repay loans they had
  borrowed from the United States
• The U.S. in turn invested money in Germany
• Why did this system break down at the end of the
  1920s? What happened when it did collapse?

6
Hoovers Depression

• "What this country needs is a good big laugh...If
  someone could get off a good joke every ten days,
  I think our troubles would be over." President
  Hoover 1931

7
Herbert Hoover A Presidency Destroyed

• Hoover and the American Dream

• HoovervilleSeattle Shantytown in early 1930s

8
The Bonus Army

• 1932 Veterans of the Great War want their
  service bonuses paid now, not in 1945.
• 15-20,000 head for Washington to press for
  immediate payment
• July 1932 Gen. Douglas MacArthur leads troops
  who confront protesters and, against orders from
  Pres. Hoover, attack and burn down protesters
  tent city.

9
The Bonus Army

• Bonus Marchers Encampment, July 1932

• After attack by MacArthurs Troops

10
How Bad Was the Depression?

• By 1932 or 1933, unemployment in the US was about
  25. (What is todays unemployment rate?)
• Total output had declined by about 1/3.
• Some industries had almost entirely collapsed.
  Steel production was only 12 of capacity.
• About 1.5 or 2 million Americans were homeless.
• In 1937, over seven years after the crash,
  President Roosevelt described a third of the
  nation as ill housed, ill clad, ill nourished.
  (Listen on line to an audio clip.)

11
Franklin D. Roosevelt
12
Toward the New Deal

• FDR The making of a presidential candidate
• Elite background
• Polio and paralysis
• New York State politician
• 1932 Presidential Campaign
• Journalist Walter Lippman describes Roosevelt a
  pleasant man who, without any important
  qualifications for the office, would very much
  like to be President.
• Campaign themes
• Bold, persistent experimentation
• A Closed Frontier

13
The Hundred Days of 1933

• Crisis Conditions
• Relief, Recovery and Reform
• Legislative triumphs
• Radical change or response to emergency?
• The New Deal as a War
• National Recovery AdministrationRecovery by
  Planning?

14
Some 1933 Cartoons
15
(No Transcript)
16
(No Transcript)
17
Eleanor Roosevelt and Liberal Idealism
18
Eleanor Roosevelt Privilege and Adversity

• A Sad Childhood and a Troubled Marriage
• Presidents Wife and Independent Leader
• Making Her Own Life
• Eleanor Roosevelt and Liberal Idealism

19
For Gosh Sakes, Here Comes Mrs. Roosevelt
20
Eleanor Roosevelt and Civil Rights

• African Americans and the New Deal
• Turn toward the Democratic Party
• Benefit and suffer from New Deal Programs
• Roosevelt and the Solid White South
• Eleanor Roosevelt, Civil Rights and Personal
  Commitment

21
Eleanor Roosevelt and Anti-Lynching Legislation
22
Eleanor Roosevelt, Marian Anderson and the
Daughters of the American Revolution

• I have, as a rule, accepted my defeat and
  decided I was wrong or, perhaps, a little too far
  ahead of the thinking for the majority at that
  time. I have often found that the thing in which
  I was interested was done some years later. But
  in this case, I belong to an organization in
  which I can do no active work. They have taken an
  action which has been widely talked of in the
  press. To remain as a member implies approval of
  that action, and therefore I am resigning.
• At right She helped organize a massive Easter
  Sunday concert by Marian Anderson at the Lincoln
  Memorial