Public Works Programs of the New Deal - The National Plan to End Poverty

Enacted by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the plan included several public works programs intended to get millions of unemployed Americans back to work.

After the Stock Market crash of 1929, some thirteen to fifteen million workers lost their jobs creating the greatest financial crisis in the history of the United States.

During the 1920s, the U.S. stock market underwent rapid expansion, where the stock market reached its peak in the summer of 1929, lead by wild speculation due to continuous growth during the 1920s. Although production had already been decreasing while unemployment had been on the rise, leaving stocks valued much higher than what they were actually worth. Among the other causes of the stock market crash of 1929 were low wages, the proliferation of debt, a agricultural sector that was struggling and an excess of large bank loans that could not be liquidated.¹

The burden of the stock market crash:¹

Stock market crash and bank closures help lead to an unemployment rate of 25%.
Hundreds of thousands of farms were forced off their land.
Many banks closed, a lot of them permanently.
At first, private charity tried to bear the burden of providing help to those in need. However, they had neither the funds or the systems to provide such aid.
It took over two years for governments to act by providing some type of unemployment relief, starting with Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York.
President Hoover, believing it is not the governments role to provide aid, refuses to provide food and jobs programs for those out of work.

After the President Hoover was defeated in a landslide by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the presidential election of 1932, President Roosevelt looked to pass legislation that help put people back to work. The plan included several public works programs intended to get millions of unemployed Americans back to work. Those programs included:

Public Works Administration (PWA) → established by the NIRA and allocated 3.3 billion dollars for hiring American citizens to work on public works projects.
- Sought to provide employment, stabilize purchasing power, improve public welfare, and contribute to reviving American industry
- Between July 1933 and March 1939, the PWA funded the construction of more than 34,000 projects (airports, dams, schools, hospitals, etc.), but it did not increase industry activity or significantly reduce unemployment²

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC, March 1933) → two goals of conservation of natural resources and helping young men in the country during the Great Depression.
- Provided jobs for young, unemployed men during the Great depression. For 9 years, the CCC employed about 3 million men across the nation
- Contributed to forest management, flood control, conservation projects, and the development of state and national parks, forests, and historic sites.
- In return, the men received the benefits of education, training, and pay³

Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA, May 1933) → headed by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration to limit crop production, reduce stock numbers, and refinance mortgages with terms that would benefit struggling farmers
- “Large agricultural surpluses during the 1920s caused prices for farm products to drop steadily from the highs of the first World war, and the onset of the Great Depression, the bottom dropped out of agricultural markets.”
- To increase prices, New Deal policymakers reduced the output of crops by destroying surpluses and taking acreages out of production. Essentially, farmers were paid money to destroy crops and livestock.
- January 1936 → The Supreme Court ruled parts of the act as unconstitutional, and it was reintroduced in 1938.⁴

See here more information on the programs of the New Deal, including Social Security ,Housing, Unemployment Insurance and Financial Assistance.

Endnotes