HELP FOR THE COMMON MAN

The CCC

Founded on 31 March 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was one of President Roosevelt's first New Deal programs. During its nine-year existence the CCC employed more than 2.5 million young men in temporary camps administered by the U.S. Army. In 1935, at the high point of its activity, the CCC employed half a million men in twenty-five hundred camps nationwide. For about a dollar a day the young members of "Roosevelt's Tree Army" restored historic sites, built park facilities, cleaned reservoirs, fought forest fires, and planted more than two billion trees. The CCC also taught thirty-five thousand illiterate young men to read. Though considered one of the most successful programs created during Roosevelt's first hundred days in office, the CCC was not without its flaws. Women were excluded from its membership rolls; and, though more than two hundred thousand African Americans did serve in the CCC, the discriminatory policies of its director, Robert Fechner, meant that sometimes a young African American man could join only after another quit.

FERA and the CWA

Signed into law in May 1933, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) provided cash grants to states for distribution to the unemployed. Under the able administration of Harry Hopkins, FERA distributed nearly $500 million in short order. Recognizing, however, that many Americans wanted to work for the money they received, Hopkins and Roosevelt developed the Civil Works Administration (CWA), which was approved by Congress in November. With a budget of more than a billion dollars, the CWA put more than four million people to work at temporary jobs during its first six months. The CCC, FERA, and CWA signaled the beginning of the federal policy of deficit spending, by which the government can mitigate economic downturns in the short term by infusing capital into the economy.

The PWA

Also established in 1933, and run by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, the Public Works Administration (PWA) had a budget of more than $3 billion with which to hire unemployed Americans for jobs created by the federal government. Tens of thousands of PWA workers across the country built housing projects, schools, hospitals, power plants, highways, dams, and new buildings on military bases. Instead of wandering as hoboes in search of nonexistent work, the people employed by the PWA were able to retain their pride and put food on the table for their families.

The TVA

On 18 May 1933 President Roosevelt signed the bill establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), one of the greatest successes of the New Deal. The TVA was an ambitious project that revitalized a broad region of the rural Southeast. The TVA began by building a series of dams on government-owned land at the point where the Tennessee River descends almost 150 feet in thirty miles. These dams generated electricity and controlled flooding in the valley. Before they were built only 2 percent of the people in the valley had electricity; after their completion nearly 100 percent did. The TVA also provided jobs in government-constructed factories that produced nitrate fertilizers using electricity generated by the dams. Other TVA projects included reforestation and industrial and agricultural revitalization. The government followed up the successes of the TVA by building a series of dams in the Pacific North-west and with the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) of 1935. Before the REA only 10 percent of farms in the nation had electricity. Fifteen years later, nearly 90 percent had light and power.

A Further Flurry of Government Activity

The Roosevelt administration restructured the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which also contributed to improving economic conditions. The "common man" was also helped by economic regulations such as the Securities Act of 1933, which curtailed the Wall Street malpractice that had contributed to the great crash of 1929. In early 1934 the country seemed to be on the road to recovery. The worst of the Depression was behind. Crowds cheered the president. Within months, however, the economy began to sputter, and by December unemployment had reached the levels of a year before. With the economic downturn and the president's luster a bit tarnished, an air of radicalism—on both the Right and Left—was becoming apparent.

The Second New Deal

In January 1935 President Roosevelt altered his course and began the "Second New Deal." Massive governmental spending in a dozen different agencies had pumped billions of dollars into works projects and relief, but with the economy still in the doldrums the president was coming under increased attacks from both the political Right and Left. Responding to the challenge, Roosevelt turned leftward.

Social Security

Signed into law on 14 August 1935, the Social Security Act (SSA) created a federal old-age insurance system for the first time in American history. The act provided a modest monthly payment for Americans aged sixty-five and older. It also provided for unemployment compensation as well as governmental support for the handicapped and for single mothers with dependent children. The SSA was not initially considered a system of welfare. Intended to function as a forced savings plan, the program required all employed people to contribute a small percentage of their pay into a general Social Security fund for the duration of their working years. In the initial years it would serve as yet another deficit-spending element in the New Deal's arsenal. After that, however, Americans would be able to collect modest Social Security checks from the federal government only after a working life spent contributing to the fund. Yet the SSA did more than simply assure working people an income in old age. Its Aid to Dependent Children provision provided single mothers with a means to make ends meet; and support payments to single mothers, as well as to the handicapped, grew enormously in subsequent years. Initially a minor provision of the SSA, it was renamed Aid to Families with Dependent Children in the 1950s, and in the Great Society programs of the 1960s the program became the backbone of an expanded welfare state.

The WPA

By May 1935 Roosevelt, in council with his brain trust, decided to enter into deficit spending in drastic ways. In its day the Works Progress Administration (WPA), with an initial budget of $5 billion, was the most expensive single governmental program in the history of the United States. Ably administered by Harry Hopkins, the WPA gave millions of unemployed Americans jobs and buoyed the economy with its infusion of cash. From its creation until it was dismantled at the beginning of World War II, WPA projects employed an average of two million workers. Men were set to building or renovating bridges, post offices, roads, and schools; women were generally employed as childcare givers or in sewing or other handicraft projects. The art, theater, and writers' projects of the WPA gave men and women the chance to earn a modest living in pursuit of their creative vocations. (Fading murals in Depression-era high schools and post offices are the legacy of this element of the New Deal.)

The NYA

The National Youth Administration (NYA), begun in June 1935, assisted millions of Americans between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. Motivated in part by the desire to dispel potential radicalism among young Americans, the NYA gave out 620,000 high-school and college scholarships. It created an additional four million part-time jobs for young Americans in such areas as roadwork and building renovation. By the end of the 1930s the NYA had helped more American young people than the CCC. Unlike the CCC, the NYA created a special Division of Negro Affairs. Under the administration of African American reformer and educator Mary McLeod Bethune, this division helped young black men and women secure scholarships and part-time jobs.

Sources;

Paul K. Conkin, F.D.R. and the Origin of the Welfare State (New York: Crowell, 1967); repubiished as The New Deal (New York: Crowell, 1969);

Martha Derthick, Policy making for Social Security (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1979);

Preston Hubbard, Origins of the TVA (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1961);

William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal 1932-1940 (New York: Harper & Row, 1963);

Betty and Ernest K. Lindley, A New Deal for Youth: The Story of the National Youth Administration (New York: Viking, 1938);

Thomas K. McCraw, TVA and the Power Fight: 1933-1939 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1971);

Cabell Phillips, From Crash to the Blitz, 1929-1939 (New York: Macmillan, 1969);

Edwin Witte, The Development of the Social Security Ad (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1962).

WEEKS ACT

WEEKS ACT. The Weeks Act was a bill sponsored by Representative John W. Weeks of Massachusetts and approved by President William Howard Taft in March 1911. It authorized(1) interstate compacts for the purpose of conserving forests and water supply; (2) federal grants to states to help prevent forest fires upon watersheds of navigable waters; (3) acquisition of land by the federal government for the protection of watersheds, to be held as national forest land; and (4) the grant to states of a percentage of proceeds derived from national forests located within their boundaries, to be used for schools and public roads.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nash, Roderick Frazier, ed. American Environmentalism: Readings in Conservation History. 3ded. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990.

P. OrmanRay/c. w.

See alsoConservation ; Fire Fighting ; Water Law ; Water Supply and Conservation .