The
huge numbers of unemployed youth of the 1930s underscored
several fears adults had for society. Conservatives saw
disgruntled young people as a fertile ground for revolutionary
politics while liberals mourned the disillusionment and
apathy spreading among American youth. Educators feared
that without some type of financial aid, colleges would
suffer irreversible damage. ER worried that long-term
unemployment
and borderline poverty would undermine young Americans'
faith in democracy. She told the New York Times
that "I live in real terror when I think we may be losing
this generation. We have got to bring these young people
into the active life of the community and make them feel
that they are necessary." (1)
ER, working closely with educators and relief officials,
pushed FDR to address
this problem. Although at first FDR did not want to develop
programs for young people, this lobbying effort changed
his mind. In June 1935, he signed an executive order establishing
the National Youth Administration (NYA), a New Deal program
designed specifically to address the problem of unemployment
among Depression-era
youth.
The
NYA sought to cope with this problem in two ways. First,
the administration provided grants to high school and college
students in exchange for work. This allowed young people
to continue studying while at the same time preventing
the pool of unemployed youth from getting any larger.
Second,
for those young people who were both unemployed and not
in school, the NYA aimed to combine economic relief with
on-the-job training in federally funded work projects designed
to provide youth with marketable skills for the future.
The latter was, by far, the more challenging
of the NYA's tasks, and by 1937 the project had provoked
some criticism for failing to provide adequate funding
for
job training. As a result, the administration shifted its
emphasis to skills development in late 1937, the same
year
that it launched a special program of assistance for African
Americans headed by Mary McLeod
Bethune.
ER became the NYA's most public champion, often visiting
NYA centers and praising its activities in her column. She
took such joy in the program that when she discussed it
in her autobiography, she took the rare step of taking credit
for its creation. As she told her readers, "One of the ideas
I agreed to present to Franklin was that of setting up a
national youth administration. . . . It was one of the occasions
on which I was very proud that the right thing was done
regardless of political consequences."
(2)
The NYA's priorities shifted once again in 1939 as unemployment
began to wane and war gradually approached. For the next
four years, the NYA emphasized skills training in defense-related
industries. Despite the NYA's success, as wartime spending
increased, Congress refused to continue funding the program
and abolished the NYA in 1943.
Notes:
- New York Times, May 7, 1934
quoted in Casting Her Own Shadow.
- Roosevelt, Eleanor This I Remember,New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1949, 162-163.
Sources:
Black, Allida. Casting Her Own Shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt
and the Shaping of Postwar Liberalism. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1996, 29-33.
Graham, Otis L., Jr., and Meghan Robinson Wander. Franklin
D. Roosevelt, His Life and Times. New York: Da
Capo Press, 1985, 278-280.