15) Tuesday, March 20. The New Deal: A New Social Contract?

Story Line: Was the New Deal revolutionary politics or conservative improvisation? Was it about getting out of the Depression or creating a new America? How many New Deals were there? Retrospectively, the two main policy-making alternatives were to generate wealth by stimulating market mechanisms or to engage in the politics and programs of redistribution in the name of social justice. The New Deal programs favored means of generating wealth instead of redistributing it. Review Questions for Discussion VIII   [Lecture 14] Outline [Lecture 16]

Readings for lecture 15 Document Number: DJ2306200095; Document Number: DJ2306200084 read first half of The Invisible Man (chapters 1-13) Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property, 1932 John Maynard Keynes, Open Letter to FDR, 1933 NLRA, 1935 Thurman Arnold, The Folklore of Capitalism, 1937 David Lilienthal, Democracy on the March, 1944

Images for lecture 15: Migrants in California Mural: Works Progress Administration Center Promoting Cultural Pluralism "Spirit of 1938" Masculinity and the New Deal "Uncle Sam's News Reel"

I- Yearning for Abundance and Security

• Charlie Chaplin movie–Modern Times
• Alabama Senator Hugo Black; AFL president William Green

II- The First Hundred Days or the First New Deal or Stop the Mess

• Glass-Steagall Act. Rescuing the banking system; regulating the stock exchange
• Home Owner's Loan Corporation; Federal Housing Administration, National Housing Act
• Agricultural Adjustment Act
• Civilian Conservation Corps; Tennessee Valley Authority; David Lilienthal
• National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA); National Recovery Administration (NRA).
• Senator Robert Wagner; Section 7
• Public Works Administration (Harold Ickes)
• Federal Emergency Relief Administration(Harry Hopkins); Civil Works Administration
• Works Progress Administration
• Robert and Helen Lynd; Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia
• Keynesian principles

III- Finding Long Term Solutions or 2nd New Deal or 2nd Hundred Days

• D. W. Griffith What Shall We do with Our Old? 1911

1) Social Security Act, August 14, 1935; old-age insurance program (OAI); ADC Aid to Dependent Children; later AFDC.

2) The Wagner Act July 5, 1935 or National Labor Relations Act

Pictorial interlude

IV. The Message Was Not Lost on Workers

1) Challenge from the right

• Huey Long; Dr. Francis Townsend

2) challenges from the left

3) The Sit-Down strikes

4) Class and Race: Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man

V. The 3rd New Deal: Towards Mass Consumption

• Business Advisory Council (BAC); W. Averell Harriman; Gerard Swope of GE
• Alfred Sloan of General Motors; Edward Filene
• John Maynard Keynes
• Henry Morgenthau, Hopkins; Beardsley Ruml; Leon Henderson; Aubrey Williams

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