Articles on the New Deal
Auerbach’s New Deal, Old Deal, or Raw Deal
Jerold Auerbach’s article deals with the historical criticisms by the New Left scholars during the 1960s against the New Deal. Auerbach lays out the evidence extensively, providing many different sources of criticism. The New Left critics said that many more things could have been done during the New Deal, which was seen as an opening for liberal changes. Instead of reforming the system, the Roosevelt administration was guilty of feeding the status quo by providing securities against the economy’s failure. This criticism included an attack on the absence of civil rights reform, an interesting attack considering most of these critiques came during the fiery dialogue of the contemporary civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Auerbach criticizes the New Left for abandoning the essence of historical study, deeming their attacks as “ahistorical.” They are blinded by political agendas and biases, which color their analysis and turn them into preachers, not scholars. The New Left critics do not notice that the changes made by the New Deal were the most comprehensive to that point and are still perhaps the most comprehensive changes ever made to our government. I feel that Auerbach is much more moderate in his dealing with the New Deal because he is very much in favor of saying that the New Deal was a success. I do think he sympathizes a bit with the analysis of the New Left only in that he believes that potentially they could have done more with the New Deal. However, true historical analysis should not deal with “shoulds” and “coulds”, but “have dones.”
Salmond’s The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Negro
John A. Salmond’s article “The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Negro” presents the failures of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to incorporate African American workers into new programs. The CCC was to provide millions of new jobs in the field of conservation and public works. Though the CCC had a policy of equal employment, African Americans were not able to break into many of the CCC programs unless there was a desperate need of labor.
Salmond presents the argument in terms of two men: W. Frank Persons, the CCC’s Director of Selection, and Robert Fechner, the director of the CCC. The author showed Persons as a crusader for the rights of African Americans, attempting to allow more employment for this downtrodden group. Fechner seemed to be a status quo character in the article, obeying public sentiment in many cases against African American employment in the CCC.
Salmond’s argument is convincing because he provides a narrative of the debate through many different sources, especially government publications and letters. These resources proved useful because his claim that the CCC failed to help African Americans goes counter to sentiment in history that Roosevelt was the best thing to happen to African Americans. Salmond stated that the problem was not in what the policy accomplished, but what it could have done. The potential of the program was great and if the authorities would have allowed it to flourish, the CCC would be known as a major character in the civil rights movement.
Saloutos’ New Deal Agricultural Policy: An Evaluation
Theodore Saloutos utilizes a great wealth of sources in order to weave together this analysis of farm policy during the New Deal era. These sources include government documents such as statements by the Secretary of Agriculture, secondary historical sources, and journals from the period and from subsequent scholars. Saloutos structures his analysis in such a way that the reader can understand how the AAA and other organizations came to be and what effect, if any, they had on the nation.
Saloutos makes a very convincing argument in saying that the policies of the Roosevelt administration in dealing with farmers and agriculture were very complex and at times in conflict with each other. Saloutos emphasizes that for the most part these policies did not aim at the purely economic goal of profit but at the technical issues of farming that would be more manageable. These programs were not sufficient, however, there was either not enough of an investment per capita or some sort of bias toward middle and upper class farmers with more economic potential.
Saloutos states in the paper that there are three camps of scholarly analyses on New Deal agricultural policy. He describes these three groups as “textbook writers…those who have written books, articles, master’s theses, and doctoral dissertations…and a few generalists.” He goes on to say that these three groups have yet to go into any great depths on the topic of agricultural policy; rather, they stay focused on profit and economic bottom lines. Saloutos seems to be an exception to this criticism; he takes a lot of different policies and issues that arose at the time and synthesized them into a coherent and in depth analysis of New Deal agricultural policy.
