New Deal

THE NEW DEAL REFERS collectively to the domestic programs that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration enacted in response to the Great Depression. The term is applied to the period of history from 1933, when Roosevelt's term in office began, until the onset of World War II in 1939.

New Deal programs involved a tremendous amount of federal legislation, government programs, bureaus, agencies, and commissions. Many of these programs had overlapping functions and jurisdictions, some of which had similar names. New Deal programs were often referred to by an alphabetical abbreviation, thus leading to the remark that an “alphabet soup” had been created. The extensive and multifaceted nature of the New Deal programs represent Roosevelt's willingness [Page 326]to utilize many approaches and to try anything that he thought might work. He was not, as was his predecessor Herbert Hoover, bound by a conviction that it was not the role of the government to involve itself in the economy. While Hoover opposed direct government aid to individuals in distress, Roosevelt felt that intervention was necessary. At one point in his presidency, he commanded one of his aides: “I don't care how you do it. Feed them damn it, feed them.”

The huge construction projects of the New Deal's Tennessee Valley Authority were one example of the liberal recovery program.

Roosevelt was elected president in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March 1933, 13 million people were unemployed, and almost every bank had closed. In his first 100 days in office, he proposed and Congress enacted numerous programs to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform programs that attempted to prevent another great depression from occurring and to cushion the economic effect in case one did. In an effort to organize New Deal programs clearly, historians usually divide them into three main groups: relief, recovery, and reform.

Relief programs were designed to relieve economic suffering immediately by feeding those who were on the verge of starvation and by putting people back to work—working for the government if necessary. It included the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). This agency provided direct government aid, an outright government handout, to individuals in need. The Roosevelt administration felt people would have more self-respect if they worked for a living and preferred establishing federal projects in which a person might be employed by the government and paid wages or a salary. The program put people to work for the government as soon as possible by doing something that would benefit society. But the FERA was considered only a temporary measure.

People were put to work on a more permanent basis through other programs such as the Public Works Administration (PWA). Under this program, large sums of money were appropriated to be spent on giant public work projects such as building dams or large public buildings. The unemployed hired for such projects were paid by the government. Next, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was similar in name and in concept to the PWA and employed people in a variety of public service tasks. Generally, WPA projects were not as large as PWA projects. For instance, WPA projects built college buildings while the PWA built great dams. Furthermore, WPA projects were much more varied than PWA. For example, WPA projects employed artists to paint pictures in post offices, historians to write history books, and actors to put on plays for the public. Many public buildings in use today were originally built as WPA projects. Finally, the National Youth Administration (NYA) and the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) employed young people in some kind of public service capacity.

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