ABSTRACT
The New Deal, Tomasky tells, “engaged and ennobled people.” It gave Social Security, jobs programs, rural electrification and federal mortgage insurance. Edwin Amenta argues that the Townsend movement was responsible indirectly for the success of social security in part because politicians could point to the latter as a fiscally conservative alternative to the more generous and radical Townsend Plan. African Americans were never denied the benefits of the social compact as such, but as others have made clear, they were effectively cut off from the benefits of the New Deal and the Fair Deal through occupational exclusions. While the New Deal provided cash relief for some women—mother’s pensions and widows’ allowances, for example —others were completely excluded. Public backlash against immigrant inclusion in the social compact is hardly unique to our own era. Similar ideas thread their way through the 1930s and 1940s.
