National Recovery Act (TVA)

In terms of welfare, the federal government for the first time in U.S history began to take responsibility for the social security of the nation, the New Deal causing a shift from expecting aid from state governments to the federal government. The urgency of the situation in 1933 was aptly described by former United States President Bill Clinton commenting that “[Roosevelt] quickly realised that, with prices collapsing and unemployment exploding, only the Government could step into the breach and restart the economy”. As a result the New Deal implemented the Social Security Act, the first nation-wide system disseminating relief for the 18 million unemployed and pensioners. Public works were another government action to create jobs and kick-start

Though the program only employed white men, the government did make special divisions for veterans and Native Americans. The program may not have been lasting as the TVA, ending at the start of World War Two, the success and image of the CCC made it by far the most popular New Deal agency at the time. The Public Works Association took the same principles of the CCC to more industrialised arenas, providing cost-effectiveness and engineering excellence to construction projects, helping the country acclimatise to urbanisation. Section 7(a) of the National Recovery Act also re-instated worker’s rights to unionise and collectively bargain for improved conditions. The advent of welfare represented a drastic shift in the attitudes of the federal towards providing aid to the American public where in 1930, total government aid was $9 million compared to a total of $969 million in 1940 for all forms of federal aid with $480 million for unemployment alone. However even this dramatic change was not enough to solve the problem of unemployment in America with the figure of total unemployed people at 9 million in

New Deal administrators, the President and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt made real efforts to include African Americans in relief programmes, pushing the message that racism was unacceptable. The government’s efforts materialised in the total number of African American federal government employees quadrupling o 200,000 by 1944 whilst the number of African Americans in the Civil Service tripled. Prominent African American were also allowed to frequently meet with the president to discuss issues in the African American community. Nevertheless the short-comings of other pieces of legislature such as the Agriculture Amendment Act still forced five million African Americans to be uprooted and move to cities between 1933 and 1941. The continual denial of civil rights for African Americans persisted, a march on Washington was threatened which forced the President to sign Executive Order 8802, creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee to rid military factories of racism. Therefore the New Deal produced more gestures of support from the government than support in legislature however African Americans did receive more aid and recognition from the government than ever before and showed how collectively through self-determinism, African Americans could fight for a better standard of living. Women fared little better during the