The Failure of the American Dream

Vulcan Historical Review Vulcan Historical Review

Volume 23 Article 10

2019

The Failure of the American Dream The Failure of the American Dream

William Winner

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THE FAILURE OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

by William Winner

he New World facilitated economic opportunity,

security, and independence. The adventurous

settlers of Jamestown and Roanoke instilled these

qualities into their daily lives with the aim of financial

gain while the Pilgrims of Plymouth yearned for

the relief these qualities oered from religious

persecution. Unknowingly, these early European

explorers and settlers set the groundwork for the

American Dream: the idea that anyone can work their

way toward success in the New World; specifically,

parents will provide their children a higher standard of

living than they had as children.

Through the ebb and

flow, boom and bust, and pro et contra of economic

prosperity, North America oered many, but not

all, of its inhabitants a generally positive economic

outlook. The American Dream provided the citizens

of the English Colonies, and eventually the United

States, with an everlasting hope in economic stability

and upward mobility. While many of the nation’s

inhabitants, particularly within the nation’s Black,

Latinx, and Native American communities, struggle

to achieve the economic and social prosperity that

the American Dream oers, this optimism remains

ever present. For over 400 years, this auspicious

promise drove the population to strive for personal

and economic aluence, until the Great Depression

solidified the notion that this perceived potential

prosperity would remain just a dream without a radical

shift in the population’s view of the American Dream.

For most of the population, the American Dream

remained an elusive idea devoid of any substantial

realized fortune. The country's citizens demanded

something more tangible than optimism and hope:

concrete programs that insulated the nation against

the economic disaster that besieged most of the

world. During his inaugural address on March 4, 1933,

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt summarized

the nation’s longing for legislation that would “apply

social values more noble than mere monetary profit.”

Thus, the economic collapse of the Great Depression

and ultimately the failure of the American Dream

represented the impetus for the rise of the social

state and the eventual realization that the American

Dream was never obtainable for every citizen of the

United States.

The economic prosperity of the American Colonies

utilized a unique collection of self-governance and

an abundance of natural resources in creating the

mythos of the American Dream. Famed 18th century

economist Adam Smith wrote in his 1776 book,

Wealth of Nations, “There are no colonies [in the

world for] which the progress [of economic stability]

has been more rapid than that of the English in

North America. Plenty of good land, and liberty to

manage their own aairs their own way, seem to be

the two great causes of the prosperity of all new

colonies.”

Smith’s assertion that the English colonies

in North American rapidly established economic

solvency directly correlates with the development of

People arriving at Ellis Island

the American Dream and the possibility of upward

mobility in society that much of the world lacked.

In a fortuitous fluke of historical timing, the start

of the American Revolutionary War preceded the

publication of Smith’s Wealth of Nation by almost

an entire year. The writers of the Declaration of

Independence codified the very principle that Smith

mentioned as the catalyst for the nation’s prosperity

—liberty – in the document’s preamble. The pursuit

of life, liberty, and happiness became engrained in

the ethos of the United States and, eventually these

simple words transformed into the American Dream.

The unprecedented rise from abject poverty towards

absolute wealth and fame of American figures

like Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, John D.

Rockefeller, and P.T. Barnum represented the ultimate

goal of the American Dream; with hard work, cunning

intellect, and perseverance anyone can reach the

apex of society and economic prosperity. The ever-

present allure of the American success story hung

over the U.S. population, taunting them with rags to

riches tales, further embedding the American Dream

in the nation’s consciousness.

While the American Dream proves a concept fully

embraced by most, a tangible form of a concept so

abstract remains elusive. The American Dream is

more diverse than acknowledged yet carries some

ubiquitous themes. The multitude of variations of

the American Dream all maintain three fundamental

elements: obtaining economic security, having an

opportunity for upward social mobility, and having

access to both life’s necessities as well as its luxuries.

James Truslow Adams coined the term “American

Dream” in his 1931 bestseller The Epic of American.

Adams called the American Dream a “dream of a

better, richer and happier life for all our citizens of

every rank.”

Often, the majority of the population

never obtained, nor remotely realized, the Dream, but

the tantalizing potential is there, and at its core, this

is the American Dream – hope. From the inception

of the American Colonies through the creation of the

United States of America and beyond, the goal of

reaching a comfortable lifestyle through perseverance

and hard work has entrenched the population with the

American Dream.

Universally, the economic status of any population

can be divided into the haves and the have-nots,

with multiple levels between. Generally, individuals

do not drastically change their economic status, nor

is there an expectation for this change. Following

the industrial revolution, the United States’ upward

mobility coecient hovered around the 35% mark,

from 1870 to 1920.

Having an inverse-correlation,

this coecient is the relationship between a parent’s

wealth, or poverty, and how that economic status

is expected to directly aect the ospring’s income

when compared to the nation’s mean income.

Thus,

for every $1 of economic advantage or disadvantage

a parent collects, compared to the mean, a child in

the late 19th century is expected to receive $.35 in

income gains or reduction.

This coecient for the

era in United States’ history the spurred the mythical

“land of opportunity” and the American Dream

seems incredibly close to the world’s current average

economic mobility, 40%.

A select few citizens

achieved the upward mobility in the American Dream

–including Franklin, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Barnum–

but the majority of the population toiled their lifetime

"The unprecedented rise

from abject poverty

towards absolute wealth

and fame of American

figures like Benjamin

Franklin, Andrew Carnegie,

John D. Rockefeller, and

P.T. Barnum represented

the ultimate goal of the

American Dream."

in the economic level of their birth. To this point, the

nation’s average economic elasticity nearly doubled,

from 35% to 49%, during the early 1900s, a period

preceded by two massive influxes of immigrants into

the country.

Interestingly, this period should have

witnessed an explosion in upward mobility, a lower

coecient or percentage, because “the children

of immigrants are … able to climb the social [and

economic] ladder most rapidly.”

The decreased

mobility in a period that should have witnessed a

boon in economic mobility stands in stark contrast to

James Truslow Adams’ American Dream.

The American Dream provided the United States’

population with an ambitious drive for economic

success that aided the nation’s development

and expansion into the world’s leadership in

manufacturing. At the end of the 19th century,

the United States reached the pinnacle as the

world’s largest and most powerful economy. The

country’s economic and political elite strived for

the conservation of their personal status quo,

the continuation of the nation’s prosperity, and

the prevention of economic calamity, a feat that

eventually proved both fleeting and disastrous for

the nation and the world. These failed eorts to

control the nation’s economic machine combined with

multiple political debacles to create a global financial

disaster. Eventually, The Great Depression shifted

the public’s attitude towards the American Dream,

highlighting many of the Dream’s failings.

The precipitating events of the Great Depression

begin with the Industrial Revolution and the

economic shift from an agrarian society towards a

manufacturing and consumption-based economy,

or, the shift from a largely rural nation toward

increased urbanization. Founding Father Thomas

Jeerson envisioned a vast population of yeoman

farmers providing the nation with a wealth of small

independent farmers, which would distribute the

nation’s wealth across its citizens and prevent the

large accumulation of wealth that perpetuated

Europe’s aristocracy. In a letter to John Jay, Jeerson

expressed what he saw as the young nation’s need for

small farming society:

We have now lands (sic) enough to employ

an infinite number of people in their [the

land’s] cultivation. Cultivators of the earth

are the most valuable citizens. They are the

most vigorous, the most independant (sic),

the most virtuous, and they are tied to their

country and wedded to its (sic) liberty and

interests by the most lasting bands.

Jeerson’s desire for small independent farmers

and skilled craftsmen, “yeomen of the city,” serving

as the backbone of the nation fit the 18th and early

19th centuries perfectly, until the Industrial Revolution

transformed the economic and social dynamic of

the United States.

The mass migration towards

manufacturing jobs in the nation’s metropolitan

centers during the mid-1900s challenged Jeerson’s

plan for the nation, reducing the number of rural

farmers and skilled craftsmen while increasing the

prevalence of unskilled labor in cities and pooling

the nation’s wealth and power into the hands of a

decreasing number of citizens, and their companies.

The explosion of large companies represented

a fundamental shift towards large corporate

entities and, subsequently, the federal government

acquiescing to their demands. Alan Trachtenberg

labeled this “The incorporation of America.”

Jeerson Cowie identifies Trachtenberg’s argument

as the explanation for the shift in political and judicial

opinions that corporations are individuals and are

therefore due the protection of the 14th amendment.

This period of the “centralization of economic power

in what had, not too long ago, been a small producers’

democracy, led many to see the era [in] dramatic

terms” which Mark Twain coined as the “Gilded Age”

because of the era’s “superficial ornamentation

[that] hid a rotten core of scheming patronage and

political profiteering.”

The “Gilded Age” promised economic prosperity

that fueled massive waves of immigration into the

United States during the late 19th and early 20th

century. Additionally, the rotten core of profiteering

encouraged the mass exploitation of the nation’s

unskilled workforce. Wage suppression and worker

abuse provided the impetus for rampant labor

unrest which politicians and the judiciary stifled

throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s.

With

the government suppressing unions by legislation,

court ruling, and even military force, labor leaders like

Sam Gompers and Eugene Debs worked tirelessly

toward garnering a cohesive vision for the members

of their unions. They advocated for greater economic

solvency while never fully welcoming every potential

member into their unions, typically excluding members

upon overt racial and ethnic discrimination reasons.

The collective living condition of the unskilled worker

remained stagnant with little hope of rising from

perpetual poverty, but the continuing infusion of

millions of unskilled workers from Europe and Asia

produced widespread discrimination and further

unrest.

The concentration of power in a decreasing number

of people alienated the United States’ working

class, divorcing them from any of the independence

and political power they experienced before the

industrial revolution.

The explosion of unskilled

workers shifted the focus of employment, from the

end-in-itself that skilled craftsmanship provided

toward simply a means of production, thus removing

the self-serving satisfaction in craft production.

Organized labor countered these forces and oered

the lonely worker the power that the government,

courts, and corporations removed through years of

worker suppression tactics. The Knights of Labor, an

early and eective labor union, openly decried the

great capitalists and corporations that degraded the

“toiling masses.”

Organizations like the Knights of

Labor recognized the inherent flaws in the American

Dream and advocated for ambitious remedies that

aided the working class, but much of the intended

measure missed huge portions of the population.

African Americans have been, and often still are,

excluded from the American Dream. Being a slave and

achieving the American Dream are mutually exclusive.

Slaves desired being released from bondage and

that is not the same as striving for upward social

mobility or economic security. Wanting your child to

not be beaten and sold as property is not the same

as desiring a higher standard of living for them. The

relationship between African Americans and the

American Dream changed after the Emancipation

Proclamation and the Civil War. Freedom opened the

American Dream to the African American population,

albeit with limited access. Former slaves began

recognizing the benefits within the American Dream

and the potential it oered their children. Specifically,

the increased opportunity for education and steady

wages.

Slavery will forever be a blight on the United States’

history until the end of time itself. The cruelty and

longevity of the United States’ system of slavery

warrants this continued scornful reminiscence. The

abhorrent treatment of African Americans only

highlights the overall racist history of the United

"However, the American

Dream persisted. Millions

of immigrants poured into

the United States’ cities

believing they could

achieve the American

Dream with hard work.

Furthermore, upward

‘mobility and growth were...

real in the United States

to a greater extent than

they were in the other

countries.’”

States’ and its white Christian population. This

history, along with the limitations that slavery placed

upon African Americans, cannot be overstated.

Labor Unions recognized the flaws in the American

Dream but perpetuated the racial discrimination

that the nation’s minorities experienced. For Native

Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans,

Eastern Europeans, and others, the American Dream

was either never oered or they never even knew

it existed. Even James Truslow Adams realized the

imperfect implementation of the American Dream in

the United States.

Before the Great Depression, an

increasing number of people understood the inherent

limitations within the American Dream and actively

worked to expand workers’ rights across the United

States, but millions would be excluded from the

nation’s unified optimism.

However, the American Dream persisted. Millions

of immigrants poured into the United States’ cities

believing they could achieve the American Dream with

hard work; furthermore, upward “mobility and growth

were … real in the United States to a greater extent

than they were in the other countries,” especially

the countries of their origin.

The explosion of the

nation’s population coincided with consistent growth

in economic productivity, but the economic boom

of the “Glided Age” waned during relatively short-

lived recessions of the 1890s and 1900s; the boom

returned, thus, ever perpetuating the mythos of the

American Dream: success and prosperity are within

reach.

The United States cornered the world’s industrial

market by the mid-1920s setting the stage for a

global disaster following the stock market crash of

1929. The economic collapse reached a dizzying

array of industries and families across the United

States and the world. The disaster did not spare

any segment of the economy. Five thousand of the

nation’s banks closed which “eliminated $7 billion of

depositors’ assets” and forced hundreds of thousands

of home foreclosures.

Farmers received an extra dose

of punishment from the Great Depression: crippling

debt, plummeting prices, and a severe drought that

compounded and resulted in the near collapse of the

United States’ farming industry.

The failure of the

nation’s economy resulted in half of its gross national

product withering away like the drought stricken fields

of the “Dust Bowl”.

As the Great Depression reached

its crescendo, the strong willed and independent U.S.

population looked inward toward “declarations of self-

blame, guilt, doubt, and despair,” never fathoming

that their plight was the result of events well beyond

their control or collective imaginations.

New Deal-

era politician Harry Hopkins summarized the Great

Depression as being “beyond ‘the natural limits of

personal imagination and sympathy’” where “[y]ou

can pity six men, but you can’t keep stirred up over

six million” people.”

As the nation dove into the

depths of economic ruin, the nation’s citizens yearned

for something or someone to do something. Political

leaders proved inept in the country’s greatest moment

of need and the population knew the calamity

required a change, both politically and socially. The

American Dream failed; a person could not simply

work themselves towards prosperity, no matter how

hard they worked and how dedicated they remained,

and surly not when six million other people struggled

from the same destitute conditions.

The nation’s collective despair generated a shift

from personal responsibility towards a unified desire

for the greater good. Progressive reformers seized

this shift in economic ideology and refocused the

political landscape towards increasingly liberal

social programs. Franklin D. Roosevelt won the

presidency in 1933, based on a platform of social

welfare programs that the populist believed would

remedy the nation’s economy. Roosevelt, during

one of his regularly broadcasted Fireside Chats,

recognized that the nation had progressed from

the “individual self-interest and group selfishness”

towards a collective more focused on the welfare of

the entire nation.

President Roosevelt described

how he needed experiences away from Washington

so he could “get away from the trees… and look at

the whole forest.”

Roosevelt implied that the nation

Waiting for relief checks during Great Depression.

started recognizing the collective over the individual,

a feat necessary for the growth and recovery of the

nation. The implementation of the social welfare

programs began the refocus and regeneration of an

obtainable American Dream. He commented on the

growing interest for the greater good by noting that

an increasing number of people are “considering the

whole rather than a mere part relating to one section,

or to one crop, or to one industry, or to an individual

private occupation”

Roosevelt called for legislative

provisions that reduced unemployment and provided

“practical means to help those who are unemployed;”

the Social Security Act of 1935 and the New Deal

developed as the nation’s political answer for the

Great Depression.

The Social Security Act developed from a collection

of modest state and local programs designed as

aid for the “indigent old, the blind, and dependent

children.”

Roosevelt wanted “to ensure that [all]

Americans would be protected in good times and

bad,” not only the citizens in the limited number of

municipalities that provided welfare assistance, which

were routinely underfunded.

Roosevelt called the

Social Security Act the “cornerstone in a structure”

designed to “provide a measure of protection…

against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden

old age.”

Following the creation of the Social Security

Act, the Social Security Administration entered

an extensive information gathering phase where it

discovered the nation’s elderly survived in conditions

resembling Roosevelt’s predicted poverty-ridden

existence.

A Social Security publication quantified

the elderly’s state of near destitution, describing

that over three-quarters – six million– of the

nation’s aged lived “wholly or partially dependent

on [their] children, other relatives, or friends” and

over one million subsisted “wholly or partially” on the

support of private or public social agencies.

The

nation’s population lived under a financial “sword

of Damocles,” economic disaster being all but

guaranteed by premature spousal death, catastrophic

injury, or the gradual decline into old age for all

but the richest.

The wage insurance in the Social

Security Act oered protection of these damning

eventualities.

Roosevelt appealed to the nation’s

changing vision of the American Dream and actively

lobbied for many of the elements that tied the

population to the Social Security Act; “[w]e put [the]

payroll contributions,” in the act, Roosevelt said, “so

as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political

right to collect their pension and unemployment

benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician

can ever scrap my social security program.”

Historically, politicians in Washington, D.C.

passionately held the view that an individual’s

“unalienable Right” to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit

of Happiness” could not be infringed upon, as long as

that pursuit did not infringe upon some else’s pursuit

of the same.

Many notable New Deal agencies

completely changed this status que in the nation’s

capital. Progressive politicians seized upon the

public’s clamoring for policies aimed at protecting

workers and expanding their right to join together in

unions. The National Labor Standards Act (NLSA),

commonly referred to as the Wagner Act, after the

legislation’s author Senator Robert Wagner, codified

unions’ rights under the protection of the 14th

amendment. Wagner confessed about the prodigious

movement in national opinion necessary for enacting

reforms for organized labor; reminding John L. Lewis,

the mineworkers’ union leader, that “the time is

ripe” to advance union rights and not the historical

political “suicide” from years past.

The passage of

the Wagner Act provided real equality between the

nation’s corporations and unions, but the nation’s

minorities experienced no such equality.

As the collective consciousness of the United States

sought ever increasing progressive programs and

political leaders, outright racism and discrimination

endured throughout much of the nation and in the

very agencies designed from the increasing liberal

ideals of the nation.

The population yearned for

a greater opportunity to achieve the American

Dream, but not at the expense of racial equality.

Knowingly or not, the language of the New Deal

created a pervasive culture of racial inequality; the

Social Security Act of 1935 excluded “domestic and

migrant” workers from participating in the program,

which disproportionally aected the minority

population of the country.

To a small degree this

changed in the 1950s, when the Social Security

Act was expanded to included agricultural workers,

allowing millions of the nation’s minority workers

participation in the Social Security program.

The

United States’ citizenry in the early 1930s gathered a

unified vision for an increasingly equitable economic

system which, combined the slow passage of time

with the success of the Social State, ushered in

greater social, political, and economic advances than

anyone ever imagined.

The Great Depression and the failure of the

American Dream share existence. The economic

disaster illuminated the fundamental flaw in the

eternal optimism that permeated the United States’

psyche; neither hard-work nor perseverance could

remedy the individual or nation’s economic woes.

By repeated romanticized storytelling, the American

Dream developed a cult-like following, perpetuating

the myth that anyone can be an economic

success. The intrinsic optimism of the American

Dream contradicts the natural order of the world’s

socioeconomic structure. The hope, faith, and wish-

fullness that a lowly peasant can game the economic

structure of the world is asinine. Everyone on Earth,

unknowingly, participates in a genetic lottery: the

winners are born into wealth and the unlucky are

tasked to toil in a merger existence; the United States’

population is not exempt from this inevitability. Herein

lays the American Dream, there is a chance.

For over 400 years, the belief that anyone can

pull themselves out of the lowest depths of the

country’s economic system by their bootstraps fooled

an entire nation; that is until the Great Depression

wiped away much of the United States’ economic

production and created roving bands of vagabonds

that wandered the nation looking for an opportunity,

a chance for success. Then, the masses gathered

their collective voices and sought a thing more real,

actually tangible, and genuinely obtainable than

optimistic hope. By joining hands and demanding

socioeconomic programs designed to aid the poor

and, eventually, the disenfranchised, the people of

the United States achieved a more unified prosperity,

but never complete unity, that led mankind into the

21st century. The American Dream did not die during

the Great Depression, it merely transformed: from

needing a fortunate stroke of economic luck to reach

financial security – into an alliance between the social

welfare state, with strong eective social programs,

and hard work for a substantial opportunity to reach

a successful and secure economic future; and a

little luck never hurts. But, after years of success,

the social programs in the United States created

a burgeoning middle-class that is obsessed with

the mythical American success story. This renewed

fetishization of the American Dream has distanced

them from the realization that a strong system of

social programs and a growing middle-class go hand

in hand.

1 Raj Chetty et al., "The Fading American Dream: Trends

in Absolute Income Mobility since 1940," Science.

sciencemag.org, April 28, 2017, accessed January 15,

2019, http://science.sciencemag.org.ezproxy3.lhl.uab.edu/

content/356/6336/398.

2 Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Inaugural Address," March 4,

1933. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The

American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.

edu/ws/?pid=14473.

3 Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of

the Wealth of Nations. Edited by S. M. Soares. MetaLibri

Digital Library, 29th May 2007. 442-43, https://www.

ibiblio.org/ml/libri/s/SmithA_WealthNations_p.pdf.

4 “Declaration of Independence,” Archives.gov, accessed

August 5, 2018, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/

declaration-transcript.

5 Matthew Wills, "James Truslow Adams: Dreaming up the

American Dream," JSTOR.Daily.org, May 18,

2015, accessed April 4, 2019, https://daily.jstor.org/james-

truslow-adams-dreaming-american-dream/.

6 Ibid.

7 Claudia Olivetti and M. Daniele Paserman. "In the Name

of the Son (and the Daughter): Intergenerational Mobility

in the United States, 1850-1940." The American Economic

Review 105, no. 8 (2015): 2695-724. http://www.jstor.org/

stable/43821353.

8 "A Broken Social Elevator? How to Promote Social

Mobility," OEDC.org, June 15, 2018, 26, accessed April 3,

2019, https://www.oecd.org/social/soc/Social-mobility-

2018-Overview-MainFindings.pdf.; In a perfect world,

a parent’s economic status will not aect the child’s

economic outcome, thus a 0% intergenerational elasticity.

Conversely, if a child’s income is completely linked to the

parent’s income, this will represent 100% intergenerational

elasticity. Both of these figures are the extreme scenario

and unobtainable.

9 Claudia Olivetti and M. Daniele Paserman, "In the Name

of the Son."

10 “A Broken Social Elevator?”; Across the 35 nations

of the Organisation (sic) for Economic Cooperation and

Development, the average intergeneration economic

mobility is 40%, meaning 40% of a parent’s economic

advantage or disadvantage will be passed on to the next

generation.

11 Claudia Olivetti and M. Daniele Paserman. "In the Name

of the Son."; Olivetti and Paserman cite the

United States as having two periods of substantial

immigration, during the 1880s and the largest wave

between 1900 and 1915.

12 Ibid.

13 There have been countless books, articles, and papers

written about the cause of the Great Depression and the

failure of politicians to thwart one of the largest and widest

reaching economic disasters in recorded history. This paper

will forgo an in-depth analysis of the Great Depression

and focus on the failure of the American Dream within the

constraints of the buildup to and beginning of the Great

Depression and how this changed the nation’s view of the

American Dream.

14 “From Thomas Jeerson to John Jay, 23 August

1785,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified

June 13, 2018, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/

Jeerson/01-08-02-0333. The spelling and sentence

structure are taken directly from Jeerson’s writing.

15 Jeerson Cowie, The Great Exception: The New Deal

& the Limits of American Politics (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2017), 41.

16 Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture

and Society in the Gilded Age (New York, NY: Hill and Wang,

1982), 3.

17 Cowie, Great Exception, 39.

18 Ibid, 38.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid, 56.

21 Ibid, 41.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 George Anderson. "LETTER FROM A FREEDMAN

TO HIS OLD MASTER. "Liberator (1831-1865),

September 1, 140. https://login.ezproxy3.lhl.uab.edu/

docview/91086854?accountid=8240.

25 Wills, James Truslow Adams.

26 Cowie, Great Exception, 60.

27 Ibid, 98.

28 Ibid.

29 The Dust Bowl is the commonly used name for the

manmade ecological disaster of the 1930s, centered

around the six states adjacent to the Oklahoma panhandle.

Preceded by an unusually wet period, which prompted

an expansion in the farming industry of the area. A long

and intense drought followed the creation of thousands

of acres of new farm land. The farming practices of the

era exacerbated the situation by removing the topsoil’s

protective layer of grasses, thus exposing the topsoil to

violent wind storms that eroded the soil and created a

barren landscape. Multiple attempts at combating the

disaster proved futile and relief arrived only after the

drought ended.

30 Ibid, 98.

31 Ibid.

32 Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Fireside Chat.," April 28, 1935.

Online by Gerhard Peters and John T.

Woolley, The American Presidency Project. Accessed May 4,

2018 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/

ws/?pid=15046.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 Nancy J. Altman and Eric R. Kingson, Social Security

Works!: Why Social Security Isn’t Going Broke and How

Expanding It Will Help us All (New York: New Press, 2015),

37 Ibid, 8.

38 Ibid, 9.

39 Ibid.

40 Marjorie Sharon, “Economic Status of the Aged,” March

1938. Social Security Administration accessed June 5,

2018, https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v1n1-3/v1n1-

3p5.pdf. This research dictated that anyone over the age of

65 would be counted as “aged.”

41 Altman and Kingson, Social Security Works!, xviii.

42 Ibid.

43 Cowie, Great Exception, 111.

44 “Declaration of Independence.”

45 Cowie, Great Exception, 109.

46 Many of the agencies created during the New Deal

excluded African Americans and other minorities from

receiving any assistance from the programs. Also, the

Southern States implemented harsher Jim Crow ordinances

that further disenfranchised African Americans.

47 Altman and Kingson, Social Security Works!,11.

48 Ibid, 168.