The New Deal and its Legacy

1. The New Deal and its Legacy FDR and the Bank Crisis and Response to the Depression racked nation

2. What are some remnants? • Are there any programs today that are a result of the New Deal? • Social Security • Public Housing • How many of you buy school lunches? • Anyone a member of a labor Union? • Does your bank have deposit insurance?

3. The US in the Depression • ¼ of the American population was unemployed • The goal was to get Americans working as quickly as possible CCC – Yorktown Virginia, Vocational Projects for “colored veterans.”

4. Repeal of Prohibition TVA – bring electricity to impoverished south CCC – planted 2 billion trees across the country Control placed on Wall Street, labor relations and farm output Federal Emergency Relief and National Industrial Recovery – created bureacracy to institute public relief by funding large scale public works Civil Works Admin (CWA) Public Works Admin (PWA) Works Progress Admin – (WPA) The First 100 Days – “First New Deal”

5. “He was at the center of it all” • Harry Hopkins – a competent social worker who had created a program to deliver services to mothers with dependent children in NYC • After 5 minutes of speaking with FDR on his 1st day of work, was released to a cockroach infested building in NYC. • By the end of the day he released $5.3 billion on aid to eight states • Within a year he employed nearly 3 million people ($13/week)

6. Was it all successful? • He spent money quickly, some say too quickly. • Responding to FDR’s promise of quick relief • He was not a welfare statist and his year as a social worker proved that people did not want to be “on the dole.” • Felt that putting people to work restored pride and boosted morale, which is what families were looking for.

7. Work as a means of happiness • New Deal art which included murals, often glorified labor • Frescos from San Francisco to New York depict scenes of men hard at work.