Crossroads: High School Curriculum
Unit X: The Age of Franklin D. Roosevelt: 1933-1945

The New Deal: Measures for Relief, Recovery, and Reform

Lesson 1

The New Deal: Measures for Relief, Recovery, and Reform

THE NEW DEAL: RELIEF

• BANK HOLIDAY: 6 March 1933 -- closed all banks; government then investigated banks and only those that were sound were allowed to reopen.
• FEDERAL EMERGENCY RELIEF ASSOCIATION [FERA]: 1933 -- gave direct relief in the form of money as aid to states and localities for distribution to needy. Ultimately FERA distributed about $3-billion in relief to 8 million families -- one-sixth of the population.
• CIVIL WORKS ADMINISTRATION [CWA]: Money to states to build 225,000 miles of roads, 30,000 schools, and 3,700 playing fields and athletic grounds.
• PUBLIC WORKS ADMINISTRATION [PWA]: Loans to private industry to build public works such as dams, ports, bridges, sewage plants, government buildings, power plants, airports, hospitals, and other useful projects.
• FARM CREDIT ASSOCIATION [FCA]: 1933 -- helped the 40% of farms that were mortgaged by providing low-interest loans (2.25% per year) through a Federal Land Bank for 50-year terms.
• CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS [CCC]: 1933 -- provided jobs and relocation for young men (18-25) in rural settings under direction of U.S. Army. CCC workers built public parks, cut fire trails, planted trees, built small dams, helped with flood control, reclaimed ruined land, drained swamps, and helped with conservation.
• HOMEOWNERS' LOAN CORPORATION [HOLC]: 1933 -- lowered mortgages to stop foreclosures.

THE NEW DEAL: RECOVERY

• ABANDONMENT OF GOLD STANDARD: 1933 -- executive order by FDR making it easier for money to get into circulation. Reconstruction Finance Corporation set new value of gold.
• FEDERAL SECURITIES ACT [FSA]: 1933 -- allowed government to investigate stock market.
• WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION [WPA]: 1933 -- established to put men to work on jobs of public usefulness. 5,900 schoolhouses built or repaired; parks, playgrounds, and pools built; roads, streets, and sewage plants built; 1,000 airfields laid out; 2,500 hospitals placed in areas not previously served. WPA also had FEDERAL ARTS PROJECTS to provide jobs of cultural usefulness to continue dramas, concerts, writing (guidebooks, local history books, oral histories), murals, and sculptures. These projects kept the American arts alive and vigorous.
• NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL RECOVERY ACT [NIRA]: 1933 -- created NATIONAL
• RECOVERY ADMINISTRATION [NRA], which administered process for devising industry-wide codes of fair business practices. NRA's symbol was a blue eagle, slogan -- "We Do Our Part." The NIRA's ¤7a recognized the right of labor to bargain collectively for working hours, wages, and conditions. The NRA was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935 [Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States] -- but ¤7a (the Wagner Act) survived constitutional challenge. (See below, under REFORM -- NLRB.)
• AGRICULTURAL ADJUSTMENT ACT [AAA]: 1933 -- limited farm production to help raise prices; paid for by taxing food processors. Declared unconstitutional by Supreme Court in 1936 [United States v. Butler]. 1938 -- AAA II enacted, creating the Soil Bank, allotments, parities, surplus controls, farm insurance, and soil conservation districts.
• NATIONAL YOUTH ADMINSITRATION [NYA]: 1935 -- helped keep youth in school with 500,000 helped in colleges and 600,000 in high schools provided with jobs.
• FEDERAL HOUSING ACT [FHA]: 1934 -- helped repair, rebuild, and insure older homes.

• GLASS/STEAGALL ACT -- gave government power to investigate banking conditions, vested greater regulatory powers in Federal Reserve Board.
• FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION [FDIC] -- insured savings of bank depositors and monitored soundness of insured banking institutions.
• FEDERAL SAVINGS & LOAN INSURANCE CORPORATION [FSLIC] -- insured savings of depositors in savings & loan institutions and monitored soundness of insured S&Ls.
• SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION [SEC]: regulated stock and bond trading; regulated exchanges where stocks and bonds are sold, and legislated requirements for disclosure of fair stock information.
• WAGNER ACT created NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD [NLRB] which reaffirmed labor's rights to bargain for wages, hours, and working conditions, to strike, and to arbitration of grievances.
• FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT [FLSA]: 1938 -- set minimum wages and maximum working hours.
• TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY [TVA] and RURAL ELECTRIFICATION
• AUTHORITY [REA]: helped to bring electricity to rural "pockets of poverty" that could not afford lines.
• SOCIAL SECURITY: Provided for unemployed, aged, dependent, and handicapped. Financed by FICA taxes paid by employee, matched by employer and Federal government.