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- [00:00]
Podcast Host
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- [00:34]
Don Wildman
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1933, the Great Depression had reached its worst point. Nearly 15 million Americans were out of work. The economy had contracted by 30%. A relentless banking crisis was toppling one institution after another. The country teetered on the edge of collapse. Roosevelt had run on the promise of bold, decisive action by the federal government. It was essential to reverse course. But for his initiatives to succeed, he needed the American people to be with him, to trust in the dramatic measures undertaken. And so, at 10:00pm Eastern Time on Sunday, March 12, 1933, one week after his inauguration, Roosevelt's voice crackled to life over radios across the country. In modest apartments, in stately homes, around kitchen tables and in living rooms, Americans settled in to listen as their new president spoke in plain, reassuring terms, explaining the steps ahead. We had a bad banking situation, he said.
- [01:37]
Eric Rauschway
Some of our bankers had shown themselves either incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the people's funds. They had used the money entrusted to them in speculations and unwise loans. This was, of course, not true in the vast majority of our banks, but it was true in enough of them to shock the people of the United States for a time into a sense of insecurity, and to put them into a frame of mind where they did not differentiate, but seemed to assume that the acts of a comparative few had tainted them all. And so it became the government's job to straighten out this situation and to do it as quickly as possible. And that job is being performed. I do not promise you that every bank will.
- [02:25]
Don Wildman
FDR had a plan. He would stabilize the chaos by first closing all banks, carefully assessing their viability, then reopen those deemed secure. When they reopened, he assured Americans their money would be safe. It was the first of many such transformative actions the Roosevelt administration would launch. In his calm, reassuring style, Roosevelt would guide Americans step by step through uncharted territory. A New Deal, he had called it, a daring vision for revitalizing the nation. Hey there. Glad you joined us. This is American History hit and I'm Don Wildman. Well, every presidential series eventually gets here. Our 32nd commander in chief, first elected in 1932 and then three more times after that. The longest serving president in American history, who is best known by the monogram on his sleeves. Fdr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt from the great state of New York, served from 1932 to 1945 before he suddenly died of a cerebral hemorrhage about three months past his fourth inauguration, when he was only 63. Though he looked more like 75. FDR is credited with, well, so much guiding the nation out of the Great Depression. The architect of a vastly expanded federal government, the man who helmed our world war efforts that defeated fascism on two fronts. It is a legacy that boggles the mind in so many ways. We still live in FDR's America, despite dogged efforts to dismantle what he created. We've done a slew of episodes about Roosevelt on this podcast. Look em up. FDR at war. A famous hot dog incident with the King and Queen of England, his endless struggle with polio. But today we focus on the New Deal. Those federal initiatives designed to pull America out of the Great Depression. Was it viewed as the success we consider it today? How much should FDR be credited for it? How new was the New Deal? We discuss it all in the company of Eric Rauschway, Distinguished professor of History at UC Davis in California, author of several key books on this era, particularly Winter, Hoover, Roosevelt and the First Clash over the New Deal. Greetings, Professor Eric, it's so nice to have you back.
- [04:54]
Eric Rauschway
It's great to see you again.
- [04:55]
Don Wildman
Folks should understand that we met with Professor Rashway for our Herbert Hoover episode, which is the last one, 31st president. And that would be a good warm up for the conversation we're about to have. So please look that up. Eric, let's put people in this place. 1932, FDR is elected. How bad are things in America at this point?
- [05:16]
Eric Rauschway
Well, conditions are dire economically. The Great Depression has been underway since the crash of 1929. Over the course of the years since then, which is almost the entirety of Herbert Hoover's term in the White House, unemployment has gotten worse and worse. By the time you get to 1932, it's in the neighborhood of 25%. It's so bad that even among those employed, about half of them only have part time jobs. You've had a series of waves of bank collapses where banks are unable to meet their obligations and close their doors in the absence of federal deposit insurance. That means people whose money are behind those doors cannot get it and of course they can't spend it and that contributes to the economic crisis. You have a farm crisis where commodity prices for farmed goods have plummeted from their mid-1920s peak. Farmers, which may be as many as a fifth or a quarter of the American economy at this time, therefore can't buy goods, can't put their money into the manufacturing sector, and that's crippling the economy as well. You have an all round collapse where farmers wouldn't be able to derive an adequate profit from harvesting their crops. And so they're rotting in the fields while people in cities are starving. It's really hard to overstate the crisis. It's also important to remember that because the United States is connected financially to most of the rest of the industrial world. This is a global phenomenon.
- [06:46]
Don Wildman
He accepts his Democratic nomination with this quote. I pledge you, I pledge myself to a New Deal for the American people. Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and of courage. This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms. Give me your help. Not to win the votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people. The man had a way with words, but he was also framing a radical new approach to economic duress than had ever been tried before. How new is the New Deal?
- [07:21]
Eric Rauschway
Oh, this is a great question. And like all historians, I'm going to say, well, it was both dramatically new and also drew on deep wells of tradition. So you have to have it both ways if you're a historian. On the one hand, you have to remember that presidential campaigns in those days were much shorter than the ones we are blessed with today. And so Roosevelt, in accepting the nomination around midsummer right, is only just gearing up to sell his campaign to voters, which he will then do over the course of really August, September, October of that year. And so American voters at the time haven't really heard all of what's going into the New Deal. What they do know is Roosevelt's record as governor of New York State, where he's been at the forefront of activist responses to the Depression. He's established a state emergency employment agency on the principle that you shouldn't have a dole, that you shouldn't pay people who are employed unless they're also doing jobs. He's also identified with conservation efforts. He's identified with hydroelectric power. He's identified with a very deep tradition at this point in American politics called progressivism, with which his cousin uncle by marriage, depending on which route you want to go, Theodore is one of the main spokespersons for in the early 20th century.
- [08:40]
Don Wildman
I always wonder about the Square Deal. How much had he been inspired by that title?
- [08:45]
Eric Rauschway
Right. I mean, you couldn't be a Roosevelt of any flavor in the early 20th century and not be overshadowed by Theodore in some way or another. Theodore was the dominating force of American politics in the first decade and a half or so of the 20th century. And his view of progressivism definitely influenced Frank Franklin, particularly ideas of conservation and of kind of balancing out the quality of rural and urban life and reckoning with the changes that have been wrought by immigration and industrialization in the United States. And of course, there's a faction of the Republican Party even as late as 1932 that still thinks of itself as Theodore Rooseveltian, that Franklin Roosevelt is trying to win over and in fact does win over in his first cabinet. He'll have Henry Wallace, who is a Roosevelt Republican. He'll have Harold Dickies, who is a Roosevelt Republican. He'll have Wil Wooden and Francis Perkins, who were progressive Republicans earlier in the 20th century. So that part of the New Deal will come directly from that strain of republicanism.
- [09:48]
Don Wildman
Yeah. You mentioned something at the end of our last episode on Hoover that really struck a chord for me. That this was a time of great fear in the world of a rising threat of communism. Even socialism was, of course, frightening. John Maynard Keynes is a big name over in England. There's a lot of what is viewed as real anti American stuff going on here. For FDR to embrace any kind of major federal initiative to address these things is seen by many people as, you know, on the brink of communism.
- [10:18]
Eric Rauschway
Well, it certainly is seen that way by the Hoover campaign. Hoover will say during the campaign that he. The smells on the New Deal, the fumes that wafted out of the cauldron that boiled over in Moscow are words to that fact. It's not subtle. And so he's saying this is Bolshevism, or at least something that smells like it. That's largely what Hoover and people who will vote for Hoover are afraid of. Roosevelt's much more worried about a different novelty in the world, which is fascism. I suppose we can come to that, sure.
- [10:48]
Don Wildman
I mean, this is what's so big about these times is these major new forces are at work all around the world. But I just want to be sure. Nothing like this idea that Roosevelt is framing out in the campaign. And he's quite open about it. The only answer to this problem of this magnitude is an equal counter from the federal government growing. The federal government having major federal works step in what was the antecedent to this? What had ever happened that gave him this idea? You mentioned New York State, but on the federal level, had anything ever been undertaken like this, short of war?
- [11:23]
Eric Rauschway
No. And in fact, as you noted, when you quoted from his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, he often used martial phrases like he said, this is a call to arms. Or he likened the kind of mobilization to the Great War, which was the experience within folks lifetime that sort of resembled the kind of collective action that he had in mind, only it was, of course, for pacific purposes. It was to have these massive public works programs, to organize the farm sector, to recognize its interdependence with the sector of industry and finance, and to try to raise the economy all across the board, all at the same time. This was a delicate process of selling this during the campaign. As one very early political science analysis of the campaign setting said, it was unusually well organized for a Democratic Party campaign. They actually had a clear series of speeches where Roosevelt would go to a kind of exemplary location and give a speech on a specific topic, and then he would go somewhere else and give a speech on a different topic. So he didn't have a kind of a stump speech where everything was a hodgepodge. He was kind of thematically laying out the parts of his agenda as he went along.
- [12:38]
Don Wildman
He was going to have to really educate the American population about this, which is when we come to the fireside chats he's so famous for. But he gets no help from Hoover. I mean, the transition was not peaceful. Hoover really didn't like him. Detest is a fair word. I think your book called Winter War refers to this right in his title. This was not an easy time for America in so many ways, but certainly it wasn't a pretty presidential transition.
- [13:04]
Eric Rauschway
That's correct. I think that Hoover thought that the American electorate had made a grievous mistake and he wanted to save them from themselves by ensuring that he could limit, to the extent possible, the damage that Roosevelt would do. He really believed that this was his role. There was no small amount of personal grievance, certainly, but he also had a profound political conviction that what Roosevelt proposed to do was going to do irreparable damage to American traditions. And he used the transition, he used the crises that occurred during the transition to try to put the brakes on or get Roosevelt to renounce altogether the elements of the New Deal.
- [13:42]
Don Wildman
But radical is a fair word to use, right? What we're talking about and about to sort of parse out is a massive government stimulus program. We're used to this now. We've heard it many times in our, even within our lifetimes here. But back then this was only happened when the nation went to war or something of an emergency nature to address economic woes. This didn't happen. This is Franklin Delano Roosevelt's vision.
- [14:09]
Eric Rauschway
Yeah, I think it's all the more radical when we remind ourselves what the country was like before the New Deal. Because so many elements of the New Deal are, as you suggest now commonplace. Right. We expect the Federal Reserve System or we expect the FDIC to step in when there are banking crises. We have seen this in. Well, I have. I won't speak for you, Don, you're probably a young chap, but I have seen this within my lifetime.
- [14:35]
Don Wildman
Right.
- [14:35]
Eric Rauschway
Going back to 2008 and the.
- [14:37]
Don Wildman
You know, I think I was alive in 2008.
- [14:42]
Eric Rauschway
I'm sure you were a stripling youth without a care in the world. You know, we've seen this, right? We've seen the federal government do these things. And we have to remember the FDIC IC didn't exist prior to the New Deal. The Federal Reserve didn't have the powers that it now has prior to the New Deal. There was no federal unemployment insurance, there was no old age pension system, what we now have as Social Security payments prior to the New Deal. There was no aid to the disabled federally prior to the New Deal. Right. There was no legal recognition of the power of unions federally prior to the New Deal. There was no price supports for agriculture prior to the New Deal. There was no federal control over the value of the US dollar because it was tied to gold prior to the New Deal. So when we think about all of these things that are ordinary reactions to economic crises, none of them were done prior to 1932 because these are all innovations that come with the New Deal. So you really have to put yourself in the mind of there's that America where the federal government might restrict immigration, it might control trade through tariffs, but that was about it. There was the post office certainly, but. But the much further reaching routine operations of the federal government didn't exist.
- [15:57]
Don Wildman
I mentioned it before that Hoover was really anti fdr. I just want to underscore how bad it really was. I mean he would not have conversations with Roosevelt without a witness in the room. He so distrusted the man. He lectures fdr, trying to convince him to change his plans. Meanwhile, FDR is doing what he needs to do to get his own government starting preparing legislation. I just want to say all that because it's really A chapter that people don't understand. It's in your book about how difficult this was, not only for FDR to face the things that he has to do, you know, his responsibility, but he's also getting a lot of guff from the guy before him.
- [16:33]
Eric Rauschway
Yeah, I mean, this is extraordinary period in US and global history. I mean, this is the last time that a U.S. president was inaugurated on March 4th. Right. Roosevelt's second inauguration would be January 20th. The amendment that changes that is passed at this time. It doesn't apply to this transition, applies to this, the next one. So you mentioned that Roosevelt's the longest serving president. However, his first term was actually truncated by the length of that shortening between March 4th and January 20th. So there's a long period between the election and the inauguration. And during that time there's a renewed banking crisis. There is Adolf Hitler coming to power. There is therefore an unprecedented domestic and international crisis. And Hoover is most focused on trying to prevent the New Deal from occurring. So as you correctly say, that involves him giving Franklin Roosevelt a difficult time. Yes.
- [17:32]
Don Wildman
You mentioned the banking crisis. That's the first fireside chat that he starts. This is the thing he's got to do. And it's utilizing this new medium that now people are kind of used to. It's been around for a while now, but still no president has ever used it the way he's going to. He creates a new kind of role for the President in people's lives. And this is really interesting just as a guy who's been doing these episodes for a long time now. The role of the presidency in America was really a removed one. People didn't like to see them campaigning. The front porch campaign became the norm for most of these guys. Americans didn't really want to have a relationship with their president until the 20th century or thereabouts. And Franklin Roosevelt is really the one that kind of creates that. He creates that bond between the White House and the people. This is a very interesting turn in the psychology of the federal government in our lives, isn't it?
- [18:26]
Eric Rauschway
Yeah, there's a technological change that enables this. I mean, prior to the 20th century, the President was the head of whichever party he represented. And so when you cast your vote for him, you are casting a vote for that party as much as for the person. But beginning with McKinley, presidents can be filmed in the 1912 campaign. Theodore Roosevelt releases a series of Edison cylinders with his speeches on it so you can hear the candidate's voice in your home for the first time. With that, you know, you begin to have the relationship to a president that consumers have to a product, right? It's something that's coming into your house. And this really achieves its expression with the Harding's campaign in 1920, where he hires Albert Laster, who's an expert in public relations, and they really craft a proper advertising campaign that involves Hollywood celebrities and sports professionals and all the kinds of things that you might recognize in terms of ballyhoo campaign of that era. But what Roosevelt does, as you're correctly putting your finger on, is take advantage of the specific nature of radio. Unlike, you know, going to the theater or putting on a record, right? With radio, the president or the candidate comes into your home, comes into your living room, speaks to you in kind of a normal speaking voice, right? You listen to those Theodore Roosevelt celebrities. He has to holler to be heard because he's hollering down those old gramophone type, megaphone type things. But, you know, Franklin Roosevelt is speaking into a modern microphone. He's speaking in a conversational tone of voice. He's using very sort of commonplace words and sentence structures. He's able to master the kinds of cadences people would have been used to hearing from their ministers in their weekly church sermons. And he's able to appeal to people in that personal kind of way as a vuncular figure to the entire nature.
- [20:28]
Don Wildman
He's a great speaker, obviously, but he's. He's got a charisma that's over the top. I mean, the press love this guy because he could just run a room. That's one of his charms and probably one of the things Herbert Hoover hated about him.
- [20:40]
Eric Rauschway
Well, I mean, the thing that you mentioned before about Hoover is, you know, Hoover wanted to have, you know, witnesses or third parties present, even if they had to listen in on a telephone extension or something like that, because Roosevelt had this gift. And Hoover wasn't the only one to be frustrated by. But, you know, Roosevelt would smile and nod and make encouraging noises and allow people to believe that he had agreed with them substantially, when all he was really doing, as one of his aides, Molly Dusen said, was being polite, you know, and people. He was very good, though, at sort of evading, making a kind of firm, substantive commitment and kind of giving people the sensation that they were at their ease in having the conversation. And only afterwards, when they walked away, did they realize he hadn't agreed to a thing.
- [21:26]
Don Wildman
I'll be right back after this short break. Meantime, if you'd like us to cover anything specifically, if you have any ideas of subject matter we should be looking at. Send us an email@ahhistoryhit.com we'd love to hear from you. As you set your resolutions for 2025, you might be considering how learning a new language can enrich your life, whether through travel, career advancement or cultural appreciation. Rosetta Stone is one of the world's leading experts and has been teaching people new languages for 30 years. Languages like Spanish, French, Italian, German, Korean and Japanese. Learning on Rosetta Stone immerses you in many ways. There are no English translations, so you really learn to speak, listen and think in that language. It's an intuitive process. Pick up a language naturally, first with words, then phrases and sentences, and it's designed for long term retention. Plus it's flexible. Learn anytime, anywhere with a mobile app or at your desktop on your own schedule. Start the new year off with a resolution you can reach today. American history hit listeners can take advantage of Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership. For 50% off, visit www.rosettastone.com historyhit. That's 50% off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your Life. Redeem your 50% off at www.rosettastone.com historyhit. Happy New Year.
- [22:56]
Podcast Host
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- [23:31]
Don Wildman
Circling back to the bank crisis, this is what will restore the public confidence. These fireside chats, the ability to tell them what's going on and take them through that. But one thing that pops in mind while we're talking, that's in recent memory for many people is when the Clinton administration comes in and they want to start this new national health care program and he puts his wife Hillary in charge of this kind of messaging campaign and they bring together all these different personalities and we are supposed to watch this whole discussion of what's to come. They kind of take that from this period. But fdr, there's not that same run up, is there? It's kind of more singularly done, isn't it? I'm just curious about his team and how he is telling people, don't worry, there's experts in control here.
- [24:19]
Eric Rauschway
Well, with the banking crisis you have kind of in miniature, I think, something that you see in the New Deal at large, which is that Roosevelt is enabled to act by how inactive his predecessor had been. Right? Hoover had done very little to forestall banking panics for the entire time he'd been in office. But most notably, he wasn't doing anything to forestall this much worse panic that was occurring in January and February of 1933. In the last two months of his time in office, he was using the crisis to try to exact from Roosevelt a pledge of fiscal and monetary restraint, knowing, as Hoover said, that this would mean forswearing the New Deal, or 95% of it or something like that, is what Hoover said. So Hoover was not stepping in even when the Federal Reserve asked him to step in, even when industrialists asked him to step in, even when bankers asked him to step in. So when Roosevelt comes into office, it's like night and day. He's inaugurated on a Saturday. Sunday is a day of rest. Then on Monday, he immediately says, you know, we are going to close the banks. We are going to have experts look over the books of the banks. We are going to reopen them as soon as possible, as soon as we can determine that it's safe to do so. And, in fact, they start to do this almost immediately in the big cities and in places where they need to make factory payroll and stuff like this. So he's at pains to say, you know, we are going to do what common sense dictates. If you listen to that first Fireside chat, before they were even really called that, where he talks about the banking crisis, you know, he speaks in very homespun terms. He says, you know, we had a bad banking situation. That's a direct quotation. That's not, you know, me trying to dumb it down. And so he tries to make it as simple as possible to demonstrate that what they're doing is going to be as little intrusive as possible. Now, behind the scenes, he's relying heavily on lawyers for the Federal Reserve. He's relying heavily on people who have graciously stayed over from Hoover's treasury into Roosevelt's term to try to implement this. He's relying on state banking officials and various other figures in order to do this. He's using existing resources, in other words. But he's trying to make it appear as simple and plain and as easy as possible.
- [26:39]
Don Wildman
When he finally gets to the New Deal, which we talk about as if it's one thing, it's many, many things, how does that unfold? Is it done in a very logistical fashion through Congress and through the press. Are we informed about each and every one of these kind of acts that's happening, or is it done more behind the scenes?
- [26:58]
Eric Rauschway
Well, it's a bit of both. I mean, you know, even before he comes into the presidency, he tries to get the lame duck Congress to pass the farm relief bill. It's largely through Hoover's efforts that that's prevented from happening. But that's all done by enlisting the aid of, you know, organizations that represent farmers and soliciting from them the kinds of policies they would like and kind of packaging them in such a way that they will get through Congress in a bipartisan way. Because there's a lot of Republicans who represent farm areas. That is done in sort of the normal legislative process and by coming up with a bill that would satisfy various constituencies. And that's all done in the public eye. And the same thing goes for industrial relief packages like the National Industrial Recovery Recovery act, which will come at the end of Roosevelt's so called 100 days. Again, this is all brokered through various interests in Congress and put together to try to satisfy a variety of constituencies, which in part explains why it's less successful than it might be otherwise. Some things are done with a sort of more presidential action. A lot of that stuff is to do with control of the dollar. So when Roosevelt implements an inflationary policy, he relies on executive powers that Congress gave the President back at the time of the Great War. And that's mostly done through the office of the president. And that is still, you know, even as his presidency goes on, Congress gives him really kind of unprecedented and unequaled later power to conduct his own monetary policy. So there's a range of things between those two kinds of activities where some things are done really by executive power, other things are done through the Congress. But even when he does things like, you know, manipulate the currency, he does this by explaining what he's doing to a national audience.
- [28:42]
Don Wildman
Right. And he has to fight this out in the Supreme Court in many cases, right?
- [28:45]
Eric Rauschway
Absolutely. And often he loses. As I'm sure you know, the Supreme Court was extremely hostile to the New Deal, especially through essentially Roosevelt's first term. It's not until Roosevelt's second term, where Roosevelt mobilizes his majority in Congress to nearly pass a bill to expand the federal judiciary, that the Supreme Court begins to suddenly discover that the New Deal is fine after all, and they would rather not have the federal judiciary molded in Roosevelt's image.
- [29:16]
Don Wildman
So famous is one particular Program Works Progress administration. The WPA started in 1935. All across this country to this day. I mean, it's like a name drop thing. Oh, yeah, that's wpa. You talk about a bridge you're going under in Los Angeles or, you know, you know, anywhere across this country. There's some WPA thing that's going on here. This was a. Had to have been a pet project of his. Right. It's to put people back to work. 3 million go back to work through this program.
- [29:42]
Eric Rauschway
Yeah. This is a core commitment of the 1932 campaign to essentially make the federal government the employer of last resort. And in fact, Roosevelt actually pitches this as a kind of long term thing to outlast the Depression, although it doesn't, which is the idea that the federal government would always serve as a kind of guarantor of jobs to people who, God forbid.
- [30:02]
Don Wildman
Oh, my God, are you kidding me?
- [30:04]
Eric Rauschway
Well, you have to remember again, this is a position that is somewhat to the right of people who would see the federal government's position of simply paying unemployment relief to people directly without giving them jobs.
- [30:15]
Don Wildman
You might as well have a guaranteed national income. Eric, you're getting me all upset here.
- [30:20]
Eric Rauschway
I don't want to rouse your inner Bolshe Don, but there you go. You know, but I mean, Roosevelt articulates a reason for this during the campaign, which is that, you know, he thinks it will help to restore people's faith in the federal government.
- [30:35]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [30:35]
Eric Rauschway
If the federal government is there to give them a job, you know, that there is this kind of intimate relationship between the government and you, that you work for the government and it shows you that the government's working for you and not just for fat cats and industrialists. So this is the general idea.
- [30:49]
Don Wildman
How long does it take before people start getting confident about this, before it starts to have some traction?
- [30:54]
Eric Rauschway
Well, you know, if you look at the figures, the National Bureau of Economic Research dates the recovery from March of 1933. In other words, from the moment Roosevelt takes office. And I think a lot of folks would say that the reason for that is that Roosevelt comes in and very credibly immediately demonstrates that he is going to inflate prices, that he is going to devalue the dollar and thus inflate prices. And what that does is it jolts money out of people's pockets. Right. If you think prices are falling and are going to continue to fall, you have no incentive to buy anything because it's just going to be cheaper tomorrow than it is today. But if you think prices are rising and are going to continue to rise. Suddenly you have an incentive to buy stuff. And so creating that expectation of inflation helps to immediately get people to start buying stuff. That seems to work right away. Now it doesn't hold perfectly after that, and there are some bumps in the road. And creating the WPA in 1935 is seen as a need to sort of prop up an economy that's still faltering, but there is definitely a recovery that begins in 33, continues through 36. There's a recession in 37 and 38, and then it resumes afterwards.
- [32:13]
Don Wildman
The travails of the agricultural world in America are so, you know, grapes of wrath. I'll leave it at that. What has happened to that whole sector of society is such a disaster, Dust bowl and so forth. How effective are his measures in that regard? Or does that just kind of work itself out over time?
- [32:32]
Eric Rauschway
Well, in the immediate term there are rises in commodity prices. So there is immediate farm relief as a result of Roosevelt's monetary policies and as a result of the AAA program, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, which taxes the processing of agricultural commodities to pay farmers to produce less, basically, and this helps raise commodity prices. There's a long term understanding even as of 1933 though, that there are more people in the farm sector, there are more people living in the countryside than can profitably be sustained in the long run. And the Roosevelt administration really is the beginning of a long term process of fewer larger enterprises being involved in agriculture with heavy support from the federal government and more and more people moving out of the countryside and out of those jobs. So you end up with a lot fewer farmers in the land. On.
- [33:32]
Podcast Host
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- [34:05]
Don Wildman
His next election is 1936. He wins it in a landslide. So obviously he's done all the right things to get himself re elected at least. And it seems that the economy is responding to his measures. The common phrase is always that the depression didn't really end until World War II, which certainly plays a factor in this. But you can really look back at this. There was real big national recovery Even within the 30s is what you're saying.
- [34:30]
Eric Rauschway
Yeah, there's no question that people at the time saw that things were getting better, felt that things were getting better, and voted accordingly. Roosevelt not only, as you say, wins in a landslide in 36. He won seats in the Congress in 34 in the midterm elections, which as you know, is relatively unusual. That's where he gets the writ to go forward with the wpa, to go forward with Social Security, which means unemployment relief, which means old age pensions, which means a much bigger expansion of the federal government's role in people's lives for a sort of proto welfare state. And so it's winning the 34 elections that allows him to go ahead with that, which in turn allows him to win Big in 1936, in part because first of all, places that have seen a lot of economic recovery are places that swing more towards Roosevelt and 36. So you can say, look, it's because people feel the New Deal is working that they vote for Roosevelt, but also because Roosevelt wins a majority of the Black vote in 36, which is a big deal. Right. Remember before this, black voters were reliably Republican going back to Abraham Lincoln. Right. And the Republicans did a lot to lose black voters over the course of the nineteen teens and twenties. But even in 1932, it's probably the case. Our figures aren't terrifically, but it's probably the case that a majority of black voters still went for Hoover, although there's significant movement to Roosevelt. But it's when black voters see that the New Deal actually is helping them that they swing towards Roosevelt. And that, of course, is the beginning of a tendency that continues today is that black voters are the backbone of the Democratic Party.
- [36:08]
Don Wildman
Yeah, it's so interesting. It really. Everything sort of begins with roosevelt in the 20th century. It's so incredible. The interesting thing is he doesn't want to have these measures permanent. This is all temporary to fix what happened there. And that's what I think is interesting about the World War II theory, that, you know, the Depression really ends there. What that spending does in World War II is catch the wave of what is, you know, you. You can't do something as huge as the New Deal and not have an equally strong counteraction in the economy. You know, even in 37, things get a little bad for him. I guess there's a dip in the economy then. But The World War II spending is kind of the government stimulus. That sort of answers all of that, or at least. Right, right.
- [36:55]
Eric Rauschway
I mean, this is one of those cases where we have an N of 1 as social scientists Say, right, we don't get to replay this, right. So it's very inconvenient from the standpoint of social science to say, well, we would like to know what would have happened with the New Deal absent the Second World War. But we don't get to say that, right? So we can look at 1938 and we can look at the Roosevelt administration's plans in 1938 and say, well, they really did talk about doubling down on agricultural relief, about doubling down on new programs for industrial relief. But once you get the Munich crisis and the obvious beginnings of the Second World War in Europe, they shift towards aircraft manufacturer because that's obviously where things are going and they never look back. And if you look at the scale of the mobilization of the federal government for the Second World War, it dwarfs the New Deal. We've been talking about the New Deal, which is this radical thing that is much different from everything that went before that. There was no kind of state capacity like this prior to 1933. But if you make a graph of the size of the federal budget that includes the war, you can't even see the increase of the New Deal. Right. So it's just completely put in the shade. So the war changes the way everything is done. It dramatically increases what we now call the defense establishment, concentrates power in the presidency in the way that the New Deal never did. So it's kind of impossible for us to pick these things apart. The only things we can point to are number one, 1936 people voted for the continued recovery as far as we can see. Number two, 38, even prior to the Mena crisis, Roosevelt's administration was already going to double down on New Deal style policies. What would have happened after that, we can only speculate.
- [38:41]
Don Wildman
But what he has created, this broader, more expanded federal government, sticks around. I mean, he's the bad guy for a lot of people down the road. You know, I'm talking about post Reagan, you know, this kind of look back at how did this happen? How do we have this gigantic federal government that now has a magnificent debt. You know, it's a whole different kind of country. And people trace it back to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, which has now sort of gotten a bad rap. But that was the nature of that previous question is to say it wasn't supposed to be anything more than the economic recovery necessary for that size of distress.
- [39:17]
Eric Rauschway
Well, it was and it wasn't. I mean, the relief programs were meant to be temporary. Things that, you know, were extraordinary in terms of hiring people were meant to be temporary. The unemployment insurance and the Social Security, old age pensions, the kind of creating of a support courts for workers like the Wagner act and the reckon that was meant to be permanent.
- [39:36]
Don Wildman
Right, but I mean, he's a capitalist, not a socialist, right?
- [39:40]
Eric Rauschway
He's absolutely a capitalist. And you know, you say he's the villain for a lot of folks after World War II, and of course that's true. And it's for reasons that he would, as he said at the time, have welcomed. Right. I mean, the reason that Roosevelt ran for a third term in 1940 was to ensure that the New Deal didn't get wiped out by the war. Right. He remembered what had happened with World War I and the illiberal turn of the Wilson administration. He wanted to stick around and make sure that didn't happen. So he managed to cement those things in place and he managed to make those New Deal values into the basis for a whole different way of conducting diplomacy, for new institutions, for worldwide financial and regulatory activity. I mean, he did his best to put those things in place in a way that they couldn't be undone.
- [40:26]
Don Wildman
Yeah. And they stuck around. I'm 40 years later. They were still in place in my childhood. My parents were fdr, Democrats all the way. And a lot of what I saw in the news was left over from that era. Bipartisan coalitions that were created. Why these names jump to mind? Mike Mansfield, you know, like these famous congressional leaders who were born out of the FDR era were still around in.
- [40:49]
Eric Rauschway
The 70s as well as Lyndon Johnson famously said, you know, he thought of FDR as his daddy. So there's a straight line right through.
- [40:58]
Don Wildman
At the very least, he gave conservative America the enemy it needed. You know, the creation of something brand new out of this time would be the wall they would push on for the rest of time. I mean, they're still doing it. And it's that enemy that anybody needs to create a victory, you know, and that that's what they have used.
- [41:16]
Eric Rauschway
Yeah, well, as he said at the time, I welcome their hatred, including Herbert.
- [41:20]
Don Wildman
Hoover, who continues to hate him right into the, into the 60s. Eric Rauschway is Distinguished professor of History at UC Davis, author of many books, including the one that we've been drawing from today, Winter War, which came out in 2018. It's all about Hoover, Roosevelt and the first clash over the New Deal. Thank you so much, Eric. I hope you have the courage to come back again on this podcast. We've exhausted you on. Hoover and Roosevelt had a great time.
- [41:48]
Eric Rauschway
And I'd be happy to come back anytime. You'll have.
- [41:53]
Don Wildman
Hello folks. Thanks for listening to American History Hit. Each week we release new episodes. Two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. All kinds of great content like mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support. Bye for now.
- [42:35]
Eric Rauschway
Foreign.
- [42:41]
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