A “Third New Deal”? Liberal Policy and the American State, 1937-1945

Abstract

Particularly in the past decade or so, New Deal scholarship has taken a new turn, and the period after the mid-1950s has received substantial scrutiny and significant rethinking. Standard accounts of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency have long held that the New Deal was essentially a product of Roosevelt's first term, of the “First New Deal” of 1933 and the “Second New Deal” of 1935. Legislative stalemate, program consolidation and sometimes reduction, and attention to foreign and military affairs then marked the remainder of Roosevelt's presidency. A new and interdisciplinary literature, however, has demonstrated that the later New Deal of FDR's second and third terms was more distinctive and more important than the established view suggests. There has developed an understanding that from 1937 on the New Deal entered an important new phase, a third stage—that there was a “Third New Deal” crucial to understanding the New Deal and the direction of liberal policy and the American state.

Remaking a Bargain: The Political Logic of the Minimum Wage in the United States

“…Many historians or historically oriented social scientists either ignore the federal minimum wage completely because it does not fit neatly into prevailing historical schematics of the New Deal (Jeffries, ) or characterize the minimum wage as a missed opportunity in the development of the American social welfare regime (Hart, ; Katznelson, ; Mettler, ; O'Brien, ; Storrs, ). Storrs, for example, argues that fair labor standards have “fallen through the cracks” of American political, labor, and welfare state history and that “government regulation of labor standards forms a more important component of the American welfare state than the relatively thin existing scholarship reflects” (Storrs, , p. 5).…”

“…Yet despite significant attention to the politics of social policy (Finegold, 1988;Gottschalk, 2000;Hacker, 2002;Howard, 1997;Klein, 2003;Skocpol, 1995) and labor-management relations (Gordon, 1994;Nelson, 2001;Orren, 1986Orren, , 1992Plotke, 1989), the minimum wage remains a relatively neglected topic in the scholarly literature about the politics of New Deal social and labor policy. The FLSA's minimum wage is an enduring legacy of the New Deal economic security program (Brinkley, 1995;Jeffries, 1996), and it laid the foundation for a range of other employer mandates. 1 The nominal level of the minimum wage has periodically been increased.…”

Erased History

“…The third New Deal begins around 1937. See John Jeffries (1996) "A 'Third New Deal?' Liberal Policy and the American State, 1937-1945" for a comprehensive overview of this debate.…”