The National Recovery highway program was shut down, but its projects continued to be funded until Congress revived the federal-aid highway program, and after the FERA was dissolved in , the federal government stopped offering direct grants to states and localities for relief payments. Road policy from the Depression-era and WPA allowed the THD to expand its authority over urban and rural Texas roads both outside and inside the existing state system.
Due to the conditions of the Great Depression, many local communities lost the ability to afford road maintenance. In , the THD took control of all highways in rural towns with a population less than 2, Texas counties regained some ability to fund state highway system during the s and s, but they were never able to reclaim power over Texas roads.
For more information on New Deal programs in Texas, read about bridge and parks construction. The downturn has some economists wondering if the U. Cebul spoke to Penn Today about lessons contemporary politicians can take from the Great Depression and the New Deal and how disasters like the current pandemic can change politics. How did FDR react to the Great Depression, as compared to how this administration is managing the current crisis so far?
The New Deal was many different policy ideas and agendas that unfolded and cohered over the course of a decade. The depression started in October of , so there were three solid years of worsening economic conditions before voters turned the keys of the White House over to Roosevelt, making the New Deal possible.
Something the pandemic is doing is showing how interconnected the world is, and that was actually something Roosevelt featured prominently in his first inaugural, that the depression laid bare how deeply interconnected Americans were. He was able to fit the crisis into a framework for active and collective government. To a certain degree, Hoover approached the depression in a similar way to how the Trump administration is approaching this crisis, but Hoover was far more sophisticated.
He worked with business leaders and voluntary associations, who would then set prices and determine what was needed in a given market through associational and voluntary decision-making rather than through government directive.
Hoover had used those strategies and tactics to great effect in World War I and rebuilding efforts in Europe afterwards when he created really robust voluntary and associational solutions for ensuring the food supply and fighting hunger.
He was an exceedingly competent broker of private actors. Was the New Deal a tough sell to lawmakers and the public? There was a hunger for bold experimentation. Some 5, banks failed between and , and what that meant was that everyone's savings in those banks went poof. Tens of millions of people in the United States have received financial assistance through the Social Security Act since its inception.
Still, the program was wrought with challenges from the start and has been a political hot topic for years, its existence threatened time and again. Social Security program introduced during the Great Depression guaranteed Americans an old-age pension. During its existence, the CWA paid approximately forty-nine thousand dollars in wages to Ohioans, helping them to meet their needs during the Great Depression.
So, in the spring of , Roosevelt launched a second, more aggressive series of federal programs, sometimes called the Second New Deal. The WPA also gave work to artists, writers, theater directors and musicians. In July , the National Labor Relations Act , also known as the Wagner Act, created the National Labor Relations Board to supervise union elections and prevent businesses from treating their workers unfairly.
In August, FDR signed the Social Security Act of , which guaranteed pensions to millions of Americans, set up a system of unemployment insurance and stipulated that the federal government would help care for dependent children and the disabled.
This FDR had come a long way from his earlier repudiation of class-based politics and was promising a much more aggressive fight against the people who were profiting from the Depression-era troubles of ordinary Americans. He won the election by a landslide. Still, the Great Depression dragged on. Workers grew more militant: In December , for example, the United Auto Workers strike at a GM plant in Flint, Michigan lasted for 44 days and spread to some , autoworkers in 35 cities.
By , to the dismay of most corporate leaders, some 8 million workers had joined unions and were loudly demanding their rights. Meanwhile, the New Deal itself confronted one political setback after another. Arguing that they represented an unconstitutional extension of federal authority, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court had already invalidated reform initiatives like the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration.
That same year, the economy slipped back into a recession when the government reduced its stimulus spending. Despite this seeming vindication of New Deal policies, increasing anti-Roosevelt sentiment made it difficult for him to enact any new programs. The war effort stimulated American industry and, as a result, effectively ended the Great Depression. They created a brand-new, if tenuous, political coalition that included white working people, African Americans and left-wing intellectuals.
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