Women as New Dealers: The Network 699prices and production, labor relations, old-age pen-
sions, relief of the needy. By encouraging the growth
of unions, the New Deal probably helped workers
obtain a larger share of the profits of industry. By
putting a floor under the income of many farmers, it
checked the decline of agricultural living standards,
though not that of the agricultural population. The
Social Security program, with all its inadequacies,
lessened the impact of bad times on an increasingly
large proportion of the population and provided
immense psychological benefits to all.Responding to the Great Depression: Whose
New Deal?atwww.myhistorylab.comWomen as New Dealers: The Network
Largely because of the influence of Eleanor Roosevelt
and Molly Dewson, head of the Women’s Division of
the Democratic National Committee, the Roosevelt
administration employed far more women in positions
of importance than any earlier one. Secretary of Labor
Frances Perkins, the first woman appointed to a
Cabinet post, had been active in labor relations for
more than twenty years, as secretary of the Consumers’
League during the progressive period, as a factory
inspector immediately after the Great War, and as chair
of the New York State Industrial Commission. As sec-
retary of labor she helped draft New Deal labor legisla-
tion and kept Roosevelt informed on various labor
problems outside the government.
In addition to Perkins, there were dozens of other
women New Dealers. Dewson and Eleanor Roosevelt
headed an informal but effective “network”—women
in key posts who were always seeking to place reform-
minded women in government jobs.
Through her newspaper column “My Day” and as
a speaker on public issues, Eleanor Roosevelt became a
major political force, especially in the area of civil rights,
where the administration needed constant prodding.
She particularly identified with efforts to obtain
better treatment for blacks, in and out of govern-
ment. Her best-known action occurred in 1939
after the Daughters of the American Revolution
(DAR) refused to permit the use of their
Washington auditorium for a concert by the black
contralto Marian Anderson. Eleanor Roosevelt
resigned from the DAR in protest, and after the
president arranged for Anderson to sing at the
Lincoln Memorial, she persuaded a small army of
dignitaries to sponsor the concert. An interracial
crowd of 75,000 people attended the performance.
TheChicago Defender, an influential black newspa-
per, noted that the First Lady “stood like the Rock
of Gibraltar against pernicious encroachments on
the rights of minorities.” (A disgruntled whiteWatchtheVideoTo hold back immense volumes of water, the Hoover Dam, seen
from above, consisted of 2.5 million cubic yards of concrete which,
at the base, was thicker than two football fields set end-to-end.United States had a “mature” economy and that the
major problem was overproduction. At other times he
appeared to think that the answer to the Depression
was more production. He could never make up his
mind whether to try to rally liberals to his cause with-
out regard for party or to run the government as a par-
tisan leader, conciliating the conservative Democrats.
Roosevelt’s fondness for establishing new agen-
cies to deal with specific problems vastly increased the
federal bureaucracy, indirectly added to the influence
of lobbyists, and made it more difficult to monitor
government activities. His cavalier attitude toward
constitutional limitations on executive power, which
he justified as being necessary in a national emer-
gency, set in motion trends that so increased the pres-
tige and authority of the presidency that the balance
among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches
was threatened.
Yet these are criticisms after the fact. By 1939 the
country was committed to the idea that the federal
government should accept responsibility for the
national welfare and act to meet specific problems in
every necessary way. What was most significant was
not the proliferation of new agencies or the expansion
of federal power. These were continuations of trends
already a century old when the New Deal began. The
importance of the “Roosevelt revolution” was that it
removed the issue from politics. “Never again,” the
Republican presidential candidate was to say in 1952,
“shall we allow a depression in the United States.”
Because of New Deal decisions, many formerly
unregulated areas of American life became subject to
federal authority: the stock exchange, agricultural