Roosevelt’s Second Hundred Days

Why Needed

• The Supreme Court found AAA and NIRA unconstitutional

• The Economy still wasn’t recovering

New Deal Criticisms

• Criticism from the Right– Expanded federal

government at expense of state’s rights

– Alarmed at growing deficit• Deficit spending –

spending more money than taking in

– Too tightly regulated business

• Criticisms from the Left– Felt New Deal didn’t go

far enough– Wanted to shift wealth

from rich to middle-income and poor families

What Provided?

1) Emergency Relief

• Emergency Relief Appropriations Act required that people work for their pay

• WPA (Works Progress Administration- Put people to work building roads, subways, schools, museums, etc.– Provided jobs for actors,

writers, composers, etc.

Social Security Act– Provided pension

to retired workers over 65–Also provided

unemployment insurance for the disabled

2) Revival of Organized Labor• National Labor Relations Act

(Wagner Act)– Outlawed anti-labor practices– Established Labor Relations

Board which enforced labor laws

– Guaranteed workers right to organize unions and bargain collectively

– Allowed binding arbitration – where union members could take complaints to neutral party who would listen to both sides and make decision

Organized labor, con’t

• CIO (Committee for Industrial Organization) was created as a labor union for the ‘unskilled’ worker–Union

membership rose during the decade

3) Recovery Efforts

• Rural Electrification Act – loaned money to farm cooperatives to bring electricity to rural areas– Number of rural

homes with electricity rose from 10% to 90%

Tennessee Valley Authority

• Modernize Tennessee Valley – Taught farmers to use

fertilizers, rotate crops, etc.

– Provided navigation, flood control, electricity, and economic development to Tennessee River Valley

• Still around today!Red – damYellow – fossil fuel plantPurple – nuclear fuel plant

Election of 1936

• Roosevelt’s new deal was criticized for being overly bureaucratic and crating a planned economy

• Roosevelt still won election by a landslide

• African Americans switched from Republican to Democratic Party

Court Packing Plan

• Roosevelt proposed adding 6 justices to the Supreme Court

• Wanted to do this so he could appoint justices favorable to New Deal

• Roosevelt’s first political mistake– Made it appear that the

President was trying to get too much power

• This was never passed and we still have 9 Supreme Court Justices

Stock Market Set Backs

• Fall of 1937 the Stock Market fell again – Causing 2 million to lose

their job• Roosevelt feared a growing

deficit (gov’t spending more than it takes in)– Cut back programs in 1937– According to Keynesian

economics, this was wrong step

– Keynes argued that gov’t should spend more in recession to jump start economy (Deficit spending)

1938 Roosevelt started spending more on relief programs