How did president hoover react to the bonus army

The Great Depression 1929-1941

Introduction

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) defeated Herbert Hoover decisively in the 1932 presidential election, no one expected his extraordinary political success. Hoover became president in 1928 because of the economy--voters felt they and the nation were thriving. He lost in 1932 because of the economy-- voters had lost confidence in his ability to end the massive depression.

Unlike Hoover, FDR favored direct involvement by the federal government to deal with the economic crisis. He launched a series of dramatic policy initiatives that became known collectively as the New Deal. He created so many federal agencies with acronyms--for example, the WPA (Works Progress Administration), the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), and the FSA (Farm Security Administration)--they were referred to collectively as an "alphabet soup.”

Although Americans did not realize it in 1932, the election of Roosevelt would usher in the establishment of the modern federal state--one that would significantly expand the role of the federal government and spread wealth to more of its citizens.

President Hoover and President-Elect Roosevelt Enroute to the 1933 Inauguration

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Section 1: The Great Depression Focus Questions: • Section Question: 


How did the Great Depression happen, and how did Americans respond to economic disaster?

• Question: 
 What were the causes of the Great Depression, and how did the Hoover administration react to the Great Crash and ensuing Depression?
 Terms:

• Stock market risk • "Black Tuesday" • The stock market decline • Reconstruction Finance Corporation • The unemployment rate • Banking crisis • Poverty in the 1920s • Hoover Administration economic policies • Relief The Depression had both short-term and long-term causes. Until October 1929, the value of stock grew steeply and investors naively believed the rise could continue indefinitely. When the stock market crashed on "Black Thursday," October 24, 1929, the worst downturn of the stock market in US history, panic spread. Investors, fearing losses, sold stock, which of course deepened the decline.

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Over the next few years, not only did the value of stock continue to fall, but thousands of banks failed, in part because they had loaned large sums of money to stock speculators who couldn't repay their bank loans. When a bank failed, its depositors' savings were essentially gone, so millions of middle- and working-class people--most of whom had not speculated in the stock market-- lost their life savings. Credit dried up, and businesses began laying off workers

As unemployment rose, consumer spending plummeted, which led to further layoffs. Home and farm foreclosure rates skyrocketed, and many Americans became homeless. By the time FDR was inaugurated in March 1933, the unemployment rate was 25 percent, while the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) had dropped by 27 percent between 1929 and 1933. Depositors Standing Outside Bank of United States After It Failed, 1931

! Despite this crisis, Hoover and many Americans believed the downturn was temporary and would soon right itself. And why not? During the 1920s wealth in the US doubled and average income rose by 30 percent. For the first time many could purchase new, modern products. With the application of the assembly line to auto manufacturing, auto prices fell and the percentage of households owning cars rose from 30 to 80 percent. In 1921 there were 5 radio stations, in 1923, over 550. In 1925, 19 percent of households had a radio, but by 1929, 35-40 percent did. Through radio, advertising boomed and encouraged listeners to buy products. When World War I ended in 1918, European countries, with economies devastated by the war, were dependent on US loans and agricultural produce. American agricultural and industrial productivity rose. By the 1920s a majority of Americans, for the first time, lived in towns and cities. And in cities most had access to electricity, which increased the demand for electrical appliances and thus further stimulated industrial production. Most Americans felt comfortable with the pro-business views of leading politicians who joined the corporate elite in opposing regulations of corporations and banks. As Calvin Coolidge famously remarked, the "chief business of the American people is business."

We can now see that this unprecedented growth was not sustainable, because the majority of the population didn't share in the prosperity. Even though unemployment was low and wages for many increased, millions of Americans still lived entirely outside this economic boom. Forty percent of the population lived in poverty even during the supposedly prosperous 1920s. Much production was controlled by a handful of large corporations. By 1929 the 200 largest corporations controlled 50 percent of corporate wealth.

As oligopolies, their control of the market enabled them to keep prices high rather than let them rise and fall with demand. People increasingly bought on credit, which at the time took the form of the "installment plan." General Motors sold automobiles this way: you would make a down payment on a car and "own" it, paying monthly installments with high interest rates. A single missed payment led to repossession. Soon buying began to slow, so industries cut back on production, laid off workers, and ceased to invest in expanding or maintaining their factories. But not many noticed these warnings.

Thus, even without the precipitous stock market crash, a vicious cycle was developing by which each contraction in the cycles of production and consumption led to further contractions. In addition, the naive faith in endlessly rising profits led many to get-rich-quick schemes, and they turned to speculation in real estate and in the stock market.

Meanwhile, American agriculture sank. As European countries recovered from the war, their demand for American products declined. In addition, small farmers, who could not afford expensive new farm machinery--tractors and combines, for example--lost out to corporate agriculture.

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It's not that President Herbert Hoover's Administration had done nothing to help end the economic crisis. Much was expected of him because he had worked on humanitarian relief during World War I. But he turned out to be timid, trapped by the old conservative maxim that helping the unemployed would make them lazy. Congress did create the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and a farm loan system to lend capital to failing businesses, but these programs helped only owners, not workers, and the funds appropriated were far too little anyway.

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• Question: 
 What “popular” challenges emerged to the official handling of the Depression?
 Terms:

• "Bonus Army" • The Townsend Plan • Senator Huey Long • Father Charles Coughlin • German-American Bund • Popular Front

Instead of stimulating the economy, the Hoover government did the opposite. Acting on the belief that the budget must be balanced, it raised taxes. Hoover and his advisors retained a fundamentally outdated faith in "rugged individualism" and the myth of independence, failing to understand how the majority of Americans depended on wages and had no way of earning a living independently. So the depression steadily deepened.

Soup Kitchen, 1932; Breadline, 1932

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By 1932, millions of Americans were clinging desperately to subsistence. Sixty percent earned less than the official poverty line. One quarter of the labor force was out of work, 50 percent in several major cities; millions had their hours cut back, and thus their wages fell.

During the 1920s, some 1.6 million African Americans had migrated to the north, driven out of southern states by racism and eviction from sharecropping land. Now they suffered the worst unemployment, 30 to 60 percent higher than that among whites.

The leading telephone company, Western Electric (owned by AT&T), laid off 85 percent of its workforce. The suicide rate climbed rapidly. Existing sources of aid--or relief, as it was called at the time--had dried up. For example, Detroit's Emergency Relief Fund aimed to collect $3.5 million in 1931 but took in only $645,000. The only public aid came from town, county, or state governments whose tax income had also plummeted. In fact many local governments were bankrupt, unable to pay the wages their employees were due. Thousands were sleeping on the streets and "riding the rails" across country in search of work. As often happens in hard times, minority groups were scapegoated. Jews were blamed for the crash, and approximately 500,000 Mexican Americans, many of them citizens, were driven out of the US Unemployed Men on Park Bench, 1934; Unemployed Man Rides the Rails, 1935

! Unsurprisingly, the economic disaster produced large-scale social protest movements. Large numbers of Americans demanded help, objected to the economic inequalities that generated the disaster, and proposed remedies for it.

Councils of the unemployed, with a membership peaking at nearly half a million, not only demanded unemployment benefits but also engaged in direct action. Most dramatically, they blocked evictions or simply stood by and then moved the family's belongings back inside.

Farm Foreclosure in Iowa, Early 1930s

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In 1932 the "Bonus Army," some 17,000 World War I veterans, asking for immediate payment of the service bonuses they were scheduled to receive in 1945, set up camp in the nation's capital. Although the House of Representatives voted in favor of a bill that would permit early payment of the service bonuses, the Senate rejected it. Frustrated but not undaunted, many members of the Bonus Army decided to remain encamped in Washington D.C.

Press coverage and public opinion about the Bonus Army were generally sympathetic. But its presence was an embarrassment to President Hoover, particularly during a re-election campaign. His attorney general, William D. Mitchell, ordered the protesters to leave the encampment, but they refused to leave. Ultimately, the US Army used tanks, tear gas, and armed soldiers to evict the protesters and set fire to their camp. It was a public relations disaster for President Hoover.

Bonus Army on Steps of US Capitol; Bonus Army Encampment Burning After Federal Troops Set It On Fire, 1932

! The largest Depression-era movement was that for old-age pensions, called by the name of its founder, Dr. Francis Townsend. The Townsend Plan's purpose was twofold: help the elderly to retire and, thereby, make more jobs available for younger people. It claimed 3.5 million members and 30 million signed its petitions. After waging a grass-roots movement, it created pressure on the government for some type of national pension plan. The Townsend movement helped make the Social Security bill possible.

Dr. Francis Townsend; Townsend Supporter in Kansas, 1936

! Some of these social movements catapulted demagogic leaders into stardom. Starting in 1932, Louisiana Senator Huey Long led a "Share Our Wealth" campaign that called for a guaranteed minimum annual wage, a shorter work

week to boost employment, and universal free education. He even soft-pedaled his usual racist rhetoric in order to win some black support.

By contrast, Detroit Catholic priest Charles Coughlin, a radio preacher who reached an estimated 30 million each Sunday, combined welfare demands with hate-talk toward Jews and admiration for Hitler. The pro-Hitler German-American Bund attracted some 100,000 members. The Black Legion, a Ku Klux Klan offshoot, and the Silver Legion espoused deporting Jews and blacks, and attracted more tens of thousands. Among elites, many quietly supported Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, admiring their suppression of the labor movement and political dissent.

Huey Long, 1935; Father Charles Coughlin, 1936; German- American Bund Parade in New York City, 1937

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• Question: 
 How did the organization of workers change and evolve during this period?
 Terms:

• Racism and the depression • Communist Party • Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) • CIO contest with AFL • Union organizing The Depression produced big gains for Left-wing groups. Their strong stands against fascism, both domestic and foreign, and for government action to help the majority rather than the wealthy, attracted millions. An informal coalition, known as the Popular Front, brought together the small Socialist and Communist Parties with Roosevelt supporters. The Socialists won 885,000 votes for their presidential candidate in 1932, but that declined to 187,000 in 1936 as its supporters were won over by FDR.

Communists reached a membership peak in 1944, at about 80,000. But Communists exerted influence far beyond their numbers. Most American Communists were oriented toward democratic activism, supporting unemployment relief and labor unions, and challenging sexism and, above all, racism. In 1931, 9 black teenagers were framed for raping 2 white girls in Scottsboro, Alabama, and were almost lynched. The Communist Party defended them, winning admiration not only from African Americans but also from many liberals. As FDR's administration acceded to southern segregation and the exclusion of blacks from benefits, and refused to support an anti-lynching law, the Communist Party was the only white-led, national organization to press for racial equality. The Communist, 1930

! The biggest steps away from racism took place in the labor movement, thanks to a new, breakaway labor union federation, the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations), which set out to organize workers on a mass basis. The older American Federation of Labor (AFL) had traditionally opposed government provision and regulation, for fear workers would no longer need trade unions to fight for them.

Rejecting the AFL's turf-protecting approach, the CIO pulled together a wide variety of grassroots unionizing movements--among miners, auto workers, steel

workers, electrical workers, machinists, movie actors, newspaper reporters, clothing workers, textile workers, teamsters, store clerks, and dock workers. In many of these organizing drives, as in the unions they created, blacks and whites worked together as never before. AFL leaders referred to this activism among workers as the "uprising." By the end of World War II, the CIO would have 6 million members and had won major pieces of federal legislation. CIO competition also forced the AFL into increased organizing, and the resulting unions raised standards of living for tens of millions of working families through the 1960s.

! Conservatives and the wealthy panicked because the economic disaster was swelling the Left. Liberals worried because the Right was growing, and in Germany and Italy, the Depression had led to fascist governments and expansionist nationalism. Some Americans were calling for the president to assume dictatorial powers. By March 1933, the time of Roosevelt's inauguration, Raymond Moley, one of the new president's advisors, wrote that "terror held the country in its grip.”

Section 2: The First New Deal Focus Questions: • Section Question: 


How did FDR respond to the Great Depression? • Question: 


What were five of the programs that FDR immediately implemented, and what was the general intention of the

programs we call the First New Deal?
 Terms:

• FDR's rise to power • First "New Deal" programs • The "100 days" legislative strategy: agencies created • Federal Communications Commission and Western Electric • Emergency relief and Harry Hopkins

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated in March 1933, following his landslide electoral victory in 1932, his privileged background combined with his extraordinary political talent gave him the confidence to think creatively and to take risks. The distant cousin of former President Theodore Roosevelt, FDR was born into great wealth, but nevertheless sensed how economic panic and suffering could undo democracy. "True individual freedom," he said, "cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

FDR was heading toward a hugely successful political career at a young age when he contracted polio. His partial recovery--he could never walk on his own-- and his powerful connections helped him return to politics, against all predictions. Paralyzed from the waist down, with the help of assistants he was able to keep most Americans ignorant of his disability.

Elected governor of New York in 1928, he drew on that experience when he became president in 1933. As governor, FDR had already advocated pensions for the elderly, unemployment insurance, aid to farmers, regulation of utilities, and development of hydroelectric power. But during the campaign he offered no major proposals, and won the presidency mainly because of popular disgust with Hoover. In fact the largest source of enthusiasm for FDR at the Democratic Convention of 1932 was his promise to repeal Prohibition! FDR Before and After Contracting Polio

! Roosevelt was a master of communication. He invited and received an unprecedented quantity of mail--450,000 letters in the first week of his

presidency and an average of 8,000 a day after that (compared to Herbert Hoover's average of 600 a day). He was also the first to use radio to communicate with his constituents. His radio speeches (dubbed "Fireside Chats" by a reporter), were extremely popular. FDR Broadcasting a Fireside Chat, 1937

! The moment he took office, FDR inaugurated a series of programs that would come to be called the "New Deal." Its accomplishments were made possible not only by the sense of emergency, but also because Roosevelt surrounded himself with activists and, in some cases, unconventional advisors. He appointed several African Americans, including a woman, Mary MacLeod Bethune, to high positions; they constituted an informal "black cabinet."

• Question: 
 How did women and African Americans fare in the relief programs of the New Deal?
 Terms:

• Frances Perkins • Works Project Administration (WPA) • Relief and discrimination He appointed the first female cabinet member, Frances Perkins, as Secretary of Labor, and she expanded the number of women in policy positions, constituting an informal "female cabinet." He appointed the progressives Harold Ickes as Secretary of the Interior and Henry A. Wallace as Secretary of Agriculture, and the Jewish Henry Morgenthau as Secretary of the Treasury. Equally innovatively, FDR hired not only political supporters but also energetic academic experts eager to use and display their knowledge and theories.

FDR's Diverse Cabinet: Mary MacLeod Bethune; Frances Perkins; Harold Ickes; Henry A. Wallace; Henry Morgenthau (clockwise from top right)

! Historians have branded the early part of the Roosevelt administration "the 100 days" because it did so much so quickly. FDR understood the demoralizing effect of fear ("We have nothing to fear but fear itself," he insisted), and that decisive action could restore some confidence.

In 100 days he ended Prohibition, rescued banks, stopped foreclosures on home mortgages, created the massive TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) electrification and flood control project, and pushed through a series of laws to save farms from bankruptcy and foreclosure. He began a nationwide rural electrification project. At the time, less than 11 percent of American farms had electricity--by contrast, in Germany and France almost 90 percent did.

He regulated banking and securities exchanges to stop cheating and insure savings deposits. The gold standard was suspended. The Federal Communications Commission investigated Western Electric and found that its monopolistic practices enabled it to overcharge its customers--the first time the federal government acted to protect consumers.

! By far the most popular program was emergency relief, headed by the decisive social worker Harry Hopkins. In his first two hours on the job, he spent $5.3 million ($93 million in 2012 dollars). By the time he left work that night, he had hired a staff, offered relief funds to all 48 governors, and sent relief checks to 8 of them.

Roosevelt's Republican opponents were irate about the "giveaways." Many charged that the poor and unemployed were lazy and/or degenerate, so Hopkins had to fight these victim-blaming interpretations of the depression. "Three or four million heads of households don't turn into tramps and cheats overnight, nor do they lose the habits and standards of a lifetime... They don't drink any more than the rest of us, they don't lie any more, they're no lazier than the rest of us." When critics complained that he was acting rashly and that things would improve in the long run, Hopkins replied, "People don't eat in the long run. They eat every day.”

Harry Hopkins at the White House, 1935; Hopkins Urges Congress to Expand Federal Programs to Help Unemployed, 1938

! Soon emergency "relief," as government aid was called, took the form of government-created jobs, predominantly in construction. The largest of these projects, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), built more than 40,000 courthouses, firehouses, hospitals, schools and post offices, 1800 public swimming pools, and 40,000 miles of new roads.

The WPA contributed to conservation and public health by reforesting 20,000 acres, planting 20,000,000 trees and bushes, building 500 water treatment plants and 1500 sewage treatment plants, and laying 24,000 miles of sewers. (The largest structures, such as the great dams, tunnels and bridges--the Golden Gate and Triborough Bridges, the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams--were built by another, necessarily more slow-moving public works agency, the Public Works Administration.) In 1938 when disastrous floods hit the Northeast, washing out railroad bridges, highways, and power lines, Hopkins sent 50,000 WPA employees to work around the clock evacuating endangered people, diking the waters, providing temporary water and power, and then cleaning the mud that clogged the streets and buildings--a federal helping hand never before possible. Public jobs not only put wages into the economy, but the materials, tools, energy and transport that the jobs required put yet more people back to work.

New Deal Construction Projects: US Post Office Claremont, CA; Bonneville Dam, Oregon; National Zoo, Washington, DC; King City High School Theater, King City, CA; Red Rocks Amphitheater, Golden, CA (clockwise from upper right)

! Everyone preferred relief jobs to simple relief payments. Government officials preferred jobs even though they were more expensive than simple relief--due to overhead--because of the traditional conservative fear of making recipients lazy. That fear was belied by the fact that relief recipients also preferred to work, because it made them feel useful, respected, and active.

Unfortunately, the whole relief program was systematically discriminatory. Women did not get a fair share of jobs or money because they were labeled dependents who were supported by husbands, which left women who lacked husbands or had husbands that didn't support them out in the cold. The programs did not prioritize the kinds of jobs that were traditionally female, although the country had a great need for teachers, social workers, librarians, for example.

Neither did people of color get a fair share of relief or jobs, for a different reason. The programs were administered by the states and in the regions where most people of color lived--the southeast and southwest of the US--racist white state governments maneuvered to exclude African Americans, Latinos, and others not considered white. Single Women Protest Lack of Government Employment Opportunities, 1933

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• Question: 
 What was the effect on government expenditures of the New Deal programs?
 Terms:

• Depression and world war • Relationships of government expenditures to

unemployment • Prohibition

The administration's experts hoped the Depression emergency would end within a year or two, but it didn't. In fact, the New Deal never ended the Depression. The unemployment relief and the other programs that constituted an economic stimulus, and were intended to jump-start the economy, were too small to do the job. The New Deal did not do enough. For example, in 1930 the average house was worth $7,100; in 1939 it was worth only $3,800, leaving the average family much poorer.

What finally ended the Depression was the enormous public spending on World War II--$288 billion. It is characteristic of American politics that war will evoke unanimous support for spending, while pulling the country out of economic depression will not.

Nevertheless, these emergency relief programs began to transform American politics and political culture. FDR's first 100 days began a great expansion of both federal power over state power and presidential over congressional power. There were 2 reasons. First, only the federal government had the tax revenues and fiscal control to meet the crisis. Two, the Depression emergency generated such fears that Congress deferred to presidential initiative.

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Section 3: The Second New Deal and the Road to War Focus Questions: • Section Question: 


Why was the Second New Deal necessary, and was it enough to pull the country out of the Great Depression?

• Question: 
 What were three of the programs that FDR implemented in what was known as the Second New Deal, and what did they do?
 Terms:

• Second "New Deal" permanent social programs • The Banking Act of 1935 • Social Security Act of 1935: unemployment benefits,

disability, aid to dependent children That transformation continued in the "second New Deal" of 1935 through 1938. Consider that until the Roosevelt presidency, the vast majority of Americans only encountered the federal government in one activity: mailing or receiving a letter. New Deal relief programs changed that, probably touching at least half of Americans personally.

In this "second New Deal," the federal government expanded by creating permanent programs. A new income tax law provided graduated rates--higher income taxpayers paid a greater percentage in taxes. The Banking Act of 1935 allowed a Federal Reserve Board to require banks to hold a certain amount of cash in reserve. In response to the drought that had ruined many Midwestern farmers, and to the overturning of emergency agricultural legislation by the anti- Roosevelt conservative Supreme Court, the administration pushed through a comprehensive farm law that installed price supports--controls by the federal government that ensured farmers would get a minimum price for their farm products.

For the majority of Americans, the most important new laws were 3: Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. These laws gave substantial and much appreciated benefits to large numbers of working Americans. But by leaving out and discriminating against equally large numbers of minorities and women, the laws simultaneously locked in great inequities that became apparent in the years to come.

The Social Security Act of 1935 was far more contested than the emergency legislation of 1933 had been, because it created a permanent, though limited,

welfare system. Today most Americans associate the Social Security Act with old-age pensions. In the 1930s many opposed them on the grounds that children, not the government, ought to support their aged parents.

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In fact, only 1 of the Act's 11 titles concerned old age pensions. The others provided unemployment benefits, several categories of aid to the disabled, a small program of maternal and infant health, and aid to "dependent" children. (This last is an odd word usage, since all children are dependent; at the time it referred specifically to children of poor lone mothers who had no male breadwinners.) FDR's top priority, public medical insurance, did not make it into the law. This amalgam of programs was put together by numerous interest groups and advisors. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins and a small group of women social workers in the US Children's Bureau wrote and fought for the programs that aided the poor and disabled. These programs were "means-tested"--that is, in order to be eligible for benefits, applicants had to prove that they were poor. For example, if you owned a home, you were required to sell it in order to be eligible; recipients were not allowed to have bank savings or telephones. Thus, the means-tested programs forced depression victims to further impoverish themselves, which made it much harder for them to climb out of poverty when the Depression ended. By contrast, old-age pensions and unemployment compensation could be paid to Americans, of whatever wealth, provided they were employed by firms over a certain size. These benefits were created by male actuarial experts, who designed the programs to make it appear that beneficiaries received their "own" money, though this was never the case.

• Question: 
 How did women and African Americans fare in these Second New Deal programs?
 Terms:

• Limitations of Social Security • Discrimination and new labor laws

Social Security programs became complex due to the political compromises forced upon their designers, but 3 enormous limitations stand out. First, women

who did not work for wages were not eligible for old-age pensions. They could collect benefits only as dependents on their husbands. This program thus cemented into law the conventional view of the time that women should not be employed but should be supported by husbands. It also meant that if a husband divorced his wife, she received nothing from Social Security. Second, conservative southern Democratic Senators, whose votes Roosevelt needed, insisted on excluding all agricultural workers and domestic servants. This meant that the vast majority of all people of color were excluded, because they worked mainly in the excluded occupations. Third, even women who were employed were often excluded because they tended to be employed by smaller firms. This meant that the poorest women, who needed benefits most, could not get them. Thus, these exclusions made permanent the same inequities that characterized the emergency relief programs. Social Security Poster Promoting Benefits for Widows and Dependent Children

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• Question: 
 How did FDR lend support to workers, and what was the reasoning behind this decision? 
 Terms:

• National Labor Relations Act of 1936 (Wagner Act) • Theory of under-consumption • Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 • Minimum wage

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1936, commonly known as the Wagner Act after its chief sponsor, was the legislative response to the vibrant labor movements, and also a move to secure working-class political support for Roosevelt. It guaranteed workers a right to form unions and to collective bargaining, and provided them with a legal remedy--appeal to a National Labor Relations Board--if employers tried to interfere with this right.

But the new law was also a strategy to end the Depression. New Deal economists saw the Depression's long-term cause as under-consumption: workers were not earning enough to buy the products and services they created. Strategists believed that unions would increase wages, and thus build the consumer market and grow the economy.

Furthermore, the labor leaders who pushed for the law also regarded it as an extension of fundamental democratic principles. It not only guaranteed workers free speech on the job, it also gave them a say in the rules that governed their working conditions. Had these aspects of the law remained strong, occupational deaths, injuries and diseases would be less frequent because employees would participate in making health and safety rules.

The NLRA compensated in part for the discrimination against women and people of color in other parts of the New Deal. The lucky ones who had union jobs--and these included 800,000 women by 1940--got higher wages and grievance procedures. Many African Americans, disfranchised in the southern states, got their first chance to vote in National Labor Relations Board elections. And the CIO unions would become strong lobbyists for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964-65.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 was also a response to labor movements. It acknowledged that the principle of "liberty of contract" required an equality of contractors--the so-called level playing field--that did not exist when people were desperate for jobs.

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The FLSA was also a response to the Supreme Court's overturning of state labor laws. In one such case, the manager of a laundry had been paying 9 women only $10 a week, in violation of the New York State minimum wage law. Forced to pay them more, he coerced them to kick back the difference. When he was tried for these crimes, the Supreme Court overturned the state law.

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In the FLSA, the federal government set basic minimums of wages and working conditions: 25 cents per hour (equal to $4.09 in 2012 dollars), a 40-hour week (at a time when many still worked 55 to 60 hour weeks), higher overtime pay for more than 44 hours per week, and no full-time child workers under sixteen. When big employers argued that the labor laws would result in mass layoffs and bankrupt corporations, Roosevelt responded in one of his Fireside Chats: "Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day ... tell you ... that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.”

The FLSA, like Social Security, applied only to large enterprises and excluded agricultural and domestic workers, once again leaving most women and most people of color denied its protections. The FLSA has since been much amended, mainly to increase the minimum wage, although since 1968 that minimum has fallen in value. The FLSA has also been extended to create equity--the Equal Pay Act of 1963, guaranteeing equal pay to women, was an amendment to the FLSA.

Woolworth Employees on Strike, 1937

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The popularity of the "Second New Deal" was reflected in FDR's landslide victory in the 1936 election, 523 to 8 electoral votes, carrying 46 of the 48 states, and winning 61 percent of the popular vote.

During the 1936 election, even more than in 1932, FDR consciously put together a political coalition that not only led to his re-election to unprecedented third and fourth terms (there was no two-term limit then), but continued to function for several decades after his death in 1945.

The white South, where African Americans had been almost entirely disenfranchised by the 1890s, had been Democratic since the Civil War, due to their hatred of Republican Abraham Lincoln. To these reliable voters FDR was able to add the votes of working-class city people, liberal professionals, and, increasingly, northern African Americans. (They had previously been Republicans out of loyalty to Lincoln's party but were quick to see that the Democrats offered more progressive policies.)

Presidential Election of 1936

! Fortunately, economic stress has never stopped people from trying to enjoy themselves. Leisure and entertainment are not only escapes but also necessary means of survival--and good for the economy. The 60 percent of 1930s Americans with radios could groove to the big band music on the airwaves.

Hollywood provided music, dance and comedy together, as in Busby Berkeley movies such as Gold Diggers of 1933, with elaborate choreography, sets, costumes, and daring camera angles. The Wizard of Oz, Dracula, and gangster films, as well as the further development of animated cartoons and Technicolor, made films more popular than ever.

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Cars provided literal escapes, enabling city folk to get more easily into the countryside and the state and national parks and beaches. Those who had

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cars--there were 23 million in 1929--learned to care for them themselves. Despite restrictions passed in some localities against women driving, more women began taking the wheel. As one farm woman said about why a car was a higher priority for her than indoor plumbing, "You can't go to town in a bathtub."

In the visual arts and publishing, the 1930s saw a populist orientation emerge. Painters, photographers, dramatists and novelists created work about the "common man," identified with the Popular Front in politics. Breaking with "high art" traditions of formal portraiture and landscapes, these artists painted and wrote about farmers, industrial workers, sharecroppers and the unemployed in a representational style that aimed to be--and was--broadly popular. New Deal artists decorated thousands of public buildings with paintings, murals and sculpture, often illustrating emblematic scenes from American history, from the early European settlements to the Revolution to the Indian wars. Relief Blues, O. Louis Guglielmi, ca. 1938

! Photographers employed by 2 successive New Deal agencies--the Resettlement Administration (1935-1937) and the Farm Security Administration (1937-1942)-- created the most historically and artistically significant pictorial representations of human suffering during the Great Depression.

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Meanwhile, beginning in the early 1930s, European and Asian developments were drawing the US into global involvement. The Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1931-2, Italian seizure of Ethiopia in 1935-6, a fascist coup in Spain in 1936, and Nazi takeover of Austria and Czechoslovakia manifested the growing fascist military threat to democratic states and American economic interests. Despite these omens, American isolationists--strong in the Congress and the public--succeeded in passing 4 Neutrality Acts (1935-39) to prevent US aid to European allies or actual intervention.

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Adolph Hitler in Vienna, Austria, 1938, and with Francisco Franco in Spain, 1940

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Roosevelt and some of his advisers, who believed that the US would ultimately have to confront the fascists' ambition for global domination, found ways to strengthen America's military capacity without an open political battle against Congressional isolationists. In his 1939 State-of-the-Union address, Roosevelt argued that the neutrality laws might actually aid the aggressors.

Even before World War II began in September 1939, FDR found ways to turn unused industrial capacity to manufacturing war materiel for the anti-fascist powers. By early 1940, industrial employment rose 10 percent, payroll 16 percent, and production 25 percent. Later in 1940, Congress agreed to expand the army to 2 million, building 19,000 fighter planes, adding hundreds of ships and submarines, and establishing the first peacetime military draft in US history.

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In early 1941 Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, providing Great Britain, the USSR, China, Free France and other allies with war materiel. War production ramped up industry in a variety of arenas, including mining, steel making, ship- building, aircraft, automotive, and ammunition manufacture, even garments and textiles. Defense production meant that previously disadvantaged groups-- notably African Americans and white women--gained access to well paid and often unionized jobs. The public's sense of encroaching war contributed to Roosevelt's unprecedented election to a third term in 1940. In his campaign, however, he promised not to send American troops into a foreign war--unless the US was attacked. That happened on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, destroying 19 ships and nearly all the warplanes, and killing 2,403. Addressing Congress the next day, FDR got a declaration of war against Japan. Hitler and Mussolini, Japan's allies, declared war on the U.S soon after, leaving Congress no choice but to declare war on the European members of the Axis.

USS West Virginia, Pearl Harbor Naval Base, December 7, 1941; President Roosevelt Signs Declaration of War Against Japan, December 8, 1941

! The attacks naturally evoked American outrage, but instead of blaming the Japanese imperialist government, much of the anger took a racist turn. On the west coast, where most Japanese Americans lived at the time, the Army and conservative press ratcheted up the racism, suggesting that no one of Japanese heritage could be trusted and saturating the media with ugly caricatures of Japanese faces. General DeWitt, military chief of the Western Defense Command, told the press that "The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second and third generation Japanese, born on American soil, possessed of American citizenship, have become `Americanized,' the racial strains are undiluted." In February 1942 FDR ordered the "relocation" of all Japanese Americans. One hundred and twenty thousand people, about three-fifths of them American citizens, were rounded up and imprisoned--not only without trial but without

even being charged with any wrongdoing. Yet while their parents were incarcerated, about 45,000 young Japanese American men were serving in the American armed forces. This blatantly unconstitutional episode serves as a reminder of the dangers of wartime hysteria.

Two Japanese Boys Waiting to be Evacuated, San Francisco, 1942

! The years 1929-41 were a momentous period in US history, requiring a complex evaluation, especially looking back on it from the 21st century. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, quite possibly our most charismatic and politically gifted president, presided over the establishment of the modern federal state.

FDR failed to get universal medical insurance and he acceded to the exclusion of the majority of Americans--all women and men of color--from the New Deal's greatest benefits. Nevertheless, building the national infrastructure helped make the US the dominant world power, while New Deal programs spread the wealth among more citizens, thereby providing the economic basis for further growth. But nothing is permanent: in the 21st century many of those gains are being dismantled by failing to maintain the national infrastructure and undoing measures that strengthened the working and middle classes.