https://millercenter.

org/president/fdroosevelt/domestic-affairs

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: DOMESTIC AFFAIRS

By William E. Leuchtenburg

FDR's mandate as a first-term President was clear and challenging: rescue the United States from the throes of its
worst depression in history. Economic conditions had deteriorated in the four months between FDR's election and
his inauguration. Unemployment grew to over twenty-five percent of the nation's workforce, with more than twelve
million Americans out of work. A new wave of bank failures hit in February 1933. Upon accepting the Democratic
nomination, FDR had promised a "New Deal" to help America out of the Depression, though the meaning of that
program was far from clear.

In trying to make sense of FDR's domestic policies, historians and political scientists have referred to a "First New
Deal," which lasted from 1933 to 1935, and a "Second New Deal," which stretched from 1935 to 1938. (Some
scholars believe that a "Third New Deal" began in 1937 but never took root; the descriptor, likewise, has never
gained significant currency.) These terms, it should be remembered, are the creations of scholars trying to impose
order and organization on the Roosevelt administration's often chaotic, confusing, and contradictory attempts to
combat the depression; Roosevelt himself never used them. The idea of a "first "and "second" New Deal is useful
insofar as it reflects important shifts in the Roosevelt administration's approach to the nation's economic and social
woes. But the boundaries between the first and second New Deals should be viewed as porous rather than concrete.
In other words, significant continuities existed between the first and second New Deals that should not be
overlooked.

One thing is clear: the New Deal was, and remains, difficult to categorize. Even a member of FDR's administration,
the committed New Dealer Alvin Hansen, admitted in 1940 that "I really do not know what the basic principle of the
New Deal is." Part of this mystery came from the President himself, whose political sensibilities were difficult to
measure. Roosevelt certainly believed in the premises of American capitalism, but he also saw that American
capitalism circa 1932 required reform in order to survive. How much, and what kind of, reform was still up in the air.
Upon entering the Oval Office, FDR was neither a die-hard liberal nor a conservative, and the policies he enacted
during his first term sometimes reflected contradictory ideological sources.

This ideological and political incoherence shrank in significance however, next to what former Supreme Court Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes described as a "first class temperament," exemplified by the President's optimism, self-
confidence, pragmatism, and flexibility. Above all, FDR was an optimist, offering hope to millions of Americans who
had none. His extreme self-confidence buoyed an American public unsure of the future or even present course. This
intoxicating mix made FDR appear the paragon of leadership, a father-figure who reassured a desperate nation in his
inaugural address that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." FDR also brought to the White House a
pragmatic approach to governance. He claimed he would try something to end the depression, and if it worked he
would move on to the next problem. If it failed, he would assess the failure and try something else.

Lifting America out of the Depression was a large task. To help him, FDR depended on a sizable coterie of advisers to
a degree unprecedented in the history of the presidency. FDR brought many veterans of his governorship to
Washington. Raymond Moley, a professor of public law and a member of the "Brain Trust," joined the
administration, as did Harry Hopkins, who ran New York's program for the unemployed. Francis Perkins, who had
known FDR since their days in the state legislature, became the first women ever to hold a cabinet office, taking
charge at the Department of Labor. In the main, these advisers were political liberals.
With this collection of advisers, FDR set up his White House staff. Eschewing a hierarchical form of organization, or
even one with each aide given a clearly delineated duty, Roosevelt instead meted out tasks to his advisers,
sometimes charging them with similar duties. Additionally, FDR often appointed advisers of clashing temperaments
and beliefs to the same policy issue, leading to internal confrontations and squabbling. The benefits of this system
were that FDR received political and policy advice from a range of advisers with different ideological predilections
and political connections. It also left the President with an array of options and allowed him to forge a consensus
within his own administration about the direction, both in terms of policy and politics, of his presidency. Finally, it
produced a degree of flexibility in the policymaking process, which harmonized with Roosevelt's often experimental
approach to the New Deal. The main drawback to this type of governance was that the New Deal often appeared to
be moving in several directions, many of them contradictory, all at once.

The First New Deal: Saving Capitalism?

The First New Deal began almost immediately upon Roosevelt's assumption of the presidency. FDR invoked the
"analogue of war" as he spurred Congress towards a flurry of legislative activity that became known as the "Hundred
Days"—from March to June 1933—in which the new President won passage of numerous bills designed to end the
nation's economic troubles. In general, the First New Deal looked to stabilize the U.S. financial system, provide relief
and jobs to the suffering, and reenergize America's capitalist economy. He sought to achieve this last objective by
building partnerships between business and government to resuscitate industrial production. In carrying forward this
agenda, FDR began to recreate the role of the federal government in American economic and political life.

Banking and Finance

FDR's immediate task upon his inauguration was to stabilize the nation's banking system. On March 6, Roosevelt
declared a national "bank holiday" to end a run by depositors seeking to withdraw their money from faltering banks.
FDR also called Congress into emergency session where the legislature enacted, nearly sight unseen, the President's
banking proposal. Under this plan, the federal government would inspect all banks, re-open those that were
sufficiently solvent, re-organize those that could be saved, and close those that were beyond repair. On March 12,
FDR went on the radio—giving the first of many "fireside chats"—to explain his plan to Americans and to assure
them that their money would be safe in the re-opened banks. During the following weeks, Americans returned
nearly $1 billion dollars to bank vaults.

FDR then won a significant number of other reforms related to the nation's financial sector. In May 1933, he signed
the Securities Act, which required corporations and stockbrokers to release accurate information about stocks to
investors. In June 1933, he signed the Glass-Steagall Act, which created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation,
guaranteeing the savings of average citizens, and prevented commercial banks from engaging in investment banking,
which they had been carrying on in scandalous fashion. In 1934, the Securities and Exchange Act created the
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which was charged with regulating financial markets.

Roosevelt in 1933 took America off the gold standard, and the Banking Act of 1935 gave the country a central
banking mechanism for the first time. A reorganized Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) spun off subsidiaries
such as the Federal National Mortgage Association ("Fannie Mae") that, along with the Federal Housing
Administration (FHA) made it possible for millions of Americans to buy or renovate homes. Taken together, these
innovations, one writer has said, marked the beginning of the end of Wall Street's domination of finance capitalism"
and "represented the shift of economic power form the lower part of Manhattan, where it had been for over a
century, to Washington."

Relief and Jobs

To meet the immediate crisis of starvation and the dire needs of the nation's unemployed, FDR established several
public relief programs in 1933. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) made direct cash allocations
available to states for immediate payments to the unemployed.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) put 300,000 young men to work in 1,200 camps planting trees, building
bridges, and cleaning beaches. Finally, the Civil Works Administration (CWA) spent almost $1 billion on public works
projects, including airports and roads. Roosevelt shut the CWA after only four months, however, because it was so
costly.

The benefits of these three programs were obvious: they provided relief for millions of Americans on the verge of
outright starvation and gave unemployed Americans jobs. Conservative attacked relieve programs as handouts to
the undeserving poor and derided the CCC and CWA as "make work" projects that added little to American society.
In fact, Americans in the twenty-first century continue to enjoy the picnic tables, the cabins, and the forest roads
built by FDR's "tree army."

Agricultural and Rural America

In the hope of spurring the recovery of American agriculture, Roosevelt asked Congress to pass the Agricultural
Adjustment Act (AAA), which it did in May 1933. FDR and his advisers believed that overproduction had caused gluts
in the farm market, dropping prices, and, in turn, sending farmers' incomes plummeting. The AAA aimed to inflate
farmers' incomes by offering cash incentives to farmers who agreed to cut production. The AAA originally covered
wheat, corn, cotton, hogs, milk, rice, and tobacco, but Congress added new commodities to the program in the
ensuing years.

More than three million farmers joined the AAA program in its first year, and farm income did increase by more than
fifty percent between 1932 and 1935. Despite these impressive gains, the benefits of the AAA too often accrued to
large farm-owners rather than the millions of poor white and African American tenant farmers and sharecroppers
who lived in abject poverty. Moreover, AAA policies stressed the lowering of production—which in a few cases in
1933 meant that crops were plowed under and livestock killed. With many Americans hungry and ill-clothed, critics
labeled such policies "utterly idiotic."Roosevelt also believed it imperative to reduce poverty in rural areas. The Farm
Credit Association, another offshoot of the RFC, lent more than a billion dollars to families to save their farms from
foreclosure. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration and the Resettlement Administration sponsored
experimental rural communities and greenbelt towns. The Farm Security Administration (FSA) enabled tenant
farmers to buy farms and built modern labor camps for migrants like John Steinbeck's fictional Joads. Perhaps
nothing did more to rescue the farm family from isolation than the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) which
brought electricity for the first time to millions of rural homes and with it such conveniences as radios and washing
machines.
The REA is only one example of FDR's interest in public power, which he had sponsored as governor of New York.
Huge dams—Grand Coulee and Bonneville—transformed the economy of the Pacific Northwest. Still more important
was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The Tennessee Valley stretched some 40,000 square miles from Virginia
to Mississippi and was the poorest region in the nation. The TVA aimed to marshal the area's natural resources into
an engine of economic uplift by building dams and power plants that would bring jobs, electricity, and flood control
to the Valley. A number of Tennessee Valley natives criticized the TVA for displacing thousands of people—usually
poor farmers—to make way for power plants and dams. But by the end of the 1930s, the TVA had brought millions
of southern Americans electric power, roads, and jobs in regions that previously had no phones, electric lights, or
stable employment. In later years, the TVA's dams and power plants wreaked havoc on the environment by spewing
pollution. The TVA however, also did a great deal to restore badly eroded hillsides, and another New Deal agency,
the Soil Conservation Service, trained farmers in the proper methods of cultivation. As Theodore Roosevelt is the
father of forest conservation, Franklin Roosevelt is the father of soil conservation.

Resuscitating American Industry

Finally, in some of the most controversial legislation of his administration, Roosevelt set out to help American
industry get back onto its feet. The centerpiece of his industrial recovery program was the National Industrial
Recovery Act (NIRA) that Congress passed in June 1933. Drawing its inspiration from the federal government's efforts
at economic planning during World War I and the voluntary trade associations of the 1920s, the NIRA provided for
national economic planning as opposed to individualistic and competitive, laissez-faire capitalism.

The NIRA created two new agencies, the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the National Recovery
Administration (NRA). The PWA, run by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, had a budget of over $3 billion.
Overseeing the construction of large-scale public works (including such landmarks San Francisco's Golden Gate
Bridge and New York City's Triborough Bridge), it hoped to stimulate the economy by creating jobs and, more
important, by generating orders for materials that American industry produced. To some degree, the PWA
accomplished this mission, although Ickes was such a scrupulous administrator—sometimes scrutinizing contracts
line by line—that he failed to spend all the money available to him.

The NRA, however, was the cornerstone of FDR's plan for industry. It proposed a business-government partnership
in which business leaders, under the watchful eye of the NRA, would draft fair codes of competition regulating prices
and wages. The codes would also outlaw cutthroat practices, such as below-cost sales and child labor. Unhealthy
competition between businesses would thus become a thing of the past, spurring job creation and economic growth.
Additionally, section 7a of the NIRA guaranteed labor the right to organize and bargain collectively. As an enticement
to business, the NIRA suspended antitrust laws that had been reviled by business leaders since the beginning of the
twentieth century.

Under the leadership of General Hugh Johnson, the NRA attempted to rally public support to its program, hoping
that public pressure, rather than federal government power, would compel American industry to support the NRA.
Johnson held rallies and parades and urged businesses which had agreed to the codes to put the NRA's symbol, the
Blue Eagle, in their store fronts. In sum, the NRA signified FDR's belief that business, with a little push from
government, could regulate itself.
This strategy proved inadequate, and perhaps naive. Businesses heeded the codes when they saw fit, and ignored
them when it served their purposes. Small business owners complained, with good reason, that big businesses
dominated the code-drafting process and looked to drive their smaller competitors out of the market. Labor unions
enjoyed a new-found legitimacy—symbolized by the millions of workers who joined—but found that businesses
ignored provisions that guaranteed worker's wages and hours. By the end of 1933, it was clear that the NRA was
anything but a success.

New Deal Critics

FDR promised an energetic attack on the Great Depression with his New Deal. He kept his word, urging Congress to
pass laws which established dozens of New Deal programs. But the New Deal accumulated a record of notable
failures as well as successes. Mixed results were not the only enemy of the early New Deal, however. A host of critics
arose on the Political Left and Right to attack Roosevelt and his policies. In 1934, conservative businessmen—and
dissident Democrats like 1928 presidential candidate Al Smith—formed the American Liberty League, which tarred
the New Deal as a radical and un-American assault upon the basic principles of capitalism and free enterprise.

Others criticized FDR for not doing enough for those hardest hit by the Depression: the poor, the elderly, and the
working class. Democratic Senator Huey Long of Louisiana was an early supporter of the New Deal, but soon accused
FDR of falling captive to American business interests. Long insisted that his "share our wealth" plan of income
redistribution would "make every man a king." Another early supporter of the New Deal, Detroit's Father Charles
Coughlin, took to the radio airwaves in 1934 to tell his estimated 40 million listeners that the key to ending the
depression was "free silver"—the populist solution of the 1890s. Finally, Dr. Francis Townsend, a California physician,
attacked FDR for not doing enough to help elderly Americans.

Another powerful opponent of FDR's New Deal initiatives came from within the government: the United States
Supreme Court. In a series of landmark cases, the Court struck down some of the most important pieces of New Deal
legislation. In the May 1935 Schechter decision, the Court invalidated the NIRA on the grounds that Congress had
improperly delegated its powers to the Executive and that it unconstitutionally interfered with intra-state
commerce. In 1936, the Court's Butler decision shut down the AAA because of its tax provisions. FDR legitimately
worried that the Court might reject most of the New Deal's legislation as unconstitutional. Moreover, growing
criticism of the New Deal—from the Left, from the Right, and from within the government—revealed that FDR's
popular support might be ebbing as the 1936 presidential election came into view.

The Second New Deal

Roosevelt, as a result, began to change direction, inaugurating what scholars have come to call the "Second New
Deal." In the summer of 1935, during what became known as the "Second Hundred Days" (June to August, 1935)
FDR won passage of a slew of progressive legislation that almost single-handedly dedicated the United States
government to providing a minimum level of social and economic protection for all Americans. Three major
initiatives represented the administration's turn to the political left: the Works Progress Administration (WPA); the
Wagner-Connery National Labor Relations Act (or the Wagner Act, for short); and the Social Security Act.
In April—prior to the beginning of the Second Hundred Days—Congress approved the Emergency Relief
Appropriation Act, creating the WPA .

Under the leadership of Harry Hopkins, the WPA aimed to give unemployed Americans jobs rather than signing them
up for the dole. By 1937, three million Americans were receiving WPA checks for building schools, hospitals, and
airports. and for pursuing cultural projects in theater, music, literature, and history. Together with the PWA, the
WPA transformed the face of the land—from La Guardia Airport and the Triborough Bridge in New York to the
Orange Bowl in Miami to the Oregon Coastal Highway. The National Youth Administration (NYA), an agency of the
WPA, trained and employed hundreds of thousands of teenagers and made it possible for many more young people,
including the future playwright Arthur Miller, to work their way through college.

FDR also belatedly threw his support behind the Wagner-Connery National Labor Relations Act, which had been
languishing in Congress. This legislation guaranteed labor unions the right to organize and bargain collectively—and
established the National Labor Relations Board to enforce these rights. It also curbed employer use of "unfair labor
practices," like blacklisting union organizers or unionized workers. Because of the legitimacy conferred on unions by
the Wagner Act, the legislation came to be known as the "Magna Carta" for American labor unions. With this new
political power, union membership swelled to more than 13 million Americans during World War II.

Finally, in August, FDR signed the Social Security Act of 1935. Long a goal of liberals, this bill, like the Wagner Act, had
been stalled in Congress until FDR declared it vital legislation. With its passage came programs like Old Age
Assistance (Title I), Old Age Insurance (Title II), Unemployment Insurance (Title III), Aid to Dependent Children (Title
IV) and Aid to the Blind (Title V). Taken together, these programs represented a significant commitment to
developing a welfare state in the United States.

This phase of the New Deal did not constitute an uninterrupted revolution of progressive legislation. Roosevelt
proposed a tax scheme in 1935 that would have greatly increased the tax bills of wealthy Americans and
corporations. Conservatives in Congress, however, watered down the proposal considerably. Likewise, FDR's attempt
to break up large public utilities holding companies with the Public Utilities Holding Company Act ignited a political
firestorm on Capitol Hill that resulted in a weakened bill—and one that eventually benefited the utilities.

The reforms wrought by FDR's "Second New Deal" also had several weaknesses. The WPA, for all its efforts, failed to
lift the country out of its economic doldrums. The Social Security Act financed its programs through deductions from
workers' paychecks, which actually stunted economic growth by muting consumer purchasing power. Moreover, the
programs and benefits of the Social Security Act were not distributed evenly among all Americans. Agricultural
workers (who were likely to be African Americans or Mexican Americans of both sexes) and domestic servants (often
African American women) were not eligible for old-age insurance (what is now commonly referred to as "social
security"); farm laborers also were ineligible for unemployment insurance. Likewise, since many of these social
security programs were administered by state governments, the size of benefits varied widely, especially between
the North and the South.

Reorganizing the Government

FDR's policies were wildly popular with large segments of the American population, as his overwhelming victory in
1936 made clear. At his inauguration in 1937, FDR vowed to continue fighting for the nation's underprivileged, the
"one-third of nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." FDR understood, though, that despite his victory in the 1936
election, his New Deal program was by no means safe. The Supreme Court and a phalanx of Republicans and
conservative Democrats had at various times proven hostile to FDR's New Deal. FDR set out in his second term to
remove these roadblocks. All too often, however, he encountered stiff resistance.

The Supreme Court topped FDR's list of concerns. If the Court had ruled the centerpiece of the early New Deal
unconstitutional, FDR reasoned, it was likely to do the same to subsequent programs, such as the Social Security Act,
when they appeared on the Court's docket. Roosevelt's best hope was for the composition of the Court to change.
But older, conservative justices opposed to FDR's program refused to retire—and some of the most ardent New Deal
supporters surmised that these jurists simply refused to die—so FDR sought a more systematic way to shield his
policies from court action.

In early February, 1937, he proposed legislation that would expand the membership of the Court, adding a new
justice for every sitting justice over the age of seventy-five. This maneuver would have put six new Roosevelt-
appointed justices on the Court, giving FDR a comfortable majority that could be expected to validate the New Deal.
Though most of the press erupted in fury, denouncing FDR as a would-be dictator, he had so large a majority in both
houses of Congress (5-1 in the Senate, 4-1 in the House) that political commentators expected the bill to pass. But in
late-March the Court began to uphold state and federal social legislation in what has been called "the switch in time
that saved nine." When the bill finally reached the Senate floor in July, Roosevelt no longer had the votes he needed.
He claimed, though, with good reason, that though he had lost the battle he had won the war, for never again did
the Court strike down a New Deal law. Scholars differ on why the Court changed, but they almost all agree that what
happened in 1937 was nothing less than a "Constitutional Revolution." From that day to this, the Court has not
invalidated a single piece of major New Deal legislation regulating business or expanding social rights.

In addition to revamping the Supreme Court, FDR believed that he needed to reform and strengthen the Presidency,
and specifically the administrative units and bureaucracy charged with implementing the chief executive's policies.
During his first term, FDR quickly found that the federal bureaucracy, specifically at the Treasury and State
Departments, moved too slowly for his tastes. FDR often chose to bypass these established channels, creating
emergency agencies in their stead. "Why not establish a new agency to take over the new duty rather than saddle it
on an old institution?" asked the President. "If it is not permanent," he continued, "we don't get bad
precedents."FDR would look at other ways to increase his administrative and bureaucratic power. His 1937 plan for
executive reorganization called for the President to receive six full-time executive assistants, for a single
administrator to replace the three-member Civil Service Commission, for the President and his staff to assume more
responsibility in budget planning, and for every executive agency to come under the control of one of the cabinet
departments. The President's conservative critics pounced on the plan, seeing it as an example of FDR's imperious
and power-hungry nature; Congress successfully bottled up the bill. But in 1939, Congress did pass a reorganization
bill that created the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and allowed FDR to shift a number of executive agencies
(including the Bureau of the Budget) to its watch. While FDR did not get the far-reaching result he sought in 1937,
the 1939 legislation strengthened the Presidency immeasurably.

Some of the more liberal measures of the New Deal encountered stiff resistance in Congress, often from
conservative Southerners within the President's own party. As a result, FDR attempted in 1938 to purge conservative
congressional Democrats by supporting their more liberal opponents in the party's primaries. He went after Senators
Millard Tydings (MD), "Cotton Ed" Smith (SC), and Walter George (GA), as well as seven other conservative
Democrats. FDR's plan failed miserably; of the ten Democrats he targeted for ouster, only one lost. The others
returned to Washington even more antagonistic toward the President. In addition, many other Democrats resented
the President's meddling in local affairs.

Economic Collapse and a Slow Recovery

These controversies, largely political in scope, occurred against the backdrop of a collapsing economy. Beginning in
the fall of 1937, industrial production fell by 33 percent, national income dropped by 12 percent, and industrial stock
prices plummeted by 50 percent. Nearly 4 million people lost their jobs, and the total number of unemployed
increased to 11.5 million. The "Roosevelt recession" occurred largely because the President, along with some of his
advisers (led by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau) were determined to balance the federal budget and
had, as a result, reduced government spending. In 1936, the government contributed $4.1 billion to consumer
purchasing power, versus less than $1 billion in 1937.

The recession hit hard and, at first, Roosevelt chose to maintain his fiscally conservative course. In April 1938,
worried that a continuing recession and the appearance of White House inactivity would doom Democrats in the
1938 congressional midterm elections, FDR jettisoned Morgenthau's advice. Instead, he listened to Harry Hopkins
and other advisers who believed that government spending on relief and public works would revive the economy—
even if such spending produced ever larger deficits. Their rationale for this approach was that the depression was
the product of under-consumption and that putting money in the hands of consumers—"priming the pump"—would
stimulate consumer spending and perk up the economy. Accordingly, FDR asked Congress for a $5 billion relief
program, which passed in the spring and summer of 1938.

Despite this infusion of federal money into the economy, the nation still suffered from under-consumption and lay
mired in depression. In 1939, over 19 percent of the nation's work force remained unemployed. Stock prices had yet
to recover from the crash of the late 1920s. Despite the New Deal, the U.S. economy in 1940, though considerably
improved, had not yet regained its former vigor.

In hindsight, many economists and historians claim that FDR's strategy of "deficit-spending" and "pump-priming"
was sound, but that $5 billion was too small to jump-start the nation's economy. Nonetheless, as the historian Alan
Brinkley has argued, a generation of economic policymakers adopted the view that the manipulation of government
fiscal policies was the key to maintaining a healthy economy. As a result, this approach colored federal efforts to
regulate the economy for the next thirty years.

The War Years

World War II, not the New Deal, brought an end to the Great Depression. The war sparked the kind of job creation
and massive public and private spending that finally lifted the United States out of its economic doldrums. It was a
mammoth effort in which the vast majority of America's industrial and human resources were brought to bear. Great
ships were built in weeks, then in days. American-made vehicles all but put the entire Russian Army on wheels.
Airplanes emerged from factories in days. American industry churned out guns, munitions, and clothing. Women and
African Americans benefited greatly from this war-time economy, as the former joined the workforce in
unprecedented numbers while the latter left the rural and poor South to find industrial employment, as well as
voting rights and a less oppressive legal and social system, in the North.

Sacrifice was the word of the day. The nation's two main labor union federations, the AFL and the CIO, agreed not to
strike. Americans, sometimes begrudgingly, submitted to the federal government's rationing of everything from
gasoline to shoes to food. New automobiles, radios, and other big-ticket items were virtually unavailable for
purchase. In addition to rationing, the government coordinated the use of raw materials and the production of
staple goods. Indeed, during the war the federal government played an even larger role in the functioning of the
American economy than it did during the New Deal. In the process, the Roosevelt administration ran up massive
deficits.

This extraordinary economic mobilization came with great costs. African Americans still lived as second-class citizens,
helping fight a war against racist and oppressive nations while enduring racism and oppression at home. The new
jobs they moved into often paid poorly and offered little chance for advancement. World War II, though, was also a
time of advance for African Americans. The NAACP multiplied its membership, and the Supreme Court struck down
the white primary. Women, while joining the workplace at great rates, still suffered from sex discrimination once on
the job. They earned less than men for doing the same work and received few opportunities for promotion. Yet, as
with African Americans, women made permanent gains during the war. Some historians have even seen in World
War II the origins of the women's liberation movement of the 1960s.

Finally, in the wake of the hysteria following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Roosevelt administration
relocated Americans of Japanese descent, more than 110,000 persons, to prison camps. Many of them stayed there
until the war's conclusion, even as their sons died in Europe fighting Nazi Germany. It was one of the most
disgraceful acts in American history, one sanctioned by FDR and validated by the Supreme Court. Only in the 1980s
did the American government admit its flagrant violation of the constitutional rights of these American citizens.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: THE AMERICAN FRANCHISE

By William E. Leuchtenburg

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.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: IMPACT AND LEGACY

By William E. Leuchtenburg

Franklin Delano Roosevelt served as President from March 1933 to April 1945, the longest tenure in American
history. He may have done more during those twelve years to change American society and politics than any of his
predecessors in the White House, save Abraham Lincoln. Of course, some of this was the product of circumstances;
the Great Depression and the rise of Germany and Japan were beyond FDR's control. But his responses to the
challenges he faced made him a defining figure in American history.

Americans elected Roosevelt President in 1932 because they believed he could combat the Depression more
effectively than his Republican opponent, President Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt promised a "new deal" and he
certainly delivered. By implementing a variety of innovative policies, FDR was able to pull the United States away
from the brink of economic, social, and perhaps even political, disaster—and lay the foundation for future stability
and prosperity.

Under FDR, the American federal government assumed new and powerful roles in the nation's economy, in its
corporate life, and in the health, welfare, and well-being of its citizens. The federal government in 1935 guaranteed
unions the right to organize and bargain collectively, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established a
mechanism for putting a floor under wages and a ceiling on hours that continues to this day. It provided, in 1935,
financial aid to the aged, infirm, and unemployed when they could no longer provide for themselves. Beginning in
1933, it helped rural and agricultural America with price supports and development programs when these sectors
could barely survive. Finally, by embracing an activist fiscal policy after 1937, the government assumed responsibility
for smoothing out the rough spots in the American economy.

Writ large, the New Deal sought to insure that the economic, social, and political benefits of American capitalism
were distributed more equally among America's large and diverse populace. The New Deal did this to a remarkable
degree. But FDR's New Deal failed to cure completely the Depression-induced ills of the American economy. By
1940, the percentage of Americans without jobs remained in double digits and the American people lacked the
purchasing power to jump start the economy. Only American entry into World War II ended this torpor.

If capitalism was still sick in 1940, democracy was also suffering from various maladies. African Americans and
women, despite a number of benefits accrued from the New Deal, still received far fewer of those benefits than
white males and, partly as a result, remained at the bottom of the American economic ladder. The New Deal,
moreover, did nothing to ensure that rights guaranteed to all Americans via the Constitution, such as the right to
vote and the right to a fair trial, were guaranteed to blacks.

If FDR was elected in 1932 to fight the Depression, he was largely re-elected in 1940 because Americans believed he
could guide the nation through a period of treacherous international relations. FDR correctly understood that Japan
and Germany threatened the United States, which in turn endangered the cherished freedoms Americans enjoyed at
home. With the onset of war in 1939, FDR ably guided America's efforts to aid its allies without formally entering
into hostilities. When Japan and Germany forced his hand in December 1941, Roosevelt rallied Americans in support
of a massive war effort, both at home and abroad.

FDR hoped that the war would produce a more secure and peaceful postwar world, and he became a major
proponent of a postwar United Nations, in which the United States would be a leading member. FDR, however, left
to his successors the thorny problem of relations with the Soviet Union, which quickly replaced Germany and Japan
as America's chief global adversary. Nonetheless, a sea change had occurred in American foreign relations under
FDR. By 1945, the United States had become a global power with global responsibilities—and its new leaders both
understood this new reality and had the tools at their disposal to shape the world accordingly.

FDR also reshaped the American presidency. Through his "fireside chats," delivered to an audience via the new
technology of radio, FDR built a bond between himself and the public—doing much to shape the image of the
President as the caretaker of the American people. Under FDR's leadership, the President's duties grew to
encompass not only those of the chief executive—as implementer of policy—but also chief legislator—as drafter of
policy. And in trying to design and craft legislation, FDR required a White House staff and set of advisers unlike any
seen previously in Washington. The President now needed a full-time staff devoted to domestic and foreign policies,
with expertise in these areas, and a passion for governance. With enactment of the Executive Reorganization bill in
1939, FDR changed the shape of the White House forever. In sum, President Roosevelt greatly increased the
responsibilities of his office. Fortunately for his successors, he also enhanced the capacity of the presidency to meet
these new responsibilities.