Paper 3 Rough Draft

Franklin Delano Roosevelt followed the Jeffersonian principle with the statement “the exercise of property rights might so interfere with the rights of the individual that the government, without whose assistance the property rights could not exist, must intervene, not to destroy individualism, but to protect it.” (cite) Self image was one of the biggest problems in America in 1932. American citizens had a “me” attitude, stemming from the brief period of financial success in the 1920’s.  Money came easily to most, luxury abounded.  Nobody had to think about their neighbor who was out of work or their family member who desperately needed to pay bills.  Everyone was rejoicing in this period of economic prosperity.

With the 1930’s came an America deep in an economic depression.  Most found themselves trying to crawl out of the harsh economic times individually.  Unfortunately, this was not an individual problem but rather a national economic disaster.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt entered the political forum and initiated the New Deal to help give relief to the unemployed, to reform business and financial practices, and to stimulate recovery of the economy.  He urged the American people that it was time to come together as Americans. The dichotomy that FDR faced was protecting individuality, while having the nation conform for the sole purpose of this protection. In his Commonwealth Club Address, he states, “The issue of government has always been whether individual men and women will have to serve some system of government or economics, or whether a system of government and economics exists to serve individual me and women.”  (commonwealth, 2)

During FDR’s rather conservative campaign for the presidency in 1932, he foreshadowed his New Deal to the American people. He urged the nation that it was time to experiment; if it didn’t work, try something else, but changes had to made.  This vow of experimentation was in direct contrast to Hoover’s political ideas and reputation as a do-nothing president.  With over 57% of the popular vote and a vote of 472 to 59 in the Electoral College, FDR embarked us on a cultural and political journey that transformed America permanently.

            FDR’s objective was to break tradition and was very aware how symbolic that was.  “Let it be symbolic, that I broke the tradition.  Let it be from now on the task of our Party to break foolish traditions.”  (culture, 159) To accomplish this break with tradition, FDR immediately began an onslaught of legislative activity that had never been accomplished before. Within hours of his inauguration, Congress passed his New Deal program and during the “Hundred Days” the First New Deal evolved. This is when his “social welfare liberalism ideas” that “called on government assistance to make certain that every citizen had the resources necessary for individual opportunity and self-development” (Ordinary people, 3) emerged.  He immediately set up the FDIC to ensure that losing one’s life savings would never happen again.  He also set up the Home Owners Loan Corporation, the Civilian Conservation Corps to employ young men on reforestation and conservation projects, the Agricultural Adjustment Act to solve the agricultural overproduction problem, the Federal Emergency Relief Act which established a welfare system, The Tennessee Valley Authority which constructed a series of hydroelectric dams, the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate the securities markets, the Public Works Administration and the National Recovery Administration to stimulate industrial recovery.   His plan was not to break up Big Business.  He promised that they would be exempt from antitrust prosecution if they cooperated and practiced fair codes of conduct and agreed to preset wage scales. 

After this was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935, FDR began to promote “The Second New Deal” and decided to go in a more liberal direction.  He had spent two years trying unsuccessfully to end the Depression and in the hope of improving his chance for reelection in 1936, he began to support more liberal and anti-big business ideas. The WPA was established which attempted to relieve unemployment, the Wagner Labor Relations Act was introduced to equalize the power of big business, the Social Security Act was created and numerous other acts were set into motion.

By the end of 1936, the New Deal was finished. Historians said that it had been an innovative, non-ideological, experimentive and inherently conservative program that did not end the economic collapse in the United States.  What FDR did accomplish with his New Deal was change the culture of America.  Organized labor gained power and respect.  The quality of life in rural areas was tremendously improved and racial minorities had higher expectations. The executive branch of the federal government became more powerful while the federal government was now totally committed to be active in programs of social reform and the management of the economy.  We were no longer a laissiz-faire capitalist nation.

Warren Susman explains how the media made an individualistic America into a unified America.  “The photograph, the radio, the moving picture---these were not new, but the sophisticated uses to which they were put created a special community of all Americans unthinkable previously.” (Susman, 161) Previously, there was nothing that could connect people of diverse backgrounds. With FDR’s New deal, he introduced the idea that everyone had to come together as one to fight a crisis that people were unsuccessfully trying to fight on their own. 

Culturally, we began to see a pattern emerge through different medias. Soap Operas united housewives of all backgrounds.  Cards, bingo, baseball, golf, tennis and even board games like monopoly promoted play that could be equal for everyone.  Again, it brought people together who normally would have had nothing in common.  Sports and games promoted equality and team effort in hopes of succeeding at a common goal.   FDR wanted America to follow the trend of sports and come together to beat the economic crisis.  

To this end, the movie industry began to promote this theme of unity as well. In 1933, the film Gold Diggers truly epitomized Roosevelt’s feelings about America. This film accurately depicts American life during the Great Depression.  It begins with creditors coming to a play rehearsal and shutting it down due to unpaid bills.  The first scene of the play featured many beautiful white women in the same gold coin money costume.  They were singing “We’re in the Money” and dancing in unison.  Even though there was a lead (Ginger Rogers), the fact that each woman had the same costume on and had the same hair and makeup made them all equal.  After the show, a person would not have been able to tell one woman apart from another.  The singing and dance number would not have been the same without the collaboration of the women.  The play needed the women all in the same outfits, working together in hopes of putting on a great play.

The creditors were also all in standard dark suits.  They came with the same goal of breaking up the rehearsal.  They all went to take pieces of the stage and the costumes that the women were wearing.  They were successful, strengthening FDR’s idea that if the American people came together they could dig themselves out of their financial woes.

            The “We’re in the Money” scene of the play also drew audiences in.  They were singing about the day that the depression would be over and they would once again be prosperous.  This was a day that all of America was hoping would come.  Audiences gained short-lived hope from watching happy, people singing and dancing about the desperate days that had passed. Audiences were brought back to reality when creditors broke up the play.  This scene really illustrated a desperate America. Again, the underlying theme was that if enough people came together then it would be possible to put the dark economic days behind them.

                        The closing scene in Gold Diggers, “Remember my Forgotten Men”, shows soldiers in uniform coming back from World War I.  Again these men in uniform could not be identified individually, thus promoting the power of togetherness.  These men were nothing on their own but when they were marching together they looked like they could conquer anything. The song reminds everyone that these men as a unit fought hard for America by cultivating the land and by defending what American land stood for. Now, these men were disenfranchised from their country, again illustrating America’s need to help.

            In another scene, a woman is protecting a man who she quite obviously felt deeply for at one time. The police officer even lets him off because he knows that he fought for America’s freedom.  Finally, the very last scene shows the men who were once uniformed solders out of uniform.  This leaves the audience with a feeling of hope and bolsters FDR’s speech about unity now leading to the furthering of individualism in the future.

            Through the use of visuals, FDR’s political viewpoints were overwhelmingly supported.  His main objective was to preserve individuality though it was impossible to accomplish this task as an individual.  The harsh reality was that the America that had enjoyed economic prosperity could only be reclaimed by a collective movement with conformity as the precipice.

Living the Not So American Dream

The American Dream is a freedom that the United States supposedly offers to all who come here.  The early 1900’s was a time that saw much immigration to the United States.  Immigrants believed that America provided the opportunity for greater monetary wealth and material prosperity than could have been achieved in their native countries.  The American Dream was definitely falsely advertised to immigrants because they were not handed the American opportunities, which they had all fantasized about.  The United States was clearly divided between American citizens and immigrants who strived but failed to imitate the life that was considered the American Dream. 

Kathy Peiss’s “Cheap Amusements” truly said it best, “Dreams for sale: Division Street clothing shops offered working women inexpensive versions of high-fashion designs.”  Immigrants were considered part of the working class and everything within their lives was a cheaper version of what well off Americans owned.  Whether it be clothing, cosmetics, housing or food, immigrants just could not afford the best of what America was offering.  The concept of the American Dream implied wealth and luxury not poverty and hardship, which was what immigrants actually found when they came to America.  They tried to cover up their lack of money by consuming economical American products that mimicked the riches they longed to have.

The picture attached to Kathy Peiss’s dreams for sale quote sums up what immigrants could have expected when they were fortunate enough to go shopping in America.  It was an industrial like scene on a one-way street of the Lower East Side.  It was crowded, very close to the road, which was full of traffic and the ceiling was metal bars.  This was definitely not a luxurious shopping trip.  Items were cheap and immigrants just wanted to make sure they were buying products that would make them fit in with America.  They felt that buying low-priced American goods with their hard earned American money would help them gain the wealth to live the coveted American Dream. 

On the contrary to the Division Street clothing shops were department stores like Marshall Fields.  Marshall Fields was an iconic department store and was famous for its beauty.  The pictures depict high and decorated ceilings with comfortable seating and plenty of room to shop.  The store soon became known as  a “Marble Palace” due to its costly marble face.  Shopping in stores like Marshall Fields was extravagant and belonged to the people who were truly living the American Dream.  Immigrants could not afford to spend money at such a high-class establishment.  Stores of grandeur like Marshall Fields may have existed in America but immigrants who came with hopes of wealth did not have the means to purchase the merchandise.

In Kathy Peiss’s “Making Faces: The Cosmetics Industry and the Cultural Construction of Gender, 1890-1930”, she speaks about the three different cosmetic markets that existed during the 1920’s.  There was the mass market, which had low-priced cosmetic lines that were sold in drugstores.  This line targeted the working-class and lower-middle class women.  This would be the only kind of cosmetics an immigrant could have afforded to purchase.  There was the ethnic market, which was for African American women and ethnic women.  The third market was the class market, which all American citizens wished they could have afforded.  The products in the class market were only sold in department stores and exclusive salons like Elizabeth Arden.  Wealthy and upwardly mobile middle-class women could buy these products and the rest of America including immigrants were left trying to buy cheap imitations from the mass and ethnic markets.

Kathy Peiss goes on to discuss how the “mass-market manufacturers stressed the makeover as a route to upward mobility, arguing that a woman’s personal success relied on her appearance.” (P.385)  Obviously mass market manufacturers just wanted to sell their products but working class women like the immigrants came to truly believe the statement that the better they looked the more successful they would be.  Immigrants believed that if they spent their hard earned money on products that were similar to those being sold in class markets, then they themselves would be the ones shopping in salons and department stores one day.  It was a dream and false hope that these companies were selling.  The amount of immigrants who actually experienced social mobility were few and far between.  Most spent their lives trying to support their families in a country that they were always trying to figure out where they really belonged.

Anzia Yezierska’s novel Bread Givers illustrates the life of a typical immigrant family living in New York’s Lower East Side.  The financial struggles that they faced consumed their lives in America.  A family with parents who lived charmed lives in Russia move their four daughters to the United States and realize that the American Dream is no easy task to live in the 1920’s.  The Smolinsky family consists of Reb, Shena, Sara, Bessie, Mashah, and Fania.  Reb is the father, an out of work Orthodox rabbi and also the head of the Smolinsky household.  Shena is the mother who is in awe of her husband’s holiness but whose life in America is filled with heartache because of the poverty that they face.  A woman who had it all in Russia now was forced into begging for money, doing any job that came her family’s way and hardly eating.  Sara is the youngest daughter who is the only member of the family who after much hard work and criticism achieves some semblance of a normal American life.  Sara’s sisters all had arranged marriages and went on living discontented lives in America.

 Sara Smolinsky tells her family’s story of struggles, the hardships that filled each day and the desires they all had for a wealthy American life.  As immigrants who moved to America, they only watched others live the life that they came to America for.  In Sara’s opinion, Mashah was the sister who could assimilate the most to the American lifestyle.  She worked only when she had to and would give up eating to buy  inexpensive beauty products and clothes.  To Mashah, living in America meant trying to fit in with what Americans cherished.  At this time American consumerism was very popular and Mashah would use the little money she had to replicate the products Americans were buying.

“Her clothes were always so new and fresh, without the least little wrinkle, like the dressed-up doll lady from the show window of the greatest department store.” (p.4)  This is how Sara would describe the clothes that Mashah owned.  Mashah had to skip meals to afford the beauty products and clothes she purchased.  She was using all of her inner power to try to look American by making her outer appearance look well off.  People living the American Dream did not have to starve themselves to purchase the items they desired.  As an immigrant, luxuries were hard to come by so sacrifices had to made if they wanted to look like an American consumer. 

“And from that day, the sight of her toothbrush on the shelf and her white, fancy towel by itself on the wall was like a sign to us all, that Mashah had no heart, no feelings, that millionaire things willed themselves in her empty head while, the rest of us were wearing out our brains for only a bite in the mouth.” (p.6)  Mashah saved her food money so she could purchase a toothbrush and a wash towel while the rest of her family used their money on food.  Mashah bought products that Americans took for granted and that were part of their daily lives.  In the Smolinsky family the only way to buy unnecessary items was by not eating.  Mashah again showed the sacrifices she made in her life to feel more like an American.  If she was living the American Dream, she would have been able to buy the finest merchandise for herself and still be able to eat.

Mamma Smolinsky was explaining to Mashah that America does not have as beautiful things as they had at home in Russia.  Mashah answered her by saying, “If you only had the money to go to Fifth Avenue you’d see the grand things you could buy.” (p.33) Mashah was explaining that their family just did not have the means to buy the products Americans could afford from fancy stores.  If they had money in America then their lives would have been much different and much more grand.

Starting a new life in America was truly a difficult task for immigrants.  They came with hopes and dreams for a life full of riches and were usually disappointed when they realized that life will never exist.  They worked long hours at tiring jobs just to put food on their tables and pay rent.  They tried to imitate the lives that Americans were living by purchasing cheap versions of the products Americans consumed in hopes of one day being able to buy the expensive luxurious products.  For most, that day never came and they realized that they had lived their entire lives trying to imitate Americans,  wondering when they too would reach the American Dream that they had seen and heard so much about.