Schlesinger, however, disputed Katznelson`s claim, arguing that the increase in federal power came at the expense of state rights, thereby exacerbating state governments, exacerbating tensions between the federal and state governments. Schlesinger used quotes from the time to emphasize this point, and observed that “the actions of the New Deal, [Ogden L.] Mills said, “Abolish state sovereignty. They transform a government with limited powers into a government with unlimited authority over all our lives. [206] In the 1970s, liberal historians responded with a defense of the New Deal based on numerous local and microscopic studies. Praise increasingly focused on Eleanor Roosevelt, who was considered a more appropriate crusade reformer than her husband. [222] Since then, research on the New Deal has focused less on whether the New Deal was a “conservative,” “liberal,” or “revolutionary” phenomenon than on the constraints within which it operated. Notable projects include the Lincoln Tunnel, Triborough Bridge, LaGuardia Airport, Overseas Highway and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. [90] The Rural Electrification Administration has used cooperatives to bring electricity to rural areas, many of which are still operating. [91] The National Youth Administration was another semi-autonomous APE program for youth. Its Texas director, Lyndon B.
Johnson, then used the NYA as a model for some of his Grand Society programs in the 1960s. [92] The WPA was organized by the states, but New York City had its own branch, Federal One, which created jobs for writers, musicians, artists, and theater staff. It became a hunting ground for conservatives looking for communist employees. [93] The Farm Tenancy Act of 1937 was the last major New Deal law affecting agriculture. It created the Farm Security Administration (FSA), which replaced the Resettlement Administration. Roosevelt won his second term in a landslide and continued to push for legislation that would help the economy. Employment programs employed more than eight million people, and while systematic discrimination harmed both women and African-American workers, these programs still managed to get people back to work. The last major New Deal law that Roosevelt passed was the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set a minimum wage, set a maximum work week, and prohibited child labor. This law, along with Social Security, still provides much of the social safety net in the United States today.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set maximum hours (44 cents per week) and minimum wage (25 cents per hour) for most categories of workers. The work of children under the age of 16 is prohibited, children under the age of 18 are prohibited from working in hazardous conditions. As a result, the wages of 300,000 workers, mostly in the south, were increased and hours reduced by 1.3 million. [85] It was the last major New Deal bill and it was passed with the support of Northern industrialists who wanted to stop the migration of jobs to the South at low wages. [86] NRA Administrator Hugh Johnson showed signs of a nervous breakdown due to the extreme pressure and workload of National Recovery Administration leadership. After two meetings with Roosevelt and an unsuccessful attempt to resign, Johnson resigned on September 24, 1934, and Roosevelt replaced the position of trustee with a new National Industrial Recovery Board,[72][73] of which Donald Richberg was appointed executive director. Roosevelt took office with no concrete plan to deal with the Great Depression — so he improvised while Congress listened to a multitude of voices. [24] Among Roosevelt`s most famous advisers was an informal brain trust, a group that tended to view pragmatic government intervention in the economy positively. [25] His election as Minister of Labour, Frances Perkins, strongly influenced his initiatives. Her list of priorities if she accepted the job illustrates: “a forty-hour week, a minimum wage, workers` compensation, unemployment benefits, a federal law prohibiting child labor, direct federal assistance for unemployment assistance, social security, a revived public employment service, and health insurance.” [26] Since 1933, politicians and pundits have often called for a “New Deal” in relation to an object – that is, they have called for an entirely new and large-scale approach to a project.
Like Arthur A. Ekirch Jr. (1971) showed that the New Deal stimulated utopianism in American political and social thought on a variety of issues. In Canada, Conservative Prime Minister Richard B. Bennett proposed a “New Deal” on regulation, taxation and social security in 1935, which was a copy of the American program, but Bennett`s proposals were not implemented and he was defeated in his re-election in October 1935. In line with the increasing use of American political phraseology in Britain, Tony Blair`s Labour government has referred to some of its employment programmes as a “New Deal,” as opposed to the Conservative Party`s promise of the “British dream.” Ira Katznelson argued that while the federal government has expanded its power and begun providing social benefits on a scale previously unknown in the United States, it has often allowed individual states to control the allocation of funds allocated to that welfare. This meant that states controlled who had access to those funds, which meant that many Southern states were able to racially separate the allocation of federal funds — or in some cases, like a number of counties in Georgia, exclude African Americans altogether. [204] This has allowed these states to continue to exercise their rights relatively and also to preserve the institutionalization of the racist order in their societies. While Katznelson acknowledged that the expansion of the federal government had the potential to create tensions between the federal government and the states, he argued that this was avoided because those states managed to maintain some control. As Katznelson observed, “they [Southern state governments] had to deal with the pressure that could potentially be exerted on local practices by investing authority in federal bureaucracies […].
To protect against this outcome, the most important mechanism was to separate the source of funding from decisions on the use of new funds. [205] In July 1935, the National Labour Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act, created the National Labour Relations Board to oversee union elections and prevent companies from treating their workers unfairly.