New Geography, a site affiliated with the esteemed Joel Kotkin, is running a fantastic series of articles looking back at the New Deal, 75 years later. It may surprise some regular readers to know that I have long been a fan of the New Deal and consider it to one of the greatest achievements of American government. In the coming weeks I will be devoting some time to the subject.

The first piece in the series by Kotkin himself makes some great points that I think both liberals and conservatives should be able to an agree on. The essay covers the broad implications of the New Deal and its greatest legacy of restored American confidence. It also points out that the New Deal was so important because it touched the lives of so many Americans and regardless of the costs, it was what America needed at that moment. I believe that we are at another one of those moments again and so it is fitting that we look backwards now.

A lot of my fellow conservatives think that the New Deal was one big entitlement program. They see its lack of success in ending the Depression and its legacies of Social Security and agricultural subsidies as unnecessary evils that drain tax dollars. I see it differently. I see it as performing a task that wasn’t written in the Constitution. It made the country believe in itself again.

In 1933 this country was short on confidence. Millions of American men were out of work, unable to provide for their families and feeling like the promise of this country was gone. At the same time much of the country was technologically closer to the 19th century than the 20th century. Our infrastructure was not broken, it just didn’t exist. So the government saw two needs and put its people to work. This was not welfare, it was workfare. From the NY Times:

For those expected to work, their strategy was to create jobs — not because requiring people to work for their public assistance benefits was necessary to correct shortcomings in the recipient population, but to preserve their dignity. Harry Hopkins, who headed the New Deal’s public relief effort, summed up their attitude: ”Give a man a dole and you save his body and destroy his spirit; give him a job and pay him an assured wage, and you save both the body and the spirit.”

The beauty of the New Deal works programs was that the country was filling a need (infrastructure) and also ensuring domestic security by putting millions back to work. These workers were also acquiring skills that would serve them well in later years. Workers were trained, improvements made and Americans once again started to believe in their country. I have said many time before that I do not believe we would have won World War II without the confidence rebuilt by the New Deal.

What are just some of the New Deal’s accomplishments? Let’s look at a brief list provided by Mr. Kotkin:

• 22,428 road projects
• 7488 educational buildings
• Over 7000 sewer, water and other public buildings
• Employed over 3,000,000 workers earning who helped support 10,000,000 dependents
• Employed 125,000 engineers, social workers, accountants, superintendents, foremen and timekeepers scattered in every state and community

I have spoken many times about the massive need for infrastructure improvements today. Even this deficiency is dwarfed in comparison with the state of our nation pre-New Deal. And in the span of just a little over a decade, all that changed. Much of the infrastructure we take for granted today was in fact built by the millions of workers given a job by New Deal programs. Many of our great cities, especially in the West, were given the tools to compete by New Deal workers.

In addition to the basic infrastructure needs of the country, ‘Federal One’ set about employing artists of all kinds. While I have lamented public support of the arts today, I believe that the targeted programs of Federal One were also just what America needed.  These programs created art that celebrated an idealized vision of America and their heavy reliance on art deco styles complimented a renewed national pride. It should also be noted that some of our greatest national treasures in the arts, such as Ansel Adam’s Mural Project were created as part of larger New Deal programs.

It is tempting to draw parallels between the New Deal and the needs of today and I will certainly entertain that in a second look at this opening piece tomorrow. But for today I think it is fitting to primarily look backwards and applaud the successes of the New Deal. Again, the words of Mr. Kotkin: 

The great genius of the New Deal lay not in ideology but in its pragmatism and practicality. People were out of work so it created jobs. The country’s infrastructure, particularly in the rural areas, was primitive, so it took on the task of modernization.

These two goals were the foundation of the New Deal and on both fronts, it was an amazing success.