HIST 12 Lecture

1. Chapter 26 – Managing the Great Depression,
Forging the New Deal, 1929-1938
Youth and Ambition, Virginia Pitman, 1938. Mural created under the Federal Arts Project.

2. Herbert Hoover: The Right Man at the Wrong
Time
If you were to write resumes for every president, citing all they
had accomplished before they were elected president, Hoover
would be one of the best qualified men for the office. He was
the classic example of the “rags to riches” American success
story. An orphan who made himself into a multi-millionaire
businessman by his 30s, he devoted himself during World War I
to the effort to feed the people of Belgium, all the while making
sure that the Germans did not appropriate the food; it’s
estimated that Hoover kept 9,000,000 alive throughout the war.
So Hoover knew about suffering and people in need. So why,
with this recent experience, and his overall abilities, was he so
unable to adequately deal with the problems of the Great
Depression, which got worse every year that went by during his
presidency? The problem was that Hoover had a very specific
and rigid view of what had made the United States great. In his
book, American Individualism, Hoover argued that there were
only three things owed to the American people by their
government: liberty, justice, and equality of opportunity;
competition and individual ability would take care of everything
else in terms of success or the lack of it.

3. The United States, Hoover argued, had been built by individuals
who had taken care of their own problems and had not asked the
government for a handout. Hoover believed that if the govern-
ment even once gave money, food, assistance to people, it would
permanently weaken them, and that would be the beginning of the
end for the U.S. Instead, he argued that the traditional sources of
public assistance would be enough to help people: the Red Cross,
Salvation Army, and the YM/WCA. But what he did not take into
account is that those organizations received their financing in the
form of donations, and in these financially tightened times, people
were not able to give as much to charitable groups as they had in
the past. So the days, weeks, months, and even years went by, with
Hoover and Congress trying one thing and then another, but they
were simply not equipped, in terms of their general ideological
perspective (conservative), imagination and ability to think outside
of the box enough to deal with the scope of the catastrophe. As the
Election of 1932 approached, the majority of American had lost
their belief in Hoover and his administration, and were anxious for
a change…

4. Below, you see the Bonus Army on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. The following two images show them camped
out on the Mall, waiting patiently for Congress to review their petition for assistance. The next two images after
that show the men fighting with the police and federal troops who were attempting to drive them out of the
capital, and the burning of their camp; with grim irony the Capitol Building can be seen in the background…but,
after all, were they not engaged in a lawful petition to their government?
The Bonus Army - 17,000 veterans, and all told,
43,000 people when wives & children are
included

8. Election of 1932
The single largest victory by a presidential candidate in American history (through today), and in 1936 FDR would win the second
largest victory. When the presidency is won by this wide a margin, it tells us that the American people REALLY wanted a change. It
also gives the winner a tremendous mandate (the authority to carry out a course of action based on the will of the great majority of
the voters), ensuring that at least for a year or two, everyone in Congress, even the opposition party, is going to cooperate with just
about whatever the president wants – after all, senators and representatives have to run for reelection, and if their constituents
know that they have been voting against the designs of the president…they may not get reelected. Remember, every politician is
always thinking about one thing more than anything else – winning the next election. (And by the way, the next time you hear
President Trump say that he won in 2020 by a “landslide” – and for the sake of argument, let’s say that he did win 2-3 more states
and 3-5% more of the popular vote, you can now legitimately understand what an actual landslide victory is, and why that statement
is categorically nonsensical by any standard of electoral wins and losses.

9. Roosevelt to
Save the Day!
Even though this cover for Vanity
Fair is from 1934, it conveys the
feeling in the United States after the
election – this new president, with
the famous last name, conjuring
memories of Teddy and the Square
Deal (Theodore Roosevelt had only
died in 1919), now on his way to the
White House with a “deal” of his
own, a New Deal – could he be the
one to tame the bucking bronco
that was the Great Depression?

10. A clearly
unhappy
Hoover and an
ebullient
Roosevelt on
their way to the
inauguration,
January, 1933.

11. “The Roosevelt Touch”
One of the hallmarks of Roosevelt’s
presidency would be his trademark
grin and generally cheerful demeanor.
In his first inaugural address he had
said, “The only thing we have to fear
is fear itself,” and he conveyed the
truth of that in the way he conducted
himself: getting out as much as he
could to meet the people (whereas
Hoover had holed up in the White
House, rarely leaving), being driven
and driving around himself in his
specially equipped car that allowed
him to operate the gas and brakes
with his hands; smiling, chatting,
asking people how they were doing,
making himself accessible. He
confronted one of the greatest
challenges any president had ever
faced as though there was nothing
else he’d rather be doing.

12. OBAMA and ROOSEVELT
Roosevelt (the Great Depression) and Lincoln
(the Civil War) faced the greatest challenges of
any presidents upon entering office. Many
observed that President Obama faced the
third greatest challenge in 2009 when he
began his presidency, and quite a few parallels
were drawn between Obama and FDR at that
time. In this cover from Time Magazine,
published in the second week of Obama’s
presidency, it’s clear that the editors of Time
were expecting big things from this new
president – that he should “learn from FDR.”
As to whether he did or not – the verdict of
history is still out.

13. And six months later in July, 2009, Time was perhaps
trying to gently nudge President Obama in the right
direction by reminding him, yet again -- be
a little bit more bold, more daring -- like FDR!

14. It was public knowledge that FDR was
crippled from polio, but right from the
start there was an unwritten
understanding amongst the members of
the press that they would refrain from
publishing photos of the president in his
wheelchair or in his leg braces and
crutches: they believed that in this time
of trouble the American people needed
to see their leader as strong, not
crippled. Ironically, many Blacks voted
for FDR because even with his handicap
he had accomplished so much; they liked
that he was not a complainer. Only a
half dozen or so photographs of FDR in
his wheelchair survive; here you see him
with his granddaughter.
The “Handicapped” President

15. Representative “bread lines” or “soup kitchen” lines, even when the line in question
was for coffee and doughnuts or a full meal – the thing that always strikes me about
these images is how well dressed the “down and out” people of the Depression
were, these folks who needed to stand in line for an hour, or hours, even, for a free,
or extremely cheap, meal – not exactly the sort of folks you see in line at shelters
nowadays.

16. “Those in need…”
This map really gets to the heart of the matter
– “Relief” refers to states where ‘x’ percentage
of the families in that state could only survive
because of money they got from their state
governments every month. As you can see, in
1934, when FDR took office, the situation was
particularly dire in the South, less so in some
other areas. But still, at the beginning of 1933,
25% of the working men and women in the
United States were unemployed. To put that in
perspective, perhaps you remember the worst
unemployment numbers from 2008-2011 –
they topped out at about 10%, and it was
considered to be a national emergency. Now
look again – 25%! And every sector of the
economy was in trouble, but nowhere were
things worse than in agriculture…

17. THE DUST BOWL
The plight of the farmer was nowhere more
problematic than in the area where the Dust Bowl
had literally destroyed the land’s ability to
produce a crop. Planting and replanting on the
same land, and not giving the soil time to regain
its health, had broken the soil down into dust, and
then unprecedented wind storms had howled
down out of Canada and blown all of the
desiccated top soil up, and off – like Dorothy’s
house in The Wizard of Oz – into the distance. It
blew across the United States…under the door of
the White House…across the streets and buildings
of New York City…and out onto sailing vessels in
the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, several
thousand miles from the Midwest! Any of you see
the science fiction film Interstellar? Well, dig the
next few images…

21. TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION…sometimes
Still with me? Didn’t lose you in those pics, did I, kids? Astonishing, huh? Like the end of the world…if you saw
Interstellar, it may interest you to know that the elderly people interviewed about the environmental collapse portrayed
in the film and how it was affecting them, well, those were segments from interviews with folks who had lived through
the actual Dust Bowl of the early 1930s – amazing what you learn in a history class, huh?

22. Mother Earth Laid Bare, Alexandre Hogue, 1936
There were many artists who were drawn to and inspired by the ecological
disaster of the Dust Bowl. In the next image you see Joe Jones’ ironically
titled American Farm, where the farm perches above the ruined landscape
like Noah’s Ark, stranded atop Mt. Ararat following the flood. Above, the
title of Hogue’s painting speaks for itself. The four images following the
next, American Farm, are by Walker Evans, the foremost photographic
chronicler of the toll the Dust Bowl took on its human victims.

27. The New Deal tried to put people to work at tasks to which they were best suited; perhaps you saw the 2005
remake of King Kong? In the opening scene a group of actors are standing around and complaining because
the Federal Theater Project was defunded by Congress and now they are all out of work. That’s how several of
them end up employed on the expedition to shoot a movie on legendary Skull Island. (Amazing what you learn
in a history class, WHAT!?) The New Deal employed writers to write, builders to build, theatrical folks to stage
free theater in towns where no one had ever seen a play, musicians to play concerts free for the public, and
artists to create art, particularly public murals. In the image below, you see New Dealers doing what they did
best: building, planning, teaching, designing, surveying, and all in service to the American people.

28. The image below (like the previous one untitled because I downloaded it so many years ago I’ve lost the title, gimme a
break, everybody’s human!) is a tribute to those men who worked their way across vast and inhospitable regions of the
United States in the service of one of the New Deal’s greatest achievements – the Rural Electrification Project. Dig it:
when FDR entered office in 1933, less than 50% of Americans had electricity in their homes; by 1945, when he died,
nearly 100% of Americans had the juice flowing. Think of how we take for granted our ability to just push buttons, flick
switches, lay down multi-strips…and think of how annoying it is when there is even a brief power outage. Now, think
again – HALF of all Americans had NO electricity…until the Rural Electrification Project. Once their work was done, unless
you were some bizarre old hillbilly, like the Unibomber in his cabin at the top of the mountain, then you had electric
power, because every small town and every wide spot in the road had a line. No more need for light to read by from the
fireplace, or a kerosene lamp – ELECTRICITY, my brothers and sisters! And, as with all of their monumental projects, the
people behind the New Deal knew that in order to sell it, they had to create a catchy promotional campaign, and sell it to
the American people through posters pasted up on public walls across the country and ads in magazine. You will see
some of these images in the next three slides following.

32. IMAGE 34

34. Pro-business
critics of
the New Deal
have
argued, then and
now,
that the real
strength of
the United States
was crippled, tied
down by
too many federal
bureaucracies, too
much red tape,
too
many so-called
‘alphabet
agencies,’
just as Gulliver
was
tied down by the
Lilliputians in
Gulliver’s Travels.

35. Huey Long, the “Kingfish”
Long, the architect of the “Share Our Wealth” Society, was one of FDR’s foremost and most problematic critics on the left. Although
Roosevelt loathed him, he had to take him seriously and meet with him when Long came to the White House, because he was so popular
with much of the New Deal’s base of support. But Long was crass, a boor who, upon entering the Oval Office, would not sit down opposite
the President, but instead would drag a chair around the desk, pull himself up next to to Roosevelt, and have a real heart-to-heart with him,
as though they were pals. Long generally wore a straw hat, which he removed in the Oval Office, but rather than hang it on the hat rack by
the door, he carried it with him, and whenever he wanted to make a particularly strong point, he would tap FDR on the leg with the brim of
his hat, emphasizing what he was saying. I hope I do not need to point out to any of you that to tap your hat upon a crippled man’s leg
seems a little bit, kind of like making fun of someone with a disability up on stage on national TV? At any rate, let’s just say that when Long
was assassinated in 1936, I don’t think the President shed many tears. Below you see on the left, the Kingfish himself, and to the right, a pic
of John Goodman, playing Long in the made-for-TV movie Kingfish.

36. FDR and the “Court-Packing”
Debacle
Your textbook leaves out several interesting tidbits on
this topic. This was one of FDR’s first big initiatives
after starting his second term in 1937. He and his
closest advisers were deeply aggravated over the
Court having ruled several key New Deal programs
unconstitutional. FDR knew that if he could only get
several new judges appointed to the Court, all New
Deal initiatives would be secure and, of course, while
new federal judges are confirmed by Congress, they
are nominated by the President; Roosevelt was a
Democrat, the Congress was solidly in the hands of the
Democrats, so the proposition, as he laid it out to the
country, went something like this: “The Founding
Fathers were some pretty smart guys, and they did
one heck of a good job in writing the Constitution.
And at the time, I’m sure it seemed to them that we
would never need more than nine justices on the
Supreme Court. But after a century and a half it has
become clear that there is a need for more; the Court
is backlogged with cases that need reviewing, these
poor guys are being worked to death, and…” You get
the idea, right? At the end of it all, he was
recommending the appointment of six new justices
which, had they all been good Democrats (and they
would have been), would have created an
overwhelmingly liberal court – just what Roosevelt
wanted. However, the country was not happy with
this proposal and indeed, even many from his own
party were angered by what they saw as a bold
attempt to not just to “pack” the Court with liberal or
pro-New Deal justices, but an attempt, in doing so, to
concentrate more power in the Executive Branch, in
the hands of the President. (Continued next slide )

37. Now FDR would get anything he wanted – the
initiative would come out of the White House,
Congress would approve it, and the Court would
uphold it…it was almost like the President was trying
to take over all of the power of the government for
himself and the Democratic Party, leaving no power to
challenge him, and after all, isn’t that what…dictators
did? You have to remember what was happening in
the world at this time: in Brazil, in Argentina, in Spain,
and in Japan, Italy, and Germany, dictators had seized
control of their governments, often dismissed their
legislatures, and bent their nations to their will. Was
this what FDR had planned for the United States – ?
Well, in retrospect, no – there is no evidence of that,
but at the time, it was FDR’s first major political
miscalculation – he thought the majority of the people
would back him up as they’d backed him on nearly
everything for four years, but instead, he was seen as
power-hungry by many, as in the political cartoon to
the right. Here, in a scene from Charles Dickens’
beloved novel Oliver Twist, we see Roosevelt as a
monstrous version of Oliver, back in the kitchen,
always hungry, and asking for “MORE, please!” But
unlike Oliver, it’s not porridge he wants, it’s power,
power that the Executive Branch will get if Congress
passes the proposed Judiciary Reorganization
Program. Well FDR was, I would argue, the sharpest
political operator of the American 20th century, and he
knew when he’d made a mistake, so he dropped the
idea, and so many other things were happening on a
daily basis that soon people forgot about that
misstep…but Roosevelt still wanted a liberal court, and
the thing about a great politician is that they always
get at least some version, or some percentage, of
what they wanted. They never lose entirely. So, a
little while later, maybe it was six months or so…

38. … a proposal was brought forth in Congress to
increase the retirement pensions of different
sorts of federal employees, among them, judges.
When that happened, several of the older judges
on the Court (who happened to be conservatives,
and anti-New Dealers) took a look at their
retirement options, and rather than work a few
more years, they decided they now had enough
to retire, and so they did. And when that
happened…
GUESS WHAT?
FDR got to nominate two new justices, and they
were both good Democrats, and…
GUESS WHAT?
The Democratic and generally pro-New Deal
Congress appointed those nominees, and…
GUESS WHAT?
Roosevelt got what he wanted in the end. One
way or another, a great politician gets some
version, or some percentage, of what they want.
Or, as Abraham Lincoln used to say, “There’s
more than one way to skin a cat.”

39. The Unfinished Portrait
President Roosevelt was sitting for this
portrait in the last months of his life, and he
passed in the spring of 1945, before it was
finished. The war was still being fought in
Europe and the Pacific, and when news of his
death reached Germany, soldiers on both
sides, American and German alike, called
cease-fires and came out to talk about it.
Seriously?
TRUTH.
Along with Hitler and Churchill, Roosevelt had
straddled and defined the depression and
war years, and they could not believe it, that
FDR could be dead. The only man to have
been elected president not just three, but
four times and by wide margins each time, he
was also the most important and is generally
considered by the majority of historians to be
the greatest president of the 20th century and
maybe ever: everyone that followed him into
the Oval Office would, in one way or another,
be measured in their successes and failures
by the yardstick of his legacy.