New Deal Programs: Social Security, Housing, and the CCC

Introduction: The Economic Crisis Behind the New Deal

The Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the global depression that followed caused U.S. industrial output to fall by 54%, while unemployment reached 25–30%. In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president and dramatically changed the course of U.S. economics and politics by introducing strong government regulation and a package of massive public works projects known as the "New Deal." These initiatives were designed to re-employ Americans and to build a more modern national infrastructure. The following sections analyze three primary sources related to New Deal programs.

The first source is an article written by Abraham Epstein in 1935 for The Nation. Epstein noted that the Social Security Act was signed by President Roosevelt on August 14 with a great deal of accompanying publicity. However, the issues the Act was intended to address — and public opinion regarding it — remained deeply uncertain. Epstein argued that President Roosevelt's speech on the occasion, and the approval it generated, was simply "too good to be true."

Epstein on the Social Security Act of 1935

His initial skepticism proved well founded. Shortly after the Act was announced, its contradictions became apparent. The President himself appeared confused about what exactly the Act was meant to accomplish. The country was loudly demanding old-age pensions, yet the Administration — represented most visibly by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins — seemed almost entirely oblivious to this pressure. Perkins, for her part, was primarily concerned with the problem of unemployment insurance. The resulting confusion was evident in Roosevelt's own speech, in which he stated: "I do not know whether this is the time for any federal legislation on old-age security."

After considerable debate, a Council for Economic Security was formed and old-age pensions were added to the program. However, the entire financial burden of old-age dependency after 1942 was transferred to young workers and their employers. In Epstein's view, this arrangement violated a fundamental principle of social insurance by placing the entire burden of insecurity on the industrial sector while excluding the wealthier population from any responsibility. (Epstein, 1935)

The second source is Albert Mayer's article "Can We Have a Housing Program?" A public housing program was another component of Roosevelt's New Deal. In Mayer's view, the government had failed in this area because it never treated housing as a matter of genuine significance — regarding it instead as merely one of many unrelated sources of emergency employment.

Mayer argued that formulating an effective housing program required attention to several important elements. Most pressing was the severe shortage of housing, which carried dangerous social implications. Beyond this, he emphasized the need for a system that integrated urban, suburban, and rural housing and planning. Issues of financing and the coordination of public and private agencies also needed to be addressed for any large-scale program to succeed. In Mayer's assessment, the government's failure to engage with these concerns stemmed primarily from its fundamental misunderstanding of the problem.

Conclusion: Evaluating New Deal Effectiveness

Mayer, Albert. Can We Have a Housing Program? (October 9, 1935). The New Deal Network. Retrieved November 16, 2003. http://newdeal.feri.org/nation/na35400.htm