The Great Depression and the New Deal PART 2

The Dust Bowl was the name given to the Great Plains region devastated by drought in 1930s depression-ridden America. The 150,000-square-mile area, encompassing the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, has little rainfall, light soil, and high winds, a potentially destructive combination. When drought struck from 1934 to 1937, the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor, so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called “black blizzards.” Recurrent dust storms wreaked havoc, choking cattle and pasture lands and driving 60 percent of the population from the region. Most of these “exodusters” went to agricultural areas first and then to cities, especially in the Far West.   DUST BOWL Ranchers and farmers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, driven by the American agricultural ethos of expansion and a sense of autonomy from nature, aggressively exploited the land and set up the region for ecological disaster. Most early settlers used the land for livestock grazing until agricultural mechanization combined with high grain prices during World War I enticed farmers to plow up millions of acres of natural grass cover to plant wheat. Did You Know? By 1940, more than 2.5 million people had fled from the regions affected by the Dust Bowl. Nearly 10 percent moved to California. In response, the federal government mobilized several New Deal agencies, principally the Soil Conservation Service formed in 1935, to promote farm rehabilitation. Working on the local level, the government instructed farmers to plant trees and grass to anchor the soil, to plow and terrace in contour patterns to hold rainwater, and to allow portions of farmland to lie fallow each year so the soil could regenerate. The government also purchased 11.3 million acres of submarginal land to keep it out of production. By 1941 much of the land was rehabilitated, but the region repeated its mistakes during World War II as farmers again plowed up grassland to plant wheat when grain prices rose. Drought threatened another disaster in the 1950s, prompting Congress to subsidize farmers in restoring millions of acres of wheat back to grassland. The Dust Bowl prompted a cultural response from artists like Dorothea Lange, Woody Guthrie, and John Steinbeck, who lamented the American economic ethos that had created the disaster. To them, the Dust Bowl signified the final destruction of the old Jeffersonian ideal of agrarian harmony with nature.

New Deal for the Dust Bowl VIDEO w/ Questions **Begin to talk about how the federal government starting to intervene with economics  to lead into how FDR’s approach differed from HOOVER’s next time???

FDR’S NEW DEAL Emergency Banking Relief Act Bank Holiday Reopened stable banks Took us off the gold standard (creates inflation) Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act FDIC: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Insured deposits

FDR’S NEW DEAL Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Priming the Pump Camps for unmarried, unemployed men 18-25 years old Reforestation, flood control, drainage, trails Sent home pay to families Criticism: militarized nation’s youth

FDR’S NEW DEAL Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) Creating artificial scarcity and raise $ Paid farmers to reduce acreage Unintended consequences: Slaughtering of animals Increased unemployment initially Declared unconstitutional Paid for by special tax on companies which processed farm products 2nd AAA passed: 1938 Constitutional Rewarded farmers for planting certain crops Paid for through government spending– not processors'’ taxes

FDR’S NEW DEAL National Recovery Administration (NRA) Industries would accept fair codes of competition Laborers given rights Industries spread out employment by reducing hours of each worker Encouraged Americans to purchase goods from companies who followed these fair codes. Unconstitutional– can’t regulate businesses not involved in interstate commerce: Schechter v. U.S. The Live Poultry Code, written and promulgated by the Roosevelt administration in 1934, was a part of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), a law passed by Congress to regulate companies as a means to combat the Great Depression. Section 3 of NIRA gave the president authority to approve such "codes of unfair competition." Roosevelt's poultry code fixed the maximum number of hours a poultry employee could work, imposed a minimum wage for poultry employees, and banned certain methods of "unfair competition." Schechter Poultry Corporation, the defendant in the case, purchased live poultry from commissioners in New York City and Philadelphia and sold slaughtered poultry to retailers and butchers in Brooklyn. Schechter was charged by the U.S. government with violating the poultry code by selling "unfit chickens," illegally selling chickens on an individual basis, avoiding inspections by local poultry regulators, falsifying records of poultry sold, and selling poultry to nonlicensed purchasers. Schechter was convicted in a federal district court, lost an appeal to the circuit court, and appealed to the Supreme Court, which reviewed the case in 1935. The Supreme Court held that the Live Poultry Code was unconstitutional and that the conviction of Schechter must be overturned. First, the Court found that the president lacked the power to write the code, citing the U.S. Constitution, Article I, which states that all legislative power is to be vested in the Congress. Article I is thus violated if Congress grants its exclusive legislative power to the president. The NIRA allowed the president to write new codes, such as the poultry code, so long as they regulated "unfair competition." The Court found the phrase "unfair competition" too ambiguous to constitute an "intelligible principle" necessary to limit the president's actions in enforcing the NIRA. Lacking such a principle, the NIRA effectively allowed the president "unfettered discretion" to create "new laws" without congressional approval.

FDR’S NEW DEAL Tennessee Valley Authority Built dams along tributaries of Tennessee River Expanded electricity “Creeping socialism”– govt. setting prices Constitutional but couldn’t be replicated Employed African Americans (segregated camps) Economically revitalizes the South

FDR’S NEW DEAL Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Regulates buying and selling of stocks Oversees all activities on the Stock Market Establishes rules for trading stocks Stabilizes the stock market

FDR’S NEW DEAL Works Progress Administration (WPA) Largest New Deal Program Construction of public works Jobs for unemployed white collar workers (dancers, artists) Highly criticized for “make work” policies

Springville Art Museum, WPA Ogden High, WPA Zion Park Structures, CCC and WPA Timpanogos Cave structures, WPA

WPA: Federal Artists Project Lynn Faucett in Price

Federal Projects

FDR’S NEW DEAL Social Security Act Unemployment insurance Old-age pensions (retirement) Aid for poverty stricken, blind, disabled, widows Life expectancy age 60

Such benefits helped reduce poverty among the nation’s elderly. 17

FDR’S NEW DEAL Wagner Act National Labor Relations Board Workers earn right to collectively bargain Led to establishment of Congress of Industrial Organization Fair Labor Standards Act (NLRB) Minimum Wage Maximum hour work week Prohibited child labor