Seventy-six years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt implemented
the first New Deal in the wake of the 1929 crash of Wall Street and
a global economic crisis, exacerbated in the United States by a
drought of biblical proportions in the early 1930s.
By 1932, U.S. unemployment had hit nearly 25 percent. As soon as
Roosevelt entered office his administration enacted sweeping
reforms to the banking industry in the form of the Glass-Steagall
Act of 1933 — repealed in 1999 under President Bill Clinton — which
created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and was
intended to curb speculation by financial institutions and to
prevent bank failures.
The New Deal poured money into infrastructure projects
throughout the United States and a second New Deal enacted in 1934
addressed labor issues and created rebuilding and anti-poverty
programs such as the
Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief program, the Social
Security Act, and initiatives to aid the agricultural sector.
Other programs created through the New Deal included the Civil
Works Administration (CWA), which provided jobs to 4 million
workers in 1934; the Public Works Administration (PWA), which
invested $3.3 billion into public works projects in 1933; and the
1935 Works Progress Administration (WPA), which employed 8.5
million workers in construction and other jobs but also provided
work in arts, theater, and literary projects.
The effects of Roosevelt’s policies were felt nationwide within
weeks of their implementation, and many of the projects created
through them are still in existence today.
According to California’s Living New Deal Project, an historical
project based at UC Berkeley that is mapping New Deal projects
throughout the state, dozens of projects were undertaken in the Bay
Area, from widening Geysers Road in northern Sonoma County to
building the Cow Palace in San Francisco, which Governor
Schwarzenegger recently threatened to sell in order to help balance
the budget.
Other enduring Sonoma County WPA projects include the airport —
the WPA built one main runway and two cross runways, in addition to
other upgrades — and Armstrong Woods State Park, where the WPA
built an outdoor amphitheater, a combination community building and
warden’s headquarters, BBQ pits, picnic tables (built from native
redwood), a timber bridge, two miles of road improvements, and
general improvements to park grounds and facilities.
Other West County projects include Harrison Grade Road in
Occidental, Jonive and Park Side Elementary schools in Sebastopol,
as well as that town’s City Hall, which had its old wooden
structure demolished and replaced by reinforced concrete.
The city of Healdsburg received a boon from the WPA as well.
According to Holly Hoods, research curator of the Healdsburg
Historical Society, the WPA built the town’s Chamber of Commerce
building in 1936 and upgraded its sewer system. WPA workers also
made improvements to Healdsburg High School’s athletic field and
facilities.
Hoods became interested in the New Deal projects last February
when President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act of 2009 (ARRA), which has been called “Obama’s New Deal.”
“We now have a lot of issues with unemployment and have the need
to put people to work,” she said. “Some of the issues we have today
are the same as in the 1930s. I wanted to see what was done and how
people worked together to do it.”
Hoods said contemporary news accounts of the government programs
show they are met with initial mistrust, but that they found
gradual acceptance when local business leaders realized the
projects were the “best business deals (for) necessary, desirable
improvements,” and were a “business opportunity the city could not
overlook.”
There may be arguments today about the efficacy of the New Deal,
but Roosevelt did create more than 8.5 million jobs —which kept
Americans working through disastrous financial times — and
infrastructure that is still in use today.
With state unemployment in double digits — 11.5 percent recorded
in May — and a national rate nearing 10 percent, comparisons
between FDR’s stimulus plan and Obama’s seem to come naturally.
The Obama Administration began its economic recovery plan by
infusing the banking industry with more than $700 billion,
following on the heels of a like amount poured into the system by
the Bush Administration, although banking regulation has been slow
to follow.
The ARRA represents a $787 billion investment in infrastructure
investments intended to create or save 3.5 million jobs.
The program’s goals include working toward computerized health
records; reviving the renewable energy industry to eventually
double domestic renewable energy capacity; funding Pell Grants; and
investing $150 billion in new infrastructure, including “the
largest increase in funding of our nation’s roads, bridges, and
mass transit systems since the creation of the national highway
system in the 1950s,” according to the ARRA’s Web site. Sonoma
County is slated to get nearly $4 million in stimulus funds out of
an estimated $85 billion for the state.
But according to Dr. Gray Brechin, a project scholar and writer
for the New Deal Legacy Project, the Obama stimulus isn’t happening
nearly fast enough.
“In addition to programs like the PWA that pours federal money
in at the top to trickle down to workers through private
contractors like Bechtel, we desperately need programs like the
CWA, CCC, and WPA that force money in at the bottom by paying
workers to do socially beneficial labor directly from the Treasury
— including the arts,” he said. “Parts of the U.S. already have
unemployment comparable to that of the Great Depression and they
need help immediately.”
It remains to be seen how effective the Obama plan will be in
addressing U.S. economic recovery. In the meantime, residents of
Sonoma County can look around them for evidence of past successes
of New Deal programs.
