FDR and the New Deal

¶ … New Deal documents and analyzes it in the context of accounting. It has 3 sources. Due to the Stock Market Crash in 1929 and the global depression that followed suit, U.S. industrial output fell 54% and there was 25-30% unemployment. In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president and he drastically changed the course of U.S. economics and politics by introducing strong government regulation and a package of massive public works projects called the "New Deal." These were meant to re-employ Americans and to build a more modern infrastructure.

Following are three sources for the New Deal. The first source is an article written by Abraham Epstein in 1935 for The Nation. He wrote that the social-security bill was with signed by the President on August 14 with a great deal of publicity surrounding it. However, the issues it was meant to cover and the public opinion regarding it was most uncertain. He generally speaks about the fact that President Roosevelt's speech regarding this act and the resultant approval and applause was simply 'too good to be true'.

His initial hunch proved true as some time after the announcement of the Act, the house of cards started to collapse. For it turned out that the President himself was confused about what exactly this Act was supposed to do. The country noisily started demanding old-age pensions. But the Administration, symbolized by Madame Secretary Perkins, seemed almost totally oblivious of this clamour. Miss Perkins, on her part was mainly concerned about the problem of unemployment insurance.

Hence, confusion prevailed and was very obvious in the President's speech when he said: "I do not know whether this is the time for any federal legislation on old-age security." However, after much ado, a council for Economic Security was formed and old-age pensions were added to the program. Also, the entire burden of old-age dependency after 1942 was transferred to the young workers and their employers.

And hence, this bill goes against one of the basic rules of social insurance by placing the entire burden of insecurity upon the industrial sector, to the exclusion of the richer population. (Epstein, 1935) The second source is Albert Mayer's 'Can We Have a Housing Program?' A Public Housing Program was another of Roosevelt's efforts as part of the New Deal. In Mayer's opinion, the government has failed because it never thought of housing as anything significant, but just one of many unrelated sources of emergency employment.

Mayer wrote that to formulate a housing program, a number of important elements have to be considered. The most important being the very shortage of housing which could have very dangerous implications. Also, there is a need for a system which inter-relates urban, suburban, and rural housing and planning. Other considerations like the financing and correlation of public and private agencies to undertake such a huge program have to be thought of as well.

In Mayer's opinion, the failure of the government to take regard of these things was mainly due to its incomprehension of the problem. Also, all the agencies that the government created added to the chaos: the Home Owners' Loan Corporation would approve a mortgage and revivify the owner in some area where the PWA was trying to assemble land for slum clearance. Hence, Mayer says, an immediate plan is required which would be practical and would incorporate all the features which were previously left unattended to in Roosevelt's Housing Plan.

(Mayer, 1935) The third source used is Robert Fechner's "My Hopes For the CCC'. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was an environmental program that put 2.5 million unmarried men to work maintaining and restoring forests, beaches, and parks. Workers earned only $1 a day but received free board and job training. Fechner was the Director of the CCC and was immensely pleased with all that it had accomplished.

These men planted new forests on barren lands, reduced forest devastation by forest fires by improving forest and park protection systems, built new recreational facilities to improve the civic usefulness of parks, forests etc. And initiated.