{"id":204,"date":"2023-03-13T16:56:41","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T16:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/chapter\/module-4-13\/"},"modified":"2023-04-28T15:59:06","modified_gmt":"2023-04-28T15:59:06","slug":"module-4-13","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1220ushistsincecivilwar\/chapter\/module-4-13\/","title":{"raw":"4.13 Legacy of the New Deal","rendered":"4.13 Legacy of the New Deal"},"content":{"raw":"The New Deal lasted for five years, from 1933 \u2013 1938, and it never spent enough to end the Great Depression. Though it pledged itself to the \u201cforgotten\u201d Americans, it failed the neediest among them \u2013 sharecroppers, tenant farmers, migrant workers.<\/span>\r\n
\r\n\r\nIn many ways, it was quite conservative. It left capitalism intact, even strengthened, and it overturned few cultural conventions. Even its reformers followed the old progressive formula of softening industrialism by strengthening the state. Yet for all its conservatism and continuities, the New Deal left a legacy of change. Under it, government assumed a broader role in the economy than progressives had ever undertaken.\r\n\r\nTo regulation was now added the complicated task of maintaining economic stability \u2013 compensating for swings in the business cycle. In its securities and banking regulations, unemployment insurance, and requirements for wages and hours, the New Deal created stabilizers to avoid future breakdowns. Bolstering the Federal Reserve System and enhancing control over credit strengthened government influence over the economy.\r\n\r\nThe power of Congress diminished, but the scope of government grew. In 1932 there were 605,000 federal employees; by 1939, there were nearly a million (and by 1945, after World War II, there were 3.5 million).\r\n\r\nThe many programs of the New Deal \u2013 home loans, farm subsidies, bank deposit insurance, relief payments and jobs, pension programs, unemployment insurance, aid to mothers with dependent children \u2013 touched the lives of ordinary Americans, made them more secure, bolstered the middle class, and formed the outlines of the new welfare state.\r\n

By the end of the 1930s, Roosevelt and his Democratic Congresses had presided over a transformation of the American government and a realignment in American party politics. Before World War I, the American national state, though powerful, had been a \u201cgovernment out of sight.\u201d After the New Deal, Americans came to see the federal government as a potential ally in their daily struggles, whether finding work, securing a decent wage, getting a fair price for agricultural products, or organizing a union. Voter turnout in presidential elections jumped in 1932 and again in 1936, with most of these newly mobilized voters forming a durable piece of the Democratic Party that would remain loyal well into the 1960s. Even as affluence returned with the American intervention in World War II, memories of the Depression continued to shape the outlook of two generations of Americans.1<\/sup><\/a> Survivors of the Great Depression, one man would recall in the late 1960s, \u201care still riding with the ghost\u2014the ghost of those days when things came hard.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\r\nHistorians debate when the New Deal ended. Some identify the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 as the last major New Deal measure. Others see wartime measures such as price and rent control and the G.I. Bill (which afforded New Deal\u2013style social benefits to veterans) as species of New Deal legislation. Still others conceive of a \u201cNew Deal order,\u201d a constellation of \u201cideas, public policies, and political alliances,\u201d which, though changing, guided American politics from Roosevelt\u2019s Hundred Days forward to Lyndon Johnson\u2019s Great Society\u2014and perhaps even beyond. Indeed, the New Deal\u2019s legacy still remains, and its battle lines still shape American politics.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nFor further information regarding the Great Depression, please watch the following videos:<\/strong>\r\n\r\nFilms for the Humanities and Sciences. The Great Depression: America in the 20th Century. Produced by Media Rich Learning. 2003. Video,<\/a> 30:35.\r\n