Let me be more direct.

I want you to understand something, and any "anonymous" commentors (thanks by the way for taking the time to read our musings), the following is absolute hog wash. You wrote:

"There were TWO depressions between 1929 and 1939. TWO. '29 to '33 and '37 to '38. that's it. No recessions."

"Now, with the economy hitting it's rock-bottom in 1933, and EVERY SINGLE economic indicator (low prime interest rate, low inflation rate, rising GDP, the dollar getting stronger every day, and unemployment FALLING at a steady and measurable rate) showing the "Great Depression" to have ended by 1939, a full TWO YEARS before Pearl Harbor..."

What do you think happens when I compose a post? That I toss bones on the floor, chant to the blog Gods and "see" what they have to say about the New Deal? This matter is settled among responsible recitations of history.

This is a graduate level researchers reference book:

The Presidents, Second Edition, Editor Henry F. Graff; MACMILLAN LIBRARY REFERENCE USA, Copyright 1997, contributed by historians: Timothy J. DeWerff, Steven A. Sayer, John Marcus, Sarah Valdez. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Catolog-in-Publication, ISBN # 0-684-80551-0

PAGE 433 (just after the "court packing" fiasco)

"The worst was yet to come. The economy had improved slowly but perceptibly since 1933, making especially vigorous gains after 1935 under the stimuli of relief expenditures and the one-time only payment of of the budget busting veterans' bonus, which passed over Roosevelt's veto in January 1936. Incredibly, this display of economic vitality raised the dread specter of inflation in many influential minds, including that of the president. In June 1937, Roosevelt severely curtailed federal spending. Simultaneously, the new Social Security taxes began to bite into paychecks. By late summer these deflationary developments had precipitated an economic downturn at least as bad as 1929. Within months, more then 2 million workers lost their jobs. The "Roosevelt Recession" rubbed salt into the president's already smarting political wounds ..."

PAGE 434

"Roosevelt did manage to push through Congress in June, 1938 the Fair Labor Standards Act, which defined a federally guaranteed minimum wage, maximum work week, and outlawed child labor. By then the the conservative coalition had crystallized, and even members of the president's own party were openly flouting his will. Roosevelt tried to purge conservatives from his party in the 1938 primary season, but failed utterly. In the congressional elections in November, Republicans won their first gains since 1928, picking up eight seats in the Senate and seventy-nine seats in the House.
With that, the New Deal was effectively ended. It had carried the country, however minimally, through a dark hour. It left a large and lasting legacy of major institutional reforms. Added together these reforms embodied the various , often contradictory pressures of the decade - particularly those still pulsing in the still disparate Democrat Party - rather then a coherent expression of any particular ideology. The problem of the Great Depression, the problems that had been the midwife and companion to these reforms, was never solved by the New Deal. Roosevelt's principle achievement was political, not economic. He had enabled his countrymen to keep their heads while peoples all about them in the world were losing theirs. He had, against not inconsiderable odds, maintained social peace in a depressed and sometimes desperate America."


This is a scholarly US history book that spans colonial America to Bill Clinton, assigned to me by the chair of USM's History Department (and I promise you, he HATED G. W. Bush, and we had an antagonistic, yet friendly relationship - wanna guess why? But a good guy. I got an A in his Nazi Germany class):

The Enduring Vision, Fourth Edition: A History of the American People. Houghton Mifflin Company Copyright 2000 ISBN # 0-395-96077-0. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 99-72038. By: Paul S. Boyer, University of Winsconsin; Clifford E. Clark Jr, Carleton College; Joseph F. Kett, University of Virginia; Neal Salisbury, Smith College; Harvard Sitkoff, University of New Hampshire; Nancy Woloch, Barnard College.

From 2 different sections entitled "The Roosevelt Recession" and "The End of the New Deal" on pages 730, thru 732 respectively.

"As the Supreme Court fight ended, FDR faced a more serious crisis: after the improving in 1936 and early 1937, the economy again plunged ominously in August 1937. Industrial production slumped. Steel output sank from 80 percent to 19 percent. Bleak unemployment statistics again dominated the headlines: after dropping to around 7 million in early 1937, the jobless toll soared to 11 million in early 1938 - more than 20 percent of the workforce, the "Roosevelt Recession."

"Although Roosevelt campaigned actively in the midterm election of 1938, the Republicans gained heavily in the House and Senate and won a net thirteen governorships. Roosevelt also tried to purge several prominent anti-New Deal Democratic senators, but his major targets, including senators Walter George of Georgia, Ed Smith of South Carolina, and Millard Tydings of Maryland, all won renomination and went on to victory. Focusing on foreign affairs in his January 1939 State of the Union message, FDR proposed no new domestic measures and spoke merely of the need to "preserve our reforms." The New Deal was over."

"The New Deal in its six year life composed a stunning record. To be sure, not all New Deal programs succeeded. Nor did the New Deal achieve full recovery. As late as 1939, some 9.5 million Americans, or more than 17 percent of the labor force, were out of work. Only in 1943, as war plants boomed, did the nation finally achieve full employment."

Now look Titus, you can smirk about PhD's, and mention that nut from Colorado, fine, whatever. But let me be clear. These are but 2 of a cadre of history books I have which all mimic this sentiment above. Written by left leaning PhD's/collegiate instructors (as 90% of them are left leaning); employed at liberal Universities (I mean, Winsconsin, are you kidding?); prescribed to me at University by OTHER liberal professors, foot noted and source cited to death (undoubtedly works by other liberal professors, each one of them with "New Deal" in their title somewhere), so this is hardly the Mark Levine web page, ok. The bottom line is the historic consensus seems to me to be that the New Deal failed economically. NOW, I am sure that each and every one of these historians, and the professors that required me to read them have no problem with these passages because they all (these books) go on to say that FDR, as a president, has no equal in success - but because of the REFORMS (labor, etc), his innovative willingness to try anything, and the War, BUT NOT the economic impact of the New Deal. And I eluded to such in both of my last posts.

Look, I thought if you didn't believe me, you would believe them. You are wrong about there never being a recession in the 30's. You are wrong about unemployment being at 11% by 1939, it was almost double that (hell, even the History Channel special Jambo and I viewed, which he described as "fantastic", concurred with those numbers). You are wrong to portray a very slow, steady up tick of the GDP as a sign New Deal was working when there was a recession and depression as set backs, and the striking down as unconstitutional the NRA - the centerpiece of New Deal legislation. And you are wrong to make 1939 - a full two years before Pearl Harbor as you noted - out to be some "Boom time." It was not. Why on earth, if boom times were abound, did FDR's party lose so bad, and he portray a man so defeated domestically in his SoTU address of that same year? It just doesn't add up politically, and that's aside from the stark numbers quoted. The economy began to turn towards that boom time, and I stress BEGAN, with congress cutting corporate taxes (FINALLY), the initiation of Lend Lease, and culminated in the entry into WWII (read: the deficit spending war orders that provided the countless factory orders, which translated into jobs). Everyone worked. Because of rations and a virtual non consumer goods market (every factory was pumping out Kraut/Jap killing mechanisms of one sort or another), family savings soared. On the other side of the war the combination of a consumer goods conversion of the war times factories, the job rates that were maintained by them, combined with those savings, the GI Bill, and other pro growth measures, the US emerged into the boom times of the 1950's (and a baby boom I might add).

Take it or leave it, I'm getting too tired to maintain an argument of New Deal economic impact that 2/3rds of the original Bund members now embrace, and countless members of academia (left leaning no less) put forth as fact.