The Election of 1936 695on corporate profits reflected the Brandeis group’s
desire to penalize corporate giantism. Much of the
opposition to other New Deal legislation arose from
the fact that after these changes in the tax laws were
made, the well-to-do had to bear a larger share of the
cost of allgovernment activities.
Whether the Second New Deal was more radical
than the first depends largely on the vantage point
from which it is considered. Measures like the Social
Security Act had greater long-range effect on
American life than the legislation of the first hundred
days but were fundamentally less revolutionary than
laws like the National Industrial Recovery Act and the
Agricultural Adjustment Act, which attempted to
establish a planned economy.
Herbert Hoover epitomized the attitude of con-
servatives when he called the New Deal “the most
stupendous invasion of the whole spirit of Liberty
that the nation has witnessed.” Undoubtedly many
opponents of the New Deal sincerely believed that it
was undermining the foundations of American free-
dom. The cost of the New Deal also alarmed them.
By 1936 some members of the administration had
fallen under the influence of the British economist
John Maynard Keynes, who argued that the world
Depression could be conquered if governments
would deliberately unbalance their budgets by reduc-
ing interest rates and taxes and by increasing expen-
ditures to stimulate consumption and investment.
Roosevelt never accepted Keynes’s theories; he
conferred with the economist in 1934 but could not
grasp the “rigmarole of figures” with which Keynes
deluged him. Nevertheless the imperatives of the
Depression forced him to spend more than the gov-
ernment was collecting in taxes; thus he adopted in
part the Keynesian approach. Conservative business-
men considered him financially irresponsible, and the
fact that deficit spending seemed to be good politics
made them seethe with rage.The Election of 1936
The election of 1936 loomed as a showdown.
“America is in peril,” the Republican platform
declared. The GOP candidate, Governor Alfred M.
Landon of Kansas, was a former follower of
Theodore Roosevelt, a foe of the Ku Klux Klan in
the 1920s, and a believer in government regulation
of business. But he was a poor speaker, colorless,
and handicapped by the reactionary views of many
of his backers. Against the charm and political
astuteness of Roosevelt, Landon’s arguments—
chiefly that he could administer the government
more efficiently than the president—made little
impression. He won the support of some anti-New
Deal Democrats, among them two former presiden-
tial candidates, Al Smith and John W. Davis, but
this was not enough.
On election day the country gave the president a
tremendous vote of confidence. He carried every
state but Maine and Vermont. The Republicans
elected only eighty-nine members of the House of
Representatives and their strength in the Senate fell to
sixteen, an all-time low. In dozens of city and state
elections, Democratic candidates also made large
gains. Both Roosevelt’s personality and his program
had captivated the land. He seemed irresistible, the
most powerfully entrenched president in the history
of the United States.
Roosevelt did not win in 1936 because of the
inadequacies of his foes. Having abandoned his
efforts to hold the businessmen, whom he now
denounced as “economic royalists,” he appealed for
the votes of workers and the underprivileged. The
new labor unions gratefully poured thousands of dol-
lars into the campaign to reelect him. Black voters
switched to the Democrats in record numbers.
Farmers liked Roosevelt because of his evident con-
cern for their welfare: When the Supreme Court
declared the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitu-
tional (United States v. Butler, 1936), he immediately
rushed through a new law, the Soil Conservation and
Domestic Allotment Act, which accomplished the
same objective by paying farmers to divert land from
commercial crops to soil-building plants like clover
and soybeans. Countless elderly persons backed
Roosevelt out of gratitude for the Social Security Act.FDR,Fireside Chatat
http://www.myhistorylab.comReadtheDocumentTable 26.2Second New Deal (1935–1938)Legislation Purpose
Emergency Relief
Appropriations Act (1935)Created Works Progress
Administration (WPA) to
give jobs to blacks, white-
collar workers, and even
artists and writers
Rural Electrification
Administration (1935)Extended electric power
lines to rural areas
Social Security Act (1935) Devised system to provide
unemployment insurance
and pensions for elderly
Wagner Act (1935) Guaranteed the rights of
unions to organize and
negotiate for members
Fair Labor Standards Act
(1938)Set minimum hourly wages
and maximum hours of work