THE SECOND NEW DEAL
In its early years, the New Deal sponsored a remarkable series of legislative initiatives and achieved significant increases in production and prices — but it did not bring an end to the Depression . As the sense of immediate crisis eased, new demands emerged . Businessmen mourned the end of “laissez-faire” and chafed under the regulations of the NIRA . Vocal attacks also mounted from the political left and right as dreamers, schemers, and politicians alike emerged with economic panaceas that drew wide audiences . Dr . Francis E . Townsend advocated generous old-age pensions . Father Charles Coughlin, the “radio priest,” called for inflationary policies and blamed international bankers in speeches increasingly peppered with anti-Semitic imagery . Most formidably, Senator Huey P . Long of Louisiana, an eloquent and ruth- less spokesman for the displaced, advocated a radical redistribution of wealth . (If he had not been assassinated in September 1935, Long very likely would have launched a presidential challenge to Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 .)
In the face of these pressures, President Roosevelt backed a new set of economic and social mea- sures . Prominent among them were
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measures to fight poverty, create more work for the unemployed, and provide a social safety net .
The Works Progress Adminis- tration (WPA), the principal relief agency of the so-called second New Deal, was the biggest public works agency yet . It pursued small-scale projects throughout the country, constructing buildings, roads, air- ports, and schools . Actors, painters, musicians, and writers were em- ployed through the Federal Theater Project, the Federal Art Project, and the Federal Writers Project . The National Youth Administra- tion gave part-time employment to students, established training programs, and provided aid to un- employed youth . The WPA only in- cluded about three million jobless at a time; when it was abandoned in 1943, it had helped a total of nine million people .
The New Deal’s cornerstone, ac- cording to Roosevelt, was the Social Security Act of 1935 . Social Security created a system of state-adminis- tered welfare payments for the poor, unemployed, and disabled based on matching state and federal contribu- tions . It also established a national system of retirement benefits draw- ing on a “trust fund” created by em- ployer and employee contributions . Many other industrialized nations had already enacted such programs, but calls for such an initiative in the United States had gone unheeded . Social Security today is the largest domestic program administered by the U .S . government .
To these, Roosevelt added the National Labor Relations Act, the “Wealth Tax Act” that increased taxes on the wealthy, the Public Util- ity Holding Company Act to break up large electrical utility conglomer- ates, and a Banking Act that greatly expanded the power of the Federal Reserve Board over the large pri- vate banks . Also notable was the establishment of the Rural Electri- fication Administration, which ex- tended electricity into farming areas throughout the country .