FDR, New Deals, and the Limits of Power 193state should be willing to run deficits, by borrowing money, in order to create
programs to make work for people in need. Roosevelt, although he would
indeed increase government spending to new levels and engage in deficit
spending, for a time, was not really a Keynesian. He was a traditional, classi-
cal liberal Capitalist who believed in private enterprise and balanced budgets,
and so the Second New Deal would make lives better for many but would
not successfully end the depression.
Still, in key areas, FDR’s policies did make a difference, especially with
regard to pensions, job creation, and labor rights. Collectively, the Second
New Deal referred to programs enacted between 1935 and around 1938
which focused on the needs of people rather than corporations. As such, it
stepped away from the pro-business conservative ways of the First New Deal
and tried to resolve the problems raised by FDR’s leftist critics, and the prob-
lem of consumption, while of course preserving corporate Capitalism. This
New Deal made some small improvements in the lives of women and minor-
ities. Most government program jobs went to men, but about 500,000 women
did get work because of NRA codes for the garment industry, and, though
symbolic, FDR’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, became an outspoken advocate for
women, minorities, and the poor. Most famously, when a conservative group,
the Daughters of the American Revolution, refused to allow the Black opera
singer Marian Anderson to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington,
Eleanor resigned her membership in the group and instead had Anderson give
a concert for over 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial. Her husband,
however, was reluctant to help Blacks due to his need for votes in the South
so he did little to create work for African-Americans, kept CCC camps seg-
regated, and did not even fight for anti-lynching laws in the South. Mexican
workers were treated even worse. Because unemployment was so high, mil-
lions of migrant workers in agriculture were deported, even children born in
the U.S. and thus citizens. Native Americans, with the Indian Reorganization
Act of 1934 did gain tribal control over some of their lands, and were no
longer under the jurisdiction of state courts, where they usually did not
receive justice. Farmers did better, as Congress created new laws, including a
second AAA to subsidize them for not growing crops and to reduce crop
acreage. And many typical Americans were able to get lodging as the United
States Housing Authority, created by Congress in 1937, built new homes for
over 500,000 Americans.