When President Franklin Roosevelt formed the National Youth Administration (NYA) in June 1935, he declared that it would address "the most pressing and immediate needs" of American young people. In this book Richard A. Reiman explores the various, and sometimes conflicting, ways in which the NYA planners and administrators defined those needs and attempted to answer them. As Reiman notes, the NYA was established to assist the millions of youth who, during the Depression years, were out of school, out of work, and ineligible for the New Deal's own Civilian Conservation Corps. Contrary to popular belief, he argues, New Dealers did not envision the NYA primarily as a "junior WPA," a trigger for civil rights reform, or a springboard for the careers of liberal administrators. Rather, its designers saw it as a reform agency that would advance and protect democracy by countering totalitarian appeals to young people and by equalizing educational opportunities for rich and poor. Woven into the successive drafts establishing the NYA, these twin purposes united the programs of planners as disparate as Aubrey W. Williams, Mary McLeod Bethune, John Studebaker, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Taussig, and FDR himself. Like their separate agendas, Reiman shows, the planners' shared concerns for democratic values were the products of thinking that had arisen during the Progressive Era - a time when an awareness of the social effects of child development first occurred. During the 1930s, fears of fascism and totalitarianism added fuel to these concerns and shaped much of the nature of the NYA's prewar appeal. Based on a wide range of sources, including NYA-related documents at the National Archives and at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, The New Deal and American Youth is the first full-length study of this important agency. By showing how the NYA served as an instrument for realizing so many New Deal ambitions, it offers rich insights into both the NYA and the New Deal.

When President Franklin Roosevelt formed the National Youth Administration (NYA) in June 1935, he declared that it would address "the most pressing and immediate needs" of American young people. In this book Richard A. Reiman explores the various, and sometimes conflicting, ways in which the NYA planners and administrators defined those needs and attempted to answer them. As Reiman notes, the NYA was established to assist the millions of youth who, during the Depression years, were out of school, out of work, and ineligible for the New Deal's own Civilian Conservation Corps. Contrary to popular belief, he argues, New Dealers did not envision the NYA primarily as a "junior WPA", a trigger for civil rights reform, or a springboard for the careers of liberal administrators. Rather, its designers saw it as a reform agency that would advance and protect democracy by countering totalitarian appeals to young people and by equalizing educational opportunities for rich and poor. Woven into the successive drafts establishing the NYA, these twin purposes united the programs of planners as disparate as Aubrey W. Williams, Mary McLeod Bethune, John Studebaker, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Taussig, and FDR himself. Like their separate agendas, Reiman shows, the planners' shared concerns for democratic values were the products of thinking that had arisen during the Progressive Era - a time when an awareness of the social effects of child development first occurred. During the 1930s, fears of fascism and totalitarianism added fuel to these concerns and shaped much of the nature of the NYA's prewar appeal. Based on a wide range of sources, including NYA-related documents at the National Archives and atthe Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, The New Deal and American Youth is the first full-length study of this important agency. By showing how the NYA served as an instrument for realizing so many New Deal ambitions, it offers rich insights into both the NYA and the New Deal.

Discusses America on the brink of economic disaster and how Franklin Roosevelt promised a new deal for America.

ultimately elevating public opinion of his administration but falling flat in achieving the economic revitalization that America so desperately needed from the Great Depression. Folsom takes a critical, revisionist look at Roosevelt's presidency, his economic policies, and his personal life. Elected in 1932 on a buoyant tide of promises to balance the increasingly uncontrollable national budget and reduce the catastrophic unemployment rate, the charismatic thirty-second president not only neglected to pursue those goals, he made dramatic changes to federal programming that directly contradicted his campaign promises. Price fixing, court packing, regressive taxes, and patronism were all hidden inside the alphabet soup of his popular New Deal, putting a financial strain on the already suffering lower classes and discouraging the upper classes from taking business risks that potentially could have jostled national cash flow from dormancy.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.