1- The Tennessee Valley Authority (that built a series of dams to prevent floods and deforestation along the Tennessee River and to provide cheap electric power for homes and factories) and the Columbia River project (that promoted economic growth, eased the domestic and working lives of ordinary Americans, and kept control of key natural resources in public rather than private hands) reflected broader changes in American life during the New Deal because they included active efforts by the national government to uplift less fortunate members of society through the application of its social policies.
2- Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a bank holiday to temporarily halt all bank operations and called Congress into special session to pass the Emergency Banking Act to provide funds to assist threatened institutions.
He also passed Glass-Steagall Act to ban commercial banks from becoming involved in buying/selling stocks and to establish FDIC, a government system that insured the accounts of individual depositors.
All these measures rescued the financial system and greatly increased government's power over it.
3- The AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act) established a system for 7 major commodities that provided cash subsidies to farmers who cut production. Its goal was to raise farm prices by reducing supply. The money for it came from taxes on mills, gins, etc. It was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court because of the taxes in the case US v Butler. A second AAA was created in 1938, the first AAA helped contribute to the Dust Bowl when farmers left land unattended causing drought.
Great Plains counties turned into dry dust plains with dust storms picking up topsoil and causing massive migration of farm families.
4- The labor forces created the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The Unions (mostly United Auto Workers, a CIO union) began sitdowns where workers halted production but remained inside. The sitdowns spread to General Motors (nerve center of automobile production), who finally negotiated with UAW.
By 1940, Union membership reached 9 million workers. Workers gained new grievance procedures and seniority systems governing hiring, firing and promotions; CIO unions helped stabilize chaotic employment situation and offered members a sense of dignity and freedom.
5- First New Deal dealt with immediate measures of getting unemployed back to work and providing welfare and recovery.
Second New Deal focused on economic and social measures to fight unemployment and poverty and give real jobs to decrease unemployment rate.
We can say that the First New Deal had a more social impact, but the Second had a macroeconomic one.
6- The entrenched power of southern conservatives limited women and blacks from enjoying the full benefits of the New Deal through the following measures:
a. Educational opportunities were limited sharply by the practice of separating African Americans and whites and providing African Americans with inferior instructional equipment. As late as 1963, for example, only 12.000 of the 3.000.000 African Americans in the South attended integrated schools, in spite of the Brown decision.
b. Employment practices throughout the South and in many northern cities restricted African Americans' ability to advance economically.
Many New Deal construction projects in the South refused to hire blacks at all.
c. Exclusion of blacks from key entitlements of welfare state.
d. Most federal jobs held by blacks were of clerk or custodian position.
7- The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 ended the policy of dividing Indian lands into small plots for individual families and selling of the rest. Indian's rights to govern their own affairs were recognized by federal authorities.
Schools were established on reservations to allow Indian children to retain their tribal heritage, replacing boarding schools. Indian kids were allowed to stay in touch with their culture but received low funding for their education in poor environments within their tribal lands.
8- Public assistance programs gave aid to dependent children, poor elderly, and Americans who showed financial needs but benefits were given at extremely low levels and had to be authorized by state to determine elegibility.
This situation led to discrimination in distribution of benefits and stigmatized african-americans as recipients of unearned government assistance.
9- Labor militance helped to produce an important shift in the understanding of civil liberties through their public manifestations and struggles.
As a result of those, in 1939 Attorney General Frank Murphy established a Civil Liberties Unit in the Department of Justice.
Civil liberties replaced property rights of business as the judicial foundation of freedom.
10- Liberalism definition after the New Deal meant active efforts by the national government to uplift less fortunate members of society.
Meaning of liberalism in the past meant limited government and free market economics.
