Monday, May 14, 2007

The New Deal -- social elixir or socialist plot?



“I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people,” said newly nominated Democratic presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt on July 2, 1932.

Editorial cartoonists had a field day with the alphabet-soup of agencies the newly elected Roosevelt spun out starting in 1933: the AAA, CAA, CCC, CWA, FAP, FCA, FMP and so on: 15 in his first year in office alone!

More than one agency held out promise to Appalachian residents. The TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) was an unusual entrance of government into business -- a government-owned network of dams and hydroelectric plants to control floods and produce electric power in the Tennessee Valley. The AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration) was an attempt to organize agriculture, though it favored the larger farmers as the NRA favored big business.

“The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what else can one call it?” noted British author H.G. Wells.

It did give jobs to the unemployed, helped the consumer with lower electric rates, and in some respect deserved the accusation that it was "socialistic." But the New Deal's organization of the economy was aimed mainly at stabilizing the economy, and secondly at giving only enough help to the lower classes to keep them from turning a rebellion into a real revolution.

That rebellion was fermenting when Roosevelt took office:. Desperate people were not waiting for the government to help them; they were helping themselves, acting directly. Aunt Molly Jackson, a woman who very soon became active in labor struggles in Appalachia, recalled how she walked into the local store, asked for a 24-pound sack of flour, gave it to her little boy to take it outside, then filled a sack of sugar and said to the storekeeper, "Well, I'll see you in ninety days. I have to feed some children . . . I'll pay you, don't worry."

And when he objected, she pulled out her pistol (which, as a midwife traveling alone through the hills, she had a permit to carry) and said: "Martin, if you try to take this grub away from me, God knows that if they electrocute me for it tomorrow, I'll shoot you six times in a minute." Then, as she recalls, "I walked out, I got home, and these seven children was so hungry that they was a-grabbin the raw dough off-a their mother's hands and crammin it into their mouths and swallowing it whole."

source: http://www.ditext.com/zinn/zinn15.html


Originally blogged at Appalachian History


3 comments:

Jeremy Peters said...

Dave, thanks for your post on the New Deal and the Great Depression. I find it one of the most fascinating eras of American History!

My Mamaw worked in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) doing office work. I interviewed her as part of an oral history project in college on her experiences during the depression and how it impacted Appalachia.

She credits the New Deal and WPA with providing opportunities that might not have been available and helping her to acquire skills that were beneficial later on in her life.

Regionally, her perspective is that the depression wasn't felt as strongly in the Appalachia because most people had very little in terms of financial resources to begin with, and were already equipped with survival skills that urban folks did not have (i.e. the means of producing their own food, fuel and fiber).

El Cabrero said...

I vote social elixir, warts and all.

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