New Deal Smiles

Jesus Campos, National Youth Administration worker from Puerto RicoIf you read the news with any regularity, you know that many working Americans are fed up. They’re fed up with stagnant wages, oppressive student loan debt, and trade deals that whittle away at their economic well-being. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has said, “People feel like the system is rigged against them. And here’s the painful part: they’re right.”

Currently, I’m performing research for The Living New Deal at the National Archives in Washington, DC. We have a number of goals in this research, such as finding more infrastructure projects for states and territories that are underrepresented on the LND map. But one thing that has caught my attention, and which has nothing to do with our research goals (or perhaps, everything to do with them), are the smiles I’m finding in the New Deal photograph collections – a Works Progress Administration (WPA) worker receiving his paycheck, a young Puerto Rican man happy to have a job in the National Youth Administration (NYA), a woman training to be an airplane mechanic, an “army” of young girls running and smiling in an NYA summer camp, a boisterous and happy group of men in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and so on.

Young woman training to be an airplane mechanic, National Youth Administration program, West VirginiaI believe these smiles are representative of something that was present during the New Deal but is largely absent today: A feeling among the downtrodden that the government was truly on their side. During the Great Depression, millions of Americans cried out for jobs and New Deal policymakers answered the call by creating millions of job opportunities in programs like the CCC, NYA, and WPA. That’s responsive public policy: a government for the people. Now, compare that to modern times, when recent research indicates “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.” This apparent dismissal of the needs of average citizens might help explain why the 21st Century WPA Act died so quickly in 2011 and why a CCC-like program for unemployed veterans was swatted down in 2012, despite the high unemployment during the years of the Great Recession, 2009-12.

Yes, I think I know why I’m seeing more smiles in the New Deal photograph collections at the National Archives than what I’m seeing in America today.

 -Brent McKee

 

Brent McKee is a Living New Deal Research Associate (the first, in fact!) and a core member of the LND team. He lives in West Virginia.

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