1. The 2nd New Deal
“It is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope--because the Nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out.”
~FDR’s 2nd Inaugural

2. 1. The 2nd New Deal -WPA Works Progress Administration
Gave 8 million jobs to all sorts of laborers (mostly unskilled)
-SSA
Social Security Act
old age pensions, unemployment, aid to families with children
Designed by Frances Perkins
-REA
Rural Electrification Administration
Gave 90% of America electricity
Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA spent $11 billion to give jobs to more than 8 million workers, most of them unskilled. These workers built 850 airports throughout the country, constructed or repaired 651,000 miles of roads and streets, and put up more than 125,000 public buildings. Women workers in sewing groups made 300 million garments for the needy. Although criticized by some as a make-work project, the WPA produced public works of lasting value to the nation and gave working people a sense of hope and purpose. As one man recalled, “It was really great. You worked, you got a paycheck, and you had some dignity. Even when a man raked leaves, he got paid, he had some dignity.”

3. One of the most important achievements of the New Deal was creating the Social Security System. The Social Security Act, passed in 1935, was created by a committee chaired by Frances Perkins. The act had three major parts:
Old age insurance for retirees 65 or older and their spouses: the insurance was a supplemental retirement plan. Half of the funds came from the worker and half from the employer. Although some groups were excluded from the system, it helped to make retirement comfortable for millions of people.
2. Unemployment compensation system: the unemployment system was funded by a federal tax on employers. It was administered at the state level. The initial payments ranged from $15 to $18 per week.
3. Aid to families with dependent children and the disabled: the aid was paid for by federal funds made available to the states.
This system was lasting, as it is still in effect in America today.

4. 2.Labor Relations Improve
-National Labor Relations Act---(Wagner Act)
NLRB – protected rights of laborers
right to unionize
anti-union practices banned
Could not threaten workers or fire union members
-Fair Labor Standards Act
minimum wage, 40 hour week
25 cent per hour, increasing to 40 cent by 1945
-Growth of AFL, CIO
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
Skilled labor/non-skilled – union membership grows

5. 3.Court Packing -Several New Deal programs ruled unconstitutional
AAA, NRA
Gave government too much power; interrupted free-market
-Roosevelt proposed adding new justices
Wanted 6 new justices to get programs passed
-rejected; seen as a threat to checks and balances
Eventually added 7 justices as a result of resignations
Roosevelt saw the old Supreme Court justices as too slow in reacting to his New Deal policies, especially after they ruled two of his New Deal programs unconstitutional. As a result, Roosevelt proposed adding six new justices to the Court, putting the balance of power in his favor. Many people disagreed, seeing it as a threat to the constitutional checks and balances.

6. 4.Women in the Depression
-Eleanor Roosevelt
Traveled the nation and reminded President of people’s needs
-several women named to high gov’t positions
Francis Perkins
First woman on Cabinet
Sec. Of Labor
-working women faced resentment
-women’s wages still lower than men
Lower minimum wage
-gov’t programs gave preferences to men
Hired fewer, if any, women
Eleanor Roosevelt, cousin-wife of FDR, gained importance throughout her role in the Great Depression and New Deal. She helped establish the current role of the first lady as advisor to the President.

7. Women in the Depression
As a student at Mount Holyoke College, Frances Perkins attended lectures that introduced her to social reform efforts. Her initial work in the settlement house movement sparked her interest in pursuing the emerging social service organizations. After witnessing the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911, Perkins pledged to fight for labor reforms, especially those for women. A pioneer for labor and women’s issues, she changed her name from Fannie to Frances, believing she would be taken more seriously. She eventually became the first woman on the Cabinet, and as Secretary of Labor, she chaired the committee that developed the Social Security Administration.

8. 5.African Americans -Depression hit African Americans especially hard
More discrimination, harder to find jobs
Mary McLeod Bethune
friend of Eleanor Roosevelt
established “Black Cabinet”
Advised FDR on racial issues
-Roosevelt never fully committed to civil rights
Does not want to lose Southern white vote; no anti-lynching laws
-African Americans came to support the Democratic Party
Mary McLeod Bethune, one of the first members of Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet” to advise him on racial issues.
“Roosevelt touched the temper of the black community. You did not look upon him as being white, black, blue, or green. He was President Roosevelt.”

9. A Washington, D.C., concert hall performance by the African-American singer Marian Anderson in 1939 was prohibited by the Daughters of the American Revolution because of her race. Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the organization. She then arranged for Anderson to perform at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday.

10. 6.Art and Literature
-many artists displayed the reality of the Depression
-Federal Arts Project (WPA)
Increased appreciation of art and literature
-Grant Wood
American Gothic
-Richard Wright
Native Son
-John Steinbeck
Grapes of Wrath
Zora Neale Hurston
Grant Wood’s 1930 painting, American Gothic, became one of the most famous portrayals of life in the Midwest during the Great Depression. Painted in the style known as Regionalism, Wood painted familiar subjects in realistic ways. The house in the background was discovered by Wood in Iowa, while he was looking for subjects to paint. He returned home with a sketch and a photograph, and used his sister and his dentist as models for the farmer and daughter in the painting’s foreground.

11. In February 1936, Dorothea Lange visited a camp in Nipomo, California, where some 2,500 pea pickers lived in tents or lean-tos. Lange talked briefly to her “subjects,” then took pictures, moving successively closer to direct more emphasis. Her last photo of the group, “Migrant Mother,” was published in 1936.

13. 7. Entertainment -family entertainment 90% of Americans owned a radio
“There, I can see the thing's body. It's large as a bear and it glistens like wet leather. But that face. It...it's indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips…The crowd falls back. They've seen enough.”
-family entertainment
90% of Americans owned a radio
-soap operas
For women
-Children’s Programs
Green Hornet, Lone Ranger
-Variety shows and plays
Bob Hope, George Burns
Orson Welles
“War of the Worlds”
Showed the far-reaching impact of radio in the 1920s

14. 7.Entertainment -Marx Brothers -Gangster films
Depression-era watchers clearly understood films
- Frank Capra, Jimmy Stewart
”Mr. Smith goes to Washington”
”It’s a wonderful Life”
Honest, kind-hearted people winning in the end (hopeful)

15. 8.Motion Pictures Movies provided escape -Gone with the Wind, 1939
Most famous film of the era
-Wizard of Oz, 1939
First in technicolor
-Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, 1937
“Lots of us enjoyed our leisure at the movies. The experience of going was like an insidious candy we could never get quite enough of; the visit to the dark theater was an escape from the drab realities of Depression living, and we were entranced by the never-ending variety of stories. Hollywood, like the storyteller, supplied more the next night, and the next night after that.”

16. 9.End of the New Deal
-”I see 1/3 of a nation ill -housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished”
Need for a 3rd New Deal
-by 1937, some recovery so gov’t pulls back programs and depression returns
-opposition grows to continued gov’t control – not solving Depression
-international affairs begin to take precedence
FDR occupied with Hitler
-New Deal has great legacy
FDIC, SEC, Social Security, changes to the environment
As the situation in Europe grew increasingly intense, FDR turned his attentions away from New Deal programs and began focusing on those European aggressors moving toward WWII.