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Introduction

The Great Depression of the 1930s was a global event that derived in part from events in the United States and U.S. financial policies. As it lingered through the decade, it influenced U.S. foreign policies in such a way that the United States Government became even more isolationist.

The origins of the Great Depression were complicated and have been much debated among scholars. The initial factor was the First World War, which upset international balances of power and caused a dramatic shock to the global financial system. The gold standard, which had long served as the basis for national currencies and their exchange rates, had to be temporarily suspended in order to recover from the costs of the Great War, but the United States, European nations, and Japan put forth great effort to reestablish it by the end of the decade. However, this introduced inflexibility into domestic and international financial markets, which meant that they were less able to deal with additional shocks when they came in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The U.S. stock market crash of 1929, an economic downturn in Germany, and financial difficulties in France and Great Britain all coincided to cause a global financial crisis. Dedication to the gold standard in each of these nations and Japan, which only managed to return to it in 1930, only made the problem worse and hastened the slide into what is now known as the Great Depression.

The International Depression

The key factor in turning national economic difficulties into worldwide Depression seems to have been a lack of international coordination as most governments and financial institutions turned inwards. Great Britain, which had long underwritten the global financial system and had led the return to the gold standard, was unable to play its former role and became the first to drop off the standard in 1931. The United States, preoccupied with its own economic difficulties, did not step in to replace Great Britain as the creditor of last resort and dropped off the gold standard in 1933. At the London Economic Conference in 1933, leaders of the world's main economies met to resolve the economic crisis, but failed to reach any major collective agreements. As a result, the Depression dragged on through the rest of the 1930s.

Isolationism

The Depression caused the United States to retreat further into its post-World War I isolationism. A series of international incidents occurred during the 1930s-the Japanese seizure of northeast China in 1931, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, and German expansionism in Central and Eastern Europe-but the United States did not take any major action in response or opposition. When these and other incidents occurred, the United States Government issued statements of disapproval but took limited action beyond that. On a more positive note, isolationism manifested in Latin America in the form of the Good Neighbor Policy of Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, under which the United States reduced its military presence in the region and improved relations between itself and its neighbors to the south. Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt were to an extent constrained by public opinion, which demanded that primary attention be given to domestic problems. The Hoover and Roosevelt Administrations concentrated upon rebuilding the U.S. economy and dealing with widespread unemployment and social dislocation at home and as a result international affairs took a back seat.

Rise of Fascism

As the United States turned inwards to deal with the lingering effects of the Depression, militaristic regimes came to power in Germany, Italy, and Japan promising economic relief and national expansion. While they achieved some measure of success on the economic front, these regimes began to push their territorial ambitions and received minimal opposition from the rest of the world. The lack of a strong U.S. response to Japan's invasion of China in 1937 and Germany's annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1938 encouraged the Japanese and German governments to enlarge their military campaigns. At the time, most U.S. leaders believed their decision to avoid a more active role was justified because of the domestic context, but some began to realize that U.S. inaction allowed the conflict to grow. After the fall of France in June 1940, the United States increasingly committed itself to the fight against fascism. Ironically, it was World War II, which had arisen in part out of the Great Depression, that finally pulled the United States out of its decade-long economic crisis.

The Great Depression caused the United States Government to pull back from major international involvement during the 1930s, but in the long run it contributed to the emergence of the United States as a world leader thereafter. The perception that the turn inwards had in some part contributed to perpetuating the horrors of World War II caused U.S. foreign policy makers to play a major role in world affairs after the war in order to avert similar disasters.

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Milestones: 1921-1936 - Office of the Historian

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The 1930s New Deal realignment reshaped the party system. The Great Depression acted as the catalyst for a transformation of the party system that moved the Democrats from minority to majority status at the national level. The New Deal Democratic coalition that put Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House and the Democratic Party in control of Congress combined support from the working class and various ethnic and minority groups with already existing strength in the South. The basis of Democratic appeal to blue-collar workers, low-income individuals, and recent immigrant groups (largely Catholics and Jews from southern and eastern Europe) was the party's liberalism in economic matters. Roosevelt and the Democrats favored federal government activity to combat the Depression and proposed programs to benefit disadvantaged groups. The Republicans, who appealed more to the middle-class, business groups, and northern white Protestants, were critical of this expansion of government interference in the economy and creation of a variety of social welfare programs. By the late 1930s, the lines between the two parties were clearly drawn, both in ideological and socioeconomic terms ( Ladd and Hadley 1978, 31-87).

Although the New Deal coalition began to break up in the 1960s, the impact of the New Deal realignment has remained to the present, albeit in a diluted and revised form. Many of the party images of decades past persist to the present. Democrats remain thought of as the party that favors bigger government, more spending on domestic programs, and helping those at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Republicans continue to be perceived as favoring limited government, less spending on domestic programs, and fewer restrictions on business enterprises. Democrats are seen as the party of the working class and lower-income groups. Republicans are viewed as the party of business and upper-income groups. These are not baseless images. They reflect continuing fundamental differences between the parties.

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The 1930s New Deal realignment reshaped the party system. The Great Depression acted as the catalyst for a transformation of the party system that moved the Democrats from minority to majority status at the national level. The New Deal Democratic coalition that put Franklin D.

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President Franklin D. Roosevelt's smashing victory in the 1936 presidential election revealed that the American political landscape had shifted. With FDR at its head, the Democratic Party put together a formidable coalition whose main components were lower-income groups in the great cities-African Americans, union members, and ethnic and religious minorities, many from recent immigrant groups-and the traditional source of Democratic strength, "the Solid South." Roosevelt carried every former Confederate state all four times he ran, but no Democrat has done so since 1944, FDR's final race. This "New Deal coalition," as it came to be known, powered the Democratic Party for the next thirty years. Its strong hold on these voters was due largely to the social, political, economic, and cultural changes wrought by the Depression, the New Deal, and World War II.

African Americans

One important demographic change underlay the experience of African Americans during the Roosevelt years. The migration of African Americans from the South to the urban North, which began in 1910, continued in the 1930s and accelerated in the 1940s during World War II. As a result, black Americans during the Roosevelt years lived for the most part either in the urban North or in the rural South, although the Depression chased increasingly large numbers of blacks to southern cities as well. In the North, blacks encountered de facto segregation, racism, and discrimination in housing and public services; nevertheless, they were able to vote and had better job opportunities. In the South, blacks were disfranchised, lived under a segregationist regime enforced by violence, and found fewer avenues for escape from crushing poverty.

No matter where they lived, African Americans were especially hard hit by the Depression. In the rural South, blacks found it increasingly difficult even to survive. In Northern and Southern cities, blacks saw their jobs-which were usually of the entry level, low paying, and unskilled or semi-skilled variety-disappear, either consumed by the faltering economy or snatched up by desperate unemployed whites. By 1932, over half of blacks in Southern cities were unemployed. The employment situation for African Americans in the urban North was only marginally better for the growing black middle class. In Harlem, black ownership or management of property dropped precipitously in the first half of the 1930s.

Did the New Deal improve the lot of African Americans? The record is mixed. The aid provided by the New Deal to America's poor-black and white-was insufficient. Racism reared its head in the New Deal, often because federal programs were administered through local authorities or community leaders who brought their own racial biases to the table. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) offered white landowners cash for leaving their fields fallow, which they happily accepted; they, however, did not pass on their government checks to the black sharecroppers and tenant farmers who actually worked the land. Even in the North, blacks found that New Deal programs did not always treat them as well as whites.

There can be little doubt, however, that the New Deal in many instances was a boon to African Americans. In one sense, this was a question of degree. Aid to African Americans prior to 1933, especially in the South, had been nearly non-existent; the federal help that did come with the New Deal, therefore, was significant. In addition, New Deal agencies like the WPA, the Public Works Administration (PWA), and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) grew more sensitive throughout the 1930s to the needs of African Americans, largely because of the leadership of Roosevelt appointees at those agencies. Indeed, African Americans found significant allies in the administration, from Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to the First Lady herself, Eleanor Roosevelt. Enough blacks, like Mary McLeod Bethune, found themselves in leadership positions that there was even talk of a "black Cabinet" of FDR advisers.

Roosevelt's approach towards civil rights legislation was janus-faced. FDR spoke out against lynching, found the poll tax reprehensible, and, at the prodding of his wife, met in the White House with African American civil rights leaders. FDR, though, refused to make an anti-lynching bill a priority, though, in truth, opposition to the legislation was so strong that it never had a chance. In his defense, FDR claimed-and he was probably correct-that endorsing legislation which threatened the South's racial order would cost him the votes of Southerners in Congress-support he desperately needed.

World War II accelerated many of the trends in African American life that became clear during the 1930s. Blacks continued to move from rural areas to cities, and more than half a million moved to the North during the war years. The war brought a surge in public and private spending that in turn spurred job creation and created a full-employment economy-which meant that blacks found both more and better jobs. On the other hand, the growing presence of blacks in the urban industrial North exacerbated racial tensions with whites. The result was sometimes deadly violence, as in the riots that shook Detroit in 1943.

Spurred by the U.S. crusade against Nazism, black advocates of civil rights called for a "double V" campaign that would bring victories against fascism abroad and racism at home. The war years saw the growth of black organizations, like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Committee (later Congress) for Racial Equality, dedicated to winning civil rights at home. Blacks even met with some success; during the summer of 1941, A. Philip Randolph threatened the Roosevelt administration with a 100,000 person "March on Washington" if discrimination was not ended in the military and the defense industries. Roosevelt capitulated and issued an Executive Order creating a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC).

Roosevelt's performance, then was deeply flawed, but blacks rendered their own verdict when in 1936 they abandoned their historic allegiance to the Republicans, the party of Abe Lincoln, and moved in large numbers over to the Democrats, the party of FDR, where they have been ever since. One of Roosevelt's severest critics, Ralph Bunch, said the FDR era "represented a radical break with the past," and W.E.B. Du Bois concluded that Roosevelt "gave the American Negro a kind of recognition in political life which the Negro had never before received."

Women

The experiences of American women during the Roosevelt years, like the experiences of African Americans, were marked by both victories and setbacks. In one respect, women achieved notable success: in unprecedented numbers, they began to fill important positions in the federal government. FDR appointed Francis Perkins Secretary of Labor, making her the first woman to serve in the cabinet. Besides Perkins, women also gained important upper-level administrative positions in a variety of New Deal agencies and programs. In addition, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was the most active and prominent woman ever to hold that honorary title.

Since several New Deal programs aimed to provide relief and social welfare-areas in which women reformers had a long history of expertise-it comes as little surprise that these same women found their way into New Deal agencies. The New Deal, however, was not designed to help women in particular, even if some of its programs, like the WPA and Aid to Dependent Children, did at least benefit women indirectly. The New Deal's chief goal, rather, was the resuscitation of the "family wage," a term that assumed the husband was the family's primary wage-earner and the wife ran the home.

As a result, many New Deal relief, employment, and welfare programs were intended primarily for men and offered fewer benefits to American women. In some cases, this targeting was explicit: the 1933 Economy Act prohibited the federal government from hiring members of the same family, which meant women lost their jobs; the NRA allowed employers to pay women less than men, even for doing the same job. In some cases, sex discrimination was more subtle: the Social Security Act did not provide for domestics, large percentages of whom were women. It should also be noted that sex and race discrimination intersected in many New Deal programs, a dynamic that left African American women outside of the already leaky protective umbrella of the New Deal.

World War II, though, marked an important change in women's lives in at least two ways. First, marriage rates spiked in the early 1940s, rising slowly through the second half of the 1930s after the doldrums of the early Depression. These newlyweds would provide the United States with a "baby boom" during those first several years following the end of the war. Second, government and private spending during the war produced jobs, many of which-because men were increasingly joining the military-went to women. Indeed, women joined the workforce in such unprecedented numbers-19 million undertook wage-work at some point during the war years-that "Rosie the Riveter," the iconic female laborer publicized by the War Manpower Commission, became a staple of wartime propaganda.

Mexican Americans

Between 1900 and 1930, the number of persons of Mexican descent living in the American southwest jumped from 375,000 to well over 1.1 million. Mexicans and Mexican Americans found employment, as well as back-breaking and low-paying work, on large farms. The Great Depression, however, reduced the need for farm labor and caused unemployment among Mexicans living in the United States and Mexican Americans to soar. At the behest of politicians and community leaders in the southwest looking to solve the region's unemployment problem, the U.S. government forcibly sent nearly 400,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans (some of them citizens) to Mexico. Those Mexican and Mexican Americans who remained in the United States faced grinding poverty and little help from the New Deal, which too often failed to help agricultural workers and people of color.

America's entry into World War II, however, marked a watershed moment in the history of Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Roughly 350,000 Mexican Americans would serve in the American military. On the home front, Mexicans and Mexican Americans, like blacks and women, took advantage of new and more lucrative employment opportunities in military-related industries. They moved increasingly into urban areas to work these better paying jobs, though they were not always welcomed with open arms. This racial and ethnic hostility erupted in June 1943 when rampaging American sailors attacked young Mexican Americans (known as "zoot-suiters," in reference to their distinctive style of dress) in the streets of Los Angeles. The police and military refused to intervene in what became known as the "zoot suit riots." The police, in fact, arrested more Mexicans and Mexican Americans than sailors.

The war had one more important consequence: it reversed the flow of immigrants between the United States and Mexico yet again. The agricultural sector in the southwest needed Mexican labor to meet war-time demands, and the U.S. government worked out an agreement with Mexico for what would be called the "bracero" program, in which Mexicans came to the United States as temporary workers. The bracero program, which brought more than 200,000 Mexicans to the United States (the majority to California) during the war, remained in place until the 1960s.

Labor

Between 1933 and 1945, union membership grew from less than 3 million workers to 14 million workers, a number which accounted for nearly thirty percent of all American workers. This fantastic growth resulted largely from changes in American politics and economics wrought by the Great Depression and the New Deal. The passage of the NIRA in 1933, with its "Section 7a" that gave workers the rights to organize and bargain collectively, accelerated the growth of union membership. After the Supreme Court invalidated the NIRA in 1935, Congress passed the Wagner Act, which strengthened labor's rights vis a vis management, and gave real enforcement powers to the National Labor Relations Board. Workers and unions now had tangible evidence that the American government stood behind them.

When Roosevelt came to power, almost no factory worker in America belonged to a union. In no other developed country in the Western world was that true. But during the FDR years, a new labor coalition, the congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), unionized the steel, automobile, textile, and other large industries. The CIO, headed by John L. Lewis, chief of the United Mine Workers, welcomed assembly line laborers, who often came from religious and ethnic minorities; in contrast, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was interested primarily in craft workers, such as carpenters with northern European backgrounds. When in 1937, the auto workers launched sit-down strikes, Roosevelt refused to sanction the use of force to dislodge them. As a result, General motors and other firms were compelled to recognize these new unions. Not until World War II, though, did Henry Ford and other recalcitrant employers yield.

African American workers increasingly joined unions to protect their employment rights as well. One of the most powerful of such organizations was the Sleeping Car Porters' Union, a group of railroad-passenger attendants that was almost completely composed of African Americans. Led by the tireless, charismatic A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979), the union languished for years until Roosevelt's legislation made it legally viable. It was the first African American union to be allowed into the American Federation of Labor (AFL). In 1935, the Porters' Union forced a virulently anti-union company, the makers and operators of Pullman passenger cars, to sit at the bargaining table with the union's members. After two long years of struggle, Pullman agreed to terms, a milestone event in American civil rights history.

During World War II, the effort to make the United States the "arsenal of democracy" aided American workers by making jobs plentiful and raising wages. Most unions agreed to a no-strike pledge at the beginning of the war. Nonetheless, conflict between labor and management still arose, largely over who controlled the shop floor, and who set work rates and salaries. In 1943, half a million coal miners went on strike four separate times to protest low pay. African American workers, likewise, still confronted discrimination on the job. When A. Philip Randolph in 1941 threatened a "March on Washington" to protest discrimination in military industries and the services, FDR issued an Executive Order directing government agencies and contractors to hire without regard to race or religion. The Executive Order also created a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to monitor its implementation, although the commission had no enforcement powers.

Without a doubt, American workers improved their lot during the Roosevelt years. They, and the unions they joined, achieved a new legitimacy in the American political and economic arena and received hard-won wage increases, although those wages did not rise as much as workers wanted. Conservatives in Congress and many business leaders, moreover, still considered unions illegitimate. The challenges for African American workers were even greater. Nonetheless, American workers and the unions that represented them believed that in Franklin D. Roosevelt, they had an ally in the White House. They would reward him-and his Democratic successors-with their votes and support for years to come.

Recent Immigrants

Although Congress passed a series of immigration laws in the 1920s which essentially halted the great migration of European immigrants since the last decades of the nineteenth century, recent immigrants continued to play an important role in American political, economic, and social life. The Great Depression hit recent immigrants very hard. They often worked in the low-paying industrial jobs that disappeared during the economic crisis. The ethnic communities that sustained immigrants as they adapted to life in the United States suffered too, as local businesses-from banks to tailors to groceries-failed.

Starting with the 1928 election, the Democratic Party began to win the votes of recent immigrants, in large part because candidate Al Smith rejected prohibition and displayed a sensitivity to life in urban American, where immigrants most often lived. FDR built upon Smith's gains in the 1932 general election. The New Deal especially energized recent immigrants and brought them into the Democratic Party. Roosevelt appointed Jews and Catholics to important positions in his administration, heartening immigrant newcomers who reveled in the appointment of their co-religionists. So great a departure was Roosevelt's attitude from that of previous Presidents, whose appointments were largely restricted to white, northern European, Protestant men, that Time magazine featured on the cover of one of its issues in 1935 two of his advisers, Thomas Corcoran (an Irish Catholic) and Benjamin Cohen (a Jew).

Most important to the party's success, however, was the emotional attachment recent immigrants felt toward FDR. They believed that he was their President and saw him a father-figure who watched after their interests. It was not unusual in the 1930s for FDR's picture to hang in a prominent place in a recent immigrant's home or business. These new Americans joined the Democratic party, and they and their children would vote Democratic for the next generation.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt: The American Franchise | Miller Center

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President Franklin D. Roosevelt's smashing victory in the 1936 presidential election revealed that the American political landscape had shifted. With FDR at its head, the Democratic Party put together a formidable coalition whose main components were lower-income groups in the great cities-African Americans, union members, and ethnic and religious minorities, many from recent immigrant groups-and the traditional source of Democratic strength, "the Solid South."

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To what extent did the New Deal contribute to the transformation and dominance of the Democratic Party in the United States, from the 19th to 20th century?

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Great Depression

New Deal

Democratic party

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The outbreak of the Great Depression in the fall of 1929 caused much economic hardship in Newfoundland and Labrador. Most damaging was a breakdown in world trade, which caused the country's revenue to plummet. Despite its shrinking income, the government still had to make interest payments on a sizeable national debt and provide essential services to the public. Widespread unemployment during the 1930s exacerbated an already difficult situation by forcing the government to spend millions of dollars on various relief programs. Most, however, were ineffective. Dole rations, for example, were heavily policed and much too small to live on; land settlement also ended in failure.

At the same time the government increased relief spending, it also contributed to the crisis by laying off employees and making cuts to health care, education, and other social programs. When allegations of corruption surfaced against high-ranking political officials in 1932, it intensified the public's mounting dissatisfaction with party politics and led to the swearing in of the Commission of Government in 1934. For the most part, however, the new regime proved equally incapable of improving the Depression's impacts on the working class and on the country as a whole. It was not until the employment boom of the Second World War that the country recovered.

Financial Crisis

The impact of the great Depression was devastating to Newfoundland and Labrador's export-based economy. A sudden slump in international trade dramatically reduced revenue from fish, mineral, and pulp and paper exports. Profits decreased from $40 million in 1930 to only $23.2 million in 1933. The national debt, meanwhile, continued to climb. By the end of 1933, the government owed $100 million - mostly to the United Kingdom and the United States. Interest payments alone accounted for 63.2 per cent of the country's shrinking income.

The government responded to the crisis by borrowing more money from abroad. As the Depression deepened, however, the pool of willing lenders dried up. Britain and Canada worried that it would reflect badly on the Empire if Newfoundland and Labrador failed to meet its interest payments and agreed to lend the government money in return for a number of concessions. One was the appointment of a financial advisor to help organize the country's finances. Sir Percy Thompson, deputy chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, filled this position in August 1931. At around the same time, the Newfoundland and Labrador government appointed Montreal businessman Robert J. Magor to investigate various government departments and reduce spending wherever possible.

Unfortunately, it was the country's poor and vulnerable who were most negatively affected by the ensuing government cutbacks. The government laid off one-third of its civil servants and reduced wages for the rest. At the same time, it introduced new taxes that increased the cost of living by approximately 30 per cent. The government also slashed spending on health and education, but doubled its police force in 1932 to better maintain law and order amid a growing atmosphere of public unrest. Perhaps most frustrating to the country's unemployed, however, were Magor's efforts to reduce public relief payments, widely known as the dole.

Government Relief

The dole was a small amount of support the government distributed to the poor and unemployed. A typical ration included flour, pork, split peas, corn meal, molasses, and cocoa. It provided for only about half of a person's nutritional needs. The government did not give more partly because it had very little money to spare during the Depression; by 1933 it was already spending more than $1 million on relief payments annually.

Government officials were also afraid that if they gave too much, people would become comfortable on the dole and stop trying to find work elsewhere. A third concern was that dole payments should not exceed the income of the country's working - yet impoverished - fishers. "The tragedy of Newfoundland," Commissioner Thomas Lodge wrote in 1939, "is not that the scale of able-bodied relief is so low. It is that the scale differs so little from the standard of living enjoyed by the workers who manage to retain complete independence."

Some government officials worried that relief expenditures were becoming too large a drain on the country's finances. To keep costs down, they closely policed dole applicants to ensure that only those who desperately needed relief received it. The government also hired a limited number of relieving officers, which made it difficult for a lot of people to apply for the dole. The officers had sweeping powers to investigate applicants and to determine how much government support they should obtain.

This contributed to the economic and social hardships experienced by the poor and working class during the Depression. If people supplemented inadequate dole rations by hunting or farming, then they risked being cut off from government support. Furthermore, Magor recommended that the government not only refuse relief to people who cheated the system, but also to those who knew of abusers and did not report them. This helped create an atmosphere of paranoia, discontent, and oppression in Newfoundland and Labrador during the 1930s.

The Commission of Government

The Commission of Government only marginally improved matters when it came into power in 1934. It distributed free milk and cod liver oil to children, raised the health department's budget, and slightly increased dole orders. Destitution remained widespread and the relief system was still harshly policed, left people hungry and malnourished, and did not allow recipients to buy their own provisions. The replacement of white flour with brown was a particularly sore point, as many applicants felt the new flour was difficult to bake with.

The Commission also introduced a land settlement program to Newfoundland and Labrador which had a promising start, but eventually ended in failure. Under this program, the government helped families establish farms, raise animals, and build communities in various uninhabited parts of the country. The intention was for people to eventually support themselves off of the land and pay back the government's investment. The first and largest program took place in May 1934 at Markland. Others followed in such places as Brown's Arm, Lourdes, and Midland.

The settlements, however, were run by trustees and not by the people who lived there. This made the settlers feel as though they had no control over their lives. In 1936, for example, the government evicted one family from Markland for refusing to send their children to the local school; seven men objected to the expulsion and were also forced to leave. By 1937, the government felt the land settlement families would not be able to pay back the money it had invested in them and began to scale back the program. It dismantled the program in 1941.

By then, however, the Second World War had brought widespread prosperity to Newfoundland and Labrador. The country reported a financial surplus for the first time in years and unemployment had virtually disappeared. When hostilities ended, it was time to replace the Commission with a new form of government. Canada's social security net made Confederation an attractive option for many voters who still remembered the hardships of the 1930s.
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Government Response to the Great Depression

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The outbreak of the Great Depression in the fall of 1929 caused much economic hardship in Newfoundland and Labrador.

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Just as the Great Depression revealed the precarity of life for many individuals and the massive risk underpinning many economic sectors and institutions, the current coronavirus crisis is drawing attention to the downsides of living in a hyper-globalized world, says Stanford historian David M. Kennedy.

Here, Kennedy reflects on these two catastrophic events and how transformative the Great Depression was in American history, demonstrating the invaluable role of government in managing and mitigating disaster. As the world reckons with an economic crisis that the International Monetary Fund anticipates to be the worst recession since the Great Depression, what can be learned from history? How are these two events similar, and how are they different? Kennedy answers these questions and more.

Kennedy is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus, in the School of Humanities and Sciences and the founder and former director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. In 2000, he received the Pulitzer Prize for History for his book Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945.
What makes a depression different than a recession?
There is no consensual definition of either event, and no sharply defined distinction between the two. A rough-and-ready definition of recession is two consecutive quarters of contracting GDP. A depression is customarily understood as a really bad recession.
What were some of the key characteristics of the Great Depression?
That Great Depression constituted one of the three great watershed moments in American history, comparable in its scope and lasting effects to the two other great transformations in American life: the American Revolution and the Civil War. In all three cases, people's lives before and after were radically different.

The impact of the Great Depression on the United States was especially severe, though it was a truly global calamity. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell by 50 percent between 1929 and 1933. Some 5,000 banks - nearly one in five - failed. Thirteen million workers, or 25 percent of the workforce, lost their jobs over those same four years. Stocks shed nearly 90 percent of their value. They didn't recover to 1929 levels for more than two decades. That last observation is especially important. Probably the single most notable and painful feature of the Great Depression was not its depth, but its duration. It blighted the land for more than a decade. It measurably lowered the rate of marriages and child-births. To some degree, the fabled "baby-boom" of the post-WWII era was compensatory for the "birth-dearth" of the 1930s. And of course, it left a lasting scar on countless Depression-era survivors, including my parents, who were ever-after vigilantly wary about the future and almost obsessively preoccupied with financial security.
Do you see any parallels to how the Great Depression unfolded and how the COVID-19 crisis has evolved, so far?
Both have the character of "black swans" - singular, unanticipated events whose scale and velocity overwhelm existing institutions and bamboozle leaders and citizens alike. History will record both as ghastly events that entailed massive human suffering and left lasting scars. Yet even worst-case scenarios for the current crisis foresee it lasting, at most, four years (until an effective vaccine can be developed and disseminated). That's a scary prospect, to be sure, but let's remember that by the usual metrics (massive unemployment, lowered GDP, stock-market losses), the Great Depression endured for more than a decade, from 1929 to 1941 - and in the case of stock values, it took more than two decades to recover to pre-Depression levels.
What vulnerabilities did the Great Depression expose in American institutions? Are there any similarities to what the COVID-19 crisis is revealing about U.S. society?
The Great Depression starkly revealed the precarity of life for individuals and the enormous elements of risk embedded in many economic sectors and institutions, notably financial markets and the banking system - not to mention the volatilizing implications of the international gold standard and the costs of not having adequate multilateral institutions to cope with a global economic crisis. COVID-19, in turn, has dramatically demonstrated the implications of living in a hyper-globalized world, as well as the price Americans pay for living in a remarkably disarticulated society with under-resourced public agencies that lack the resilience and preparation to cope with a crisis of this magnitude.
What legacies from the Great Depression still remain today?
First and foremost, the Depression demonstrated the indispensable role of government - the bogey-man of much of our political discourse for the last 40 years and more - when it comes to dealing with the kinds of crises we face now and that we faced in the 1930s.

Among the legacies of the Great Depression were some durable innovations to make individual lives and many economic sectors less risky, including both the old-age pension and unemployment-relief features of the Social Security Act of 1935, federal programs to make mortgage lending and home-ownership more accessible, and reforms like the Securities Exchange Commission that brought at least a measure of order and rationality to equity and credit markets. The Depression also inspired a raft of post-WWII international bodies - like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (which eventually morphed into the World Trade Organization) that brought a modicum of stability to international markets, and thereby undergirded unprecedented levels of global trade and investment. Whether the COVID-19 pandemic will incubate comparably consequential innovations remains to be seen.
You once said that a 25 percent unemployment rate would not mean the same thing as it did in 1933. Can you elaborate?
Two considerations: First, no such thing as unemployment insurance existed before 1935. So, there was no "safety net" for those who went jobless and wage-less. Second, fewer than 10 percent of married women worked for wages on the eve of the Great Depression. When we talk about a 25 percent unemployment rate in 1933, we are, in effect, talking about nearly 25 percent of all households that lost their sole breadwinner's income. The demographic profile of today's workforce, where two-income households are common, is decidedly different. That provides at least some cushion against the consequences of job loss today.
How did the New Deal, a set of relief programs and reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1939 to bring economic relief to those affected by the Great Depression, help the nation recover?
For all of its positive legacies - and I do think the New Deal's legacies have been salutary for tens of millions of Americans over several generations - the New Deal notoriously did not bring about economic recovery in the 1930s. It brought unemployment down to about 14 percent by 1936, no trivial achievement, to be sure, but the unemployment rate averaged 17 percent for the decade, and full recovery came only with gargantuan, unprecedented federal expenditures in WWII.

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The Great Depression demonstrated the indispensable role of government

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With the U.S. anticipating an economic downturn not seen since the Great Depression, historian David M. Kennedy reflects on how that calamitous event was a watershed moment in U.S. history and transformed American institutions.

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Relief Blues

Artist make choices in communicating ideas. What information can we learn about the experience of a family applying for government assistance during The Great Depression? What clues does artist O. Louis Guglielmi give us? Observing details and analyzing components of the painting, then putting them in historical context, enables the viewer to interpret the overall message of the work of art.
Observation: What do you see? Is this home?
We see four people and a few simple furnishings in this interior. The space feels cramped with barely enough space to sit around the table and a bed crammed into a corner of the back room. A small stove, prominently placed in the foreground of the painting, does little to warm this shelter with its somber colors and lack of pictures, mementos, or other signs of family life.
Was it always this way?
Two light pink roses decorate the edge of the floor cover. Their delicacy and beauty seem as though they belong to another world. Perhaps these furnishings once filled a more spacious, more comfortable home.
Why so glum?
Guglielmi painted the most expressive features of these people - their hands and faces - especially large. The viewer can clearly see figures' expressions and actions, or lack thereof. The mother, usually so busy in a home, stares despondently out of the painting. She is not doing housework, perhaps because she has little to work with in her sparse surroundings. The daughter puts on her lipstick - is she trying to ignore the situation around her or to "put her best face forward" under difficult circumstances? The father looks at the visitor and holds one hand to his chin. As the traditional family provider, his hands are strangely idle. The visitor, still in her coat and hat, leans towards the father as though listening to him, as she writes on a sheet of paper. The heaviness of her posture and expression suggest that she is burdened by sadness or despair.
Interpretation: What does it mean?
O. Louis Guglielmi painted this experience of receiving government relief around 1938 for the government's Works Progress Administration. The artist himself was on a relief program and he could appreciate the stresses of many of his fellow Americans who needed government assistance in order to survive the Great Depression.

Applying for aid was considered a last resort and a humiliating experience. As part of the process, a case worker would come and inspect a home to ensure that the people living there were truly poor enough to qualify for help. The opened curtain implies that this worker has already inspected the family's living spaces and the fact that she still wears her coat and hat suggests that the room is still cold in spite of the heater. She completes her paperwork at an empty table, indicating that the family has no food or drink to share with her. Case workers, whose jobs were also part of the aid program, faced the desperate situations of fellow citizens time and again. This painting, completed nearly nine years after initial stock market crash, shows the demoralizing, helpless position that was so common amongst Americans at this time.

Construction of the Dam

Artist make choices in communicating ideas. What information can we learn about the New Deal's efforts to promote relief and recovery from the clues in this mural? How would an infrastructure project such as building a dam impact Americans in their everyday lives? Observing details and analyzing components of the painting, then putting them in historical context, enables the viewer to interpret the overall message of the work of art.
Observation: What do you see?
Directly in the center of this three-panel, monumental mural is a section of an enormous pipe being hoisted above a canyon. A man on top of it directs his co-workers, who include a surveyor and an engineer scrutinizing blueprints for the project. In the left panel, bravely positioned on the steep, jagged edges of the canyon, men operate air drills. At the right, six men balance themselves on a large steel buttress.

The artist, William Gropper, emphasized teamwork and physical courage by depicting three separate groups of workers, who labor under the oppressive heat of a southwestern sun. The landscape is rocky and dry; in the background a mountain looms. The image flows across the three-part work, a sun-lit tribute to the American worker as a hero. Gropper deliberately romanticized the scene, showing the men smiling as they put innovative technologies to use to harness the enormous potential power of the water. In the new, industrialized America, he seems to say, technology can conquer anything.
Interpretation: What does it mean?
William Gropper proposed this mural for the Department of the Interior building in Washington, D.C. He based the image on visits to the Grand Coulee Dam on the Colorado River. Gropper organized the composition in three parts to accommodate a second-floor lobby wall divided by two marble pilasters. Gropper's monumental mural illustrates the grand theme of nature submitting to the shaping power of humankind. Each scene represents different phases of construction to show the drama, danger, and massive scale of the dam projects overseen by the government. The depicted Grand Coulee Dam was an inspiring feat of twentieth century engineering. It bettered the lives of millions of people by providing them with electrical power and irrigation for their crops. The dam itself is hardly visible in this mural because Gropper wanted to emphasize the American workers who made it possible; he paid tribute to the courage and strength of the laborers and the country recovered from economic disaster thanks to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal relief programs.

Disaster, Relief, and Recovery

The first rumblings of disaster were heard in September 1929 - stock prices fell, then quickly recovered. On Wednesday, October 23, 1929, more than six million shares changed hands, and about $4 billion in stock value was wiped out. Thursday was worse - more than twelve million shares traded, and by noon, losses had reached $9 billion. The following Tuesday, 16,410,000 shares changed hands. For two weeks, stock prices continued to fall, and by mid-November, roughly one-third of the value of stocks listed in September was lost. It was becoming clear that recovery would be neither swift nor easy, and that company promises of wages and pensions had been ephemeral.

In reaction to the stock market crash, President Herbert Hoover met with business leaders during the winter of 1929 and 1930. Hoover's administration asked businesses to maintain wage levels in the hope that recovery would be swift, but by the end of 1930 it was clear that recovery would be neither swift nor easy. During the 1920s, banks failed at a rate of more than 500 per year. In the first ten months of 1930, America saw 659 bank closures; during the last two months of the year, sixty more, many of them woefully undercapitalized to begin with, closed their doors. During Hoover's last winter as president, the picture was bleak. Tens of thousands of unemployed lined up at soup kitchens, rode the rails in every direction of the compass hoping to find work, or hitchhiked wherever the roads might take them.

By early 1932, more than ten million Americans were unemployed. Industries such as steel and automobiles which had flourished during the World War I years and fueled the economic boom of the 1920s now came to a virtual halt - the unemployment rate for these industries was as high as fifty percent. Those who held their jobs took shorter hours or reduced wages. Unfortunately President Hoover failed the grasp the direness of the economic crisis and as a result, he was blamed by many Americans for failing to leverage the power of the American government to address the problem. As such, he was soundly defeated for re-election in 1932 by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The New Deal
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933, and announced that "with the support and understanding of people themselves" he would end the "unjustified terror which paralyses." Through Roosevelt's New Deal - his long series of experimental economic programs - he began to restore the faith of the American people in democratic government. Roosevelt had taken office proclaiming the need for "broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe." His series of economic experiments began in March 1933, when Roosevelt sent to Congress what he rightly assessed as "the most drastic and far-reaching farm bill ever proposed in peacetime," the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). Following this, the Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) was put into effect on May 12, 1933, allotting 500 million dollars to give relief to the states, who could then help their citizens who were in need. Infrastructure and conservation work were also a part of FERA.

Roosevelt created the Tennessee Valley Authority and called for a National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which legitimized the right of workers to unionize. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) put Americans to work, providing them with decent nutrition and training to use new technologies. Two hundred thousand young men put to work on conservation and construction projects, projects improving bridges, roads, and sewers, and refurbishing schools and hospitals. A great part of its success was the understanding that the money distributed was not relief but wages.

William Gropper's Construction of the Dam, a mural painted for the lobby of the Department of the Interior, depicts the type of infrastructure projects Americans worked on as part of the New Deal. The heroic and powerful nature of this depiction of the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam were meant to inspire fellow American and provide them hope in a time of uncertainty. The construction of the Grand Coulee fit President Roosevelt's sweeping ambitions for the New Deal: jobs for men on relief, planned prosperity for vast rural regions, new opportunity for the destitute migrant. During a 1934 visit to the Grand Coulee's remote construction site, FDR declared, "This country, which is pretty bare today, is going to be filled with the homes... of a great many families from other states of the union."

The sheer size of the Grand Coulee makes it both a monument and a metaphor. It is one of the largest concrete structures in the world, with 12 million cubic yards of concrete - enough to pave a transcontinental highway. It is 550 feet tall from top to foundation, though not quite as tall as another famed public-works colossus, the 726-foot-tall Hoover Dam. It is, however, several times more massive - Grand Coulee is a mile long to Hoover Dam's quarter-mile length. When it was completed, the Grand Coulee Dam's electricity powered the growth of the Pacific Northwest. President Roosevelt's dedication message, sent from Washington, D.C., spoke of the Grand Coulee's power. "A tremendous stream of energy," FDR wrote, "[will] turn factory wheels to make the lives of men more fruitful. It will light homes and stores in towns and cities." Interior secretary Harold Ickes' statement spoke directly to the Grand Coulee's size: "The dam alone comprises the greatest single structure man has built."

Today, Grand Coulee is still the United States' largest hydrogenerator of electric power, supplying electricity to the entire western United States, from Washington State to New Mexico, as well as parts of Canada. It generates 21 billion kilowatt-hours, enough to power 2 million homes for a year. A million visitors a year travel to rural Washington State to visit the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area, and the dam remains the greatest monument to the New Deal's epic remaking of the American landscape.

On June 28, 1934, President Roosevelt spoke to the country about the New Deal programs in one of his famous radio addresses termed " fireside chats." He told his fellow Americans that his administration had introduced relief "because the primary concern of government dominated by the humane ideals of democracy is the sample principle that in a land of vast resources no one should be permitted to starve. Relief was and continues to be our first consideration . . . direct giving shall, whenever possible, be supplemented by provision for useful and 'remunerative work." The President spoke directly to the American people, asking if the New Deal programs had improved their lives.

Many people wrote to the President, replying to these questions. The letters disagree vastly, according the differences in people's circumstances, backgrounds, and beliefs. Some objected to any relief, while others thought that the New Deal was wonderful, whether or not it helped them personally. Replying to the President's fireside chat query, one American wrote:

I heard your message to the people last night over the radio and was very much empressed [sic] with it. You asked in your Message are you better off than you were last year? My answer I am sorry to say is, I am not. I have not had very much work in the past year. Another one of your questions was, Is your faith in your own individual future more firmly grounded? To that I am glad to say It most certainly is. If I did not have more faith in the future than I have had in the past three years I don't know what in the world I would do.

The advent of World War II would bring American's economy roaring back to life. But in the meantime, the New Deal had rebuilt regional economies and fostered small businesses. It had inserted a notion into the American consciousness that the federal government had a responsibility to ensure the health of the economy and the welfare of its citizens. It patronized the arts and created housing. The New Deal had brought into the fold the rural poor, the marginal immigrant communities in cities, and the elderly and unemployed, and gave them a sense that they too had a stake in the future of the nation.
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Art as Relief

Many of the New Deal programs were innovative, even radical, in treating artists, writers, and playwrights as workers deserving of support. This was new in America, where artists since the colonial era had largely been considered marginal "extras" of society. The mid-1930s saw artists brought to the forefront, with New Deal programs created for unemployed artists eligible for government relief. Artists, newly defined by the government as workers, produced an unprecedented number of artworks, literary works, and theatrical performances, launching the careers of many who would fine fame in later years. President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously exclaimed, "One hundred years from now my administration will be known for its art, not for its relief."

The first New Deal arts program was the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), which was created "to give work to artists by arranging to have competent representatives of the profession embellish public buildings." This seven month-long program (December 1933 through June 1934) funded 3,750 artists to produce 15,600 artworks at a cost of $1.3 million. Artists were encouraged to portray "the American Scene." With this minimal guidance, they turned to local and regional subjects and created a picture of the country striving to survive through hard work and true grit. They were inspired by the idea that their art would be displayed in public spaces for broad audiences. President Franklin D. Roosevelt awarded the ultimate honor by selecting thirty-two PWAP artworks to hand in America's premier public space, the White House. Another 130 paintings hung in the Department of Labor Building, while 451 were displayed in the House of Representatives Office Building. The enormous success of the PWAP spawned other New Deal Arts initiatives, some which lasted into the 1940s.

"[Art] to coax the soul the soul of America back to life." - Gutzon Borglum, sculptor

The better-known successor of the PWAP was the Works Progress Administration (WPA) which ran from 1935 through 1943, spending $12 billion to give jobs to nine million people, with three-fourths of the money going for construction projects. But the WPA took a broad view of "workers," with special programs devised for writers, musicians, actors, and artists. "Why not?" asked President Roosevelt, when criticized for including all these in his recovery effort. "They are human beings. They have to live." The WPA helped such young, up-and-coming artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and O. Louis Guglielmi who, on relief himself, painted Relief Blues for the WPA in 1937.

This powerful painting documents the harsh conditions and emotional toll on Americans during the Great Depression. The painting's title suggest that the effects of the Depression were both economic and psychological. When the economy collapsed, all hope seemed lost. Welfare was offensive to many; they wanted jobs instead. Yet many people had to admit that they could not make it on their own and were forced to apply for help from the government. In this painting Guglielmi shows how a family and all of their belongings are crowded into a small urban apartment, which they have probably had to move into to save money. The case worker at the right has come to inspect the home to make sure that what is stated on their relief form is correct. The small coal-fired heater and the case worker's keeping her coat on, both hint that the family has been unable to afford central heating. All this has been seen and is being recorded by the case worker. This invasion of a family's home for the purpose of making sure that they were truly in need was widely reported as a humiliating ordeal. In Guglielmi's painting, the father seems lost in thought, hiding his feelings as if he is unable to cope with the idea of going on relief; the daughter literally puts her best face on the situation as if hiding behind a mask of makeup as she pretends that everything is normal. Only the mother openly looks out to share her sorrow with the viewer. Many found the process of applying for relief humiliating, but had realized that there were simply no other viable options. A clothing seller recounted how his life fell apart after the stock market crash and he had to apply for relief:

I didn't want to go on relief. Believe me, when I was forced to go to the office for the relief, the tears were running out of my eyes. I couldn't bear myself to take money from anybody for nothing. If it wasn't for those kids - I tell you the truth - many a time it came to my mind to go commit suicide. Than go ask for relief. But somebody has to take care of those kids.

Rural America suffered from the economic downturn as well. In 1937, a group of photographers employed by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) set out to create a pictorial record of the impact of hard times on rural America. Eighty thousand documentary photographs were distributed to newspapers and magazines to show the devastation of the Dust Bowl; and grinding poverty on agricultural lands and people, and some were featured in a 1938 exhibition called How American People Live, producing an overwhelming public response that made New Deal programs more popular than ever. Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" and Walker Evans's Alabama sharecroppers are among these haunting images about profound distress and human dignity. In later years, the program's photographers documented America's mobilization effort for World War II. 164,000 FSA photographs are in the Library of Congress collections as an invaluable resource and moving tribute to hard times.

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FDR's First Inaugural Address, 1933
Read it at The National Archives

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's inaugural address to the nation in 1933 was essentially a declaration of war on the Depression. FDR set out to not only reassure the American public, but lay out his plan for recovery. His plan required the expansion of executive power, something for which this address set out to prepare the American public. Roosevelt stated: "Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations." Though at the same time, he was prepared to recommend measures that he knew could succeed only with strong public pressure in support of extraordinary federal powers to deal with "extraordinary needs."

Transcripts of FDR's Fireside Chats
Read it at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum

Between March 1933 to June 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the American people in a series of 30 speeches broadcast via radio, speaking on a variety of topics from unemployment to banking to fighting fascism in Europe. Millions of Americans found comfort and renewed confidence in their government through these speeches, which became known as the "fireside chats."
Of particular importance are:

On the Bank Crisis - Sunday, March 12, 1933

Outlining the New Deal Program -Sunday, May 7, 1933

On the Purposes and Foundations of the Recovery Program -Monday, July 24, 1933

On the Works Relief Program - Sunday, April 28, 1935

On Economic Conditions -Thursday, April 14, 1938

Memoir of Arcadia Hernandez Lopez - Chapter 12: The Depression
Find it in a Library (Excerpt from page 49)

Excerpt: " Of course, we did not lose any money during the Depression, because we did not have any in the bank or elsewhere to lose. Unemployment became rampant, and the people who continued to work earned a pittance. There were soup lines and many businesses were forced to close. Some teachers were being let go and the rest were paid in script. Times were tough, tough. Few men could afford to get haircuts at my father's barber shop. Before the Depression, they got shaves also; but now they had safety razors and no money, so many men shaved themselves. Father earned very little during this time. All he could give mother was twenty cents a day to feed the family, which had grown to four children. Mother would buy corn dough and frijoles, and we would have tortillas and beans every day. These were hard times, very hard times. We had always helped Daddy to earn money, but now we had to work even harder. We earned money at home by doing the finishing work on children's dresses - hems and embroidery - and by shelling pecans. In the summer, we went to pick cotton. That helped to buy clothes and supplies for school. I was ready to go to college, but there was no money to pay the tuition. There wasn't even enough to take the bus nor to eat at the school cafeteria. So I walked the several miles to school and packed my own brown-bag lunch. Having to walk several miles was not conducive to a happy attitude. When I forgot my lunch, I had to suffer with an empty, aching stomach through classes. "

Source: Barrio Teacher, 1992, Arcadia Hernandez Lopez

Automotive Industry (mural study, Detroit, Michigan Post Office), 1940-1941, William Gropper
The artist took pride in his commissions for the Works Progress Administration (including this mural) and believed that, like the workers shown in this mural, he was a valuable member of a working class intent on rebuilding the nation after the Depression. He wrote to officials at the Treasury Department thanking them for "a great pleasure and stimulant" and vowing that "we will continue to do our part in building a great American Art and Culture"
Automotive Industry (mural, Detroit Public Library), 1940, Marvin Beerbohm
The Works Progress Administration commissioned Automotive Industry for a library in Detroit, the automobile capital of the world. Beerbohm celebrated the nation's industrial might and the sweat of the laborers who made it happen. At the very center of this mural is a cutaway view of an engine, showing the piston arm pushing down and around the crankshaft to turn the wheels. Beerbohm repeated this shape eight times across the span of the image in the muscular arms of the men who build the cars. The different parts and processes of the factory surround these workers who are like the motor's piston and its connecting arm, at the very heart of the enterprise. The WPA commissioned thousands of images like this, not only to encourage blue-collar workers but to help the nation's artists feel that they were a vital part of America's workforce.
Dispossessed , ca. 1938, Mervin Jules Tenement Flats, 1933-1934, Millard Sheets Snow Shovellers, 1934, Jacob Getlar Smith
Mervin Jules's scenes of the urban homeless showed the desperation of people ruined by the Great Depression. Here, an elderly couple have lost their home and sit in despair among their possessions, out of work, old, and vulnerable. Their long faces and defeated poses express the depth of misery. A tray on the ground reflects a group of workers waiting in line, emphasizing the desperation of the times. Jules was committed to the social purpose of art, and although he confronted difficult issues, a curator described him in 1941 as having "an optimism, tempered with courage to face facts as they are . . . At the core of his optimism is respect for just people and their occupations."
Juan Duran, 1933-1934, Kenneth M. Adams Somewhere in America, 1934, Robert Brackman
These ramshackle tenements were home to poor families in the Bunker Hill neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles during the Great Depression. Millard Sheets, like many artist members of regional committees, proudly gave his painting as a gift to his country. The shabbily dressed women in Tenement Flats would be startled to discover that this painting would hang in the elegant surroundings of the White House. PWAP paintings like this one were displayed in reception areas to show President Roosevelt's commitment to art and to ordinary Americans across the country.

Black and white, poor and middle class-all had lost their jobs to the Great Depression. Smith showed them gathered into the ranks of the New Deal social programs that offered them all the means to get through the winter. A boy pulling a sled walks alongside the men, a reminder of the families who looked to these men for their support.
Gold Is Where You Find It, 1934, Tyrone Comfort
Kenneth Adams painted Juan Duran as a proud laborer taking a cigarette break. Duran's heavy coat and blue overalls underscore his enduring strength and echo the folds around his weary eyes. The artist emphasized Duran's strong hands by placing them prominently on his knees, reinforcing the value of manual labor. Like many artists of the 1930s, Adams worked for the Works Progress Administration. He and his peers created images that gave dignity to laborers and helped the artists themselves to feel as though they were valued members of the workforce.

In Robert Brackman's painting the red-checkered cloth and fruit plate reflect popular ideas of home and heartland in the 1930s, but the girl's wary expression makes her seem old beyond her years. During the Great Depression, scenes like this were meant to reflect the nation's strong spirit and to remind Americans of their common bonds rather than their differences. This attitude drove New Deal art projects, which aimed to appeal to broad audiences and affirm shared values. But Brackman's title suggests that he wanted his viewers to think about a class of Americans who were largely excluded from the optimistic imagery that prevailed.

Golden Gate Bridge, 1934, Ray Strong

This panoramic depiction of the Golden Gate Bridge under construction pays tribute to the ambitious feat of engineering required to span the mouth of San Francisco Bay. Strong's painting, with its intense colors and active brushwork, conveys an infectious optimism. Hundreds of tourists who shared the artist's excitement came to gaze at this amazing project that continued despite the financial strains of the Great Depression. President Franklin Roosevelt chose this painting celebrating the triumph of American engineering to hang in the White House.

Rising gold prices during the Great Depression caused many old mines to reopen and sent the hopeful across the American West in search of new strikes. When President and Mrs. Roosevelt chose this painting to hang in the White House, it represented a rapidly rising industry helping to fuel the reviving American economy.

The Great Depression: Crash Course US History - PBS (14 min) TV-G
The Depression happened after the stock market crash, but wasn't caused by the crash. This PBS video will teach you about how the depression started, what Herbert Hoover tried to do to fix it, and why those efforts failed.

The New Deal: Crash Course US History - PBS (15 min) TV-G
This PBS video teaches you about the New Deal, which was president Franklin D. Roosevelt's plan to pull the united States out of the Great Depression of the 1930's. The video discusses some of the most effective and best known programs of the New Deal. Also, who supported the New Deal, and who opposed it?

Exploring all 19 Smithsonian museums is a great way to enhance your curriculum, no matter what your discipline may be. In this section, you'll find resources that we have put together from a variety of Smithsonian museums to enhance your students' learning experience, broaden their skill set, and not only meet education standards, but exceed them.

Subject: Art

Myths in Words and Pictures - Smithsonian Education
The symbolism of Achelous and Hercules features lesson ideas and online interactives.

Subject: History

The Grand Coulee Powers On - Smithsonian Magazine
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's dedication message, sent from Washington, D.C., spoke of the Grand Coulee's power. "A tremendous stream of energy," FDR wrote, "[will] turn factory wheels to make the lives of men more fruitful. It will light homes and stores in towns and cities." Interior secretary Harold Ickes' statement spoke directly to the Grand Coulee's size: "The dam alone comprises the greatest single structure man has built." This article tales a look back at how the powerful dam came to be.

Agricultural Adjustment Act: (AAA) a 1938 New Deal era law which reduced agricultural production by paying farmers subsidies to not plant part of their land in order to reduce crop surplus, therefore effectively raise the value of crops.

Civilian Conservation Corps: (CCC) a New Deal public relief program which employed young men (ages 17-28) to work on conservation projects including the construction of roads, bridges, and dams and the reforestation of nearly 3 million trees to combat the effects of the Dust Bowl.

Dorothea Lange: (1895-1965) American documentary photographer and photojournalist. She is best known for her pioneering Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA).

Farm Security Administration: (FSA) created in 1935 as part of the New Deal, the administration was created to combat rural poverty during the Depression.

Federal Emergency Relief Act: (FERA) 1933; the first governmental action to combat the Depression, the act allotted 500 million dollars to the states in order to provide for the needy and the unemployed.

fireside chats: a series of 30 radio conversations, or chats, given by President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1944. The phrase "fireside chat" was coined in order to evoke an image of the president sitting by a fire in a living room speaking to the American people, seemingly "one on one," to provide them with hope and reassurance during the worst economic crisis in American history.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: (1882-1945) 32nd President of the United States, commonly known by his initials, FDR. He is best known for his series of social programs, called the New Deal, which focused on relief, recovery, and reform to combat the effects of the Great Depression. He won a record four presidential elections, which led to the passage of the 22nd Amendment, barring presidents from serving more than two full terms.

Herbert Hoover: (1874-1964) 31st President of the United States. Hoover took office in 1929, the year the American economy plummeted into the Great Depression. Unfortunately Hoover failed the grasp the direness of the economic crisis and as a result, he was blamed by many for failing to leverage the power of the American government to address the problem. As such, he was soundly defeated for re-election by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Jackson Pollock: (1912-1956) American painter and major figure of the Abstract Expressionist movement. He is best known for his iconic "drip" paintings.

Mark Rothko: (1903-1970) American painter and major figure of the Abstract Expressionist movement, although he refused to self-identify as such.

New Deal: (1933-1938) a series of domestic social programs and projects enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in an effort to combat the crippling effects of the Great Depression. These programs included immediate economic relief, as well as reforms in industry, agriculture, and labor.

National Industrial Recovery Act: (NIRA) passed by Congress in 1933, the Act authorized the President regulate industry in an attempt to regulate prices and stimulate economic recovery.

Public Works of Art Project: (PWAP) a program established to employ artists during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal series of social programs. The program ran from 1933 to 1934.

stock market crash: the severe downturn in stock prices which occurred during a two week period, beginning on October 29, 1929. The crash, while not the sole cause of the Great Depression, heralded the beginning of the Depression.

Tennessee Valley Authorit y: a federally owned corporation established in 1933 to construct dams and power projects in the Tennessee Valley - an area particularly hard hit by the Depression.

Works Progress Administration: (WPA) the largest New Deal agency that employed millions of people to carry out public works projects. These projects included roads, public buildings, bridges, dams and more.

Standard 1A - The student understands the causes of the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression.

5-12 - Analyze the causes and consequences of the stock market crash of 1929.

5-12 - Evaluate the causes of the Great Depression.

7-12 - Explore the reasons for the deepening crisis of the Great Depression and evaluate the Hoover administration's responses.

Standard 1B - The student understands how American life changed during the 1930s.

7-12 - Analyze the impact of the Great Depression on industry and workers and explain the response of local and state officials in combating the resulting economic and social crises.

7-12 - Analyze the impact of the Great Depression on the American family and on ethnic and racial minorities.

9-12 - Explain the cultural life of the Depression years in art, literature, and music and evaluate the government's role in promoting artistic expression.

Standard 2A - The student understands the New Deal and the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
9-12 - Contrast the first and second New Deals and evaluate the success and failures of the relief, recovery, and reform measures associated with each.

Standard 2B - The student understands the impact of the New Deal on workers and the labor movement.
5-12 - Explain how New Deal legislation and policies affected American workers and the labor movement.

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Artist make choices in communicating ideas. What information can we learn about the experience of a family applying for government assistance during The Great Depression? What clues does artist O. Louis Guglielmi give us? Observing details and analyzing components of the painting, then putting them in historical context, enables the viewer to interpret the overall message of the work of art.

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The 1930s New Deal realignment reshaped the party system. The Great Depression acted as the catalyst for a transformation of the party system that moved the Democrats from minority to majority status at the national level. The New Deal Democratic coalition that put Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House and the Democratic Party in control of Congress combined support from the working class and various ethnic and minority groups with already existing strength in the South. The basis of Democratic appeal to blue-collar workers, low-income individuals, and recent immigrant groups (largely Catholics and Jews from southern and eastern Europe) was the party's liberalism in economic matters. Roosevelt and the Democrats favored federal government activity to combat the Depression and proposed programs to benefit disadvantaged groups. The Republicans, who appealed more to the middle-class, business groups, and northern white Protestants, were critical of this expansion of government interference in the economy and creation of a variety of social welfare programs. By the late 1930s, the lines between the two parties were clearly drawn, both in ideological and socioeconomic terms ( Ladd and Hadley 1978, 31-87).

Although the New Deal coalition began to break up in the 1960s, the impact of the New Deal realignment has remained to the present, albeit in a diluted and revised form. Many of the party images of decades past persist to the present. Democrats remain thought of as the party that favors bigger government, more spending on domestic programs, and helping those at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Republicans continue to be perceived as favoring limited government, less spending on domestic programs, and fewer restrictions on business enterprises. Democrats are seen as the party of the working class and lower-income groups. Republicans are viewed as the party of business and upper-income groups. These are not baseless images. They reflect continuing fundamental differences between the parties.

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The 1930s New Deal realignment reshaped the party system. The Great Depression acted as the catalyst for a transformation of the party system that moved the Democrats from minority to majority status at the national level. The New Deal Democratic coalition that put Franklin D.

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Since about 1960, though, the New Deal coalitions have been unraveling in the face of complex
social change. The United States has entered upon a new sociopolitical setting most aptly
described as “postindustrial”involving such conditions as a dramatic increase in national wealth,
advanced technological development, the central importance of knowledge, the elaboration of
national electronic communications processes, new occupational structures, and with them new
life-styles and expectations, which is to say, new social classes and new centers of power.

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The longest war in American history had significant economic effects both domestically and internationally in terms of what was spent on the war and what expenses had to be cut.

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Table of Contents

What was the purpose of the New Deal?

What were the New Deal programs and what did they do?

What were the most important results of the New Deal?

What New Deal programs remain in effect?

New Deal, domestic program of the administration of U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) between 1933 and 1939, which took action to bring about immediate economic relief as well as reforms in industry, agriculture, finance, waterpower, labour, and housing, vastly increasing the scope of the federal government's activities. The term was taken from Roosevelt's speech accepting the Democratic nomination for the presidency on July 2, 1932. Reacting to the ineffectiveness of the administration of Pres. Herbert Hoover in meeting the ravages of the Great Depression, American voters the following November overwhelmingly voted in favour of the Democratic promise of a "new deal" for the "forgotten man." Opposed to the traditional American political philosophy of laissez-faire, the New Deal generally embraced the concept of a government-regulated economy aimed at achieving a balance between conflicting economic interests.

The Hundred Days

Much of the New Deal legislation was enacted within the first three months of Roosevelt's presidency (March 9-June 16, 1933), which became known as the Hundred Days. The new administration's first objective was to alleviate the suffering of the nation's huge number of unemployed workers. Such agencies as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) were established to dispense emergency and short-term governmental aid and to provide temporary jobs, employment on construction projects, and youth work in the national forests. The WPA gave some 8.5 million people jobs. Its construction projects produced more than 650,000 miles of roads, 125,000 public buildings, 75,000 bridges, and 8,000 parks. Also under its aegis were the Federal Art Project, Federal Writers' Project, and Federal Theatre Project. The CCC provided national conservation work primarily for young unmarried men. Projects included planting trees, building flood barriers, fighting forest fires, and maintaining forest roads and trails.

Before 1935 the New Deal focused on revitalizing the country's stricken business and agricultural communities. To revive industrial activity, the National Recovery Administration (NRA) was granted authority to help shape industrial codes governing trade practices, wages, hours, child labour, and collective bargaining. The New Deal also tried to regulate the nation's financial hierarchy in order to avoid a repetition of the stock market crash of 1929 and the massive bank failures that followed. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) granted government insurance for bank deposits in member banks of the Federal Reserve System, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was established in 1934 to restore investor confidence in the stock market by ending the misleading sales practices and stock manipulations that had led to the stock market crash. The farm program, known as the Agricultural Adjustment Act, was signed in May 1933. It was centred in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), which attempted to raise prices by controlling the production of staple crops through cash subsidies to farmers. In addition, the arm of the federal government reached into the area of electric power, establishing in 1933 the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which was to cover a seven-state area and supply cheap electricity, prevent floods, improve navigation, and produce nitrates.

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New Deal | Definition, History, Programs, Summary, & Facts

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New Deal, domestic program of the administration of U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) between 1933 and 1939, which took action to bring about immediate economic relief as well as reforms in industry, agriculture, finance, waterpower, labour, and housing, vastly increasing the scope of the federal government's activities.

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To a large extent, the New Deal contributed to the transformation of the Democratic Party in the United States, by building a broad coalition transforming its image.

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To a large extent, the New Deal contributed to the dominance of the Democratic Party in the United States, by implementing impactful reforms that established its dominance in American politics.

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Point 3: Argue against (counter arguement)

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Point 3: Argue against (counter arguement)

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The Democratic party’s dominance did not last long, as the coalition began to fragment in the 1960s due to evolving social and political dynamics.

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To a large extent, the New Deal contributed to the transformation and dominance of the Democratic Party in the United States, by building a broad coalition and implementing impactful reforms that transformed its image and established its dominance in American politics, although this dominance did not last long, as the coalition began to fragment in the 1960s due to evolving social and political dynamics.

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According to ICPSR’s instructional resources, the New Deal realignment reshaped the party system, moving the Democrats from minority to majority status at the national level

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The New Deal Democratic coalition that put Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House and the Democratic Party in control of Congress combined support from the working class and various ethnic and minority groups with already existing strength in the South. The basis of Democratic appeal to blue-collar workers, low-income individuals, and recent immigrant groups (largely Catholics and Jews from southern and eastern Europe) was the party's liberalism in economic matters. Roosevelt and the Democrats favored federal government activity to combat the Depression and proposed programs to benefit disadvantaged groups. The Republicans, who appealed more to the middle-class, business groups, and northern white Protestants, were critical of this expansion of government interference in the economy and creation of a variety of social welfare programs. By the late 1930s, the lines between the two parties were clearly drawn, both in ideological and socioeconomic terms (Ladd and Hadley 1978, 31-87).

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The new administration’s first objective was to alleviate the suffering of the nation’s huge number of unemployed workers. Such agencies as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) were established to dispense emergency and short-term governmental aid and to provide temporary jobs, employment on construction projects, and youth work in the national forests. The WPA gave some 8.5 million people jobs. Its construction projects produced more than 650,000 miles of roads, 125,000 public buildings, 75,000 bridges, and 8,000 parks. Also under its aegis were the Federal Art Project, Federal Writers’ Project, and Federal Theatre Project.

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During the New Deal era, each of the two main parties had its reasonably secure bases among certain social groups. The Republicans were the party of the Northeast, of business, of the middle classes, and of white Protestants, while the Democrats enjoyed a clear majority among the working classes, organized labor, Catholics, and the South. And these sources of respective party strength could be counted upon at all levels of the election process--in voting for president, Congress, lesser offices, and in underlying party identification. After 1960, however, this condition of relatively secure party bailiwicks defined by ethnicity, class, and region began breaking down rapidly. The Democrats emerged almost everywhere outside the presidential arena as the "everyone" party. The depiction is not intended literally, of course. Rather, it is meant to describe a novel situation in which one party had more, at least nominal, adherents than its opposition among virtually all relevant groups. Since 1960 few social collectivities have given the Republicans regular pluralities either in party identification or in the sweep of subpresidential voting.