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The New Deal Coalition; Programs and Acts

QUESTION

Required Resources

Read/review the following resources for this activity:

Initial Post Instructions:

For the initial post, pick two (2) of the following (any program and/or act of the New Deal): (Pick 4 of the following and address them in 2 pages each.)

Programs Acts
Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC)

Public Works Administration (PWA)

Civil Works Administration (CWA)

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

Farm Security Administration (FSA)

 Emergency Banking Relief Act

Economy Act

Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)

Tennessee Valley Authority Act (TVA)

National Employment System Act (Wagner-Peyser Act)

Home Owners Loan Act

National Industrial Recovery Act (NIA)

Glass-Steagall Act (Banking Act)

Securities & Exchange Act

Emergency Relief Appropriation Act

Resettlement Administration (RA)

Rural Electrification Administration (REA)

National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act)

Social Security Act

Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)

Reflecting over the weekly reading and lesson video The New Deal Coalition (also linked in the Required Resources), address the following for your selections:

  • Consider workers, immigrants, and African Americans. Explain how minorities were represented by the New Deal.
  • Analyze to what extent you think that the New Deal effectively ended the Great Depression and restored the economy.

 

ANSWER

Consider workers, immigrants, and African Americans. Explain how the New Deal represented minorities.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA)

President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938. The FLSA created provisions for a forty-hour work week and minimum wage. The minimum wage was 40 cents per hour. The law also created provisions that allowed workers to earn overtime for extra working hours. Before the legislation, women worked for longer hours, but their wages were lower than men’s. The Fair Labor Standards Act solved this issue by establishing the maximum number of hours employees can work daily. Coupled with minimum wage, the law protected women from working longer shifts with low wages.

It also prohibited child labor, i.e., individuals under 16 years (Corbett et al., 2016, p. 714). Children were the most exploited by the system because they only got a fraction of adults’ pay. Some children had to drop out of school and even work night shifts to support their families, yet their wages were the lowest. FLSA had child labor provisions, protecting these children from exploitation. According to Corbett et al. (2016), the FLSA prohibited interstate trade of goods made by children under sixteen. This prohibition served as a disincentive for companies that used child labor, ending child exploitation. The Fair Labor Standards Act represented minority groups by improving their standard wages, welfare, and their working conditions.

National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act)

The Wagner Act represented minority groups by protecting industrial unionism, which provided a medium for workers to express their labor grievances to the federal government. Corbett et al. (2016) indicate that the law benefited industrial workers. Most people that worked at factories were minority groups or the working class, such as immigrants, women, child workers, and African American. This Act led to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which granted workers the right to bargain and unionize collectively. The U.S Supreme Court had formerly rescinded these rights in 1937, but Roosevelt reinstated them. By reinstating the law, Roosevelt provided the minority groups a medium for championing for their employment rights.

Analyze to what extent you think the New Deal effectively ended the Great Depression and restored the economy.

The primary goal of the FLSA was to lift the country out of the Great Depression by raising wages. According to Cherry (2009), about one in every four workers in the United States was unemployed. Labor supply was high, but the demand was low. Consequently, workers competed by underbidding each other, which continuously dropped the minimum wages (Cherry, 2009). The low wages resulted in a downward economic spiral, and the FLSA tried to ameliorate this situation by setting a minimum wage. The Wagner Act had similar motives but achieved them by giving workers union rights. These legislations helped improve the economic conditions of workers, but their role in ending the Great Depression was trivial. Cherry (2009) states that laying basic floor regulations (like in the FLSA case) helps reduce income gaps and social inequality, but such laws cannot end economic recessions.

Another study conducted by Moloney (1942) reports that the federal government hoped these laws would promote the country’s economy by improving citizens’ purchasing power and increasing employment opportunities. Unfortunately, these laws did not achieve these goals because unemployment persisted in the 1940s (Corbett et al., 2016, p.715). The FLSA and Wagner Act improved the country’s economy by raising workers’ wages, but they were inadequate in offsetting the Great Depression.

Option 2: Works Progress Administration and the Social Security Act

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

Congress passed the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act in 1935. This legislation authorized the government to invest in relief programs to help Americans. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was one of the relief programs. The WPA program created over 5900 schools and 2500 hospitals. It also funded the construction of 570,000 miles of road. (Corbett et al., 2016, p.712). Through WPA, the National Youth Administration created work-study jobs for over 500 000 college students and four million high school students (Corbett et al., 2016, p.712).

Many minority groups benefitted from this program, including African Americans. Corbett et al. (2016) indicate that African Americans were discriminated against by many of the New Deal programs. The WPA was different because it employed over 350 000 African Americans, accounting for approximately 15% of the workforce (Corbett et al., 2016). Another WPA project called Federal Project Number One administered a literacy program that helped over 1 000 000 African American children (p.716). The WPA program represented minority groups by creating employment opportunities, expanding local infrastructural capacities, and improving their literacy levels.

The Social Security Act

The Social Security Act created programs to help the vulnerable, the elderly, the young, the unemployed, and the disabled. The Act created a pension plan for all retirees except farmers and domestic workers. Corbett et al. (2016) indicate that African Americans and women were locked out of the pension benefits because most worked in semi-skilled and unskilled positions that did not require payrolls. Congress passed another unemployment insurance law as an extension of the Social Security Act. This insurance program protected unwed mothers, the blind, the deaf, or the disabled. Social Security Act represented the needs of many minority groups by providing unemployment relief and retirement benefits. However, it left out some minority groups, such as women and African Americans.

Analyze to what extent you think that the New Deal effectively ended the Great Depression and restored the economy

Since the Great Depression was formally declared, economists and historians continued to debate whether the New Deal played a role in ending the most prominent economic depression in world history. Dunleavy (2018) argues that the New Deal programs had a long-term impact on the U.S economy, but they did end the Great Depression. For example, the tenets of the Social Security Act still exist to date, and many vulnerable populations have benefitted from it. Likewise, the WPA played a considerable role in improving the purchasing power of citizens by increasing employment opportunities for the target population.

A recent study by Fishback (2017) shows that relief spending by the government increased consumption activity. The author states that. “… the distribution of New Deal public works and relief funding stimulated income in the states with a multiplier of around one, and stimulated durable good consumption in the form of car sale” (Fishback, 2017). This study implies that the relief funding by the government increased consumption.

However, Dunleavy (2018) argues that historical events such as World War II played a more significant role in ending the depression than the New Deal. The Second World War lowered unemployment and increased the country’s GNP, thanks to the increased demand for weapon production. Therefore, according to Dunleavy (2018), the New Deal alone could not end the Great Depression because government stimulus was not large enough. The author attributes the end of the Great Depression to the Second World War. The New Deal programs such as WPA improved the country’s economy, but the government stimulus alone could not end the Great Depression.

References

Cherry, M. A. (2008). Working for (virtually) minimum wage: Applying the Fair Labor Standards Act in cyberspace. Ala. L. Rev., 60, 1077. https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1533&context=faculty

Corbett, P. S., Janseen, V., Lund, J., Pfannestiel, T., Vickery, P., & Waskiewicz, S. (2016). US History. OpenStax. https://assets.openstax.org/oscms-prodcms/media/documents/USHistory-WEB.pdf

Dunleavy, B. (2018, September 10). Did New Deal Programs Help End the Great Depression? HISTORY. https://www.history.com/news/new-deal-effects-great-depression

Fishback, P. (2017). How successful was the new deal? The microeconomic impact of new deal spending and lending policies in the 1930s. Journal of Economic Literature, 55(4), 1435-85. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w21925/w21925.pdf

Moloney, J. F. (1942). Some Effects of the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act upon Southern Industry. Southern Economic Journal, 15-23. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1052478

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