By the end of the hundred days the country had made up its mind about Roosevelt’s New Deal, and despite the vicissitudes of the next decade, it never changed it. A large majority labeled the New Deal a solid success. Considerable recovery had taken place, but more basic was the fact that Roosevelt, recruiting an army of officials to staff the new government agencies, had infused his administration with a spirit of bustle and optimism. The director of the presidential Secret Service unit, returning to the White House on inauguration day after escorting Herbert Hoover to the railroad station, found the executive mansion “transformed during my absence into a gay place, full of people who oozed confidence.”
Although Roosevelt was not much of an intellectual, his openness to suggestion made him eager to draw on the ideas and energies of experts of all sorts. New Deal agencies soon teemed with college professors and young lawyers without political experience.
The New Deal lacked any consistent ideological base. While the so-called Brain Trust (a group headed by Raymond Moley, a Columbia political scientist, which included Columbia economists
Rexford G. Tugwell and Adolf A. Berle Jr., and a number of others) attracted a great deal of attention, theorists never impressed Roosevelt much. His New Deal drew on the old populist tradition, as seen in its antipathy to bankers and its willingness to adopt schemes for inflating the currency; on the New Nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt, in its dislike of competition and its de-emphasis of the antitrust laws; and on the ideas of social workers trained in the Progressive Era. Techniques developed by the Wilsonians also found a place in the system: Louis D. Brandeis had considerable influence on Roosevelt’s financial reforms, and New Deal labor policy was an outgrowth of the experience of the War Labor Board of 1917-1918.
Within the administrative maze that Roosevelt created, rival bureaucrats battled to enforce their views. The “spenders,” led by Tugwell, clashed with those favoring strict economy, who gathered around Lewis Douglas, director of the budget. Roosevelt mediated between the factions. Washington became a battleground for dozens of special interest groups: the Farm Bureau Federation, the unions, the trade associations, and the silver miners. While the system was superior to that of Roosevelt’s predecessors— who had allowed one interest, big business, to predominate—it slighted the unorganized majority. The NRA aimed frankly at raising the prices paid by consumers of manufactured goods; the AAA processing tax came ultimately from the pocketbooks of ordinary citizens.
Table 26.1 First New Deal and First Hundred Days (March-June,1933)
Legislation | Purpose |
Banking Act | Provided federal loans to private bankers |
Beer-Wine Revenue Act | Repealed Prohibition |
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) | Created jobs for unemployed young men |
Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) | Gave federal money to states and localities to provide relief of poor |
Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) | Raised farm prices by restricting production |
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) | Massive construction project that generated employment—and electricity—in Tennessee Valley |
National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) | Created structure for business and labor to cooperate to make particular industries more profitable |
Isaac Soyer's Employment Agency (1937) captured the isolation and loss of self-esteem that accompanied joblessness.
Source: Isaac Soyer (1907-1981), Employment Agency, 1937, Oil on canvas, 34 1/4 X 45 in. (87 X 114.3 cm.) Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Unemployment and Federal Action, 1929-1941 Unemployment of nonfarm workers reached nearly 40 percent by early 1933. The Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) and Civil Works Administration (CWA) (both in 1933) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) (1935) put millions back to work.
World History
