AP US HistoryMarch 9 – 13 2020

Well, those of you who were out last week do have a quiz to make up but mostly it is notes.

The Unit Test: The Great Depression and New Deal will involve an SAQ for all classes on Thursday. The MCQ section will be online.

MONDAY and TUESDAY Examine the Second New Deal 1934 – 1938 (WXT-6,8) Identify the key ideas of the New Deal critics. (POL-5)

Material Strategy/FormatPpt and documents lecture-discussion

Student Skill TypesChronological Reasoning (1,2,3)Comparison and Context (4,5)Historical Arguments (6)Historical Interpretation (8)

Introduction: Critics of the New Deal While there can be little question that the New Deal played a major role in relieving some of the worst days

of the Depression, not everyone was pleased. 1935, Roosevelt's programs were provoking strong opposition. Many conservatives regarded his programs as infringements on the rights of the individual, while a growing number of critics argued that they did not go far enough.

Three figures stepped forward to challenge Roosevelt: Huey Long, a Louisiana senator; Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest from Detroit; and Francis Townsend, a retired California physician. Of the

three, Huey Long attracted the widest following. Ambitious, endowed with supernatural energy, and totally devoid of scruples, Long was a fiery, orator in the tradition of southern populism. As governor and then U.S. senator, he ruled Louisiana with an iron hand, keeping a private army equipped with sub-machine guns. Yet the people of Louisiana loved him because he attacked the big business, increased state spending on public works, and improved public schools. Although he backed Roosevelt in 1932, Long quickly abandoned the president and opposed the New Deal as too conservative.

Huey Long was immensely popular, especially among the poor. Part of his appeal lay in his style; he dressed in vanilla ice cream-white suits and called himself "the Kingfish," after a character in "Amos 'n Andy." He became a popular legend by playing up his country origins and ridiculing the rich. In one incident, he issued a "budget" showing how millionaires could economize by living on $10,000 a day.

Early in 1934, Long announced his "Share Our Wealth" program. Vowing to make "every man a king," he promised to soak the rich by imposing a 100% tax on inheritances over $5 million and by levying a 100 percent tax on annual incomes over $1 million. The confiscated funds, in turn, would be distributed to the people, guaranteeing every American family an annual income of no less than $2,000. In Long's words, the money would be more than enough to buy "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage." By February 1935, Long's followers had organized over 27,000 "Share Our Wealth" clubs. Roosevelt had to take him seriously, for a Democratic poll revealed that Long could attract three-to-four million voters to an independent presidential ticket. Long was assassinated under rather suspicious circumstances.

Like Long, Father Charles Coughlin was an early supporter who turned sour on the New Deal. For about 16 years, from the mid-1920s until the United States entered World War II, Father Charles Coughlin was probably the most influential religious figure in the United States. His radio program, "The Golden Hour of the Shrine of the Little Flower," had a weekly audience of 16 million. His parish in suburban Detroit had to build a post office to handle his mail. Coughlin blamed the depression on greedy bankers and challenged Roosevelt to solve the crisis by nationalizing banks and inflating the currency. When Roosevelt refused to heed his advice, Coughlin broke with Roosevelt and in 1934 formed the National Union for Social Justice. The National Union's weekly newspaper serialized "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," an anti-Semitic forgery. Father Coughlin helped to invent a new kind of preaching that made effective use of the microphone and radio. Coughlin exemplified what historian Richard Hofstadter called the "paranoid style." He believed that Jews and Communists, in league with bankers and capitalists, were out to get the little man.

Roosevelt's least likely critic was Dr. Francis Townsend, a California public health officer, who found himself unemployed at the age of 67 with only $100 in savings. Seeing many people in similar or worse straits, Townsend embraced old-age relief as the key to ending the Depression. In January 1934, Townsend announced his plan, demanding a $200 monthly pension for every citizen over the age of 60. In return, recipients had to retire and spend their entire pension every month within the United States. Younger Americans would inherit the jobs vacated by senior citizens, and the economy would be stimulated by the increased purchasing power of the elderly. Although critics lambasted the Townsend plan as ludicrous, several million Americans found his plan refreshingly simple

On the Right conservatives also attack FDR and especially the constitutionality of his ideas. We have already seen two of his programs ruled unconstitutional. FDR called the Supreme Court the “Nine old men.” In 1937 President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a reorganization of the judiciary that included his controversial "court-packing" plan. This plan would allow the president to appoint a new Supreme Court justice whenever an incumbent judge reached seventy and failed to retire; a maximum of six judges could be named in this manner. This plan met with outrage and lost FDR support from many in his supporters known as the New Deal Coalition. Hatching a way around the Supreme Court seemed fascist to many people made worse by the fact that Adolf Hitler had accomplished a similar idea. It was a rare case in which the normally very savvy FDR made a mistake. He quickly backed away from the plan.

The Second New DealIn 1936 FDR was returned to office by the second largest landslide in U.S. History with Republican Alf Landon winning only two states (Maine and Vermont). FDR saw this as a mandate to pursue more reforms and many of the Second New Deal programs reflect an even more radical approach.

Housing and Farming1. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) The Federal Housing Administration, generally known as

"FHA", provides mortgage insurance on loans made by FHA-approved lenders throughout the United

States and its territories. FHA insures mortgages on single family and multifamily homes including manufactured homes and hospitals. It is the largest insurer of mortgages in the world, insuring over 34 million properties since its inception in 1934. FHA mortgage insurance provides lenders with protection against losses as the result of homeowners defaulting on their mortgage loans. The lenders bear less risk because FHA will pay a claim to the lender in the event of a homeowner's default. Loans must meet certain requirements established by FHA to qualify for insurance. The creation of FHA helped to stimulate housing starts in 1934 and today is the only Federal agency that generates its own income and does not rely upon taxpayers.

2. The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was created in the Department of Agriculture in 1937. The FSA and its predecessor, the Resettlement Administration (RA), were New Deal programs designed to assist poor farmers during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. We already discussed the second AAA that aided in reducing overproduction.

3. Soil Conservation Act established the Soil Conservation Service, sought to “control floods, prevent impairment of reservoirs and maintain the navigability of rivers and harbors, protect public health, public lands and relieve unemployment.” It gave farmers subsidies to plant native grasses and trees or raise vegetables rather than commercial crops that depleted soil nutrients. In the law, Congress was responding to fierce dust storms that stripped away millions of tons of arid soil, loosened after years of rapid homesteading and commercial agriculture.

Unemployment Despite all of the innovations, unemployment remained a constant problem. In 1935 FDR signed one of the

most ambitious programs into law. In January 1935, Congress created the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Roosevelt's program employed 3.5 million workers at a "security wage"--twice the level of welfare payments, but well below union scales. Roosevelt, again, turned to Harry Hopkins to head the new agency. Since the WPA's purpose was to employ men quickly, Hopkins opted for labor-intensive tasks, creating jobs that were often makeshift and inefficient. Jeering critics said the WPA stood for "We Piddle Along," but the agency built many worthwhile projects. In its first five years alone, the WPA constructed or improved 2,500 hospitals, 5,900 schools, 1,000 airport fields (including New York's LaGuardia Airport), and nearly 13,000 playgrounds. By 1941 it had pumped $11 billion into the economy.

The WPA's most unusual feature was its spending on cultural programs. Roughly five percent of the WPA's spending went to the arts. While folksingers like Woody Guthrie honored the nation in ballads, other artists were hired to catalog it, photograph it, paint it, record it, and write about it. In photojournalism, for example, the Farm Security Agency (FSA) employed scores of photographers to create a pictorial record of America and its people. Under the auspices of the WPA, the Federal Writers Project sponsored an impressive set of state guides and dispatched an army of folklorists into the backcountry in search of tall tales. Oral historians collected slave narratives, and musicologists compiled an amazing collection of folk music. Other WPA programs included the Theatre Project, which produced a live running commentary on everyday affairs; and the Art Project, which decorated the nation's libraries and post offices with murals of muscular workmen, bountiful wheat fields, and massive machinery.

Valuable in their own right, the WPA's cultural programs had the added benefit of providing work for thousands of writers, artists, actors, and other creative people. In addition, these programs established the precedent of federal support to the arts and humanities, laying the groundwork for future federal programs to promote the life of the mind in the United States. Approximately five percent of its budget was devoted to the arts. WPA alumni include writers Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright, the artist Jackson Pollack, and actor and director Orson Welles.

The WPA was not especially efficient. In Washington, D.C., construction costs typically ran three-to-four times the cost of private work. Although, this was intentional. The WPA avoided cost-saving machinery in order to hire more workers. At its peak, the WPA spent $2.2 billion a year, or approximately $30 billion annually in current dollars

Social Security The 1935 Social Security Act, a goal of reformers since the Progressive Era, aimed to alleviate the

plight of America's visibly poor--the elderly, dependent children, and the handicapped. A major political victory for Roosevelt, the Social Security Act was a triumph of social legislation. Financed by the federal government and the states, the act offered workers age 65 or older

monthly stipends based on previous earnings, and it gave the indigent elderly small relief payments. In addition, it provided assistance to blind and handicapped Americans and to dependent children who did not have a wage-earning parent. The act also established the nation's first federally-sponsored system of unemployment insurance. Mandatory payroll deductions levied equally on employees and employers financed both the retirement system and the unemployment insurance

The debate over Social Security resembled the rhetoric now heard over national healthcare as proposed by the Obama and Trump Administrations. Conservatives argued that the Social Security Act placed the United States on the road to socialism. The legislation was also profoundly disappointing to reformers, who demanded "cradle to grave" protection as the birthright of every American. The new system authorized pitifully small payments; its retirement system left huge groups of workers uncovered, such as migrant workers, civil servants, domestic servants, merchant seamen, and day laborers; its budget came from a regressive tax scheme that placed a disproportionate tax burden on the poor; and it failed to provide health insurance.

Despite these criticisms, the Social Security Act introduced a new era in American history. It committed the government to a social welfare role by providing for elderly, disabled, dependent, and unemployed Americans. By doing so, the act greatly expanded the public's sense of entitlement and the support people expected government to give to all citizens.

ConclusionThere were many smaller programs that we did not even have a chance to discuss like the National Youth Administration headed by Mary McLeod Bethune or the Rural Electrification Act. But we did get the main ones covered. By 1937 the nation seemed to be headed in the right direction only to suffer a deep recession again in 1938.

Homework for Monday NIGHTBegin studying for the Unit Test

WEDNESDAY (BOOK NEEDED) Analyze primary and secondary sources on the New Deal (WXT-6,8) (CUL-3) (POL-3)

Materials Strategy/FormatDoc-set Close text reading and analysis

Instructions Complete the doc sets on the New Deal and answer the guided questions. You can use notes on this if

needed as it is not a quiz. That is for tomorrow in fact. This should help you get ready. The doc set will be due by the end of class so be speedy.

HomeworkLook over your notes on the New Deal for the in-class SAQ section of the Depression and New Deal. Remember there will be at least

THURSDAY Write the SAQ section for the Unit Test: The Depression and New Deal

Strategy/FormatDocs. Analysis and close text reading

Instructions Today in class we will do a review of the Depression causes and

FDR’s New Deal. This will involve several doc. sets in the textbook

Homework

Begin Work on the Depression and New Deal See Below on Friday

FRIDAY Review Activities

Materials Strategy/FormatAny notes that you might need Assessment and Review

Instructions Following the same procedure that we have been following we will complete MC review packet AP US History Curriculum: Period 3 (1754 – 1800) AP US History Practice Test: Period 4 (1800–1848) AP US History Curriculum: Period 5 (1844 – 1877)

Homework Have a nice break but don’t forget the quia due on Monday March 23rd at 7 am

The Depression and New Dealhttp://www.quia.com/quiz/7638526.html