Question

What was the effect of the Great Depression in the development of anti-povery programs?

Answer 1

• Prior to the Great Depression, poverty in the United States was not seen as responsibility of the government and was often left to religious and other charitable organizations. In the United States, poverty generally has been viewed as pathology of the individual rather than a consequence of macro-economic policies or discrimination.
• Reflective of this worldview anti-poverty policies and programs in the United States have focused primarily on the individual rather than on the state and societal political and economic structures – addressing the pathology of the individual by instilling a work ethic, education, and direct cash assistance.
• The first direct attempts by the federal government to address the burgeoning poverty problem in the United States during the great depression were the programs of the New Deal including the National Youth Administration, The Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Public Works Administration. These programs sought to create much needed employment and infrastructure for future economic growth until WWII when attention was diverted away from poverty.
• The New Deal, in a certain sense, merely introduced types of social and economic reform familiar to many Europeans for more than a generation. Moreover, the New Deal represented the culmination of a 1ong-range trend toward abandonment of "laissez-faire" capitalism, going back to the regulation of the railroads in the 1880s, and the flood of state and national reform legislation introduced in the Progressive era of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
• By 1933 millions of Americans were out of work Bread lines were a common sight in most cities. Hundreds of thousands roamed the country in search of food, work and shelter.
• An early step for the unemployed came in the form of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a program enacted by Congress to bring relief to young men between 18 and 25 years of age. The CCC was run in a semi-military style and enrolled jobless young men in work camps across the country for about $30 per month.
• About 2 million young men took part in this program during the 193Os. During their time in the CCC, they participated in a variety of conservation projects such as "planting trees to combat soil erosion and maintain national forests; eliminating stream pollution; creating fish, game and bird sanctuaries; and conserving coal, petroleum, shale, gas, sodium and helium deposits.
• The Civil Works Administration was a work relief program that gave jobs to many unemployed people. Although this program was criticized as "make work," the jobs funded ranged from ditch digging to highway repairs to teaching. It was Created in November 1933,and was abandoned only a few months later in the spring of 1934. Roosevelt and his key officials, however, continued to favor unemployment programs based on work relief rather than welfare.
• The Great Depression of the 1930s worsened the already black economic situation of black Americans. African Americans were the first people to be fired from their jobs as they suffered from an unemployment rate two to three times that of whites.
• In early public assistance programs blacks often received substantially less aid than whites, and some charitable organizations even excluded blacks from their soup kitchens. It was an extremely poor and desperate time for most African Americans.
• Efforts to unify black organizations and youth groups later led to the founding of the National Negro Congress in 1936 and the Southern Negro Youth Congress in 1937.The Roosevelt Administration’s accessibility to black leaders and the New Deal reforms strengthened black support for the Democratic party Roosevelt bad many black leaders, members of a so-called "black Cabinet," were served as advisers to him.
• Blacks benefited greatly from New Deal programs though discrimination by local administrators was common. Low-cost public housing was made available to black families. The National Youth Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps enabled black youths to continue their education. The Work Projects Administration gave jobs to many blacks.
• The Congress of industrial Organizations (CIO); established in the mid-1930s, organized large numbers of black workers into labor unions for the first time. By 1940, there were more than 200,000 blacks in the CIO, many of them officers of union locals.
• The Works Progress Administration (WPA), the principal relief agency of the second New Deal, was an attempt to provide work rather than welfare. Under the WPA, buildings, roads, airports and schools were constructed. Actors, painters, musicians and writers were employed through the Federal Theater Project, the Federal Art Project and the Federal Writers Project. In addition, the National Youth Administration gave part-time employment to students, established training programs and provided aid to unemployed youth.
• The New Deal's cornerstone according to Roosevelt, was the Social Security Act of 1935.In addition to several provisions for general welfare, the new Act created a social insurance program designed to pay retired workers age 65 or older a continuing income after retirement. Social Security created a system of insurance for the aged, unemployed and disabled based on employer and employee contributions.