The New Deal also greatly influenced the American Labor Movement, especially through the following legislation: Through the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 the National Recovery Administration (NRA) came into being. The NRA attempted to revive industry by raising wages, reducing work hours and reining in unbridled competition. Portions of the NRA were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935; however, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which was the second part of the NRA, was allowed to stand. The majority of its collective bargaining stipulations survived in two subsequent bills. The NRA — a product of meetings among such “Brain Trust” advisors as Raymond Moley, big business leaders, and labor unionists — illustrated Roosevelt`s willingness to work with, rather than against, business interests. Employees were guaranteed the right to negotiate with employers through unions of their choosing by the Wagner Act of 1935, and it established a Labor Relations Board as a forum for dispute resolution. The act bolstered the American Federation of Labor, and pointed to the inception of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.), another labor movement. Workers were given the right to bargain collectively through the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 promulgated a 44-hour workweek with time-and-a-half for overtime and pegged a minimum wage of 25 cents an hour. The act also provided that the hours worked would drop to 40 and the wage would incrementally rise to 40 cents. In addition, the bill made child labor under the age of 16 illegal. The U.S. GOVERNMENT could reach out in the widest way to alleviate human misery — such was an assumption that underlay the New Deal. Beginning in 1935, Congress enacted the Social Security Act of 1935 (and later amendments) that provided pensions to the aged, benefit payments to dependent mothers, crippled children and blind people, and UNEMPLOYMENT insurance. Small businesses, homeowners and the oil and railroad industries were given help by other legislation. Who paid for the New Deal? The foregoing projects, and others, were expensive, and the government was not taking in enough revenue to avoid deficit spending. To fund all the new legislation, government spending rose. Spending in 1916 was $697 million; in 1936 it was $9 billion. The government modified taxes to tap wealthy people the most, who could take it in stride most easily. The deficit was made up in part by raising taxes and borrowing money through the sale of GOVERNMENT BONDS. Meanwhile, the national debt climbed to unprecedented heights. TVA construction site Response in the U.S. Supreme Court Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes provided a swing vote during the critical DEPRESSION and New Deal eras, although liberal senators had assumed that he would hold conservative positions when he was nominated by Hoover in 1930. Critics have suggested that some of Hughes’ pro-New Deal stances were prompted by a desire to weaken FDR`s court-packing scheme, not by conviction. He supported Franklin Roosevelt’s decision not to pay government obligations in GOLD, provided a critical vote upholding collective bargaining rights under the Wagner Act and upheld the controversial Social Security Act. On other occasions, however, Hughes dealt severe blows to the New Deal, most notably in Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States (1935), in which he voted with the majority to strike down the National Industrial Recovery Act. In 1937, Hughes publicly opposed Roosevelt’s plan to pack the Supreme Court with sympathetic justices and offered his opinion in writing to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Opponents of the New Deal By 1934, the New Deal was encountering opposition from both ends of the POLITICALspectrum. All around the country, brazen unions — some Marxist-influenced — sparked job actions, including a city-wide strike in San Francisco. Nevertheless, the most prominent left-wing threat to Roosevelt was a Louisiana senator, Huey P. Long, who railed at the New Deal for not doing enough. Conservatives argued that Roosevelt had done too much. Some of them organized the American Liberty League in August 1934 to galvanize the right. However, in the mid-term elections, the Democrats gained enough seats in both houses of Congress to enjoy veto-proof majorities. The nation saw measurable progress by 1935, but businessmen and bankers increasingly opposed the New Deal. The president`s experiments alarmed them. The rich, conservatives, numerous businessmen — and those who were all three — vigorously opposed the New Deal. They were dismayed by his toleration of budget deficits and his removal of the nation from the GOLD standard, and were disgusted by legislation favorable to labor. Social Security poster Election of 1936 The U.S. Supreme Court had been nullifying crucial New Deal legislation, but the president was re-elected by a wide margin in 1936. That nationwide endorsement of FDR, who carried every state except Vermont and Maine, convinced him that he had popular backing. To capitalize on it, Roosevelt introduced legislation to expand the federal courts, ostensibly as a straightforward organizational reform, but actually to pack the courts with justices sympathetic to his proposals. He was unsuccessful, but constitutional law would eventually change to allow the GOVERNMENT to regulate the national economy. Conclusion As the free world geared up to fight the Axis powers, Roosevelt began to turn his attention away from domestic policies and toward helping the Allies, while maintaining an isolationist position towards entering the fighting of World War II. With America’s eventual entry into the war, that nation’s economy continued to improve. Large-scale production of military equipment and the draft turned America’s eyes toward a larger enemy than the beast of poverty that it had once known during The Great Depression, thus closing the chapter on the New Deal. ---- Selected Quotes ---- Quotes regarding The New Deal. By Franklin D. Roosevelt I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. Speech accepting the 1932 Democratic Party nomination. - - - BOOKS You May Like Include: ---- Aberdeen Gardens by Aberdeen Gardens Heritage Committee. Aberdeen Gardens was established by Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1934 as a model for housing following the Great DEPRESSION. Of the 5... The Defining Moment: FDRs Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter. In this dramatic and authoritative account, the author shows how Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his famous fear itself speech and the first 100 days... Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H.W. Brands. A sweeping, magisterial biography of the man generally considered the greatest president of the twentieth century, admired by Democrats and Republican... Nothing to Fear: FDRs Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America by Adam Cohen. Nothing to Fear brings to life a fulcrum moment in American history--the tense, feverish first one Hundred Days of FDRs presidency, when he and his i... New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDRs Economic Legacy Has Damaged America by Burton W. Folsom Jr.. A sharply critical new look at Franklin D. Roosevelts presidency reveals government policies known as the New Deal that hindered economic recovery fr... Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDRs Great Supreme Court Justices by Noah Feldman. As a conservative Supreme Court flexes its muscles against a Democratic president for the first time since the New Deal, a series of recent books has ... The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes. In The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes, one of the nations most-respected economic commentators, offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depressi... Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America by John M. Barry. In 1927, the Mississippi River swept across an area roughly equal in size to Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont combined, leaving ...
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 03:55:22 +0000
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