Why the New Deal Matters

230 Pages·2021·0.566 MB·English

by  Eric Rauchway

why the new deal matters
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yale
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press
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eric
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why the
new deal
matters
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also by eric rauchway
nonfiction
Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash
Over the New Deal
The Money Makers: How Roosevelt and Keynes Ended
the Depression, Defeated Fascism, and Secured a
Prosperous Peace
The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short
Introduction
Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America
Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore
Roosevelt’s America
The Refuge of Affections: Family and American Reform
Politics, 1900–1920
fiction
Banana Republican
For Kathy
contents
1
Introduction
11
one Arlington National Cemetery
41
two The Clinch River
73
three Window Rock
101
four Hunters Point
133
fi ve The Street Where You Live
175
Conclusion
179
Notes
209
Acknowledgments
211
Index
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introduction
One winter in the United States there were more people out of
work than at any time anyone could remember or records could
tell. In the evenings, families throughout the country gathered to
enjoy such entertainment as they could fi nd—and afford. Few of
them had been able to go anywhere, nor did they have much
news the others did not already know. Crisis had grown normal.
Hard times had lasted so long, and so shrunk their horizons, that
many people grew sick of their housemates and the limits of their
lives, constrained by this long emergency, and by uncertainty,
and by the inexorable dwindling of their resources and the appar-
ently ineffective actions of everyone to do anything to reverse the
destructive inactivity that plagued their nation, and others. Their
houses smelled of the few meals they knew how to cook and for
which they could get ingredients, and also of fear. For an invisible
enemy lurked outside, one that had gathered strength in Asia and
in Europe, and that now threatened to pour out its unreasoning
malice on the United States. You couldn’t see it; you didn’t know
1
which of your neighbors might harbor it. So you kept to the peo-
ple you knew best, you did your work if you still had some, and
you hoped that in the evening you might fi nd distraction from
the news, all of which was bad.
And then, toward the end of that winter, there was something
new to hear, because American voters had made a decision about
their country. Even as the unending crush of desperation grew
ever worse, they decided to dispense with what they knew and try
something else. They had grown tired of sleek men assuring them
repeatedly that they needed only to have confi dence in the funda-
mentals of American business and all would be well. They had
been told they need not turn to the government at Washington,
DC, for help, although the government at Washington, DC, was
giving money to help those same sleek, reassuring men, even
while it was turning guns on other, poorer people who went to
the capital city to ask for aid from their representatives. So the
American voters decided they wanted a different government at
Washington, one that pledged itself to pull the nation together,
to do its utmost to solve their problems and to fi ght the global
contagion of fascism that threatened to engulf them. They voted
for a New Deal, which they had been promised would mean fed-
eral jobs, laws protecting workers, relief for farmers, and all man-
ner of things that the wisdom of bankers and businessmen had
thus far mandated they ought not to have because recognizing
these rights would fetter American ingenuity.
And so, with that decision made, and a few last weeks of winter
to get through before the spring on which so many had placed
their hopes, the families huddled in American homes were able to
2 Why the New Deal Matters