Virginia availed itself of these programs in spite of opposition from its political leaders. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration, or FERA, provided food, clothing, and shelter for the neediest and work relief for the unemployed. More than 40,000 Virginians were employed on FERA projects building schools, roads, and sewer systems. Other FERA programs aided students, transients, and the rural poor. A Women's Work Division provided jobs for women in libraries, sewing rooms, and mattress centers. Although FERA required matching funds from the states to help pay for these programs, Virginia never contributed. Its leaders argued that money spent to employ the jobless on highway construction was the equivalent of direct relief. FERA, therefore, wound up paying 92 percent of Virginia's relief bill ($26 million), with localities paying the remaining amount. It assisted 500,000 Virginians during its two-year life.
Perhaps the most popular New Deal agency in Virginia was the CCC, which employed jobless young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five in the state's forests. They planted trees, reduced fire hazards, improved wildlife conditions, stocked fish, and restored historical sites. They also created Virginia's first statewide park system. Living in forest campsites, wearing uniforms, and supervised by military personnel, 65,000 Virginians received training that also would prepare them for service in the upcoming war.
The Agricultural Adjustment Administration, or AAA, addressed the problems of low crop prices and declining farm incomes. The domestic allotment plan of AAA attempted to raise crop prices by reducing production; farmers were paid not to plant a portion of their acreage. Senator Harry Flood Byrd Sr., a conservative Democrat and the state's most powerful politician at this time, objected to the coercive nature of the plan, but Virginia farmers year after year overwhelmingly endorsed the AAA as they experienced improved prices and incomes. The tobacco control program proved particularly effective in raising prices. Larger farmers and landowners received most of the benefits, however, not sharecroppers and tenants. The New Deal did devise programs under the Resettlement Administration and later the Farm Security Administration to help poorer farmers resettle on more fertile land, buy the land they farmed and obtain credit to purchase stock and equipment, but these programs were inadequately financed and never reached a large number of subsistence farmers in the state. When the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the AAA in 1936, Congress responded with the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act that provided payments to farmers for employing conservation practices on their land, a mechanism that even Byrd applauded.
In 1935, Roosevelt initiated legislation, often called a "second New Deal," to address some of the more deep-seated economic and social problems facing the nation, such as labor-management relations, welfare reform, and agricultural instability. Passage of the National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act), strengthened workers' rights to organize unions and bargain collectively with management. This stimulated union activity in the state, resulting in a number of strikes, including a few of the infamous sit-down strikes that led to wage increases and forty-hour weeks in many Virginia plants.
The inadequacy of private and state-supported programs for the elderly, the disabled, and the unemployed forced Roosevelt to create, over the opposition of Virginia's two senators, a national Social Security program that established a pension system for the aged, unemployment insurance, and aid for dependent children and the disabled. Fearing high future costs, Virginia became the last state to join the Social Security program. Three years after Congress enacted the plan, Virginians began receiving benefits. Furthermore, in 1938 Congress established a twenty-five-cent-an-hour minimum wage and a forty-four-hour workweek.
In that year Congress also passed the "permanent solution" to the farm problem—the "ever normal granary" bill that attempted to stabilize crop output with a combination of production and marketing controls, a program that endured well beyond the Roosevelt presidency. Furthermore, the creation of the Rural Electrification Administration in 1935 brought electricity to Virginia's farmers through the establishment of local electric cooperatives. This stimulated competition with private utilities that ultimately electrified the rural areas of the state, easing workloads, improving living standards, and diversifying economic activity. Said one farmer: "Getting electricity in 1937 made Fluvanna a nice place to live."
The obstructions of the Byrd Organization, however, and the shortcomings of the New Deal programs limited their effectiveness in the state. The miserliness of state leaders left many citizens without adequate relief. Virginia agriculture, with its many subsistence farms, was not well-suited for the crop control programs of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. The AAA also inadequately addressed the forces of mechanization and agribusiness that threatened to eliminate the small family farm. Most of the programs were racially segregated, too, which usually left black Virginians with less than a fair share in relief funds and jobs. Virginia ranked twenty-seventh in New Deal spending, but only forty-third in per capita spending. The New Deal permitted survival and brightened horizons for many Virginians, but it did not challenge the social and political order; and the problems of unemployment and reduced business activity resisted solution until the spending of World War II.
Virginians divided their loyalties between Roosevelt and Byrd in the 1930s. Since Virginia was a one-party state, party loyalty demanded that both state and national Democrats be endorsed. They applauded the New Deal programs that were addressing the worst features of the depression, but they also continued to support the pay-as-you-go policies of the organization. The absence of party competition, Roosevelt's missteps, including the court-packing scheme and party purges of the late 1930s, and a traditional self-help ethic for which Virginians were renowned, preserved Byrd's leadership in the state.
Time Line
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1929 - The Great Depression begins with the crash of the U.S. stock markets.
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1931 - Virginia's unemployment rate begins to rise rapidly as the effects of the depression begin to take their toll on the state.
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1932 - Governor John Garland Pollard initiates a cut in general appropriations to avoid a budget debt due to the depression.
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March 3, 1933 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt creates the New Deal, an array of federal programs designed to assuage the effects of the Great Depression.
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1938 - Congress establishes the minimum wage at twenty-five cents per hour in an effort to combat the depression.
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Categories
- Twentieth Century History (1901–2000)
References
Further Reading
External Links
Cite This Entry
- APA Citation:
Heinemann, R. L. The New Deal in Virginia. (2017, January 4). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/New_Deal_in_Virginia.
- MLA Citation:
Heinemann, Ronald L. "The New Deal in Virginia." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 4 Jan. 2017. Web. READ_DATE.
First published: February 11, 2008 | Last modified: January 4, 2017
Contributed by Ronald L. Heinemann, a professor of history at Hampden-Sydney College.