American History Tellers - The Great Depression - A New Deal | 3

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

With the country was still hobbled by the Depression, New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised a “New Deal” for the American people. That vow handed Roosevelt a contested Democratic nomination and helped him crush Hoover in the general election. Roosevelt began his presidency with a flurry of policy proposals and legislative efforts focused around three priorities: relief, recovery, and reform. These new efforts saw millions of young men put back to work preserving natural areas as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps and undertaking a massive rural electrification project in the Tennessee River Valley. And the country’s first female cabinet member led the creation of Social Security, one of the crowning achievements of Roosevelt’s administration.Meanwhile, a reckoning was in order for Wall Street. Years after the stock market crash, a raucous senate investigation would unveil egregious abuses by financiers.Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's a sweltering summer day, July 1st, 1932, and you're a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Like everyone else at Chicago Stadium, you're eager for change. President Herbert Hoover has been in office for more than three years. He promised the end of poverty, but this is also the third year of an economic catastrophe. You're a Democrat from Iowa, so it's natural you want Hoover out. The question is, who should replace him? You're getting restless after three rounds of balloting.

Everyone's impatient. It's no doubt the party bigwigs have been in backroom negotiations all day, but here on the floor, the stalemate just can't seem to be broken. Mainly because of Speaker of the House John Nance Garner, a Texan, just like Jim, a delegate you befriended earlier in the morning. You turn to Jim, exasperated. Garner only has, what, 100 votes? Yeah, sure. But FDR's had three chances to get enough votes to win the nomination, and he hasn't done it. If he can't do that, how can I be sure he'll beat Hoover? Anyone can beat Hoover. I could beat Hoover. You could beat Hoover. Don't get crazy now. Look, I want to win, but Roosevelt has polio. I hear he wears leg braces when he gives speeches. Can he really run a campaign, or for that matter, the White House? Suddenly, a buzz races through the crowd. Jim has to excuse

himself to huddle with other Texas delegates. You watch them whisper furiously. A look of surprise washes over Jim's face, and he nods. The commotion dies down, and he returns to you. Well, Garner released us to vote for Roosevelt. Guess some folks high up think your man has what it takes, polio and all. Sounds like Roosevelt wants Garner on his ticket. You're thrilled by this revelation. And as it turns out, other delegates are too. With Garner as the vice presidential candidate,

Roosevelt racks up 945 delegates and with them, the nomination. He bucks tradition and makes a tough cross-state flight against strong headwinds to address the convention in person the very next day. I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people. Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of confidence and of courage. This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms. Give me your help not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people.

Listening to Roosevelt accept his nomination, you think about the failed farms, the boarded up banks, and the hungry transients you encountered on your way to Chicago. You think about all the struggling people you know back in Iowa. It's a hard time in America, and this country needs a change. As hopeful as you are now, you still wonder, can Roosevelt do it? From the team behind American History Tellers comes a new book, The Hidden History of the White House. Each chapter will bring you inside the fierce power struggles, intimate moments, shocking scandals that shaped our nation.

From the War of 1812 to Watergate. Available now wherever you get your books. Broker a deal with a drug cartel? Take out a witness? Paul can do it. I'm your host, Brandon Jinks Jenkins. Follow Criminal Attorney on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. In 1928, Herbert Hoover faced few obstacles in his path to the White House. It was the height of the Roaring Twenties. The stock market crash was still a year away. Four years later, though, Hoover faced a dramatically different political landscape.

By July 8, 1932, the stock market reached its historic low. That day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 41.22, a 90% decline from its peak in 1929. For many Americans, it was a time for a change of leadership. The Democratic National Convention signaled that something bold and new was coming. This is Episode 3 of our six-part series on the Great Depression, A New Deal. In 1932, nearly a quarter of all Americans were jobless, and that didn't include counts for displaced farmers whose land had been foreclosed. Even those who still had jobs were hurting.

Since Black Tuesday, average incomes in the United States had dropped by almost half. The grim economic conditions weren't President Hoover's only problem. At the end of May, tens of thousands of World War I veterans and their families arrived in Washington, D.C. By July, they reached a boiling point after Congress denied their request for immediate payment of war bonuses. When the veterans refused to leave Washington, local police tried to evict them, killing two veterans in the clash. Later the same day, Hoover ordered a disastrous army raid on their encampment. Soldiers chased war veterans with bayonets and tear gas, burnt down

shacks, and crushed their encampments with horses and tanks. Newspaper descriptions of the raids and photographs of the chaos destroyed whatever was left of Hoover's reputation. Hoover's seemingly tone-deaf response to the Depression, and to those impacted by it, created a natural opening for the Democrats. Two years earlier, they'd won control of the House of Representatives. Now, they had a clear chance to take the presidency. Three major candidates emerged at the Democratic National Convention, which took place in Chicago from June 27th to July 2nd. One was the Democrats' previous nominee, former New York Governor Al Smith. The second was John Nance Garner, a congressman from Texas and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. The third, and leading candidate of the House of Representatives. The third and leading candidate

when the convention began was the current New York governor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt won the first ballot with 666 delegates, more than any other candidate, but he was still short of the two-thirds majority Democratic Party rules required. Roosevelt led the next two ballots, too, but Smith held on with about 200 votes. In all three ballots, Garner had between 90 and 100 votes, while the rest were split between eight other minor candidates. Before a fourth ballot, Roosevelt struck a deal with Garner. Garner had beaten Roosevelt in the California primary after publisher William Randolph Hearst endorsed him.

But after the third ballot, emissaries from Roosevelt's campaign reached out to the Speaker. If Garner released his delegates, especially the ones from Texas and California, Roosevelt would include him on his ticket. Throughout the negotiations, publisher Hearst continued to play kingmaker. He was growing concerned that more ballot chaos at the convention would be damaging to the party, and though he wasn't a fan of Roosevelt, he called Garner and urged him to accept the deal. Garner did. Finally, Roosevelt won enough votes to take the nomination, with Garner as his vice presidential running mate. It was early morning in Albany when word arrived that Roosevelt had finally won the nomination. Sam Rosenman, a lawyer and advisor to Roosevelt, had been up all night at the governor's residence waiting for the news.

Unable to sleep, Rosenman boiled some hot dogs, made a pot of coffee, and sat down to draft a possible acceptance speech in a small dining room. There, Rosenman wrote a small dining room. There, Rosamond wrote a small phrase that would forever define Roosevelt. Taking the speech with him, Roosevelt boarded a flight to Chicago to accept the nomination in person, becoming the first candidate to do so. The move was strategic. Roosevelt had contracted polio in 1921. Concerns about his health colored much of the opposition to Roosevelt's candidacy within the Democratic Party and would also likely arise during the general election.

Making the last-minute trip to Chicago and speaking before the convention crowd represented a strong, symbolic counterpoint to concerns about his health. The official Democratic platform, which Roosevelt endorsed at the convention, included economic policies Hoover supported, like cutting government spending by a quarter and balancing the budget. But at the convention, in the speech Rosenman had prepared for him, Roosevelt unveiled his New Deal to surprising fanfare. Neither he nor Rosenman nor other close advisors

had paid particular attention to the term when it was written. But soon, Roosevelt's New Deal came to define a sweeping economic program Rosenman and five other members of Roosevelt's so-called brain trust were busily devising. A massive slate of public works projects, economic relief, and financial regulation. And after the convention, he took the message to the people. In the general campaign, Roosevelt deftly employed modern media such as radio broadcasts and news reels. In them, Roosevelt distinguished himself from Hoover by highlighting how, as New York's governor, he'd led his state's response to the Depression, enacting relief and employment programs. And in the end, with a popular message in the New Deal and an

unpopular opponent at Hoover, Roosevelt carried 42 of 48 states, winning over 57 percent of voters. Now, he only had to carry out his ambitious promises. Imagine it's March 4th, 1933. You're an attorney from Dayton, Ohio. It's been an eventful year. In January, you were one of the first two women in the city's history to represent a criminal defendant. You also ran the local office of Dayton's congressman. Now, you have a new job in the nation's capital. Your life is about to get much busier.

Franklin Roosevelt will take office today and begin work on the new deal he promised as a candidate. That means a lot of work for Congress and staff like you who make it run. But today you're witnessing history. You and 100,000 people are gathered in front of the steps of the U.S. Capitol building to attend Roosevelt's inauguration. The tinny loudspeakers set up on the Capitol grounds make it tough to hear everything he says. You strain your ears. As he continues, he urges you and your countrymen to remember that common difficulties concern only material things. And as the president lists those material things, you can't help but wince at just how bad things have become. The president seems to understand the extent of the problem. That, or Rosenman, is as great a speechwriter as everyone says.

Of course, you are a staunch supporter of Roosevelt. The congressman you work for is a vocal advocate of the incoming president. But Dayton hasn't been immune from the Depression. Hunger and unemployment exist in Ohio, just like the rest of the country. Banks are closing there, too. As the president speaks, he seems to recognize the country's despair. The withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side. Farmers find no markets for their produce,

and the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment. Return from the crowd, find your colleagues, and head for the inauguration ball. It's a last chance to celebrate because tomorrow, the work of rebuilding the country begins. Roosevelt inherited a troubled country. The grim problems of everyday life persisted, despite the hope his inauguration delivered. To combat the dark realities of the moment, Roosevelt launched his presidency with a frenzy.

First, the president called a special session of Congress. He tasked it with drafting 15 pieces of legislation to combat the Great Depression. This legislation was based on ideas devised by his brain trust of scholarly advisors, and each targeted priorities the administration called the three R's—relief, recovery, and reform. For now, Congress was largely willing to participate in the aggressive policymaking of the 100 Days Agenda. After winning control of the House of Representatives in 1930, the Democrats expanded their majority by nearly 100 seats in 1932. Democrats also picked up 12 Senate seats and secured control of the chamber. However,

before Roosevelt could launch any job creation efforts or spend on infrastructure, he had to address a more pressing emergency. The country's banking system was in crisis. Beginning in February, thousands of banks started failing across the country, and with them, millions of dollars in deposits evaporated, while the banks that remained had liabilities that far outstripped their assets. Once Roosevelt was inaugurated, the White House needed to act fast to stop a full-blown panic. The day after Roosevelt took office, he imposed a four-day bank holiday. That was a euphemistic term for ordering the banks to close. Various state governments had already used the closure strategy, giving banks time to secure much-needed reserves

and for the public's feeders to cool. The federal government spent the national banking holiday taking stock of the banking crisis. The move had huge implications. With banks closed, nobody could deposit a check. Employers couldn't pay employees. Factories couldn't order supplies. The longer the holiday lasted, the more acute these problems would become. So Roosevelt called Congress into a special session so it could draft a plan to reorganize and reopen the country's banking system. With the clock ticking, Congress passed the Emergency Banking Relief Act in just

eight hours. The legislation put banks under presidential supervision. Banks were reopened only after federal examiners assessed their viability and stability. The act also allowed the Treasury Department to prop up troubled banks or issue emergency currency at the president's discretion. During the bank closure, Roosevelt turned again to a radio address to reassure the public about the crisis. On March 12, 1933, Roosevelt spoke live on the air. He wanted to urge the country to start making deposits in banks, and explained the Emergency Banking Relief Act made it safe to do so. I want to tell you what has been done in the last few days

and why it was done and what the next steps are going to be. The idea of a primetime fireside chat evoked the image of a family gathered in a living room around a cozy hearth as they listened to their new president. This would be the first of 30 such fireside chats throughout Roosevelt's presidency. Aware of the power of this medium to influence the public, Roosevelt spoke to listeners in simple, straightforward language, adopting the tone of a caring neighbor or beloved family member sitting with listeners around the fire.

The president reassured his public about their concerns and urged them to trust the government's actions in the banking crisis. Confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan. You people must have faith. You must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses. Let us unite in banishing fear. We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system, and it is up to you to support and make it work. It is your problem, my friend. Your problem no less than it is mine. The gambit worked. The next morning, many banks reopened. Huge lines formed outside. But this time,

the people didn't rush to withdraw their money. They rushed to deposit it. But the banking crisis was only one of the nation's troubles. Unemployment, poverty, hunger, and violence plagued the nation. Roosevelt's fast action might have reopened the banks, but much more was yet to be done. In November 1991, media tycoon Robert Maxwell mysteriously vanished from his luxury yacht in the Canary Islands. But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed. It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse, and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt, and multi-million dollar fraud. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers. We tell the true

stories of business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that define their journey, and the ideas that transform the way we live our lives. In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something of his life. Taking the name Robert Maxwell, he builds a publishing and newspaper empire that spans the globe. But ambition eventually curdles into desperation, and Robert's determination to succeed turns into a willingness to do anything to get ahead. Follow Business Movers wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. This is the emergency broadcast system. A ballistic missile threat has been detected inbound to your area.

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Join Wondery+, in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Roosevelt's frenetic first 100 days saw the launch of a tangle of alphabet agencies. The AAA, TVA, FDIC, CCC, SEC, each focused on the three R's, relief, recovery, and reform. Some wouldn't last the length of the Depression, but many persisted well beyond the era. Some infuriated opponents, some even infuriated allies. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration, known as the AAA, sought to stabilize farm prices by

subsidizing landowning farmers who refrained from growing certain crops. But tenant farmers, who didn't own the land, usually among those hit worse by the Depression, were out of luck if farm owners didn't pass payments along, and they usually didn't. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, FDIC, was established after the passage in June of the Glass-Steagall Act, also known as the Banking Act of 1933. This legislation mandated a separation between investment banks and commercial banks,

so bankers couldn't use consumers' deposited money on risky investments. And at the same time, the FDIC created federal protections for deposits, covering up to $2,500 at the time. The Tennessee Value Authority, or the TVA, became a controversial symbol of the Roosevelt administration, pitting private interests against major public works. Seventeen years earlier, in 1916, the federal government obtained a 30-mile strip of land in northern Alabama

alongside the Tennessee River. Along this strip, known as Muscle Shoals, the river dropped 140 feet. It was such a quick drop-off that ships couldn't travel up the river. However, as U.S. involvement in World War I looked imminent, the site seemed like a good place to build a dam to generate electricity and power a local munitions plant. Ultimately, no dam was ever built, and the fate of the site remained up in the air throughout the 1920s. That changed on May 18, 1933, when President Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act. The legislation created a federally managed corporation, the Tennessee Valley

Authority, and charged it with improving navigation on the Tennessee River, developing mining operations necessary for national defense, controlling and preventing flooding, and reforesting the area around Muscle Shoals. It also had a larger, arguably nobler task, improving the economic and social well-being of people in the Tennessee River Valley, which ran through parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina, and Mississippi. How the TVA would improve well-being in the surrounding region seemed straightforward. Muscle Shoals was a natural site for a dam, and such a dam's hydroelectric power could revolutionize life in the region.

Planners hoped that powering the region could generate significant economic opportunity. But establishing the TVA required tapping into the complex political alliances that undergirded Roosevelt's presidency. As was the case for other agenda items, Roosevelt needed Southern Democrats in Congress to help him pass the TVA Act. Many of these legislators were open racists who opposed integration and other efforts to combat the South's Jim Crow laws. One of these was Mississippi Congressman John Elliott Rankin and the primary sponsor of the TVA bill in the House of Representatives. Rankin's segregationist and anti-Semitic views made him an unlikely ally

for a president from New York with many Jewish advisors. But he was willing to sponsor the TVA legislation with Senator George Norris, a Republican from Nebraska who'd long championed building a dam at Muscle Shoals. But he sought to steer the benefits from the project to only white recipients. Adding to the political complexity of the project, the three-member board in charge of the authority had vastly different priorities. Only one of the board members, Harcourt Morgan, was from the South. He resisted what he perceived was too much federal planning and private business in the region, especially commercial farming.

Another, Arthur Morgan, no relation to Harcourt, was an academic who saw the TVA as a vehicle to eliminate poverty. The third board member was David Lilienthal, who saw the TVA as a case study for the benefits of public electric power. But in addition to the board's infighting, the TVA also faced significant difficulty in the courts. Much of the opposition held that the authority was a constitutional overreach that positioned the federal government as an unfair competitor to private power generation. But the project carried on. A year after the TVA Act was passed, the authority

employed more than 9,000 people. The agency built 16 hydroelectric dams in the Tennessee Valley between 1933 and 1944, electrifying the region and luring new businesses like textile mills. And in 1939, following a tide of legal and congressional battles, the Supreme Court ruled the TVA was indeed constitutional. After years of disappointment and distress, the New Deal was beginning to deliver the first inklings of hope. That hope also marked the birth of another popular program. It would put thousands of men and women back to work rebuilding America. It was called the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Imagine it's early morning, May 7th, 1935. You're 18 years old, barely, and stumble out of your bunk. It's been a little over a week since you arrived at Camp Galleon in Green Bay, Virginia, to serve with the Civilian Conservation Corps as part of 1390 Company. And even though the federal government's rules establishing the Corps prohibited discrimination, you and all of the other members of 1390 Company are African American, kept segregated by regional administrators here in the South. Your first week was tough. Cutting fire trails is hard work,

so you're looking forward to a big breakfast before you begin another day. You grab a tray of steaming something and sit down next to your friend Lou who's reading a mimeograph newsletter. What's that? Camp newspaper. A newspaper? Yeah, the Camp Galleon Dispatch. This is their inaugural issue.

Lou shows you the front page. You study the banner headline, written by hand in all caps. A hearty welcome to our new men. Guess that's us. Yeah, I guess it is. Hmm. They left out the A in hearty, though. Well, look at you, Mr. Editor. Maybe you should join them. Nah, man.

I'm going to have enough work to do. And you think some more about what Luce said. Your only shot for a job after serving in the CCC might be to know something more than cutting firebreaks. Maybe learning how to be a reporter could lead to work at a newspaper someday. I'm serious. You're smart. And look at the next page.

See, right there. Hear ye, hear ye, calling all loose hogs. Huh. Lou hands you the paper. It says they need editors and reporters. You think about your struggling parents. This is something Mama could be really proud of.

You keep reading. This paper must be an expression of the members, by the members, and for the members of the 1390th. Well, Luke, why not? I've got more in me than just swinging an axe. Camp Galleon was home to Civilian Conservation Corps, Company 1390. Located about 50 miles southwest of Richmond, the camp was one of

only a handful of all African American Civilian Conservation Corps camps in Virginia. It was established in June 1933, shortly after the passage of the Emergency Conservation Act. That act passed Congress on March 31st of the same year, just four days after it was introduced. It was another of Roosevelt's slate of 15 major laws at the beginning of his term. The new legislation created the CCC as a peacetime military mobilization. The program hired crews of unemployed men between the ages of 18 and 25 to work on projects aimed at restoring and enhancing the nation's natural resources. By 1942, when the CCC finally ended, more than 8,000 women had also joined the Corps.

Participants in the program received $30 a month for their work, $25 of which the program sent home to Corps members' families. The Corps fed members three meals a day and provided beds and work sites. CCC companies typically consisted of between 150 and 200 people. Each assignment lasted for six months, and participants could serve up to two years total. Corpsmen fought forest fires, constructed flood control barriers, built hiking trails, dug drainage ditches, aided victims of natural disasters, and restored historic sites. But their most common task was planting trees. In fact, the Civilian Conservation Corps planted so many trees

that it became known as Roosevelt's Tree Army. The Corps had two central goals, preserving natural resources and providing work. Military officers and teachers supervised the work crews. The CCC also offered classes in vocational skills such as typing, first aid, and construction supervision. Over the program's nine-year existence, CCC work crews built countless bridges, planted three billion trees, and installed crucial fire lookout towers and other firefighting facilities. The CCC employed more than 3 million people, 250,000 of whom were African Americans, and 80,000 were Native Americans. It provided them with work skills as well as a lifelong appreciation for the outdoors. Though the Emergency Conservation Act explicitly banned discrimination on racial or religious grounds, the CCC was not immune to

the prevalent discrimination and segregation that existed in broader society. By 1935, there were separate camps for white and African American Corps members in many parts of the country. The segregation existed nationwide, in CCC districts as far from the South as Minnesota and California. And CCC segregation didn't just reinforce the racial divides of American society. It also led to unbalanced work experiences for Corman. African-American CCC workers were often given more routine, hard labor projects, like road building, whereas white workers in the same areas were given higher profile and less monotonous projects,

like setting up forest conservation labs. African Americans were frequently passed up for promotions, and many recreational facilities that African American Corps members helped build would be, once opened, off-limits to them to enjoy, and would continue to be until court battles challenged the rules in 1948. As the CCC and other pieces of Roosevelt's 100-day agenda slowly put Americans back to work, Congress turned to answering important questions. How did the Depression begin? What institutions failed to protect the country from economic collapse? And most Who's to blame? Did you know that the Air Jordans were initially banned by the NBA? We'll explore all that and more in The Best Idea Yet,

a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boys. This is Nick. This is Jack. And we've covered over a thousand episodes of pop business news stories on our daily podcast. We've identified the most viral products of all time. And their wild origin stories that you had no idea about. From the Levi's 501 jeans to Legos. Come for the products you're obsessed with. Stay for the business insights that are going to blow up your group chat. I'm Tristan Redman, and as a journalist, You can listen to the best idea yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. When I tried to find out more, I discovered that someone who slept in my room after me, someone I'd never met, was visited by the ghost of a faceless woman.

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Imagine it's June 1st, 1933. You're a journalist for a newswire in Washington, D.C. It's mid-morning on a hot weekday and your editor rushes over to your desk. Hey, Hal, I need you to cover this finance hearing today. Oh, God. That's, isn't that Oliver's beat? Yeah, but Oliver's sick. So I want you to get over there. Remember last week how Senator Glass said Pecora's investigation was becoming a circus? Well, buckle up, because J.P. Morgan's on his way over today. That's huge,

you realize. The Senate has been holding hearings into the stock market crash, and at the last hearing, Chief Counsel Ferdinand Peckera had Morgan admitting he wasn't paying any taxes on the millions he made and that he sold stocks cheap to big-name friends like Charles Lindbergh and Calvin Coolidge. What secrets might Peckera unearth today? You grab your notepad and race to the hearing room. When you get there, it's packed to the gills. J.P. Morgan walks in, wearing a dark three-piece suit, starched cuffs, and a bloodstone watch charm draped from his vest to his jacket. He's the picture of a tycoon. Proper. Dignified. But just as Morgan sits down, a tiny woman wearing a blue satin dress races up

to him. I mean, really tiny. She can't be more than two feet tall. And then she leaps into Morgan's lap. A man barks from the back of the room. Behold, the smallest lady in the world meets the richest man in the world. The room explodes in gasps and laughter. Cameras flash. Man, you think to yourself, this is a circus. As President Roosevelt busily deployed his New Deal agenda, the Senate was in the middle of an investigation into the causes of the 1929 stock market crash. Even after the crash, short selling of stocks had persisted on the New York Stock Exchange.

President Hoover had insisted that Wall Street rein in the practice, but Richard Whitney, the exchange's president, rebuffed Hoover repeatedly. So finally, in 1932, a frustrated President Hoover urged the Senate to launch an investigation into the exchange. At first, the investigations made little headway. But after Democrats took the Senate at the beginning of 1933, they named a dogged New York prosecutor, Ferdinand Pecora, to take the lead. The second of nine children, Pecora grew up in New York City after his family moved to the United States from Sicily when he was four. After his father was injured at work, Peckra dropped out of school to support his family by delivering newspapers and milk.

He later resumed his studies, graduated from New York Law School, and began a career at the New York District Attorney's Office. As the Senate's lead investigator, Peckra used his training as a hard-bitten prosecutor to grill some of the biggest names in finance. He wasn't afraid to get aggressive, and it was his inquisitorial style that led to the theatrics at Morgan's hearing. A week earlier, Senator Carter Glass, a conservative Democrat from Virginia, grew annoyed that he didn't know ahead of time the questions Peckra wanted to ask of Morgan, and said Peckra was treating Morgan unjustly. When Peckra produced a list of VIP clients of Morgan's, Glass insisted the investigator's line of questioning was irrelevant, chiding Peckra by saying he was turning the hearing into a circus that lacked only

peanuts and pink lemonade. Reading the quote and sensing a publicity opportunity, a press agent at Ringling Brothers brought the 27-inch-tall, 20-year-old woman, Laia Graff, to Morgan's hearing. The photographs of the diminutive Laia Graff in Morgan's lap were in newspapers around the world. But the circus wasn't fun for Morgan. During the hearings, Peckra compelled the financier to reveal he had preferred clients to whom his company gave insider information and sold stocks at a discount.

VIPs like Calvin Coolidge, Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts, and a number of other politicians. Morgan also admitted that despite his $100 million net worth, he'd avoided paying income taxes for the three years following the market crash. Morgan wasn't the only one to be grilled. Charles Mitchell, the president of National City Bank, who made showy purchases in the chaotic days surrounding the market's crash, also testified. Peckra forced him to admit to a slew of criminal behavior. He and other National City execs loaned themselves millions of dollars interest-free, manipulated stock prices, hid his income to avoid taxes, and pushed bad stocks onto new investors he'd enticed into the market. After the testimony,

Mitchell resigned. Soon thereafter, he was arrested in New York and charged with tax evasion, but only received a fine. In June 1934, a year after J.P. Morgan's circus moment in the Senate hearings, Congress passed the Securities and Exchange Act, which forced corporate insiders to disclose their stock holdings, put margin rates under the Federal Reserve's control, and establish the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. Many expected Roosevelt would reward Peckera with the chairmanship of this new commission. Instead, though, the president named a former stockbroker from Boston, one who'd profited from many of the abuses the SEC would now be regulating.

The new commissioner's name was Joseph P. Kennedy. Roosevelt believed that the SEC likely wouldn't work if it was led by a firebrand like Pecora. Pecora received a seat on the commission, but it was Kennedy that called the shots. The crash had spooked many investors, so the commission began on less adversarial footing in hopes of nurturing the market. Even so, Wall Street resisted the SEC's oversight. Over time, the Commission responded by becoming more aggressive in its enforcement of the new rules. When it came time to make another appointment, Roosevelt was less worried about stirring the pot. Francis Perkins, Roosevelt's pick to lead the Department of Labor,

proved invaluable to the president's New Deal push. A Boston native with deep roots in New England, Perkins attended Mount Holyoke College for her undergraduate degree, then studied economics and sociology at Columbia University in New York. After beginning a career in social work in Philadelphia, Perkins returned to New York, where she began working with organizations advocating for improved child labor conditions. In 1928, Perkins told the New York Times, From the time that I was in college, I was horrified at the work that many women and children had to do in factories. I was young and was inspired with the idea of reforming, or at least doing what I could to help change those abuses.

After a massive fire killed more than a hundred people at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in March of 1911, Perkins, who witnessed the fire, led a New York City committee on public safety that advocated for working weeks with fewer hours and other protections. The fire catalyzed Perkins. Despite her patrician background, she became a tireless, lifelong advocate for working people. But she wasn't a typical activist. Perkins wanted to see results and rejected the ideological purity some of her peers in the labor rights community expected. That meant occasionally working within the system to accomplish legislative goals. It also meant confronting powerful

figures in government, almost exclusively men. When Al Smith, Roosevelt's predecessor in New York, became governor, he named Perkins to a council overseeing industrial conditions in the state. After Roosevelt succeeded Smith in 1928, he named Perkins as the state's industrial commissioner. And when the Depression began, Perkins became the point person for the state's response to the crisis. So after Roosevelt was elected president, he named Perkins to lead the Department of Labor. She became the country's first female cabinet member. Perkins' selection rankled many, and not just because of her gender.

The left viewed her suspiciously, as she was not a union member, and yet was charged with heading the Department of Labor. And from the right, she faced frequent accusations of being a leftist socialist agent. Roosevelt's presidency began amid a moment of global upheaval. This disorder nurtured dictatorships that promised to bring stability to their countries. The most dramatic such movement began a terrifying chapter just as Roosevelt took office. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became Germany's chancellor. The following month, someone set fire to the Reichstag, the German legislature. The fire was allegedly set by a Dutch communist,

and Hitler used the blaze as a pretense to suspend civil liberties, consolidate power, and silence opposition. All of this occurred as Roosevelt's 100-day agenda unfolded. Some of the president's opponents feared his rapid expansion of federal programs would become a dictatorial power grab similar to the ones in Europe, though one from the left rather than the right. Consequently, Roosevelt's advisers were often accused of manipulating the president, and Perkins was one of the most frequent targets for critics, claiming the White House was secretly controlled by a socialist cabal. Reactionaries circulated screeds in pamphlets and newspapers, claiming Perkins and other advisors were secret

communist plants. They claimed that New Deal programs were Soviet plots intended to push the U.S. into Joseph Stalin's influence. Many of these attacks also drew on anti-Semitic fears. Some alleged that Perkins was secretly a Russian Jew, and a few conservative organizations who opposed Perkins even launched investigations into her lineage. But despite the challenge of these false accusations, Perkins poured her energy into enacting the president's New Deal agenda, and almost every New Deal program carried her fingerprints. Minimum wage, unemployment insurance, the CCC, the 40-hour workweek, prohibitions against child labor, and the

right to join a labor union. But there was one program Perkins orchestrated that is probably more familiar than any other aspect of the New Deal, Social Security. With Perkins at the lead, the committee spent a year developing the Social Security program and lobbying Congress to establish it. To write this legislation, Perkins teamed up with New York Senator Robert Wagner. The pair had already worked together after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which Wagner investigated while a New York state legislator. As a child, Wagner immigrated to New York from Germany. A longtime player in New York's political scene, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1926. However, it wasn't until Roosevelt's

election that his legislation on social welfare programs received any traction. Wagner believed strongly in the so-called welfare state and the government's responsibility to advance the public good. To that end, the Social Security Act was his signature piece of legislation. On August 14, 1935, Congress passed the Act, and Roosevelt promptly signed it into law. Immediately, the Act established a payroll tax to fund pensions for workers older than 65, early unemployment insurance benefits, aid to blind people, and assistance to mothers and children.

Other initiatives rounded out the New Deal's early years, each with varying success. Two, the Civil Works Administration and the Public Works Administration, represented competing job creation efforts. The Public Works Administration, backed by Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, led to significant infrastructure projects like the Grand Coulee Dam and the Triborough Bridge. Both would ultimately be dwarfed, though, by a later program, the Works Progress Administration. As Roosevelt's presidency continued, not all would go smoothly.

Labor strife continued. One-time allies became bitter enemies. Virulent strains of nationalism emerged. And even as the pain of the Depression lingered, the country would have to face a new catastrophe, drought. On the next episode of American History Tellers, as the Depression decimates industrial centers, an environmental disaster hollows out the country's rural core. Parching drought and epic dust storms push millions from their farms. And uprooted from their homes, these early climate refugees face hostile welcomes from their fellow Americans. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. I hope you enjoyed

this episode. If you're listening on a smartphone, tap or swipe over the cover art of this podcast. You'll find the episode notes, including some details you may have missed. You can also find us and me on Twitter and Facebook. Follow the show at A.H. Tellers, and I'm at Lindsey A. Graham. And thank you. American History Tellers is hosted,

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