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:'''''See also: [[Fascism and the New Deal]].'''''[[File:Fascist Blue Eagle.PNG|right|250px|thumb|The New Deal Blue Eagle.<ref>https://financearchive.townhall.com/columnists/jimhuntzingeris/2020wip/02/05/the-malicious-symbol-of-the-blue-eagle-n2560786eOb97</ref>]]The '''New Deal''' was a group of otherwise disjointed programs conducted by President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]], a [[Democrat Party|Democrat]], throughout the [[Great Depression]], especially from 1933–361933 to 1936. His program had three aspects: Relief, Recovery and Reform. It sought to provide immediate Relief for the millions of unemployed in the [[Great Depression]]. It was intended to promote Recovery of the economy to normal standards—a goal he did not fully achieve. It involved a series of Reforms, especially in the financial system and labor relations. The basic issue was how to deal with the severely damaged economy—and great social misery—caused by three years of the [[Great Depression]]. Conservatives endorsed parts of the '''First New Deal''' (the 1933 programs) and rejected the more radical '''Second New Deal''' (the 1934–35 programs).

From the Wilson administration, other New Dealers, such as [[Hugh Samuel Johnson|Hugh Johnson]] of the [[National Recovery Administration|NRA]], were shaped by efforts to mobilize the economy for [[World War I]], They brought ideas and experience from the government controls and spending of 1917-181917–18. And from the policy experiments of the 1920s, New Dealers picked up ideas from efforts to harmonize the economy by creating cooperative relationships among its constituent elements. Roosevelt brought together a so-called "[[Brain Trust]]" of academic advisers to assist in his recovery efforts. They sought to introduce extensive government intervention in the form of spending and regulation instead of allowing self-correcting mechanisms to run its course. New Dealers such as Donald Richberg, as the replacement head of the NRA, said "A nationally [[planned economy]] is the only salvation of our present situation and the only hope for the future."<ref name="Leuchtenburg p. 58">Leuchtenburg p. 58</ref> Historian Clarence B. Carson says:

Shortly after his election FDR forced the Congress to scrap minimum wage and maximum hour legislation which the Senate had already passed.<ref>''The Roosevelt Myth'', [[John T. Flynn]], Fox and Wilkes, 1948, Book 2, Ch. 3., [http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/book/fdrmyth_Chapter_Three___The_Forgotten_De.htm ''The Forgotten Deprssion''].</ref>

The [[Tuskegee syphilis experiment]], officially the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, was a government funded racist study on the disease of [[syphilis]] begun during the New Deal.<ref>https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3372911/Brandt_Racism.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y</ref> The United States Public Health Service and the [[Center for Disease Control]] infected [[African American|black people]],<ref>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3731206/</ref> who could not read or were poor in Tuskegee, Alabama from 1932 to 1972.<ref>http://tuskegeestudy.weebly.com/new-directions.html</ref>[[File:Tuskegee experiment.jpg|right|350px|thumb|Tuskegee experiment during the New Deal.]]The study was initially funded by the private Rosenwald Fund. However, The Fund ended its involvement due to lack of matching state funds, and the federal government under the heavily [[Democratic party|Democrat]] 73rd Congress took over the funding.<ref>https://www.slu.edu/law/academics/journals/health-law-policy/pdfs/issues/v1-i2/menikoff_article.pdf</ref> According to the 1995 Abstract to ''The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment: [[biotechnology]] and the [[administrative state]]:''{{See alsoquotebox-float|"The central issue of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was [[property]]: property in the body and [[intellectual property]]. Once removed from the body, tissue and body fluids were not legally the property of the Tuskegee subjects. Consequently, there was not a direct relationship between a patient and research that used his sera. The Public Health Service (PHS) was free to exercise its property right in Tuskegee sera to develop serologic tests for syphilis with commercial potential. To camouflage the true meaning, the PHS made a distinction between direct clinical studies and indirect studies of tissue and body fluids. This deception caused all reviews to date to limit their examination to documents labeled by the PHS as directly related to the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. This excluded other information in the public domain. Despite the absence of a clinical protocol, this subterfuge led each to falsely conclude that the Tuskagee Syphilis Experiment was a clinical study. Based on publications of indirect research using sera and cerebrospinal fluid, this article conceives a very history of the Tuskagee Syphilis Experiment. Syphilis could only cultivate in living beings. As in [[slavery]], the generative ability of the body made the Tuskegee subjects real property and gave untreated syphilis and the sera of the Tuskegee subjects immense commercial value. Published protocols exploited the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to invent and commercialize biotechnology for the applied science of syphilis [[serology]].<ref>https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7869408/</ref>}}Jinbin Park of Kyung Hee University reports,<ref>https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Jinbin-Park-2137382871</ref>{{quotebox-float|"the growing influence of [[eugenics]] and [[racial]] pathology at the time reinforced discriminative views on minorities. [[Progressivism]] was realized in the form of domestic reform and imperial pursuit at the same time. Major medical journals argued that [[blacks]] were inclined to have certain defects, especially [[sexually transmitted diseases]] like syphilis, because of their prodigal behavior and lack of hygiene. This kind of racial ideas were shared by the PHS [Public Health Service] officials who were in charge of the Tuskegee Study. Lastly, the PHS officials believed in continuing the experimentregardless of various social changes. They considered that black participants were not only poor but also ignorant of and even unwilling to undergo the treatment. When the exposure of the experiment led to the [[Senate]] investigation in 1973, the participating doctors of the PHS maintained that their study offered valuable contribution to the medical research. This paper argues that the combination of the efficiency of military medicine, [[progressive]] and imperial racial [[ideology]], and [[discrimination]] on [[African-American]]s resulted in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.}}

The administration launched a series of relief measures and welfare agencies to give meaningful jobs to the unemployed, especially unskilled laborers. The largest programs were the [[Civilian Conservation Corps]] (CCC), the [[Civil Works Administration]] (CWA), the [[Federal Emergency Relief Administration]] (FERA), the [[National Youth Administration]] (NYA), and above all, the [[Works Progress Administration]] (WPA). The WPA employed a maximum of 3.3 million in November 1938.<ref>According to Nancy Rose' Put to Work.</ref> However, even at this level of WPA employment, unemployment (counting WPA as employment) was still 12.5% in 1938 according to figures from Micheal Darby.<ref>Darby, Michael R.''Three and a half million U.S. Employees have been mislaid: or, an Explanation of Unemployment, 1934-1941.'' Journal of Political Economy 84, no. 1 (1976): 1-16.</ref> All these emergency programs were terminated in 1942-431942–43, when unemployment had vanished due to World War II related employment offers.

In 1933 the administration launched the [[Tennessee Valley Authority]], a project involving dam construction planning on an unprecedented scale in order to curb flooding, generate electricity, and modernize the very poor farms in the [[Tennessee Valley]] region of the [[US The South|Southern United States]].

In a measure that garnered substantial popular support, Roosevelt, in his first days of office, moved to put to rest one of the most divisive cultural issues of the 1920s. He supported and signed a bill to legalize the manufacture and sale of beer, an interim measure pending the repeal of [[Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Prohibition]], for which a constitutional amendment (the Twenty-first) was already in process. The amendment was ratified later in 1933. Prohibition had been a rather unpopular amendment and led to bootlegging, the illegal manufacture (or importation) and sale of liquor within the United States.

A separate set of programs operated in [[Puerto Rico]], headed by the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration. It promoted [[land reform]] and helped small farms; it set up farm cooperatives, promoted crop diversification, and helped local industry. The Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration was directed by [[Ernest Gruening]] from 1935 to 1937.

Roosevelt realized that these initial actions were nothing but short -term solutions, and that more comprehensive government programs would be necessary. In the roughly three years between the Great Crash and Roosevelt's First Hundred Days, the industrial economy had been suffering from a vicious cycle of [[deflation (economics)|deflation]]. Since 1931, the [[U.S. Chamber of Commerce]], then and now the voice of the nation's organized business, had been urging the Hoover administration to adopt an anti-deflationary scheme that would permit trade associations to cooperate in stabilizing prices within their industries. While existing antitrust laws clearly forbade such practices, organized business found a receptive ear in the Roosevelt administration.

In the spring of 1935, responding to the setbacks in the Court, a new skepticism in Congress, and the growing popular clamor for more dramatic action, the administration proposed or endorsed several important new initiatives. Historians refer to them as the "Second New Deal" and note that it was more radical, more pro-labor and anti-business than the "First New Deal" of 1933-341933–34. The [[National Labor Relations Act]], also known as the '''Wagner Act''', revived and strengthened the protections of collective bargaining contained in the original (and now unconstitutional) NIRA. The result was a tremendous growth of membership in the labor unions comprising the [[American Federation of Labor]]. Labor thus became a major component of the New Deal political coalition.

Roosevelt, however, emboldened by the triumphs of his first term, set out in 1937 to consolidate authority within the government in ways that provoked powerful opposition. Early in the year, he asked Congress to [[Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937Court packing|expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court]] so as to allow him to appoint members sympathetic to his ideas and hence tip the ideological balance of the Court. This proposal provoked a storm of protest.

[[File:Fdr-reorganize.jpg|thumb|290px|FDR alreads already has too much power & demands more]]

[[File:Hugo black kkk.jpeg|right|300px|thumb|]]

Conservative economists at the time opposed this idea, most notably Raymond Moley (a widely read columnist), consultants George Terborgh<ref>Benjamin Higgins, "The Doctrine of Economic Maturity," ''American Economic Review,'' Vol. 36, No. 1 (Mar., 1946), pp. 133-141 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1802261 in JSTOR]</ref> and Wilfrid I. King,<ref>Willford I. King, "Are We Suffering From Economic Maturity?," ''Journal of Political Economy,'' Vol. 47, No. 5 (Oct., 1939), pp. 609-622 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1824177 in JSTOR]</ref> and professors Gottfried Haberler, Frank Knight, Oskar Morgenstern, Henry Simons, [[Joseph Schumpeter]], and William Fellner.<ref>William Fellner, " The Technological Argument of the Stagnation Thesis," ''Quarterly Journal of Economics,'' Vol. 55, No. 4 (Aug., 1941), pp. 638-651 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1884121 in JSTOR]</ref>

The New Deal set up numerous agencies to help impoverished farmers, but in the long run they had to move to the cities to become better off. Many leading New Dealers, including [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], [[Harold L. Ickes]], [[Aubrey Williams]] and [[Harry Hopkins]] worked hard to ensure Blacks received at least 10% of welfare assistance payments. Economic uplift was one thing but political revolution was another: the New Deal did not try to undercut segregation or change the second class political status of Blacks in the South. Roosevelt did appoint an unprecedented number of African Americans to second-level positions in his administration that collectively were called the Black Cabinet, perhaps due to the influence of Eleanor Roosevelt, a vocal advocate of easing discrimination. Roosevelt and Hopkins worked with big city mayors to welcome Black political organizations that made the transition from the GOP to the Democratic party in 1934-361934–36.

Business-oriented observers explained the recession and recovery in very different terms from the Keynesians. They argued that the New Deal had been very hostile to business expansion in 1935-371935–37, had encouraged massive strikes which had a negative impact on major industries such as automobiles, and had threatened massive anti-trust legal attacks on big corporations. All those threats diminished sharply after 1938. For example, the antitrust efforts fizzled out without major cases. The CIO and AFL unions started battling each other more than corporations, and tax policy became more favorable to long-term growth.

Economic indicators show the American economy reached nadir in summer 1932 to February 1933, then began recovering until the Roosevelt recession of 1937-19381937–1938. Thus the Federal Reserve [[Industrial Production Index]] hit its low of 52.8 on [[1932-07-01]] and was practically unchanged at 54.3 on [[1933-03-01]]; however by [[1933-07-01]], it reached 85.5 (with 1935-39 = 100, and for comparison 2005 = 1,342).<ref>[http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/INDPRO.txt Industrial Production Index]</ref>

The minority view is represented by Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian who conclude that the "New Deal labor and industrial policies did not lift the economy out of the Depression as President Roosevelt and his economic planners had hoped," but that the "New Deal policies are an important contributing factor to the persistence of the Great Depression." They conclude that the New Deal "cartelization policies are a key factor behind the weak recovery." They say that the "abandonment of these policies coincided with the strong economic recovery of the 1940s."<ref name="Cole"/> Lowell E. Gallaway and Richard K. Vedder conclude that the "Great Depression was very significantly prolonged in both its duration and its magnitude by the impact of New Deal programs." They argue that without Social Security, work relief, unemployment insurance, and especially without the labor unions, business would have hired more workers and the unemployment rate would have been lower.<ref>''Gallaway, Lowell E. and Vedder, Richard K. ''Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth-Century America'', New York University Press; Updated edition (July 1997).</ref> Few economists or economic historians have agreed with these speculations. The New Deal years 1933-36 (or indeed the FDR years 1933-451933–45) showed the highest growth rates in the history of the American economy.

One historian remarks, "What Fascist corporatism and the New Deal had in common was a certain amount of state intervention in the economy. Beyond that, the only figure who seemed to look on Fascist corporatism as a kind of model was Hugh Johnson, FDR's head of the National Recovery Administration."<ref>Stanley Payne, ''History of Fascism'' (1995) p 230.</ref> Johnson was “an admirer of Mussolini’s National Corporatist system in Italy and he drew upon the Italian experience in formulating the New Deal.”<ref>Thayer Watkins, "[http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/corporatism.htm The Economic System of Corporatism]," Department of Economics, San José State University</ref> Walker F. Todd, research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, agrees that Johnson “did admire greatly what Mussolini appeared to have done,” identifying the NRA as a “thoroughly corporativist” idea.<ref>Walker F. Todd, "[http://www.aei.org/docLib/Todd%20-%20The%20Federal%20Reserve%20Board%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20the%20Corporate%20State.pdf The Federal Reserve Board and the Rise of the Corporate State, 1931-1934]," ''Economic Education Bulletin'', Vol. XXXV No. 9 (September 1995) pp. 6, 34</ref> According to Jonah Goldberg, Johnson displayed a portrait of ''Il Duce'' in his NRA office and actually distributed a memo at the 1932 Democratic Convention proposing that [http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/the-raw-deal/ the entire Congress and Supreme Court be sent into temporary exile] and that "FDR become a Mussolini-like dictator.”<ref>Jonah Goldberg, [http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Mjc0ZmFlMDFiNDJkODdjYjE3NDY5OGVlY2JiZWRmNjM= Hendrick Hertzberg & The F-Word], The Corner (National Review Online), March 5, 2009</ref> In his retirement speech, Johnson invoked what he called the “shining name” of Mussolini.<ref>Hugh Samuel Johnson, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=7J1YAAAAYAAJ The Blue Eagle, from Egg to Earth, Vol. 4]'' (Doubleday, Doran & company, inc., 1935), p. 405</ref> Johnson was said to carry around with him a copy of Raffaello Viglione’s Viglione's pro-Mussolini book,<ref>Sheldon Richman, "[http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html Fascism]," ''The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics'', econlib.org</ref> ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=vIJQHAAACAAJ The Corporate State]'', and presented a copy to Perkins.<ref>Frances Perkins, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=AIEhAAAAMAAJ The Roosevelt I Knew]'' (The Viking press, 1946) p. 206. Socialist (Kent Worcester, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=TwTTArAPWswC C.L.R. James: A Political Biography]'' [SUNY Press, 1995] ISBN 079142751X, p. 175) George Rawich wrote that Perkins told him Johnson gave each member of the Cabinet a book by [http://www.marxists.org/archive/rawick/1969/xx/self.html Fascist theoretician Giovanni Gentile], “and we all read it with great care.” Schivelbusch suggests the book was actually [http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo172.html Mussolini advisor] Fausto Pitigliani’s ''The Italian Corporativist State.'' (Wolfgang Schivelbusch, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=Z3GV5_n1h04C Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939]'' [Macmillan, 2006] ISBN 080507452X, p. 203, n. 28)</ref>