Andrew S.

Terrell
Spring 2010

Précis: Smith, Jason Scott. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Jason Scott Smith aimed to reexamine the New Deal era in his monograph, Building New

Deal Liberalism. He accomplished this by approaching the era through the political economy of

the 1930s through the first administration of Eisenhower. The term “political economy” is often

misunderstood or co-opted into the general field of economics. However, Smith poignantly

portrayed how economics--in this case, public works projects--was inseparable from politics

thereby justifying his new methodical approach to the New Deal. Smith also tackled gender and

racial issues by providing evidence that the American welfare state’s expansion during the two

decades covered created larger boundaries between minorities and women, and economic

livelihood. New Dealers, according to Smith, focused on construction and trade so much that

they ended up subsidizing a rising economic sector that discriminated against African Americans

and women while expanding white male employment; he agreed with Susan Ware’s influential

monograph Beyond Suffrage, that showed how women’s movements since 1910 lost the ear of

FDR when his chief of staff, Louis Howe, died in 1936.

Smith was also careful to show both sides of the racial question (and the inherent political

feasibility limitations) in politics when examining the quota system for the PWA in addition to

how it was among the first systemized efforts to reshape the labor market. Nonetheless, the race

riots in the 1940s, and housing discrimination in the postwar period depicted the reality of

politics and race; racial concerns were not integrated in “New Deal liberalism.” Smith asserts

that many of these moments of shortsightedness were due to the voting public demographics, and

their subsequent concerns over employment and economic prosperity.

Andrew S. Terrell
Spring 2010

In the post WWII era, Smith asserts that programs from the former WPA created a

national market that was part of the economic “boom” in the 1950s. In Smith’s mind, the

interstate highway construction, airport network, and other large projects were products of New

Dealers who sought to continue public works projects. These examples further defended Smith’s

choice to study the political economy New Dealers oversaw and legislated.

Smith’s contributions to New Deal scholarship are two fold: first, by approaching public

works efforts as successful economic developments from the State rather than utter economic

failures, he counters the consensus that much of the New Deal legislation failed to alleviate the

largest problem of the country, unemployment. Furthermore, his approach to the era solidifies

and exemplifies political history’s multidisciplinary credence in academia. Smith uses political,

economical, and social studies in creating his narrative. The culmination of his diligent effort to

draw on several disciplines and sources is a pivotal, trendsetting work on our image of New Deal

public works successes.

Smith noted that the Hatch Act revealed the unpopularity of public works programs and

was used by the conservative coalition in hopes of “rolling back” the welfare state. Were the

limitations created by the Hatch Act meant to be longterm? Surely the conservative coalition

knew the Supreme Court would see it as an impediment of free speech. Additionally, Smith

seemed to approach the WPA and National Defense section from the mindset that the impending

war in Europe was reason enough to keep the WPA. Was the looming threat of war, however,

conveniently used by political defenders of the WPA in order to keep the WPA around into the

1940s in hopes of expansion into and beyond the war years? In essence, was the war a last ditch

effort to defend the existence of the WPA?