CHAPTER NINETY EIGHT – PART TWO

CHAPTER NINETY EIGHT – PART TWO

Okay, with the Emergency Banking Act and Glass-Steagall, the people were confident that their banks wouldn’t fail, and if they did, the federal government would insure their deposits. But they still needed something to deposit. On to jobs. FDR started with putting money into the pockets of the young people. FDR himself designed the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a program that put young men (ahem!) aged 17 to 24 to work on conservation projects. Many of the guys were urbanites, and their work carried them to rural environments, so in addition to lining their pockets, they broadened their horizons. In three months the Corps grew to 250,000 men who were assigned to CCC camps all over the country. African American men were signed up, but (no surprise here) they were forced to work in segregated camps. No women needed to apply, segregated or otherwise. Still, in nine years the CCC employed three million men. Eleanor Roosevelt tried to remedy the gender inequity, and with her support, a smaller program was created for unemployed young women. Thank God for women like Eleanor and Abigail (“Remember the women”). What did the CCC do? They planted more than two billion trees, fought forest fires, built trails, campgrounds and reservoirs and helped with soil conservation programs. It was one of the most successful programs of the New Deal. Yes, it cost money, but it put people to work, and the things they built still last to this day in our national forests and parks.

The CCC and other government work programs made a dent in the unemployment rate, reducing it from 25 percent to 21 percent in 1934, the first decrease since 1929. Then private investment started coming back, and it actually doubled in 1934. See how that works, Tea Party? First the government kicks in a lot of money to stimulate the economy; then private business has the assurances it needs that government is doing something to improve the economy and the privateers start putting their money back into the economy rather than just sitting on top of it. It could work again, if only Congress would let it. It worked so well that in the 1934 elections the voters were so pleased with the way things were going that they voted in even more Democrats in both Houses to continue the forward economic progress. This prompted FDR to expand his New Deal programs in 1935. Congress had already passed the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933, which guaranteed workers the right to organize and bargain collectively. But it was after the mid-term elections that the Wagner Act became law. It re-affirmed the workers’ right to organize unions, and it also required employers to bargain with union reps. It also increased the power of the National Labor Relations Board to mediate labor disputes. With the passage of these two laws, union organizers were able to get a much larger percentage of workers to join unions. The percentage of unionized employees increased from 7 percent to 34 percent between 1933 and 1945.

FDR was just as concerned about securing economic protection for citizens as they reached old age as he was about providing jobs for the young. In 1935 he signed the Social Security Act. In so doing, he said: “We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life. But we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.” Man oh man, that guy could turn a phrase – and hit the nail on the head. Protection for the average citizen – that’s what the Social Security Act intended. To prevent older citizens from living in poverty – that was the goal. So tell me, why did President Reagan think he was entitled to Social Security? Surely he did not consider himself “average” and surely he was not facing an old age in poverty. But with rich folks like him milking Social Security, the whole purpose of the law has become perverted. Oh, I get it. Rich people contribute to Social Security throughout their working lives and they are entitled to a return on that investment. Perhaps they might consider taking a smaller return on their investment, if they really don’t need the money. Just saying. This is the kind of private charity I can get behind; maybe President Hoover would even have approved.

But even with its flaws, the Social Security Act was by far the biggest domestic achievement of all of FDR’s terms. It not only created old-age pensions and unemployment insurance, which were funded by payroll taxes on workers and employers, but it also provided grants to states to help disabled people and fatherless children. As a fatherless child from the age of 13 on, I am very grateful to FDR for creating this benefit, because it made it possible for my mother to support me and three siblings and also made my college education a reality. Oh yes, my mother went to work as soon as my father died, but with women’s wages being so much lower than men’s in the 50’s (and even now), the Social Security death benefits kept us above the poverty level. Thank you, Mr. Roosevelt and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins.

These first four years of FDR’s Presidency showed that he was indeed willing to experiment with social programs, if he felt the action he was taking would improve the economy for all citizens, but particularly those citizens who lost their jobs and were living in poverty as a result of the Great Depression, followed by four years of total inaction by Hoover’s regime. And when he was nominated for a second term, FDR recognized the virtues of bold governmental action to improve the economy. In his acceptance speech given June 27, 1936, the nominee stated: “Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.” A “spirit of charity” – where is that spirit today? Why does it seem that all we have is a mean spirit, one that blames the 47% for not earning enough wages to support themselves and require governmental assistance like food stamps? It seems simple enough to understand that when businesses do not pay a living wage, workers cannot live without government assistance. And it also seems simple enough that any far-sighted businessman should be able to see that a healthy economy depends on employees earning living wages. It does NOT depend on businesses amassing obscene profits (Exxon anyone?) and either salting them away or throwing them away on hellishly high executive wages, benefits and bonuses. Greed was never good, not even in the 1980’s, but especially now, when so many are trying to live on so little.

Let’s close the book on FDR, as I have to leave his Library to return to Slow Motion and head to the Erie Canal. I realize I only covered his first term in office. You’ll have to go to Hyde Park yourself to learn about the other three terms. Maybe you think I’ve presented too rosy a picture of FDR and his accomplishments, but any objective commentator will admit that the first term was an amazing period of change for the good of the economy. And, to be fair, the commentaries that are written all over the Library with various exhibits are not all glowing, because not everything FDR touched turned to gold. There is coverage of the “Roosevelt Recession” in 1937-38. In September, 1937 FDR announced major spending cuts in an effort to balance the budget. To ward off inflation, he supported efforts to tighten credit. And, of course (déjà vu), as government spending decreased and interest rates increased, economic progress not only came to a standstill, but dropped off considerably. By March 1938 unemployment, which had gone as low as 14 percent was back up to 19 percent.

What FDR had, which the current President will not have, is a major worldwide war to pull the United States out of that recession and to grow the economy – the war economy by leaps and bounds. He already started increasing defense spending in 1939, in light of Hitler’s successes in trampling upon and subjugating major European countries. Naturally, as spending increased, the budget deficits got a lot larger. However, the spending stimulated growth throughout the American economy, and unemployment went from 19 percent to 9.9 percent in 1941. It just takes a humongous war, a supermajority in Congress, and a President who cares more about people than a deficit to right the American economy in times of recession. By 1944, economic growth – based in large part on the expansion of the armed forces – reduced unemployment to 1.2 percent. Do you think that “Shrub” (Gov. Anne Richards’ nickname for Bush II) was hoping to achieve the same results with his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? For a while he was able to use the hawks in his party to keep the deficit squawkers in line. But with that peacenik Obama in the White House now, the deficit squawkers don’t have to knuckle under to patriotic hawks. They can cloak themselves in a new perversion of patriotism – it’s un-American in their eyes to spend money on social programs. Balancing the budget has become a new religion, because it sure ain’t good economics in a recession. It’s hard to swallow that our country is at its most prosperous in wartime, but that’s the raw truth. When we’re not at war on a foreign shore, we seem to turn our belligerence on each other. Who should we blame? Who can we be better than? Who can we hate? Divide and be conquered from within. Wake up, America. Read a little history. See that we’ve been in this place before, and accept that we have to spend our way out of a recession. Every day Paul Krugman tells us this. Let’s listen. Better yet, let’s get our government to melt the ice of its own indifference and return to a spirit of charity toward its neediest citizens.

For those of you who read this blog for the travel adventures, I will return to descriptions of our cruising on Slow Motion in Chapter 99, from the Rondout Yacht Basin to Shady Harbor to Waterford – and through the first 5 locks of the Erie Canal. You are in for a treat. I might even mention my side trip today to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Be still, my heart.