The New Deal and the WJLC Agenda
"I think that there was a direct line from the progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt through [New York City] Mayor [John Puroy] Mitchel, to Governor Smith, to Governor Roosevelt, to President Roosevelt, to the national scene . . . . It's all in one episode.-Frances Perkins.
INTRODUCTION
By April 1933, when Governor Herbert H. Lehman signed the new minimum wage bill for working women, the agenda pursued by the Women's Joint Legislative Conference began to assume national proportions for three reasons. First, the election of New York State Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt as president in November of 1932 presented an opportunity for progressive-minded reformers. Second, Conference leaders such as Molly Dewson, Frances Perkins, and Rose Schneiderman left the New York scene to pursue a reform agenda in Washington, D.C. Dewson became the head of the Women's Division of the national Democratic Party, while Perkins assumed the position of U.S. Secretary of Labor, the first female cabinet officer in American history. Schneiderman found herself appointed to the National Recovery Administration (NRA) after Congress created the agency in June 1933. Finally, and most importantly, a powerful ally helped facilitate the continuation of the Conference agenda. Eleanor Roosevelt, the new First Lady, effectively promoted women in the New Deal. As her biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook shows, Roosevelt worked with Molly Dewson to compile a list of qualified women for federal appointments. "By 1935," Cook notes, "over fifty women had been appointed to ranking national positions and hundreds to leadership positions in various government agencies on the state and local level."
From 1933 through 1938, Frances Perkins, Rose Schneiderman, and Molly Dewson fought to promote a maximum hour/minimum wage agenda on the federal level. Perkins utilized her new cabinet position to gather together old Conference allies into a new coalition that pressured both the White House and the Congress to pass federal legislation.
Schneiderman saw the NRA as a means of advancing the gains made in New York State. Using her connection to Eleanor Roosevelt, the NYWTUL president witnessed mixed results in the fight to extend protection to all women workers, regardless of race. Dewson functioned more as a behind-the-scenes facilitator, an activity consistent with her direct connection with the national Democratic Party. Working with the First Lady, Dewson placed such protégés as Elinor Morehouse Herrick in important New Deal-related positions. This subtle but effective use of patronage helped the New York State minimum wage bill at a time when the Supreme Court had seemingly nullified the measure in a 1936 case, Morehead v.
...al Bill was vetoed and opposed by large companies, Solis fearlessly persisted to help the poor and minority communities be heard. Trying to be heard in a company she was not extremely involved with and the criticism from Governor Walker caused her to be courageous, and she made new rules and changes to give more power to workers and interns of the country. Being politically courageous can lead to much criticism, but Hilda Solis boldly fought for what she thought was right and for the people she cared about.
Franklin D. Roosevelt once asserted “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people,” in belief for a change, for a better nation, and for guidance to those who have lost all faith in humanity. During the Great Depression, The United States faced many different scenarios in which it caused people to doubt and question the “American Dream.” The Great depression began in 1929 and ended in 1939. In these ten years, people went through unemployment, poverty, banks failed and people lost hope. President Herbert Hoover thought it wasn’t his responsibility to try and fix such issues in the nation. He felt it was just something that everyone was facing and it will be over soon enough. However, years passed and nothing seemed to
Given these similarities and differences between these two Progressive presidents, it is easy to see how the idea of “Progress” and Progressivism can mean so many different things, while still encompassing the same general set of ideas and principles. Both men aimed to improve the American economy in a time when corporate monopolization was rampant, however, they both set out to achieve the heavier regulation of corporate monopolies in different ways. Two progressive thinkers, two completely different ways of achieving progress.
Unlike any president before him, President Roosevelt faced the Great Depression and created the New Deal to try and ensure the economic and political wealth of the United States. In 1935, the federal government guaranteed unions the right to organize and bargain collectively, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established minimum wage and maximum outs. Beginning in 1933, the government also helped rural and agricultural American with development programs and assume responsibility for the economy of the United States. Essentially, the New Deal sought to ensure that the benefits of American capitalism were spread equally amongst the many diverse peoples of the United States. Even though Roosevelt's New Deal failed to cure completely the economy of the Great Depression, his governmental policies during it established a new norm for succeeding governments to
Eleanor not only helped envision the future, but also secured the future of many people. She heavily influenced the construction of the New Deal programs, which focused on the “rights of women, civil rights, workers, and youth programs” (“Eleanor Roosevelt: The Worlds First Lady"). In 1945, she continued her career by joining the U.S. Delegate to the United Nations and became head of its Human Rights Committee (“Eleanor Roosevelt: The Worlds First Lady"). She was born into a prominent family, and opposite of what her family wanted her to do she became an activist in the social reform. In order to envision the future, a leader must imagine the possibilities and find a common purpose. For Eleanor, there were not many possibilities but there was most definitely a common purpose. She helped achieve and was apart many reforms like women’s suffrage that was ratified in 1920. Through this accomplishment we can see Eleanor’s ability to lead and help accomplish a very important
The Great Depression, beginning in the last few months of 1929, impacted the vast majority of people nationwide and worldwide. With millions of Americans unemployed and many in danger of losing their homes, they could no longer support their families. Children, if they were lucky, wore torn up ragged clothing to school and those who were not lucky remained without clothes. The food supply was scarce, and bread was the most that families could afford. Households would receive very limited rations of food, or small amounts of money to buy food. This led to the starvation of families, including children. African-americans faced tougher challenges than most during the Depression due to discrimination. The classes hit hardest were middle-class
This article speaks to the long term impacts of the Progressive Movement and what it has become to today’s society. Roosevelt was a symbol for the Progressive Movement and although Howell does not specifically list Roosevelt’s successes, he does detail some of the major breakthroughs of the Progressive Movement.
The FLSA began on a Saturday, June 25, 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed 121 bills, one of them being the landmark law in the Nation's social and economic development the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 ( Grossman, 1978). This law did not come easy, wage-hour and child-labor laws had made their way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1918 in Hammer v. Dagenhart in which the Court by one vote held unconstitutional a Federal child-labor law. Similarly in Adkins v. Children's Hospital in 1923, the Court voided the District of Columbia law that set minimum wages for women, during the 1930's the Court's action on other social legislation was even more devastating (Grossman, 1978). Then came the New Deal Promise in 1933, President Roosevelt's idea of suspending antitrust laws so that industries could enforce fair-traded codes resulting in less competition and higher wages; It was known as the National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA) ( Grossman, 1978). The President set out "to raise wages, create employment, and thus restore business," the Nation's employers signed more than 2.
The New Deal advocated for women's economic and social rights immensely, giving them new opportunities
...ary of labor in 1933, and she and Suzanna packed their things to go to Washington D.C. “On March 4th, 1933, Frances was sworn in as the first woman to serve in the United States cabinet” Schiff says. This was an astonishing moment. Frances was not only the first female cabinet member; she was the only secretary of labor to hold the job for 12 years.
“Franklin Roosevelt’s 1937 impassioned speech calling on Congress to help the one-third of Americans who were “ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished” heralded in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and with it a national minimum wage. Echoes of that speech are still heard today. Senator Edward Kennedy (1989: S14707), in his criticism of the most recent increases in the minimum wage, declared:
Theodore Roosevelt was well known by the people for being for the people and willing to stand shoulder to should with “anyone who had a forward-thinking vision of the future and intense convictions,” he called them Progressives (Bowles, M.D., 2011). In 1912 TR and his Progressive Party had already accepted that their chances of winning the Presidential Race were very small. "Although I expect to lose I believe that we are founding what really is a new movement, and that we may be able to give the right trend to our democracy,” (Kraig, R.A., 2000). TR’s hope was to get his message out to as many Americans as possible to lay the groundwork for the future of his political pa...
The most benefited policies created through the New Deal for employment, one, the Social Security Act (1935), provides “old-aged pensions and unemployment insurance. A payroll tax on workers and their employers were created a fund from which retirees received monthly pensions after age sixty-five.” (pg 470 Out of Many) Second, National Labor Relations Act (1935), also known as the Wagner Act, gave Americans the right to form a union and bargain with their employers for better pay and working conditions. Third, and the most important one of all Fair Labor Standard Act (1938), it established a minimum wage and maximum hours for an employee.
In the first two decades of the twentieth century the national political scene reflected a growing American belief in the ideas of the Progressive movement. This movement was concerned with fundamental social and economic reforms and gained in popularity under two presidents. Yet Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson espoused two different approaches to progressive reform. And each one was able to prevail upon congress to pass legislation in keeping with his own version of the progressive dream. These two people, although they had different principles in mind, had one goal: to make changes to the nation for the better of the people and the country. Setting out to reach this goal, Roosevelt came to be a president of the common man while Wilson became the “better” progressive president.
It is worth examining how the New Deal period represented a significant departure from US government and politics up to then. From the start of Roosevelt's period in office in 1932, there was a widespread sense that things were going to change. In Washington there was excitement in the air, as the first Hundred Days brought a torrent of new initiatives from the White House. The contrast with Herbert Hoover's term could not have been more striking. By 1934, E.K. Lindley had already written about The Roosevelt Revolution: First Phase. Hoover, meanwhile, denounced what he saw as an attempt to "undermine and destroy the American system" and "crack the timbers of the constitution." In retrospect, it was only a "half-way revolution", as W. Leuchtenburg has written. Radicals have been left with a sense of disappointment at the "might have beens", in P. Conkin's words.