[Pen-l] The New Deal versus Black-Connery 30-hour bill

[Sandwichman <lumpoflabor@xxxxxxxxx>]

 Benjamin Hunnicutt, Work Without End, pp.248-49:

"In a letter to Arthur Schlesinger dated April 9, 1958, Leon
Keyserling stressed that Roosevelt came to Washington without a
"systematic economic program." The "highly experimental, improvised
and inconsistent" programs of the first New Deal defy categorization.
They were the products of "schools of reformers" that had been
promoting diverse programs that Roosevelt, higgledy-piggledy, picked
up. According to Keyserling, the PWA, CWA, NIRA, and the rest were not
parts of any systematic plan or overall purpose. The only coherence
given these events came from outside the administration. It was the
"desire to get rid of the Black bill" that prompted the administration
to draw up such things as the NRA, "to put in something to satisfy
labor." This same point was made by other notables in Roosevelt's
administration, among them Raymond Moley.

"Throughout the depression, 30-hour legislation goaded Roosevelt to
action. The Black-Connery bill, introduced in each depression Congress
until passed in highly modified form as the Fair Labor Standards Act
[FLSA] in 1938, with all the work-sharing teeth pulled, continued to
function as a sort of reverse polestar, enabling Roosevelt to chart
his course by the simple expedient of sailing in the opposite
direction. Roosevelt's instinctive reaction against 30 hours matured
to positive approaches to industrial stabilization and reemployment.
They were built on work creation, not work spreading, founded on
industrial growth and increased spending as the wellsprings of
progress. In the process, he and his administration discarded the
century-old notion that work reduction had the potential for social
and individual advancement.

"From the point of view of someone like Representative William
Connery, who pushed for 30 hours from 1932 to 1937, the New Deal had a
coherence, a reason for happening when and as it did, that was lost on
others not so positioned. From Connery's perspective, the New Deal was
what it was because of its opposition to 30 hours."





-- 
Sandwichman
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