“Dig it Out and Let the Sun Shine In” (June 25, 1938)
by Frederick Little Packer (1886-1956)
15.25″ x 22.25″, ink on paper
Coppola Collection
End of the New Deal
By 1937 the economy had recovered substantially, and Roosevelt, seeing an opportunity to return to a balanced budget, drastically curtailed government spending. The result was a sharp recession, during which the economy began plummeting toward 1932 levels. By the middle of 1938 the crisis had passed.
By mid 1938 the New Deal was also outliving its welcome. Conservative Southern Democrats openly opposed its continuation, and Roosevelt’s attempt to defeat several of them in the 1938 Democratic primaries (September 1938) not only proved unsuccessful but also produced charges that the president was a dictator trying to conduct a “purge.” In the congressional elections that year the Republicans gained 80 seats in the House and 7 in the Senate.
Another major threat to FDR came from Father Charles E. Coughlin, a radio priest from Detroit. Originally a supporter of the New Deal, Coughlin turned against Roosevelt when he refused to nationalize the banking system and provide for the free coinage of silver. As the decade progressed, Coughlin turned openly anti-Semitic, blaming the Great Depression on an international conspiracy of Jewish bankers. Coughlin formed the National Union for Social Justice and reached a weekly audience of 40 million radio listeners. He also caught the attention of the Nazis.
Roosevelt was criticized for his economic policies, especially the perceived shift in tone from individualism to collectivism with the dramatic expansion of the welfare state and regulation of the economy. Critics would complain of being oppressed and under attack by “the CIO-PAC, Eastern reds and pinks.” The CIO, predecessor to the AFL-CIO, was the first Political Action Committee. Reds and pinks were the direct accusations to being communist sympathizers as it would for years. And the ALP was a small but influential political party (American Labor Party) populated by liberal Democrats and threw its support towards New Deal candidates who supported progressive social policies.