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WITNESS HISTORY AUDIO Step-by-Step Trying to Survive During the Great Depression, people found themselves
SECTION Instruction 2 desperate for work. Daily visits to the unemployment office and workplaces often turned up nothing. Some of the jobless lost their homes. Others could not feed their SECTION 2 children. One 12-year-old boy wrote to President Objectives Roosevelt to ask for help for his family. As you teach this section, keep students “My father hasn’t worked for 5 months.... Please you focused on the following objectives to help do something.... We haven’t paid the gas bill, and the them answer the Section Focus Question and electric bill, haven’t paid grocery bill.... I have a sister master core content. she’s twenty years, she can’t find work. My father he • Discuss the programs of social and eco- staying home. All the time he’s crying because he can’t nomic reform in the Second New Deal. find work.” —Anonymous 12-year-old boy, Chicago, 1936 • Explain how New Deal legislation affected Children picket for the growth of organized labor. the Workers’ Alliance during the Great • Describe the impact of Roosevelt’s court- Depression. ᮣ packing plan on the course of the New Deal. The Second New Deal
Objectives Why It Matters FDR’s goals for the first New Deal were relief, • Discuss the programs of social and economic recovery, and reform. Progress had been made, but there was still reform in the second New Deal. much work that needed to be done. Beginning in early 1935, Roosevelt launched an aggressive campaign to find solutions to the Prepare to Read • Explain how New Deal legislation affected the ongoing problems caused by the Great Depression. This campaign, growth of organized labor. known as the Second New Deal, created Social Security and other Background Knowledge L3 • Describe the impact of Roosevelt’s court- programs that continue to have a profound impact on the everyday Remind students that even with the packing plan on the course of the New Deal. lives of Americans. Section Focus Question: What major issues did the unveiling of the New Deal, there were Second New Deal address? still problems to solve. Ask students to Terms and People predict the types of measures that FDR Second New Deal collective bargaining might take to solve these problems. WPA Fair Labor Standards Act Extending Social and Economic Reform John Maynard Keynes CIO In his fireside chats, press conferences, and major addresses, pump priming sit-down strikes Roosevelt explained the challenges facing the nation. He said that Set a Purpose L3 Social Security Act court packing the complexities of the modern world compelled the federal govern- ½ Wagner Act WITNESS HISTORY Read the selec- ment to “promote the general welfare” and to intervene to protect tion aloud, or play the audio. citizens’ rights. Roosevelt used legislation passed during the Second Witness History Audio CD, New Deal to accomplish these goals. The Second New Deal addressed Trying to Survive the problems of the elderly, the poor, and the unemployed; created new public-works projects; helped farmers; and enacted measures to
Ask Why did the child write a Reading Skill: Connect Ideas Complete a protect workers’ rights. It was during this period that the first serious letter to Roosevelt? (The boy table like the one below to record problems and challenges to the New Deal emerged. wanted Roosevelt to help his family the second New Deal’s solutions. New Programs Provide Jobs In the spring of 1935, Congress because his father and sister could The Second New Deal appropriated $5 billion for new jobs and created the Works Progress not find jobs to pay for food, electric- Problem Solution Administration (WPA) to administer the program. Roosevelt placed ity, and gas.) Unemployment his longtime associate Harry Hopkins in charge. The WPA built or ½ Focus Point out the Section Focus improved a good part of the nation’s highways, dredged rivers and Question, and write it on the board. Tell students to refer to this ques- tion as they read. (Answer appears with Section 2 Assessment answers.) Use the information below and the following resource to teach students the high-use word ½ Preview Have students preview from this section. Teaching Resources, Vocabulary Builder, p. 11 the Section Objectives and the list of Terms and People. High-Use Word Definition and Sample Sentence ½ Using the Structured upsurge n. a sudden rapid increase Read Aloud strategy (TE, p. T20), The FDR’s recovery programs during the first 100 days created an upsurge in have students read this section. As public confidence. they read, have students record programs of the Second New Deal and the problems each addressed. Reading and Note Taking Study Guide
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harbors, and promoted soil and water conservation. The WPA even provided programs in the arts for displaced artists. As Hopkins explained, artists “have to eat just like other people.” Teach
By 1943, the WPA had employed more than 8 million people and spent about $11 billion. Its workers built more than 650,000 miles of highways and 125,000 Extending Social and public buildings. Among the most famous projects funded by the WPA were the San Antonio River Walk and parts of the Appalachian Trail. Economic Reform L3 All of these programs were expensive, and the government paid for them by spending money it did not have. The federal deficit—$461 million in 1932— Instruct grew to $4.4 billion in 1936. The enormous expenditures and growing debt led Electricity Comes ½ Introduce: Key Terms Have stu- many to criticize the government’s public-works projects as wasteful. Some to Rural Farms dents find the key terms Second economists disagreed. British economist John Maynard Keynes argued that The success of the REA allowed farm New Deal, WPA, pump priming, deficit spending was needed to end the depression. According to Keynes, putting families to light their homes, pump and Social Security Act in the people to work on public projects put money into the hands of consumers who water, and run radios, refrigerators, text. Have students discuss how would buy more goods, stimulating the economy. Keynes called this theory and washing machines. these terms might be related to pump priming. Farms With Electricity, 1930–1950 extending social and economic Social Security Eases the Burden on Older Americans The United reform in the United States. 100 States was one of the few industrialized nations in the world that did not ½ have some form of pension system for the elderly. During the depression, 80 Teach Display Color Transparency: Critics of the New Deal. Have stu- many elderly people had lost their homes and their life savings and were 60 living in poverty. On January 17, 1935, President Roosevelt unveiled his dents review some of the programs 40 plans for Social Security. the New Deal established and dis- In addition to creating a pension system for retirees, the 20 cuss their goals. Note that these pro-
Social Security Act that Congress enacted established of farms Percentage 0 grams caused the government to unemployment insurance for workers who lost their jobs. 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 spend massive amounts of money it The law also created insurance for victims of work-related SOURCE: Statistical Abstract of the United States did not have. Ask Why did econo- accidents and provided aid for poverty-stricken mothers mists such as Keynes say that and children, the blind, and the disabled. deficit spending was beneficial? The Social Security Act had many flaws. At first, it did (Keynes’s pump-priming theory not apply to domestics or farmworkers. Since African Amer- stated that putting money into con- icans were disproportionately employed in these fields, they sumers’ pockets would stimulate the were not eligible for many of the benefits of Social Security. economy because they would buy Widows received smaller benefits than widowers, because more goods.) What did the Social people presumed that elderly women could manage on less Security Act establish? (It pro- money than elderly men. Despite these shortcomings, Social vided a pension for elderly Ameri- Security proved the most popular and significant of the New cans, as well as money for the Deal programs. unemployed, the disabled, poor mothers with children, and people More Aid Goes to Farmers The Second New Deal injured on the job.) Did Social included further help for farmers. When the depression Security cover all workers began, only 10 percent of all farms had electricity, largely equally? (Not at first. Domestics because utility companies did not find it profitable to run elec- and farm workers were not covered tric lines to communities with small populations. To bring initially. Widows also received lower farmers into the light, Congress established the Rural Electri- death benefits than widowers.) Draw fication Administration (REA). The REA loaned money to students’ attention to the line graph electric utilities to build power lines, bringing electricity to on this page. Ask How did the isolated rural areas. The program was so successful that by REA change the percentage of 1950, more than 80 percent of American farms had electricity. farm families with electricity New Deal programs changed the relationship of the fed- during the 1930s? (There was a eral government to the American farmer. The government was now committed to providing price supports, or subsi- steady increase in the 1930s, espe- dies, for agriculture. Critics attacked price supports for cially between 1935 and 1940.) Why undermining the free market. Others observed that large did African American farmers often not share equally in the benefits received from the New Deal? (As sharecroppers and tenant farmers, African Americans were John Maynard Keynes Keynes, a British econo- advocated the use of government deficit spending to itinerant or short-term workers and mist, is best remembered for what is known as create public works jobs to stimulate a sluggish did not share fully in these pro- “Keynesian” economic theory. It supports govern- economy. grams.) Why were New Deal ment intervention to spur employment and consumer Keynes’s theories were not well-known when he water projects so important to spending when economies stumble. first proposed them, but many people, including FDR, the development of parts of the Early in his career, Keynes did not challenge the pre- came around to this economist’s way of thinking. West? (They provided irrigation for the spread of agriculture; they also vailing economic wisdom—largely adhered to by Having government employ the jobless in an attempt provided cheap hydroelectric power Herbert Hoover in the opening years of the Great to end the Great Depression was groundbreaking in that helped the growth of cities and Depression—of laissez faire, or allowing the free the United States—and Keynes’s economic theories industry.) Color Transparencies A-98 market to correct itself. In Britain, however, Keynes were influential in the United States for many saw that this policy resulted in misery for people who decades. lost their jobs during periodic recessions. He
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½ farms, not small farmers, benefited most from federal farm programs. Even dur- Quick Activity Have students ing the 1930s, many noticed that tenant farmers and sharecroppers, often Afri- read the Primary Source quotation can Americans, did not fully share in the federal programs. Yet farm prices from Woody Guthrie’s song “Roll stabilized, and agriculture remained a productive sector of the economy. on, Columbia” on the next page. Ask students to discuss the benefits of Water Projects Change the Face of the West Many of the New Deal public- the Columbia River water projects works water projects had an enormous impact on the development of the Ameri- described in the lyrics. can West. The government funded the complex Central Valley irrigation system in California. The massive Bonneville Dam in the Pacific Northwest controlled flooding and provided electricity to a vast number of citizens. In 1941, the Independent Practice Department of the Interior’s Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) hired folk ½ To extend lesson content, have stu- singer Woody Guthrie for one month to write songs for a movie they had made dents access the History Interac- tive at Web Code nep-0903. After viewing the History Interactive, have them write essays about the changes Social Security has experi- enced since its creation in 1935. As students write their essays, they may want to keep in mind the fol- lowing questions: Before Social Security, how did retired people During the Great Depression, many elderly Americans had lost their life without savings or people who sud- savings and were struggling to survive. The 1935 Social Security Act denly lost their jobs get along? How created a pension system as well as unemployment insurance for workers did Social Security affect the occur- who had lost their jobs. Financed through a payroll tax on employers and workers, Social Security is one of the country’s most important legislative rence of poverty among older Ameri- achievements. cans? Would you have supported Social Security when FDR first proposed it? 1935–1950 The Social Security ½ Have students read and complete program was expanded in 1939 to pay the worksheet Reading a Chart: benefits to the widows and young New Deal Programs. Teaching children of deceased workers. In 1950, Resources, p. 21 amendments to the Social Security Act increased benefit payments and extended coverage to more workers. As a result, almost all working Americans now contribute to Social Security and are eligible for benefits.