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Demonstration by Unemployed, 1932
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Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal owed its significance to the severity of the
Great Depression,
a cataclysmic economic disaster that struck especially hard at America's large industrial cities. At the nadir of the Depression, Chicago's
unemployed
numbered 700,000 people (fully 40 percent of the workforce). By 1932 the city's
relief
expenditures reached $35 million annually, an amount supplemented by an estimated $11 million in private donations—but these totals fell far short of the need. The federal programs made available to the city created desperately needed jobs for thousands of Chicagoans, improved the
infrastructure,
and bolstered the local Democratic
machine.
Outer Drive Bridge Dedication, 1937
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New Deal relief agencies like the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and the Social Security Administration provided desperately needed assistance for the aged, infirm, and unemployable. Federally funded
construction
projects put thousands of idle men and women to work and refashioned much of the cityscape: Works Progress Administration (WPA) and
Public Works
Administration expenditures resulted in the completion of Lake Shore Drive from Foster Avenue to Jackson Park, including the Outer Drive Bridge, as well as the State Street Subway. Federal government funds provided for the building of 30 new
schools
and the city's first
public housing
projects. New Deal labor enlarged the city's antiquated municipal airport, landscaped acres of new parkland, resurfaced roads, and repaired sewers. The Home Owners Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration provided emergency loans and underwrote mortgages so that increasing numbers of the middle and working classes could enjoy the benefits of homeownership. The WPA's Federal Project One provided jobs for unemployed
artists,
actors, musicians, and writers who met the criteria for relief.
Dinner with Mayor Edward J. Kelly, 1938
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Contrary to the belief that the New Deal helped to eliminate big-city political machines in America, much the opposite occurred in Chicago. Edward J. Kelly, who served as mayor from 1933 to 1947, immediately established himself as a fervent New Dealer who never missed an opportunity to remind voters of all the largesse secured by the city because of his good standing with the
Democratic
administration in Washington. Roosevelt overlooked the graft and electoral irregularities rampant in the Cook County Democratic organization while Chicago turned out massive vote majorities for the president every four years. The New Deal's primary contribution to the Democratic machine lay in the financial windfall it provided for Kelly's administration during the hazardous Depression years. Using federal money for care of the indigent and unemployed, Kelly avoided having to cut city services or, most important,
patronage
rolls. At a time when a discredited
Republican Party
could threaten the Democratic machine only in the case of the city's fiscal collapse, New Deal beneficence assured Chicago's solvency. With New Deal programs aiding an unprecedented number of
African Americans
and because of the Roosevelt administration's comparatively liberal record on race, Chicago's black voters (who also found much to admire in Mayor Kelly's record) switched allegiances from the Republican to the
Democratic Party.
Roger Biles
Bibliography
Biles, Roger. “Edward J. Kelly: New Deal Machine Builder.” In
The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition,
ed. Paul M. Green and Melvin G. Holli, 1987.
Biles, Roger.
Big City Boss in Depression and War: Mayor Edward J. Kelly of Chicago.
1984.
Cohen, Lizabeth.
Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939.
1990.
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