FDR, New Deals, and the Limits of Power 197with work, and thus wages, so they could buy basic items and thereby survive
the depression. While attacked as “Socialism” or worse, the point of the WPA
was, once more, to save Capitalism by preventing the poor from rebelling or
seeking truly radical alternatives, but FDR publicly used new language to
describe his programs. With this new, people-oriented, reform in place
Roosevelt ran for re-election in 1936 as a “man of the people” against the
“malefactors of wealth.” In his speeches he attacked the ruling class [even as
he was working with it and trying to preserve it], saying “they are unanimous
in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.” The class rhetoric worked,
and FDR and the Democrats won huge victories in the elections. And, it
seemed, the New Deal was working. By 1937, the GDP was up to $93 billion,
the highest since 1929, private investment numbers were back to 1930 levels,
the unemployment rate was down to 14 percent, wages were back to pre-
depression numbers, and a real recovery from the depression seemed likely.
FDR, using government activity and deficit-spending, seemed to have finally
found an effective way to confront the economic crisis. But Roosevelt, as
FIGuRE 4-12 WPA mural by Mitchell Jamieson entitled, “An Incident in
Contemporary American Life,” depicting Marian Anderson’s concert at
the Lincoln Memorial