what did the second new deal do to reform business and business practices?

The second New Deal

Although Roosevelt restored hope and staved off the collapse of the banking system, the problem of unemployment was more difficult and at the start of there was still . million people out of work. With the presidential election on the horizon, the New Deal began to change direction. Some historians have interpreted the change by saying there were two New Deals – the first dealing with the immediate emergency of – and the second, which emerged in -, offering more radical, reforming policies:

•The Works Progress Administration (WPA), the principal relief agency of the so-called second New Deal, was an attempt to provide work rather than welfare. Under the WPA, buildings, roads, airports and schools were constructed. Actors, painters, musicians and writers were employed through the Federal Theater Project, the Federal Art Project and the Federal Writers Project. In addition, the National Youth Administration gave part-time employment to students, established training programs and provided aid to unemployed youth. The WPA only included about three million jobless at a time; when it was abandoned in it had helped a total of million people.

•The Rural Electrification Administration – this agency aimed to bring electricity to America’s farms.

•The National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) – this act aimed to improve relations between workers and employers, especially as had seen a series of violent industrial disputes.

•The Public Utility Holding Company Act of (Wheeler-Rayburn Act)

•The Revenue Act of

•The Social Security Act of . Social Security created a system of insurance for the aged, unemployed and disabled based on employer and employee contributions. Many other industrialized nations had already enacted such programs, but calls for such an initiative in the United States by the Progressives in the early s had gone unheeded. Although conservatives complained that the Social Security system went against American traditions, it was actually relatively conservative. Social Security was funded in large part by taxes on the earnings of current workers, with a single fixed rate for all regardless of income. To Roosevelt, these limitations on the programs were compromises to ensure passage. Although its origins were initially quite modest, Social Security today is one of the largest domestic programs administered by the U.S. government.

Some historians say that, where the first New Deal aimed to save America and its capitalist economic system, the second New Deal aimed to change America.

Source(s): http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/…