How successful was the New Deal?
Socialism: If you
own two cows you give one to your neighbour.
Communism: You give
both cows to the government and the government gives you
back some milk.
Fascism: You keep
both cows, but the government takes your milk, and sells
some of it back to you.
New Deal: You shoot
both cows and milk the government.
Republican joke of the 1930s
(c. 1935)
As with most historical questions, there are two
sides to this issue
On the one hand, it can be argued that the New
Deal was a success (the
5Rs).
On the other hand, there are many arguments that
it had serious weaknesses and failings
(the 3Ds).
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Links
Simple for and against
Overview
Successes and failures - brill grid
Student's essay with examiner's comments
Podcasts
- Giles Hill on the impact of the New Deal
Francis Townsend
Huey Long
Opposition - lecture notes
Minorities under the New Deal
Myth of the New Deal - very difficult, but takes FDR and
the New Deal apart.
'Soft
Fascism' - another attack
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1. Relief
Millions of people received relief, help with
their mortgage, jobs etc. from the alphabet agencies.
2. Roads
and buildings
The PWA and the TVA provided valuable economic
and social infrastructures, such as
roads, airports, schools, theatres, dams etc
3.
Reform
Roosevelt's new laws about
social security/ minimum wage/ labour relations
and trade unions survived and protected ordinary people’s rights
and conditions.
Democracy survived in America (unlike Italy and
Germany)
4. Roosevelt
became the people's hero - he was elected four
times.
5.
Repercussions
Democracy survived in America (unlike Italy and
Germany). The New Deal became a model of how a
democratic government ought to behave - arguably influenced the
British Welfare State of 1948. And in 1998, when the
Labour Government of Britain was trying to introduce new laws to
help poor people, it called it: a
New Deal.
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Source A
Whether the New Deal was a
success or failure is not easy to judge.
Individual programmes were
a success, such as T.V.A. Others, such
as A.A.A. succeeded in
getting food prices to rise, which was good for
the farmers, but did not
help the millions who were out of work and
hungry. The New Deal did
not solve the problem of unemployment,
but merely made the
situation not as bad as it might have been’
Pupil's GCSE essay for OCR
(2003)
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1. Did not end the
Depression
- indeed, Roosevelt's insistence on a balanced
budget, healthy interest rates and ‘sound money’ may have helped
to continue it. Roosevelt had no new ideas how to end the
depression – just Hoover’s schemes only bigger. By 1935 he had
failed to end unemployment (which was only down to 10.6
million), and – although unemployment fell to 7.7 million in
1937 – when Roosevelt tried to cut back government expenditure
in 1938, it rose again to 10.4 million. It is not really fair
to criticise Roosevelt for this - no one at that time knew how
to end the Depression - but the Depression did not end until the
Second World War got production going again.
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2. Damaged
Blacks and immigrants
– in fact, many were laid off as a direct result
of the New Deal’s attempts to give workers rights.
This cartoon shows New Deal
legislation throwing Black workers out of a job.
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.
.
.
This
cartoon shows the AAA driving farm labourers from the land by
making farmers cut back production.
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3. Determined
Opposition (BRASS)
a
Businessmen hated the
New Deal because it interfered with their businesses and
supported workers’ rights. Rich people accused Roosevelt of
betraying his class.
Henry Ford hired thugs to attack his trade union workers.
b
Republicans hated the
expenditure, which they said was wasteful (‘boondoggling’ – jobs
for the sake of jobs). CWA had to be abolished in 1935, though
immediately replaced by the PWA. After 1938, Republicans took
over the Senate, and Roosevelt was unable to get any more New
Deal legislation through.
c
Activists
like Huey Long (Senator for Louisiana who started a Share the
Wealth’ campaign to confiscate fortunes over $3m) and Francis
Townsend (who campaigned for a pension of $200 a month) said it did
not go far enough.
d
State governments opposed the
New Deal, saying that the Federal government was taking their
powers.
e The
Supreme Court ruled that the
NRA codes of employers’ conduct, and the AAA programme, were
illegal because they took away the States’ powers. Because of
this, in 1937, Roosevelt threatened to force old Supreme Court
judges to retire and to create new ones; the crisis was averted
when the Supreme Court reversed its decisions.
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People claimed that by
trying to 'pack' the Supreme Court, Roosevelt was trying to
make himself a dictator.
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