Pre-New Deal Statistics
13-14 million unemployed in months leading up to inauguration
40 million people who could not count on regular source of income
1932 1,456 bank failures
$715 million in lost deposits
1933 (first two months) 4,004 banks go under
$3.6 billion lost
Longer breadlines, Hoovervilles more crowded
New Deal
Speech Given at Acceptance of nomination
Players
Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor
Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of Interior
William Woodin Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of Treasury
Cordell Hull, Secretary of State
Harry Hopkins, had supervised FDR’s relief programs in NY, chosen to do it at federal
level. Head up FERA
First 100 Daysset tone for this measurement for future presidents
The Beginning
I. Finance
BankHoliday
Four day bank holiday beginning Monday, March 6
-so that congress could write legislation to deal with the banking system
Legislation
Emergency Banking Act of 1933 (passed by Congress on 3/9 after 38 minutes of
debate…more conservative than they had expected…Senate overwhelmingly passed it by
7:30 that evening…73 to 7)
Banks start to reopen on March 13 (end of the month, ¾ reopened)
(FDR=fiscal conservative, call for balanced budgets throughout term)
EBAto stabilize banking system not change it
RFC (Reconstruction Finance Corporation)
AUDIO: Fireside Chat (March 21, 1933)
NEWS:
CARTOONS:
Off gold standard (April 19) and Federal Securities Act (May 27)
Long term impact but little immediate effect
Non financial relief programs
(“…the government’s relief programs, which were indisputably direct, massive in
scale, and, if flawed and too often confused and confusing, affected the lives of millions
at the level of survival itself.” Watkins, 124)
FDR opposite of Hoover’s individuals help themselves, private sector, etc
FDR wanted to “provide federal relief to as many people as possible as soon as
possible.” (Watkins, 124)
II. Federal Emergency Relief Administration (May (12) 1933)
FERA nfunded by $500 million provided by RFC
Grants to states for half of the 500 mill.
Each state must establish and support a local FERA office
Other half=matching grants ($1 fed money for every $3 local)
Administered through the AAA
III. National Industrial Recovery Bill (NIRA) June 16
Introduced in Congress on May 15$3 billion allocated for relief
Fund federal, state and municipal projects
How paid for? (manufacturers sales’ tax or ‘breakfast table tax’)
Two parts
Title I
--created NRA
National Recovery Adminsitration (NRA)
Get prices and wages under control
Government control over industry (not since WW I)
Hugh Johnson to administer it
Blue Eagle emblem, “We Do Our Part” (films of support)
Title II
--created Public Works Administration
Public Works Administration (PWA)
Directed by Ickes
$3.3 billion to run it
fed gov had supported public works projects previously
transcontinental railroads, Rivers and Harbors Act,
during its six years it would finance 34,508 projects at a cost of over $6 billion,
employing, in any given year, 500,000 workers or more
--in all but three of the nation’s 3,073 counties there would be at least one project
(Watkins, 145, examples as well)
NIRA would be invalidated by SCOTUS in January 1935
IV. Farm Relief Act signed into lay by FDR May 12
--president the power to adjust the value of the dollar to implement inflation; a
“measure long desired by price-hungry farmers, it appalled conservatiuve economists,
including FDR’s budget director, Lewis Douglas, who said, “Well, this is the end of
Western civilization,” and later resigned” (Watkins 160)
Created the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)
--controlled production, inducing higher prices by paying farmers to take
land out of cultivation or reducing livestock production—money came from a processing
tax on food products
--mortgage relief
V. Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) May 18, 1933
Description, Watkins, 151
Civil Works Administration (CWA), October 1933
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), (passes congress on March 31) April 5, 1933
Part of Reforestation Relief Act
Separate
Outlining the New Deal
http://newdeal.feri.org/texts/380.htm
VI. Court Packing (Watkins, 307)
--FDR calls meeting February 5, 1937 with cabinet and Senate Dem. Leaders
--Announced intention to ask congress, that afternoon, for legislation empowering
him to appoint one additional judge to the federal judiciary for every judge who
reached the age of 70 but declined to retire. Targets? 6 of 9 SCOTUS justices
--Set in motion events that would erode relationship with congress and “condemn
the ND to a long legislative twilight”
--essentially ended the New Deal
--on July 22 the Dem controlled Senate voted 70-20 to recommit the legislation to
the Judiciary Committee—way to bury it.
--next few years, deaths and retirements
--he eventually appointed 8 justices
Court Make-up
Justices
Conservatives
James McReynolds (1914-1941) Wilson (aging)
Willis Van Devanter (1911-1937) Taft
George Sutherland (1922-1938) Harding
Pierce Butler (1923-1939) Harding
Moderates (at best)
Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes (1910-16) Taft (CJ 1930-41) Hoover
More often than not, he voted to uphold controversial legislation of New
Deal, though in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935), he wrote
the opinion that found the act that created the NIRA to be unconstitutional.
He vigorously opposed Roosevelt's unsuccessful effort to reorganize the
Supreme Court in 1937.
Owen J. Roberts (1930-45) Hoover
Liberals (always count on to support ND?)
Louis Brandeis (1916-1939) Wilson (“a sometimes ally-sometimes enemy of New
Deal policy” Watkins, 241)
Harlan Stone (1925-41) Coolidge
Benjamin Cardozo (1932-1938) Hoover
". . .the great generalities of the Constitution have a content and a
significance that vary from age to age. The method of free decision sees
thru the transitory particulars and reaches what is permanent behind
them."
Important Decisions
1/7/35 on: several decisions invalidating portions of New Deal measures
5/7/35 Schecter v. United States -- “Black Monday” – invalidated code-making
and price-fixing powers of Title I of National Industrial Recovery Act
(NIRA) “This is the end of this business centralization, and I want you to
go back and tell the president that we’re not going to let this government
centralize everything. It’s come to an end.” – Brandeis to Thomas
Corcoran
Spring 1936 Invalidated Bituminous Coal Conservation Act (BCC) “little NIRA”
for coal industry
Struck down major portions of AAA
Suggestion of trouble for National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)
March 29 – May 24, 1937 A series of decisions supporting ND – made the enemy
look like it supported his policies
Additional Information
Media Against Roosevelt
Chicago Tribune – “Shall the Supreme Court be turned into the personal organ of
the President…is fundamental because, if Congress answers yes, the principle of an
impartial and independent judiciary will be lost in this country.”
Walter Lippman – Roosevelt was “drunk with power”
Constituents (from Watkins, 308)
defy the kind of tyranny that “Cornwallis and Howe fought for in 1776”
“Don’t, don’t let that wild man in the White House do this dreadful thing to our
country.”
Senator Joseph Robinson – who had been fighting for it against growing opposition in
Senate died on July 14, 1937.
Documents
Draft of the Proposed Law
http://newdeal.feri.org/court/draft.htm
Judicial Branch Reorganization Plan
http://newdeal.feri.org/speeches/1937b.htm
Editorial, The New York Herald-Tribune, February 8, 1937.
http://newdeal.feri.org/texts/666.htm
Title: Issues and Men, by Villard, Oswald Garrison, Publication:
http://newdeal.feri.org/texts/831.htm
Editorial, The Nation
http://newdeal.feri.org/texts/668.htm
The President Faces the Court," The New Republic
http://newdeal.feri.org/texts/667.htm
FDR Speech in support
http://newdeal.feri.org/texts/654.htm
Reasons for President's Plan and the Remedy
Homer S. Cummings
Attorney-General of the United States
By radio, February 14, 1937
http://newdeal.feri.org/texts/651.htm
The Naked Question of the Constitutionality of the Court Proposal
John H. Clarke
The Nation
Former Associate Justice, U. S. Supreme Court
Over NBC, March 22, 1937
http://newdeal.feri.org/court/clarke.htm
This is No Lawyer's Dispute over Legalisms
Herbert Hoover
Chicago. February 20, 1937
http://newdeal.feri.org/texts/652.htm
Audio
FDR’s accepts Dem Party nomination July 7, 1932
Text: http://www.theamericanpresidency.net/nomafdr32.htm
On the Reorganization of the Judiciary (Fireside Chat)
Franklin D. Roosevelt , March 9, 1937 text: http://newdeal.feri.org/texts/387.htm
Support
Charles E. Coughlin
Supreme Court Decisions
http://newdeal.feri.org/texts/subject.htm#364
Backing the President's Court Proposal
http://newdeal.feri.org/texts/584.htm
Political Cartoons
http://www.nisk.k12.ny.us/fdr/1937/index.html
http://newdeal.feri.org/court/toons.htm