the new deal the depression followed by roosevelt's new deal roosevelt has been elected president he beat herbert hoover in 1932 wasn't even close a landslide in winning roosevelt had said that the government should do whatever was necessary to protect the unfortunate and advance the public good just keep in mind the word what's constitutional was not in that statement one of the things that bonded americans to franklin roosevelt was his fireside chats he did about 30 of these they weren't that frequent but they were more than most people most presidents had done he would sit in the oval office and talk to the american people as if he's sitting by his fireside the americans listening on the radio or sitting by their fireside in their living room and he's just a friend having a chat very very effective way for the president to reach the people bypassing reporters and talking heads roosevelt's first 100 days as president became a standard more major legislation was passed in his first 100 days than any other president there was a lot more going on in the country that needed legislation obviously than most any other president but this is the standard that's applied to each new president it doesn't apply on reelection it's only on the first term roosevelt had an advantage he was sworn in in march a whole three months had gone by in the new year elected november takes office in march the congress that's been sitting is ful controlled by the democrats and they're ready and working on passing whatever he wants in his inaugural he had said we have nothing to fear but fear itself one of the first things that happened within days of his inaugural was the emergency banking act what is not well known is this is herbert hoover's plan between november and march the banks were closing at a horrific rate we've talked about that hoover came up with a plan his secretary of treasury some of the people from the fed but he needed roosevelt hoover needed roosevelt to tell the democrats in congress to pass it roosevelt refused the democrats did not want to give hoover even though the election's over he's going to go away as president they did not want to give hoover any kind of positive send off so they waited 90 days over 90 days more banks closed tens of thousands of dollars were lost to the american people because roosevelt did not want to give hoover any kind of positive send-off but the democrats passed the bill it called for a national banking holiday some states were doing this but roosevelt made it a national all banks closed they were not allowed to reopen without having passed a treasury audit u.s treasury audit if they passed then the fed issues money to the bank using good assets other words loans that they have as collateral so if the bank's on solid footing if the assets the loans they have on businesses and property are valuable the fed issued them money this was a great boost to the american people's morale they saw that the banks were not going to be stable and within months half of the money that had been pulled out in the preceding months came back in as deposits people trusted roosevelt trusted the banks and the money went back in one side note here because roosevelt let the banks open up under the current ownership it meant he was not going to nationalize the banks that's important because his people wanted him to nationalize the banks some of the people in roosevelt's administration were extremely far left and they thought that maybe the american people wanted the government to take control completely of all the banks roosevelt did not do that the next thing that gets passed is the federal emergency relief administration in may of 1933 now this may not be the next but it's the one we're talking we can't cover everything that gets passed by roosevelt's administration we're just going to try to cover some of the key ones this federal relief administration dispensed 500 million dollars to state agencies this is relief relief in those days meant welfare this money can go for any purposes the state wants soup kitchen bread kitchen jobs however the states wanted to do it out of this federal emergency relief administration roosevelt creates the civil works administration this was an idea to spend lots of money to put four million people to work building and repairing roads public buildings decorating the walls of post offices with murals so it's not just construction now we're painting and now we're doing artwork the guy in charge was so enthusiastic in five months he spent one billion dollars roosevelt panicked and disbanded it in march of 34 was open from november 33 to march 34. this concept however will come back in a couple years another thing that gets passed during roosevelt's first 100 days probably the most famous of his programs civilian conservation corps for those not familiar with the word core doesn't stand for corporation it's a military term usually several thousands of men it was established to relieve unemployment and it's established for young unmarried men single men there's not many jobs out there and roosevelt would like to see the married men who have families to feed get the jobs so one way to help make sure that there's jobs available for married men is to pull single men out of the workforce they enlisted for at least a six month period notice the word enlisted they were paid thirty dollars a month but 25 went home to their parents each worker only made five dollars a month 25 a month went home to the parents the military ran the camps they were mostly remote and they did conservation work hence the conservation corps they planted trees fought fires constructed trails fire roads lodges campsites built some small dams built roadways and remote areas but the camps were run by the military so the young men were learning how to do close order drill how to make a bed what have you now the men were not in the military but roosevelt tapped into the military sergeants corporals younger officers to help run the camps give them some order under the under the pressure of the department of labor the program opened up to african americans by 1938 the number of african americans reached about 11 that's about how many african americans ruined the general population african-american unemployment was higher than white unemployment but here at least we've reached a proportional amount of african americans in the ccc but they were paid less than the white men and they lived in segregated camps women basically were excluded eleanor roosevelt did insist and later on the ccc enrolled 8 500 women but only for a few months less than a year before congress eliminated the women it was sexist men the congress thought that jobs should go to men women should get married and take care of kids we don't want women out there like doing this kind of stuff very patriarchal women were in for a brief period of time but not long one of the things that's important about the ccc is educa a lot of people had dropped out of high school over 100 000 men will funnel through the ccc they are weak malnourished the ccc feeds them well the military exercises them back into shape and they begin to take classes over five thousand finished high school and over 2 000 started into their college degrees what's interesting to note about the ccc these this program is very similar to a program hitler was running in germany and mussolini had run in italy it was a way for them to get young men into the hands of the military to be trained for close order drill and discipline and some of the things that the fascist states wanted in their young men later it goes away when hitler decides to ignore the versailles treaty but this program in some ways is a fascist style pro mussolini and hitler used this kind of thing congress also passed the agricultural adjustment act the purpose was to help farmers by reducing the crops to for sale and it was staple crops s-t-a-p-l-e that is the most commonly used crops corn wheat tobacco oats things that are the staple things that everybody buys now what we're doing is we're paying people not to grow food or to grow less food so if 10 15 percent of wheat farmers take the money and don't grow wheat there's less wheat produced less flour lost supply and demand says if the demand goes up and the supply goes down the price goes up this was to help farmers if parts of it were declared unconstitutional in 36 congress fixed that by rewriting it and passing it again in 38. but it hurt sharecroppers and tenant farmers especially down south because many cotton farmers who were hiring tenant farmers or sharecroppers decided to take their land off the market they're paid not to grow cotton that's great they can just sit there take the money live off the money and they don't have to do anything the sharecropper who gets paid off piece of the profit no longer has a profit the tenant farmer only works if he can rent the land and if the guy says no i don't want to rent it the tenant farmer's out of luck so while this helped people who did produce cotton it helped people who produced wheat oats what have you it did not help the tenant farmer and the share croppers and there were a lot of them down south by 1935 farm income nationally not individual farmers necessarily but farm income had gone up 50 percent the downside of this the price of food went up bread is made from wheat if wheat's more expensive bread becomes more expensive and people in the city are out of work and need bread and it just got more expensive one of the most controversial programs roosevelt passed well congress passed he signed is the tennessee valley authority the tennessee valley authority covers the area of most of tennessee it's there's not like a real valley it means the waters and creeks and rivers that flow into the tennessee river which starts up in northeast tennessee flows southwest curves and goes north through kentucky into the ohio river so a lot of flooding very poor area parts of appalachia so the tennessee valley authority was designed to manage the tennessee river's navigation and flood control teach farmers how to do proper land use how to plant with contours do some reforestation they also built a lot of dams to control flooding but if you've got a body of water and you've got a dam you have everything set up you need to make electricity and that's what the tva did many of their dams produced hydroelec hydroelectric power the tennessee valley authority became and it may still be the largest utility in the country it sold electricity at reduced rates to about parts in all of six different states it is still i think the largest utility now they've gone past dams they have a couple of nuclear power plants but it was designed to help stop flooding then they built dams now they're making electricity eight over eight million customers in its day eighty thousand square miles this actually is a communist program if you get down to it the government is owning the means of production i'm pointing this out because a lot of people like to criticize roosevelt in the day for being a communist for being a socialist and it's the programs like the tva that make them think that but the reality is some of what roosevelt did could be considered fascist roosevelt probably wasn't committed to one particular philosophy his approach seemed to be if you came to him with an idea to get people to work and he could get money for it let's run with it we've talked about dams already twice they'll be in one or two more times that's an example a lot of roosevelt's programs built dams instead of having one damn building center one damn building administration multiple programs built dams so multiple programs hired engineers to build dams we're getting a redundancy in the government the other real controversial thing that roosevelt created is the national industrial recovery act it's designed from the very beginning this is in 33 to have businesses and government work together to get people back to work and continue manufacturing this bill was to permit manufacturers to draw up industry-wide codes of fair practices under this law the group could raise prices and limit production without violating the antitrust laws that was written into it so it's by industry so shoemakers dry cleaners what have you steel workers steel industry as a side note the law gave workers the protection of a minimum wage i think it was like 25 cents an hour limit to how many hours of work a week they could work and guarantee them the right to organize and collective bargainly excuse me collectively bargain it's a very at that point very pro-labor bill this created two sub programs the national recovery administration is the piece that was to supervise the drafting and operation of the business codes the act authorized committees or councils composed of people from industry government and consumer groups to drop codes of the fair wages and what they thought were fair prices they kind of forced people into this uh there were instances just in new york of if you didn't sign on you got boycotted if you signed up with one of these groups in your industry you got to blew up put a banner in your window it was a blue eagle and then everybody knew that you were following the codes of the nra if you didn't join you didn't get that little ego but even then they still forced you or tried to force you to charge the same amount as they were charging uh there were some cases involved some dry cleaners in a couple of cities who actually were charging less than what the nra suggested and the nra took them to court mixed results but they're trying to set prices and wages in 1935 the supreme court kills this it says that the nra codes were unconstitutional partly because they're giving power to committees that congress is supposed to have and partly because these committees these council are coordinating efforts of industries within a state constitution says congress has the authority for businesses that cross state lines but not businesses within a state in trust state is not touchable by congress and this is what was happening and it was then killed by the supreme court the public works administration was also established to reduce unemployment through the construction of highways and public buildings there were certain rules they were to build schools courthouses city halls hospitals clinics health clinics roads bridges subways and dams third program building dams it spent over six mi billion dollars updating infrastructure but there could be no use of convict labor many of you may have seen or may not have seen shawshank redemption convicts were used to build things can't do that not here it's cheaper but we want to give jobs to people who need to pay limited to 30 hours a week why in those days you work six days a week 10 hour days that's 60 hours if you hire somebody for 30 hours half the work week is left so now you have to hire a second person this job is not about not this job this program is and projects are not about efficiency they're about the government hiring people to do things and hiring as many as they can human labor is to be used in lieu of machinery whenever practical so if you're building a road and there's a little hog back of dirt in the middle of it and you want to cut through it you'd say well go get the bulldozer drop a blade spend an hour cuts done nope can't do that instead you get 20 guys with shovels and wheelbarrows and let them do it it takes a lot longer but the guys are working and getting paid to work it's inefficient the government doesn't care the public works administration jobs were designed to give people paychecks no matter how long they took to do the job the pwa had a very good reputation for management very little graft and it also guaranteed jobs to african americans at base workers all the way up through supervisors now the crews were segregated and african americans a lot of times as i said before got paid less but there was promotions available to african americans in their own crews up through supervisors in 35 now we've you know this couple years later they revise and think about the old cwa and recreate it calling the works to me the work projects administration this will have a bigger budget overall than even the wpa excuse me the pwa 4.8 billion dollars initially is funded for the wpa the main thrust of the wpa is toward the semi-skilled and unskilled workers it's a major effort for the construction of public facilities by 1941 the agency will spend over 11 billion dollars helping 8 million people sixteen hundred schools over a hundred airports three thousand dams there's the dams again and my favorite two things three thousand tennis courts and 103 golf courses you have to remember back in the 30s when they're building all this stuff who plays golf only rich folk but they built a hundred golf courses the wpa tended to be also non-discriminatory in hiring and it supported the arts this was a deliberate approach by the administration to support the arts there was the writers project they hired people to write guidebooks pamphlets health information churned out over a thousand books most of which almost all of which was non-fiction the theater project which was designed to put plays on they played pay rights to write it and actors to act in it the art project for artists under the theater project just to show you the non-discriminatory section here they hired some african-american composers put together an african-american orchestra to play the music and staged the concert in harlem now buried in the wpa down toward the bottom row affairs buried in the negro affairs of the national youth administration under the wpa was the highest ranking african-american in roosevelt's administration which means he didn't have any high-ranking african-americans in his administration what do we get out of all of this by the end of the first 100 days many people in america had come to believe in the new deal they really believed in it to the extent that no matter what happened later they believed the new deal was a solid success if you go to my mother and you talk to her and people of her age did roosevelt solve the depression oh yes roosevelt walked on water which of course would have been a neat trick since as i already told you he had polio and was in a wheelchair but people believed because he told them they were doing things money was being spent they could see projects going up some people were making some money unemployment was dropping they believed in roosevelt and they thought he was doing what he promised but unemployment in the new deal never really dropped below 14 in eight years it never really dropped below 14 one of the concepts to understand about the new deal almost all of the programs the wpa the pwa the tva all these programs designed to give people jobs the government does not go out for contract bid private companies are not building any of this the government is hiring the people the government is buying the equipment buying the supplies so it's a government project no private businesses involved and that's the way a lot of roosevelt administration wanted it as i said many of them were very left they thought it was almost immoral for any businessman to make any money during this time and when we get to the next section we'll see this come up even more as we get closer to world war ii