The State in U.S. History

Is there too much or too little of state power in the United States?

Progressive Reform

• Politics• Teddy Roosevelt and the rule of socially-conscious experts• End of “liberty of contract” doctrine

• Art and Culture• Realism in art (Ashcan School)• Muckraking journalism• Documentary photography

• Immigration and Labor • Settlement House movement• Idea of the “melting pot”• Fordism and Taylorism

Progressive Politics > President Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-1909

Art and Culture > John Sloan, Parade, Washington Square, 1910

Art and Culture > George Bellows, Dempsey and Firpo, 1924

Art and Culture > Cartoon about Muckraking Journalism

Art and Culture > Jacob Riis, “Bandit’s Roost, 59 1/2 Mulberry Street,” c. 1888

Art and Culture > Child Labor Poster with Lewis Hine’s Photographs

Immigration and Labor > Henry Ford’s Model T, 1915

Immigration and Labor > Henry Ford’s automobile assembly line

Immigration and Labor > Photographic Motion Study, 1894

The Great Depression

• New Deal Successes• Banking• TVA and CCC• Farmers• Labor

• Backlash• Critics: Huey Long and Father Coughlin• Legislation and anti-union violence• Court Packing case

• Depression Culture• Works Progress Administration• Popular Front

• The Crash of 1929• Financial Panic• Causes of the Great Depression• Consequences of the Crash

• The New Deal• Historiographic Debates• Stages• Election of 1936

KKK Membership

1920 4,000,0001924 6,000,0001930 30,0001980 5,0002008 6,000

The Crash > What Caused the Great Depression?

• Financial panic• Stock market crash• Land speculation in Florida and Southern California• Bank failures• Mortgage foreclosures

• Sales of new goods stagnated after 1926• Unequal distribution of income reduced purchasing power• Depression in farming• Europe’s demand for US goods declines

• Europe defaults on debt payment • Germany stops paying France and Britain• France and Britain stop paying US

• Unavoidable economic cycles or could have been avoided if speculation was curbed and consumption encouraged?

The Crash > Economy Compared to Television, 1929

The Crash > “It’s so nice to have Daddy home all the time now,” Life, 1930

The Crash > “We can do it!” 1931

The Crash > Hooverville, 1933

The Crash > Farmers displaced by the Dust Bowl

The Crash > Deportation of Mexicans, 1931

The Crash > Jobs Listed by Race, 1939

New Deal > Banking Crisis Advertisement, 1931

The Crash > “Fundamentally, the ship was sound,” New Yorker, 1932

The Crash > Popcorn

New Deal > Historiographic Debates

• 1952, Herbert Hoover • New Deal failed because it “attempted to collectivize the American system of life.”

• 1940s-1960s, “liberal consensus” historians• New Deal was a “pragmatic” revolution that expanded the role of the federal

government in American life.

• mid-1960s, “New Left” historians• New Deal was fundamentally conservative, it could but failed to redistribute power in

American society; it protected American capitalism.

• 1970s-2000s, contemporary historians• New Deal could not have done more than it did, because of conservative Congress, the

lack of adequate government bureaucracy, and localist and antistatist political culture.

New Deal > Stages

• 1932 - FDR elected• First New Deal (“the hundred days”)

• 1934 - Strike wave

• 1934 - Leftist Democrats win the majority in congressional elections• Second New Deal (“the second hundred days”)

• 1935 - Supreme Court unanimously declares NRA unconstitutional

• 1936 - FDR reelected in a landslide

• 1937 - Court-packing• FDR proposes but fails to implement unpopular Supreme Court reform

• 1938 - Republicans and conservative Democrats regain seats in the House• As a reform movement, New Deal is over

New Deal > Private FDR Photograph, 1930s

New Deal > Public FDR Photographs, 1930s

New Deal > FDR Giving a Fireside Chat

New Deal > FDR’s Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

I am certain that on this day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

New Deal > Song from Thanks a Million, 1935

They started up the NRA to keep the big bad wolf awayThen FDR began to be a headache to the GOPNow that codes are everywhere we’ve got initials in our hairThe farmer’s IOU is O.K. since Congress formed the AAAThe CCC chops down a tree and sells it pronto FOB …The RFC and NHA led millions to the AAAThe AAA has crops it cuts and all of us are going nuts!

---NRA - National Recovery AdministrationAAA - Agricultural Adjustment AdministrationCCC - Civilian Conservation CorpsRFC - Reconstruction Finance CorporationNHA - National Housing AuthorityFDR - Franklin Delano RooseveltGOP - Grand Old PartyFOB - Freight on Board

New Deal > Works Progress Administration poster

New Deal > TVA: Big Ridge Dam, TN

New Deal > CCC Worker Photograph, 1930

New Deal > NRA’s Blue Eagle Photograph, 1934

New Deal > One Hundred Days Cartoon, Lynn Item, 1933

New Deal > One Hundred Days Cartoon, Houston Post, 1933

New Deal > Literary Digest and Gallup polls on 1936 election

January 1936 Gallup PollBy Income

Roosevelt LandonUpper third 41% 59%Lower third 70 30Reliefers 82 18

October 1936 Gallup PollFarmers

Roosevelt 52.6%Landon 42.1%

WomenRoosevelt 51.4%Landon 44.8%

Young People (21–24 Years)Roosevelt 57.4%Landon 38.4%

ReliefersRoosevelt 78.8%Landon 14.0%

Literary Digest Final Poll

Landon 57%Roosevelt43States for Landon 32States for FDR 16

A.I.P.O. (Gallup) Final Poll

Roosevelt 55.7%Landon 44.3States for FDR 40States for Landon 6On the line 2

Election ResultsRoosevelt61%Landon 49%States for FDR 46States for Landon 2

New Deal > Percentage vote for Roosevelt in black districts, 1932 and 1936

Farmers > Farm Holiday, 1932 and Archibald Willard, The Spirit of ‘76, 1876

Farmers > Dust Storm Approaching Startford, Texas, 1930s

Farmers > Map of Erosion and Dust on the Plains

Farmers > Traveling from South Texas to the Arkansas Delta, 1936

Farmers > Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, March 1936

Farmers > Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother series, March 1936

Farmers > Arthur Rothstein, Steer Skull, Pennington County, South Dakota 1936

Farmers > Arthur Rothstein, the same skull on dry sun-baked earth

Farmers > Arthur Rothstein, the same skull, cows grazing in the background

Labor > Wagner Act, 1935: United Automobile Workers poster addressing Ford workers

Labor > Social Security Poster, 1936

Labor > AFL and CIO

AFL

• skilled workers only• by craft• anti-immigrant• native-born white male workers only

CIO

• all workers, including semi-skilled (majority)• by industry• actively recruited immigrants, women, and nonwhites

Labor > A CIO poster quoting FDR

Labor > The rise in union membership

Labor > Sit-down strike in Flint, MI

Labor > UAW organizers Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen pose for press photographers, River Rouge Plant, May 26, 1937

Backlash > Anti-Roosevelt cartoon, 1938

Backlash > Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin

• Populist critics of President Roosevelt• Long - Louisiana Governor and U.S. Senator; the rich should “share wealth”• Coughlin - Catholic priest,

• Both used radio effectively• Long - the rich should “share wealth” (as Kingfish from Amos’n’Andy show)• Coughlin - sermons, attacked “money changers,” but also socialists

• Both had large following in the early 1930s• Long - 8 million members of Share Our Wealth Clubs• Coughlin - 40 million listeners in 1930

• At first support FDR, then disillusioned• Long - till 1933 as U.S. Senator (Democrat)• Coughlin - till 1935 through sermons on the radio

• Long shot in 1935, used for the main character in Robert Penn Warren’s novel All the King’s Men• Coughlin turned anti-semitic and conservative after FDR’s reelection in 1936, ordered by his bishop to cease all political activity in 1940

Backlash > Huey Long, My First Days in the White House (1935)

Backlash > Schecter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 1935

• A small company - small firms objected the most to limits on hours and wages

• Charles Evans Hughes for the majority: “Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power.”

• Congress cannot relegate power to the executive branch, even in an emergency

• NRA infringes on “freedom of contract,” through industrial price and wage codes

Backlash > “Qualifying Test,” New York Herald Tribune, 1937

Backlash > “Step by Step,” Buffalo News, 1937

Backlash > Memorial Day Massacre, May 29, 1937

Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”

• Completed New Deal social agenda established in the 1930s• Medicaid and Medicare - health services for the poor• Departments of Transportation, Housing, Urban Development• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Endowments

fo the Humanities and the Arts• National Public Broadcasting network• War on Poverty

“Freedom Budget” Poster

Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty”

• Kennedy started drafting the project after Michael Harrington’s book The Other America in 1962

• limited - no help for unions, does not stop jobs from flowing overseas• Food stamps - popular• Education - Head start• Job training, legal services, scholarships for the poor• stalls by 1967 because of spending on Vietnam war

Results of Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty”

Watergate Chronology

1964 Free Speech movement at BerkeleyFreedom SummerGulf of Tonkin Resolution

1965 Malcolm X assasinated1966 National Organization for Women organized

Black Panther Party Founded1968 Tet offensive

Martin Luther King, Jr. assasinatedDemocratic National Convention in ChicagoRichard Nixon elected presidentMiss America Beauty Pageant protest

1969 Stonewall riot“Indians of All Nations” occupy Alcatraz island

1970 The Ohio National Guard kills four students at Kent State1972 Congress passes Equal Rights Amendment (not ratified by states)

Break-in at the National Democratic Convention1973 Paris peace agreement ends war in Vietnam for America1974 President Nixon resigns

National security blanket

Nixon’s “I’m not a crook speech”

Washington Post, Sunday, November 18, 1973; Page A01

Orlando, Fla, Nov. 17 -- Declaring that "I am not a crook," President Nixon vigorously defended his record in the Watergate case tonight and said he had never profited from his public service.

"I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life I have never obstructed justice," Mr. Nixon said.

"People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got."

The Rose Mary Stretch

Not a crook

President Nixon Quits, 1974

Recession: "Remember--don't vote for anyone who would interfere with the way we've been handling things," October 30, 1974

Support for Carter: "... One nation ... indivisible ...," February 22, 1977

Oil Crisis in the 1970s

US greatly dependent on non-remewable energy1870, 90% of Us energy came from renewable sources--

water, wood.1970 more than 90% came from non-renewable fossil fuels.US uses more than 1/3 of the worlds energy resources

1973 - 1st oil crisisOPEC, Oct. 1973--announces embargo of oil to nations

supporting Israel Soon lines blocks long form at gas stations

1979 - 2nd oil crisisBy 1979, US importing 43% of its annual oil supplyIran embargos US, won’t ship oil, again long lines at the

pumps, fear of end to abundance

Ronald Reagan Ad from the 1940s

C.P.O. Graham Jackson mourning the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Warm Springs, Georgia, 1945

Ronald Reagan’s radio address, 1983

There's a very famous, very moving photo of Chief Petty Officer Jackson, tears streaming down his face while he played "Going Home" on his accordion as F. D. R.'s body was borne away by train to Washington.

Mr. Jackson once said that as he began to play, "It seemed like every nail and every pin in the world just stuck in me." Mr. Jackson symbolized the grief of the Nation back in 1945, and I just wanted his own family to know the Nation hasn't forgotten their personal grief today, 38 years later.

As I'm sure Mr. Jackson's family would tell you, in times of sorrow the warmth and support of a family's ties are especially important. I've spoken a great deal about the strength and virtues of the American family. I'd like to return to that topic today, because the family will again be a top priority as we head into the new year—for the family is still the basic unit of religious and moral values that hold our society together.

Reaganomics: "The Gods are angry," April 12, 1981

Republican administrations vastly increased the size of government—mostly military spending

By 1985, the us military budget was more than 1.5 trillion dollars—the us was spending half a million dollars a minute on defense, four times as much as at the height of the Vietnam war. By the end of the Reagan and bush 1 admins, the natinal debt was74 billion: by 1992 it was 290 billionIt’s now more than 6 trillion dollars

The estimated population of the United States is 289,013,375so each citizen's share of this debt is $21,944.72. The National Debt has continued to increase an average of$1.25 billion per day since September 28, 2001 Traditionally, in the 20th centuries, republicans were the party of small government and balanced budgets

Since the 1980s, the republicans have been, despite their anti government rhetoric, the party of massive federal budget deficits and big government

Bush II is increasing the debt while cutting taxes for the rich and creating an entirely new cabinet level agency to oversee “homeland security”

Labor > Compare to 2008