Which Practice Did The Federal Government Use To Deal With The Great Depression?
Great Depression: American Social Policy
American Social Policy in the Smashing Depression and Globe State of war II
by Jerry D. Marx, Ph.D., Academy of New Hampshire
The Economic Context —The 2d Industrial Revolution
America in the 1920s was a prosperous nation. Savings during the decade quadrupled.i A "housing blast" enabled millions of Americans to own their own domicile. By 1924, about eleven million families were homeowners. Automobiles, electricity, radio, and mass advertisement became increasingly influential in the lives of average Americans. Automobiles, in one case a luxury for rich Americans, now gave industrial workers and farmers much greater mobility. Electricity put an end to much of the backbreaking work in the American home. Electric refrigerators, irons, stoves, and washing machines eventually became "widespread.2 On the farm, electric tools such as electric saws, pumps, and grinders fabricated farmers more productive. By 1922, radios were common sources of news and entertainment for American families. With improvements in transportation and communication came increases in the mass advertising industry. In addition to all of this, corporations increasingly offered workers fringe benefits and stock-sharing opportunities.3
The Great Low
Photo: Collection FDR-PHOCO: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Public Domain Photographs.
The overall prosperity of the Us in the 1920s overshadowed the chronic poverty of sure vulnerable populations. These were the same populations that had always been at hazard in American history: children, older Americans, minorities, female-headed families, people with disabilities, and workers with unstable or low-paying jobs. According to James T. Patterson, writer of America'southward Struggle Confronting Poverty: 1900-1994, about one-fourth of the population in southern rural areas consisted of poor sharecroppers and tenant farmers.4 Over a third of these pocket-size farmers were African Americans. This is what Patterson refers to equally the "quondam poverty."5 The "new poverty" began with the famous stock market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Nifty Depression. This is when many heart and upper-income families first experienced poverty in America. These were hard-working people who fully shared the values and ethics of the American dream, people who had enjoyed the strong economy of the 1920s and had bought the homes, refrigerators, and automobiles. The sudden and severe downturn of the American economy left many of these people in shock and denial. Some became suicidal. Between 1929 and 1933, unemployment in the United States jumped from 3.2 per centum to 24.nine pct, most a quarter of the official labor forcefulness.half dozen This represented 12.8 million workers.7 Unemployment in some cities was as loftier as 80 percent, 8 out of x workers.8 During this period, consumer spending declined 18 percentage, manufacturing output dropped 54 percent, and construction spending plummeted 78 percent. Fourscore percent of product capacity in the automobile industry came to a halt. By 1932, many politicians, businessmen, and journalists started to contemplate the possibility of massive revolution in the Us.9 In fact, thousands of the most desperate unemployed workers began raiding nutrient stores. Reminiscent of the food riots during the breakup of the feudal arrangement in Europe, this looting became widespread by 1932. Demonstrations by the poor demanding increased relief often resulted in fights with the police. In places similar Harlem, the "sit down-downward strike" became office of the strategy during these relief demonstrations. A Pittsburgh priest named Begetter James R. Cox attracted sixty,000 people to a protest rally; 12,000 of these followers later joined Cox in Washington to protestation in forepart of President Herbert Hoover. When five,000 state of war veterans demonstrated in Washington in the leap of 1932, Hoover sent none other than General Douglas MacArthur and Major Dwight Eisenhower to intermission up the rally. One observer describes the treatment of the veterans:
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Shacks, put up by the Bonus Ground forces on the Anacostia flats, Washington, D.C., burning afterwards the battle with the armed forces. The Capitol in the background. 1932.
Photograph: National Archives
National Athenaeum Identifier 531102"The police encircled them. In that location was some brick throwing. A couple of law retaliated past firing. A man was killed and another seriously wounded….To my right…armed services units were being formed….A squadron of calvary was in front of this army column. Then, some staff cars, and four trucks with baby tanks on them, stopped well-nigh the camp. They allow the ramps down and the baby tanks rolled out into the street….The 12th Infantry was in full battle dress. Each had a gas mask and his belt was full of tear gas bombs….They fixed their bayonets and likewise fixed the gas masks over their faces. At orders, they brought their bayonets at thrust and moved in. The bayonets were used to jab people, to brand them move….The entire cake was covered by tear gas. Flames were coming up, where the soldiers had set fire to the buildings housing protesters to bulldoze these people out."10
The Political Response—Franklin D. Roosevelt and The New Deal
One observer pointed out to Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) upon taking office that, given the present crunch, he would be either the worst or greatest president in American history. Roosevelt is said to have responded: "If I fail, I shall be the terminal one."11 By the time Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932, the traditional ideologies and institutions of the United States were in a country of upheaval.12 Americans who had grown up promoting the ideology of the "deserving and undeserving poor" and the stigma of poor relief were now standing in line for relief. Private nonprofit organizations such every bit Community Chests, although valiant in their endeavor, were overwhelmed with requests, unable to come across the needs of their communities. State and local governments, ultimately responsible for their poor throughout American history, at present looked for financial assist. What was needed was an expanded institutional partnership between the federal government and the other sectors of American order in promoting social welfare. In the past, the federal government had been active in other areas such as railroad development and state of war veteran pensions. However, the American conventionalities, as earlier expressed by President Franklin Pierce to Dorothea Dix, was that the federal government should not be involved in providing poor relief.thirteen Only at present the size of this national crisis required a national solution. The federal government was in the all-time position to initiate and coordinate national efforts amidst public, individual, and nonprofit sectors of society. As the crisis deepened, progressive leaders and average Americans increasingly demanded that the federal government take greater responsibility in relieving and preventing poverty.
One of the more radical policy proposals to address the Nifty Depression was put along by Senator Huey Long from Louisiana and a second past Dr. Francis Townsend from California.xiv Long (who was later assassinated) proposed a "share the wealth" program where millionaires would exist taxed to fund pensions for anyone over threescore years of age. The toll of the program, to be funded by an income tax, was projected to be $3.6 billion, a colossal amount of money at the time. Townsend proposed a special sales tax to pay every American citizen over 60 (except bedevilled felons) $200 per month. The full price of the proposal was estimated to be $2.4 billion. About 25 million people signed petitions in back up of Townsend's program! Consequently, the Roosevelt Administration established a two-tier federal system of insurance and relief programs. But to address the social unrest throughout the nation, he took immediate activeness to create job opportunities. He did so by establishing several federal agencies and programs.15 I was the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which was created by the Federal Emergency Relief Human activity in 1932.
As its name suggests, FERA was given primary responsibleness for managing the effort to distribute federal relief funds to individual states. The relief funds were used to sustain unemployed families during the immediate crisis. The Civilian Works Assistants (CWA) was really part of FERA. This federal program created jobs in public works. These public sector jobs included road repair, the excavation of drainage ditches and the maintenance of local parks. The Public Works Assistants (PWA), created in 1933, also focused on public works. Notwithstanding, in dissimilarity to the CWA, it focused on circuitous public works such as dams and airports. Another program started in 1933 was the Noncombatant Conservation Corps (the CCC, of course!) The target population of this programme was unemployed youth. That is, the Civilian Conservation Corps provided jobs for youth in various parks. The U.S. Army was used to supervise the youth. Furthermore, Congress passed the Wagner-Peyser Human activity in 1933. This legislation provided federal funding to individual states to develop employment offices. Only 23 states had such services earlier 1933. And finally, though not straight task-related, emergency food programs were set up to prevent starvation. For instance, surplus agricultural appurtenances were distributed to the poor. Besides, a relatively small-scale "food stamp" program was established for needy federal workers.
Federal reforms during the FDR Administration as well included reforms to stabilize the economical sector.xvi These included creation in 1933 of the National Recovery Administration (NRA). This controversial program, which was declared unconstitutional past the Supreme Court in 1935, temporarily threatened capitalist ideology by directly intervening in the "supply and demand" workings of the marketplace. More than precisely, this federal initiative sought to stabilize the economy by establishing wage and price agreements to curb the slashing of prices and wages during the depression. To farther back up product prices, product quotas were established to deter the "dumping" of surplus inventories of products on the consumer market. Similarly, the Agricultural Adjustment Agency was created to curtail farm product in order to maintain higher farm prices (and prevent further bankruptcies in the farm sector). Likewise established in 1933 was the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (signified by the FDIC window sticker at your local bank). A main responsibility of this entity was to restore public confidence in the banking system. The FDIC worked with participating banks to insure consumer depository financial institution deposits against banking company insolvency. The federal authorities also collaborated with banks to address the millions of farms and homes threatened with foreclosure. For instance, the federal government directly purchased from banks and refinanced (at a lower interest rate) the mortgages of needy farmers through passage of the Emergency Farm Mortgage Human action and the Farm Relief Act. Both were enacted in 1933.
A year later the National Housing Act established the Federal Home Administration (FHA). Through this plan the federal government insured home mortgages and home improvement loans, assuasive banks to refinance the loans of needy families at lower interest rates. Additional economic reforms included the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in 1933 and the Securities and Commutation Commission (SEC) in 1934. The goal of the TVA was to facilitate economical development in that region of the country. To this stop, dams and generating plants were synthetic, providing inexpensive electric ability to the region. The TVA also developed flood-command projects, manufactured and sold fertilizer, and reforested big tracts of state. Regarding the Securities and Substitution Commission, many people felt that rampant speculation in the stock market played a significant role in causing the stock market crash and subsequent depression. Therefore, the Securities and Exchange Commission took on the responsibility of regulating speculation abuses by investors and stockbrokers.
Question for Discussion: Presidents and Disabilities Franklin D. Roosevelt is more often than not considered to be one of the three greatest presidents in American history, along with Lincoln and Washington. FDR besides happened to take a disability, coping with infantile paralysis or "polio" throughout much of his adult life. Considering the disease left his legs paralyzed, he could not walk without assistance.17 All the same, during his entrada for president, FDR traveled xiii,000 miles by train and fabricated 16 major speeches.18 Throughout his presidency, people were amazed at his free energy and optimism. He held office longer than any president in American history, leading the U.s. through two of its biggest crises in the Twentieth Century, the Great Low and World War II. Could Roosevelt be elected president today? How would the press cover his disability? How would the voters react to a candidate who could not walk without assistance? This first set of reforms, every bit previously stated, was an emergency stop-gap mensurate. From November of 1934 to Nov of 1936, the Roosevelt Administration implemented a second set of reforms meant to define an ongoing responsibility of the federal government, a responsibleness for social welfare similar to that found in European nations.19 The major piece of legislation passed during this menstruation was the Social Security Human action of 1935.
This legislation constituted a package of social programs consisting of both insurance and poor relief (later referred to as "public assistance" or "welfare"). With respect to insurance, the act contained both unemployment insurance and onetime historic period pensions (commonly known every bit "Social Security"). Unemployment insurance was very unpopular with business concern leaders. To illustrate, equally tardily as 1931, Henry Ford persisted in blaming mass unemployment on individual laziness. He claimed there was plenty of work for those who wanted it!20 Yet, packaging unemployment insurance with more popular programs such as old historic period pensions, Roosevelt was able to pass the legislation. The Social Security Act also contained several federal poor relief programs. Meant to exist a standing federal responsibility, these programs included Old Age Assist, Aid to the Blind, and Aid to Dependent Children (ADC).21 ADC, equally the proper name suggests, targeted relief to poor children in single parent families. It was non until 1950 that the single parent became officially eligible for assistance also. Note that prior to the New Deal, relief was a tool used by social workers to rehabilitate.22 To get relief, a person had to accept rehabilitation services from a social worker (including a significant dose of moral teaching!) With the New Deal, poor relief became a correct of American citizens meeting certain eligibility standards, including of course, fiscal need. In other words, poor relief became, non a "ways" to rehabilitation, just rather, an "end in itself." The Social Security Deed promoted cooperation between the federal government and the states in providing poor relief through the utilize of "matching funding formulas."23 That is, for every dollar of state funding expended in the Old Age Assistance, Aid to the Blind, and Assistance to Dependent Children programs, the federal government contributed a specified percentage of funding. Nevertheless, the legislation allowed each land to make up one's mind eligibility standards and levels of benefits. Also contained in the legislative bundle were a number of smaller scale health and human service programs.
These included child welfare and maternal health programs in Title Five of the deed and public health programs in Title Half dozen of the legislation. During this 2nd round of reforms, the Roosevelt Administration continued to confront massive unemployment and labor unrest. Numerous strikes took place throughout the state. To support the rights of matrimony organizers, the Wagner Act was passed in 1936.24 This legislation established the National Labor Relations Board. The lath enforced the right of workers to start their own unions. For case, specific procedures for starting unions were outlined, including voting procedures for choosing a collective bargaining agent. The Roosevelt Administration too implemented major federal initiatives during this "second New Deal" that were subsequently terminated.25 1 was the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which replaced the Federal Emergency Relief Administration created at the start of the New Deal. Nigh 85% of programme participants were receiving poor relief. Program eligibility was limited to one member of each family. Considering this was typically a male, the program was considered by some to be discriminatory. In any case, the WPA employed two million people a calendar month building libraries, schools, hospitals, parks, and sidewalks.26
Eleanor Roosevelt was a strong advocate of a major program located within the WPA chosen the National Youth Administration.27 A forerunner of modernistic student financial assistance, this programme immune high school and college students to finish their education by providing part-time public sector jobs. It also established rural camps where youth could learn trade skills. The WPA besides funded several projects which put people in the arts to work.28 For example, the New Deal established the Federal Theater Projection, which created jobs for actors and playwrights and entertainment for laborers. In add-on, a Federal Writers Projection and a Federal Art Project were funded. In and so doing, writers were put to piece of work preparing items such equally tourist guides to American states and cities, while artists painted murals on the walls of public buildings. After 1936, the Roosevelt Administration met greater opposition to its reform agenda from Republicans and conservative Democrats.
There were several reasons for this opposition.29 First of all, the New Deal had not succeeded in ending the depression. The national economic troubles continued despite the wide array of reforms. Secondly, many political and concern leaders felt uncomfortable with Roosevelt'south standing spending deficit. (To fund the New Deal and stimulate economic growth, the Roosevelt Administration spent more than the federal regime was actually receiving in tax revenue.) A 3rd reason for the opposition to further reform was the fearfulness of socialism in America. The New Deal with its massive public employment and national poor relief programs was a cardinal change in America'south institutional structure, a alter that threatened the credo of the nation's bourgeois leaders. Adding to this fearfulness was the growing power of labor unions beyond the country. Roosevelt, after all, had supported legislation (Wagner Human action) to facilitate this development, despite the opposition of business leaders. All of these developments led to a growing resentment past conservative Republicans and Democrats of Roosevelt's Administration, the and so-called "brain trust." Hence, the growing opposition to additional social reform. Despite this opposition, the Roosevelt Administration did manage to get the Wagner-Steagall Housing Act passed in 1937.xxx This human activity established the U.Southward. Housing Authority, which provided low-interest loans to local regime for the evolution of public housing. Another late New Deal success was the Off-white Labor Standards Act, passed in 1938. This legislation established minimum wages and maximum work hours. (Remember that both minimum wages and maximum work hours were part of the policy agenda of the earlier Progressive Era.) Still, to appease southern interests, the legislation did not embrace farm labor.
The Role of Social Work in the New Deal
By the showtime of the Great Depression, social work in the Us had experienced much growth and maturation equally a professional subject field. Responding to the criticism that social work was fabricated upward of kind-hearted people doing activities that about anyone could do, Mary Richmond's 1917 publication, "Social Diagnosis," provided a "trunk of knowledge" for professionalization.31 The book emphasized casework techniques that focused on the person in their environment. That is, although Richmond held the sociological perspective that individual bug were rooted in the social environs (unemployment, etc.), her book adopted a medical model process of differential diagnosis of individual cases. Based on this careful collection of client information, treatment would then consist of some combination of individual and ecology change. (Information technology should be noted, withal, that Richmond was non a great enthusiast for "wholesale" social reform, preferring instead "retail" interventions.) As the decade of the 1920s progressed, the social work profession increasingly reflected the conservative tendency across the nation.32 Times were good; jobs were plentiful. Once over again, social problems such as poverty and unemployment were traced to the individual.
Psychiatric social work, led in office by Smith College, became the rage within the profession. In the procedure, the psychoanalytic work of Sigmund Freud, which became pop nationally, provided social workers with needed theory and individual treatment methods. In the 1920s, social club viewed individual dysfunction equally a sign, not of immorality so much as, emotional disorder. As John Ehrenreich put it, private need was not a matter for Saint Peter as much as it was for Saint Sigmund. In whatsoever case, the emphasis on casework facilitated the professionalization of social work for numerous reasons.33 Casework was much less threatening to the middle and upper classes than cause-related social work, better known every bit social reform. In fact, business and professional people were a ready clientele for psychoanalysis. To establish itself as a profession, social work needed the support of these middle and upper-income groups. It needed their fees for service; information technology needed their sanction. Thus the profession of social work with its growing emphasis on casework fit the social, economical, and political needs of the bourgeois and prosperous 1920s.
By 1929, there were 25 graduate schools of social work.34 Several professional organizations had been established, including the American Association of Social Workers in 1921. In addition, to further knowledge based in research, several professional journals were adult, including "The Compass," which was afterwards renamed, "Social Work." When Franklin Roosevelt took office, he made several social workers prominent figures in his administration. This is despite the fact that the profession equally a whole was reluctant to return to a social reform (i.e., "macro") emphasis.35 Individual nonprofit organizations remained the dominant provider of casework by social workers. Yet, during the New Deal, public agencies primarily distributed relief funds to the needy. This is where the activity and the jobs were to be found. And, equally stated, social workers played major roles in policy development. FDR's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, was probably the near influential person in the White House. Although she did non hold a "social piece of work" degree, Eleanor received on-the-job training working in New York settlement houses.36
In fact, her approach to the role of First Lady reflected the settlement philosophy of "research and reform." Her trips around the nation and the world collecting information for her hubby are legendary. She attracted much press coverage and seemed to be everywhere. She was his eyes and ears, his information collector. He knew he could count on her to bring back detailed information concerning public sentiment and social need. All of this "research" was a prerequisite for developing the social policy of the New Bargain. Harry Hopkins, a social worker with settlement house experience, was the next about influential person to the President. In fact, information technology was Eleanor who first observed Hopkins as a passionate, young social worker in New York and referred him to her husband.37 After managing Roosevelt's relief program in New York, Hopkins was selected to caput the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and later its successor, the Works Progress Administration.38
A third prominent fellow member of the Roosevelt Administration with social work training and settlement house experience was Frances Perkins. Perkins was the first adult female appointed to the President's Chiffonier in U.Due south. history, serving as Secretary of the Section of Labor.39 Early on in her career, she worked at 2 Chicago settlement houses, Hull-House and Chicago Commons.40 In 1909, she attended the New York School of Philanthropy (which would become the Columbia University Graduate School of Social Work) to learn survey research methods. A year afterward, she received her Principal'south Degree in Political Science from Columbia Academy. Before becoming Labor Secretary, Perkins had headed the Roosevelt's New York State Industrial Board, a position in which she advocated for safer manufactory and labor standards.41 Other influential social workers in the Roosevelt Administration included Grace Abbott, Paul Kellogg, Adolph Berle, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and Eduard Lindemann.42
In improver to these prominent policy development roles, the New Deal created thousands of new "rank-and-file" jobs in social work. In fact, the Federal Emergency Relief Act required that every local public relief administrator hire at least one experienced social worker on their staff.43 This requirement introduced social piece of work ethics and methods into every county and township in America. During the 1930s, the number of employed social workers doubled, from about 30,000 to over 60,000 positions. This chore growth created a major shift in social work do from primarily private bureau settings and clinical roles to public agencies and social advocacy. The New Deal also expanded the scope of social work from a primarily urban profession to a nationwide profession practicing in rural areas as well.
Did You Know?
Harry Hopkins, a social worker, was and so respected by President Franklin Roosevelt that, before Hopkins' wellness started to deteriorate, some believed that Roosevelt was grooming him to exist the side by side President of the United States.44 During World War II, Roosevelt sent Hopkins to be his special representative in talks with both Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.
Successes and Failures of the New Deal
The New Bargain had many shortcomings.45 As stated earlier, it was Earth War II that did the most to solve unemployment during the Great Depression. And although the Social Security Human activity contained some relative small health programs, the New Deal as a whole established no major national health plan. Furthermore, to appease southern politicians and get some reform legislation passed, Roosevelt did relatively fiddling to help African Americans.46 Many of these citizens were employed as domestic servants, migrant workers, and subcontract laborers. New Deal legislation concerning quondam age pensions, unemployment insurance, and minimum wages did non cover workers in these occupations. Perhaps most regrettable from an ethical standpoint, the New Deal contained no anti-lynching legislation – even though the beating and lynching of black citizens was still a common occurrence in some parts of the nation.
If America equally a nation suffered during the Great Low, African Americans and other minorities suffered worst of all.47 Eleanor Roosevelt was probably the most powerful political ally of African Americans during the Roosevelt Administration. As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has noted, Franklin Roosevelt thought in terms of what could be washed politically, while Eleanor idea in terms of what should exist done ethically.48 While inspecting weather in southern states for her married man, Eleanor discovered discrimination against African Americans in several New Bargain programs. For example, African Americans in southern piece of work relief programs under the WPA received lower wages than their white counterparts. As a result, Eleanor made certain that black leaders received a hearing at the White House, resulting in a 1935 executive order from the President barring discrimination in WPA programs.
In the context of the times, actions such as these showed African Americans that Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt did care near them. More than chiefly, this advocacy gave young African Americans a glimpse of the potential power of the federal government regarding civil rights. What always its shortcomings, the New Deal prevented many Americans, black and white, from starving to expiry during the Great Depression. While challenging the ideologies of the status quo in the United States, it reformed national institutional structures to meet the massive needs of millions of Americans in poverty. In doing this, the New Bargain created a major federal health and human service organization in add-on to the services of local public and private agencies. The Social Security Board, fix to administer the Social Security Act, later became the United States Department of Health, Instruction, and Welfare.49 And the Social Security Deed became, and withal is, the foundation of the American health and human service system.
Personal Contour: Mary McLeod Bethune
Mary McLeod Bethune, the girl of former slaves, became caput of the Division of African-American Affairs within the National Youth Administration in 1936. She used this position to advocate for the needs of African Americans during the Corking Depression, directing a more equitable share of New Deal funding to black pedagogy and employment.fifty Born in 1875 in Mayesville, South Carolina, Bethune received a scholarship to Scotia Seminary for Negro Girls in Agree, North Carolina. She later attended the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago from 1894 to 1895.51 In 1904, she founded the Daytona Educational and Industrial Schoolhouse for Negro Girls in Daytona Embankment, Florida, a school that subsequently merged with the Cookman Institute of Jacksonville to become Bethune-Cookman Higher. An educator, organizer, and policy advocate, Bethune became one of the leading ceremonious rights activists of her era.52 She led a group of African American women to vote after the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution (giving women the correct to vote). In her position in the National Youth Administration, she became the highest paid African American in the federal regime and a leading member of the unofficial "Blackness Cabinet" of the Roosevelt Administration. She later became the kickoff African American woman to have a monument dedicated to her in Washington, D.C.
Critical Assay: Business, the Swell Depression, and the New Deal
Given the primary role that the private for-profit market plays in American social welfare, the Great Depression represented the greatest failure of the business organisation sector in American history. Equally a consequence of the massive economic collapse in the wake of the stock marketplace crash in 1929, the federal government causeless a much larger office in promoting social welfare. This new partnership amongst U.S. institutional sectors was apace developed, at times, over the opposition of business concern leaders. To illustrate, both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers considered the Social Security Human activity too radical.53 However, there was much less opposition to the Social Security Deed (with its employer contributions) than expected by the Roosevelt Administration. In fact, some prominent business leaders such as Gerard Swope of Full general Electrical and Marion Folsom of Eastman Kodak publicly supported the legislation. At the same time, many social reformers attacked the Social Security Act and other New Deal legislation for being too moderate, too sexist, and too racist. Were they correct? Should the New Deal accept replaced, rather than cautiously reformed, many U.S. institutions? Were Roosevelt and the New Deal too all-around to the interests of bourgeois business and political leaders? Did America miss a fundamental opportunity for significant progress in terms of social and economic justice?
Social Policy in Mail-War America Economical Context: Automobiles, Suburbs, and Corporate Social Responsibility
The belatedly 1940s and the decade of the 1950s witnessed an increasingly stiff U.S. economy. The victory of the United States and its Allies in Earth War II left the United states of america economy positioned for world leadership. The economic infrastructures of Europe, Japan, and the Soviet Matrimony had suffered tremendous destruction during the war, while the United States' economy, boosted by state of war production, recovered from the Great Depression. Every bit the nation entered the 1950s, the U.Southward. economy boomed, facilitated by federal government policies, specially in the machine and housing industries. In fact, in that location was a large, pent-upward demand for most products. General Motors was the world'southward largest, richest corporation and would shortly pass the billion dollar mark in gross revenues.54 The Interstate Highway Act of 1956 provided billions of dollars for highway construction, thereby fueling the demand for automobiles by a growing population. Millions of Americans saw the opportunity to keep their urban industrial jobs while living in the suburbs. In one case over again, the federal government (working in partnership with the private cyberbanking industry) fabricated possible depression-interest domicile mortgages for these consumers, mortgages guaranteed by federal agencies such as the Veteran'due south Administration and the Federal Housing Authority.
In addition, developer William J. Levitt began mass-producing affordable homes for center-class Americans. While the economic system grew, American businesses began to shift their priorities for charitable giving. Experiences of the Swell Low, New Deal, and World War II prompted American businesses to increasingly direct donations to community groups other than the traditional health and human services of the local community chests. The transition was facilitated past a 1953 ruling of the Supreme Court of New Jersey. The ruling legitimized corporate charitable giving, not just in the traditional terms of "direct benefit" to the corporation, merely also in terms of the broad social responsibilities of corporations to the nation.55 Previous to this courtroom ruling, corporate charitable gifts could be legally justified to stockholders only if the donation was a direct benefit to employees. For instance, a donation past a railroad company to a local YMCA that provided housing for railroad workers was legal. The ruling interpreted "directly do good" to mean a benefit to the free enterprise system and not solely to the corporation or its employees.
Thus, a legal precedent was established for corporate giving to a wider range of causes, including educational, cultural, and artistic organizations. At the same time, American corporations were becoming more enlightened of their responsibility to a wide range of community groups.56 Throughout the 1930s, the business sector faced resentful, hostile public opinion as a effect of the complanate economic system and widespread suffering. The subsequent New Bargain legislation, as previously stated, was perceived by business as an enormous threat to the gratuitous market arrangement. In addition to the unprecedented increase in the federal authorities's responsibility for national social welfare, the business sector feared hereafter increases in government regulation. Thus, business organization was presented with the pick of acknowledging its broader social welfare responsibilities on a voluntary basis or through increased authorities regulation. As in the Progressive Era, business leaders responded to the threat of further regulation with a renewed emphasis on management professionalism and corporate social responsibleness.57
The idea of business management as the trustee for society at large was increasingly stressed in the business concern sector. Business concern management became more responsive to multiple groups in its environment: stockholders, employees, retirees, consumers, authorities, and local communities. For instance, in 1954, General Electric became the offset corporation to match employee and retiree contributions to charity with a corporate donation (i.eastward., "matching gifts").58 Furthermore, this broad range of stakeholders began efforts to hold corporations more than answerable for their policies and social bear upon (eventually resulting in the "consumer movement" and "ethical investing").
The Political Context: McCarthy and The Cerise Scare
Although the federal government worked with the business organisation sector during the l950s to build homes and highways, there was relatively little new social reform passed at the federal level.59 Major New Bargain programs such equally Social Security survived the conservative political climate of the 1950s thanks to potent support by America'south growing middle grade. However, the administrations of Harry Truman (1945-1952) and Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1960) were relatively fallow with respect to major new social reform. The legislation that was passed included the 1946 National Schoolhouse Luncheon Program, the 1946 National Mental Health Human action (providing grants to states for mental health services), and the 1954 School Milk Program.60 One of the primary reasons for the lack of major new social reform during this period was the national business organization about the growth of communism. As indicated earlier, some of the big government programs of the New Bargain had been criticized for being communistic.
American labor unions, to varying degrees, were influenced past Communist members. Still, now the Soviet Marriage and China had emerged from Globe War Two as military powers capable of rivaling the U.S. effectually the globe. Events such as the postwar Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe alarmed a U.S. population that had recently witnessed the global aggression of Adolf Hitler.61 At the same time, Communist Parties were gathering strength in countries such equally France and Italy.62 Consequently, the spread of communism became the number ane voter concern.63 Maybe even more alarming to U.S. political leaders were government reports that the Soviet Marriage, in its quest for earth domination, was secretly developing diminutive weapons and sponsoring espionage activeness in the U.s.a.. President Truman responded to (and fueled) this "Red Scare" past setting up the Federal Employee Loyalty Program in 1947.64 The program's goal was to eliminate subversive employees in the U.S. regime.
In the same year, the House Un-American Activities Commission (which included a immature Congressman named Richard Nixon) began a series of investigations of Communist infiltration of American labor unions, government, academia, and movie industry. During these investigations, a senior editor from Time mag, Whittaker Chambers, admitted to being a one-time member of the Communist Party and identified a former top U.S. Country Department official and Secretarial assistant-General of the founding United Nations conference, Alger Hiss, as a Communist doing espionage work for the Soviet Union. The Ruby Scare became even more frightening in 1949 when President Truman announced that the Soviet Union had detonated an diminutive flop and when Mao Tse-tung declared communist sovereignty over the entire Chinese mainland. Then in 1950, Alger Hiss, was constitute guilty of perjury in denying that he had committed espionage for the Soviet Wedlock.65 By the time that Senator Joseph McCarthy later that yr claimed to have list of Communist working in the U.Due south. State Department on national policy, the Red Scare had become hysterical.
Implications for the Social Sector and Social Work
This sociopolitical environment generated much public support for a "Cold War" anti-communist foreign policy. Yet, it likewise turned public back up against further social reform.66 The writings of Karl Marx were banned from bookstores. Universities refused to invite "controversial" speakers. Radical militant unions were expelled by the Congress of Industrial Organizations ("CIO"). In the end, this anti-communist sentiment forth with a potent economy resulted in relatively petty involvement in major social legislation by the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations. The bourgeois trend of the 40s and 50s was, once again, reflected in the social piece of work profession. That is, the focus of the social work returned to professional status and to individual handling (i.e., casework) rather than the social reform of the New Bargain era.67 In 1952, the Council on Social Work Education was established providing a standard accrediting body, and three years afterward, several professional organizations were merged to form the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). Furthermore, during the 1950s, a "psychosocial" orientation to casework evolved, merging techniques from competing schools of thought ("diagnostic" verses "functional").
Based in part on the writings of Heinz Hartman, Melanie Klein, Paul Federn, and Anna Freud, more attending began to be paid by therapists to ego functions. More attending was likewise given to utilize of the client-therapist relationship in the present (as opposed to the recovery of repressed unconscious information) and to bug of separation, through the use of "termination" in therapy. (See the writings of Margaret Mahler, Rene Spitz, and John Bowlby) In addition, foreshadowing the age of "managed health intendance," caseworkers began examining techniques associated with brief therapy. Finally, Erik Erikson's 1950 publication, Childhood and Society, brought increased involvement by social workers in psychosocial development across the lifespan. In summary, the emphasis of the 1950s in social piece of work was casework. So came the 1960s! ContentSelect For more information on related social piece of work topics, apply the following search terms: The New Deal Federal Art Project Franklin D. Roosevelt Federal Writers Projection Federal Emergency Relief Admin. Fair Labor Standards Act Civilian Works Administration Wagner-Steagall Housing Deed Civilian Conservation Corps Mary Richmond Social Security Act of 1935 Sigmund Freud National Labor Relations Lath Eleanor Roosevelt Works Progress Administration Harry Hopkins National Youth Assistants Frances Perkins Federal Theater Projection Mary McLeod Bethune Blood-red Scare
Notes
one. Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (New York: HarperPerennial, 1999), p. 718.
2. Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (New York: Vintage, 1983), pp. 502-504.
three. Bruce S. Jansson, The Reluctant Welfare Country: American Social Welfare Policies-Past, Present, and Future, 4th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2001), p. 167.
4. James T. Patterson, America's Struggle Confronting Poverty: 1900-1994 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 38.
v. Ibid.
6. Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse, 10th ed. (New York: BasicBooks, 1996), p. 214.
7. Patterson, p. 42.
8. Katz, p. 214.
9. Ibid., p. 223-224.
10. Ibid., p.224.
xi. Paul F. Boller, Jr. Presidential Campaigns (New York: Oxford Academy Press, 1985), p. 239.
12. Katz, p. 214.
13. James Leiby, A History of Social Welfare and Social Work in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), p. 104.
14. Edward D. Berkowitz, America's Welfare State From Roosevelt to Reagan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 18-19; Richard Wade, Expanding Resources: 1901-1945, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Almanac Of American History (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1993), p. 470.
15. Jansson, pp. 179-184.
16. Ibid., pp. 184-188.
17. Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (New York: The Viking Press, 1946), p. 37.
xviii. Boller, p. 234.
19. Jansson, p. 194, 199.
20. Howard Zinn, A People's History Of The United states of america: 1492-Present (New York: HarperPerennial, 1995), p. 378.
21. Jansson, p. 203.
22. John H. Ehrenreich, The Donating Imagination: A History Of Social Work And Social Policy In The United States (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Printing, 1985), p. 107.
23. Jansson, pp. 203, 205-207.
24. Ibid., p. 204.
25. Ibid., pp. 194, 207-208.
26. Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Fourth dimension (New York: Touchstone, 1995), p. 87.
27. Jansson, p. 208; Trattner, p. 283.
28. Goodwin, p. 87; Zinn, p. 394.
29. Jansson, p. 209.
30. Ibid., pp. 210-211.
31. Ehrenreich, pp. 64-65; Trattner, pp. 255-262.
32. Ibid.
33. Ehrenreich, pp. 72, 76.
34. Ibid., p. 78.
35. Ibid., p. 103.
36. Goodwin, pp. 96, 365, 381.
37. Ibid., p. 87.
38. Leiby, p. 224, Goodwin, p. 87.
39. George Martin, Madam Secretary Frances Perkins (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), pp. iii-4.
twoscore. Ibid., pp. lx-63, 72-74.
41. Ibid., p. 205.
42. Ehrenreich, p. 104.
43. Walter I. Trattner, From Poor Police To Welfare State: A History Of Social Welfare In America, 6th ed. (New York: The Gratis Printing, 1999), pp. 285; 296-297.
44. Goodwin, pp. 106-107; 212, 257.
45. Zinn, pp. 393-394.
46. Goodwin, p.163, Trattner, p. 282.
47. Trattner, p. 282.
48. Goodwin, pp. 162-163.
49. Trattner, p.295.
50. Audrey Thomas McClusky & Elaine M. Smith, Mary McLeod Bethune: Building a Ameliorate World (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1999), pp.xii, iv.
51. Sigerman, p. 20; McClusky & Smith, p. v.
52. McClusky & Smith, pp. 3, 6, 8, 16.
53. Trattner, p. 291.
54. David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Villard, 1993), p. 118, 132; Ehrenreich, 1985, pp. 144-145.
55. Eleanor Vivid, The United Way: Dilemmas of Organized Clemency (New York: Columbia, 1990), p. 157; Barry D. Karl, Corporate Philanthropy: Historical Background. In Corporate Philanthropy: Philosophy, Management, Trends, Futurity, Background (Washington, D.C.: Quango on Foundations, 1982), p. 132.
56. Frank E. Andrews, Corporation Giving (New York: Russell Sage, 1952), p. 17; Morrell Heald, The Social Responsibilities of Business: Visitor and Community, 1900-1960 (New Brunswick, North.J.: Transaction, Inc.,1988), p. 207.
57. Leiby, pp. 170-172; Heald, 1988, p. 207.
58. Billitteri, Thomas J. " Donors Large and Small Propelled Philanthropy in the 20th Century." In The Chronicle Of Philanthropy, January 13, 2000. cited 19 July 2000. Available from http://philanthropy.com/free/articles/v12/i06/06002901.htm; Internet.
59. Jansson, p. 229.
60. Trattner, p. 312.
61. Christopher Matthews, Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America (New York: Touchstone, 1997), p. 48.
62. David McCullough, Truman (New York: Touchstone, 1993), p. 544.
63. Matthews, p. 37.
64. Ehrenreich, 1985, p. 140; McCullough, p. 551.
65. Matthews, 1996, pp. 67-68.
66. Ehrenreich, p. 122,140-142.
67. Ibid., pp. 122, 136-137, 188.
How to Cite this Commodity (APA Format):Marx, J.D. (2011). American social policy in the Corking Low and Globe War Ii. Retrieved [engagement accessed] from https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-depression/american-social-policy-in-the-not bad-depression-and-wwii/ .
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