New Deal Hard Times Art (10/10): "Boy Artist at Transient Shelter"

Above: "Boy Artist at Transient Shelter," a lithograph by Elizabeth Olds (1896-1991), created while she was in the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project, 1934. How many children today sit in homeless shelters and dream of a better life? And how many realize, despite all the happy-talk to the contrary, that it's unlikely, because of the greed and selfishness of the American caste system? Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Nebraska State Historical Society.

As the super-rich keep hoarding wealth, evading taxes, and refusing to give American workers a significant raise, child homelessness remains a major problem in the United States. For example, in 2016 the U.S. Department of Housing and Human Services (DHHS) reported: "Homelessness is a reality for many families with young children in our country. In fact, infancy is the period of life when a person is at highest risk of living in a homeless shelter in the United States... Experiences of homelessness in early childhood are associated with poor early development and educational well-being" ("Early Childhood Homelessness in the United States: 50-State Profile," January 2016, available here).

Childhood homelessness occurs just about everywhere in America. In Kentucky, the DHHS report shows that 10.6% of children in Kentucky under the age of 6 experience homelessness. Meanwhile, "New York City remains in the midst of the worst crisis of homelessness since the Great Depression, with more than 62,000 men, women, and children sleeping in shelters each night. A chronic shortage of affordable housing and the potent combination of rising rents and stagnant wages have fueled a daunting and unabated 79 percent increase in the demand for shelter in the last decade... The City has made far too little progress for the 45,000 children staying in shelters each year. The number of children in shelters remains at record levels" ("State of the Homeless 2017," Coalition for the Homeless, available here).

The problem of child homelessness is so bad that it's developed its own lingo. For example, homeless high school students are sometimes referred to as "couch surfers or couch hoppers," because, lacking a permanent residency of their own, they stay at various shelters and friends' homes ("Number of homeless children and adults in America has increased," The Philadelphia Tribune, June 28, 2016).

How will our Republican federal government address child homelessness? Answer: They will give massive tax cuts to the super-rich. Not more affordable housing, not an increase in the earned income credit, not a public works program for the unemployed, but massive tax cuts... for the super-rich "job creators" who have failed so miserably at creating good-paying jobs. Republicans are working hard, for example, to repeal the estate tax (a tax paid only by the rich) so that even more dynastic wealth can be passed down from generation to generation. This will solidify America's developing caste system - those born into great wealth will live in great luxury and those born into poverty will remain in poverty, struggling all their lives with low wages and high debt (see, e.g., "Poor at 20, Poor for Life: A new study indicates that from the 1980s to the 2000s, it became less likely that a worker could move up the income ladder," The Atlantic, July 14, 2016).

In the Bible, Christ says we should avoid hoarding wealth and, instead, help the poor (see, e.g., Matthew 19: 20-24). But in America today, with the strong support of many evangelicals (who voted for Trump, a man who says, "I'm a very greedy person") we help the super-rich get richer and scold the poor - calling them "takers," "parasites," and "lazy good-for-nothings." And then, the political right (the group that facilitates most of this wealth-hoarding and name-calling) has the nerve to declare America "A Christian Nation!!"

Isn't that amazing? I mean... isn't that just jaw-dropping, eye-crossing, pull-your-hair-out amazing? Wow!

New Deal Hard Times Art (9/10): "Forgotten Man"

Above: "Forgotten Man," an oil painting by Gustav Berk, created while he was in a New Deal art program, probably either the Public Works of Art Project or the WPA's Federal Art Project, ca. 1934-1935. Not much is known about Berk, but according to the Nebraska State Historical Society, he was born in Germany and lived from about 1871-1937. He had a wife named Margaret and two children, so it's possible he has descendants living today - descendants who might not even be aware that he painted "Forgotten Man," an artwork based on one of Franklin Roosevelt's speeches. Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Nebraska State Historical Society.

On April 7, 1932, in his Radio Address From Albany, New York: "The 'Forgotten Man' Speech", Franklin Roosevelt said: "In my calm judgment, the Nation faces today a more grave emergency than in 1917. It is said that Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo because he forgot his infantry - he staked too much upon the more spectacular but less substantial cavalry. The present administration in Washington provides a close parallel. It has either forgotten or it does not want to remember the infantry of our economic army. These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power for plans like those of 1917 that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid."

Today, plutocracy has once again taken over the country. As everyday Americans face stagnant wages, crushing personal debt, rising rates of depression and anxiety, the political right is working hard to give massive tax cuts to the rich and also to cut the social safety net. We are forgotten again.

New Deal Hard Times Art (8/10): "Poverty"

Above: "Poverty," an aquatint by Dorothy Rutka (1907-1985), created while she was in the WPA's art program, ca. 1935-1942. Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

A few days ago, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report highlighting America's looming retirement catastrophe ("Government report sounds alarm on retirement crisis," CNBC, October 19, 2017). This wide-scale, old-age poverty crisis will be due to a number of reasons (some are explained in the article, some are not), including: Stagnant wages; the exportation of good-paying jobs; decreased union participation; rising healthcare costs; the growing and pathetic "gig economy"; rising levels of personal debt; recent & cold-hearted limitations on bankruptcy relief; financial fraud; the replacement of fixed pension plans with inadequate 401k's (if anything at all); the refusal of right-wing politicians to expand Social Security; and the greed & selfishness of the super-wealthy.

If millions of voters keep electing Republican, Tea Party, and "centrist" (i.e., Republican-Light) politicians, and millions of others keep sitting on the sidelines in apathy, little or nothing will be done to address old-age poverty. We can expect even higher rates of suicide and other deaths of despair, while younger generations are trained by right-wing millionaires and billionaires--via think tank "researchers," political advertisements, and mainstream media talking heads--to blame impoverished senior citizens for their plight. "Personal responsibility!" they'll scream at the elderly. "Rugged individualism!" they'll admonish. "Tough sh&t!" they'll laugh, "You should have saved more!" And the fact that they couldn't have saved more because of pathetic wages, outsourced jobs, and crushing debt won't matter a bit to the right-wing boneheads who will be scolding them.

Free market fanaticism, and the refusal to accept the existence of market failure, breeds sociopathy - and that's going to cause a lot of suffering for older Americans in the very near future.

New Deal Hard Times Art (7/10): "Money Magnet" and "1939 A.D."

Above: "Money Magnet," a lithograph by Don Freeman (1908-1978), created while he was in the WPA's Federal Art Project, 1936. Freeman went on to have a very successful art career after the WPA, but in a 1965 oral history interview, he said, "I think you have to give credit to - I do, give credit to the WPA, through that very difficult time. My wife, she wasn't on the project, it helped us to carry on so that we could paint. We were just painting all the time. So it helped us through a very difficult period." Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

This year, it's been reported that "Fifty-seven percent of Americans don't have enough cash to cover a $500 unexpected expense"; and "Data suggests that the typical working-class family wouldn't make it in most big U.S. cities without taking on debt"; and "Two-thirds of Americans would struggle to cover a $1000 emergency expense"; and "Americans are dying with an average of $62,000 of debt."

Meanwhile, the richest Americans are enjoying record wealth; and their political puppets (Republicans, Libertarians, and Tea Partiers) are working hard to give them even more tax cuts, while slashing social safety net programs that help the non-rich.

Is it any wonder that suicides and other deaths of despair are becoming more and more frequent? After decades of trickle-down economics, the American Dream is dead.

We are constantly bombarded with messages / propaganda like, "America number one!" and "America is the greatest country in the world." Further (and worse), if you don't agree it's considered unpatriotic. But to accept that America is the greatest country in the world, you have to accept, or be oblivious to, an awful lot of mental, physical, and financial suffering. You have to tune out misery, and immerse yourself in vanity.

In Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 speech accepting his renomination for president, he stated:

"An old English judge once said: 'Necessitous men are not free men.' Liberty requires opportunity to make a living—a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor - other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of Government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the Government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the Government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the Government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike."

Above: "1939 A.D.," a lithograph by Elizabeth Olds (1896-1991), created in 1939, probably during her time in the WPA. Notice the "Right To Work" sign in the crowd of marchers. Back then, "right to work" meant something along the lines of employment assurance. Today, of course, the slogan has been hi-jacked by anti-union forces, as a tool to trick Americans into working for lower wages. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

For a time, roughly 1933 to 1980, economic inequality, tyranny, and slavery was reduced. After that, however, America abandoned the New Deal and embraced trickle-down economics instead. And so now, we live in a time period where, on the one hand, student loan debt is approaching $1.5 trillion, wages are stagnant, infrastructure is crumbling, millions are incarcerated... while, on the other hand, a mere 400 people control $2.7 trillion in wealth. To add to the absurdity of the situation, tens of millions of middle and lower-income Americans keep voting for right-wing politicians who want to (a) cut or eliminate taxes on the wealthy and (b) do nothing at all about the debt that average Americans are being bludgeoned with.

Slavery still exists in America. It's been fine-tuned and adjusted, very ingeniously, so that the enslaved can't see their shackles or oppressors.

New Deal Hard Times Art (6/10): "Eviction"

Above: "Eviction," a crayon aquatint by Dorothy Rutka (1907-1985), created while she was in the WPA's Federal Art Project, 1937. Rutka graduated from the Cleveland School of Art in 1929, and worked "as a portrait painter, a writer and illustrator before joining the graphic arts project with the WPA in 1936." In 1985, she and her husband were murdered during a burglary of their home in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Kelvin Smith Library, Case Western Reserve University.

A new report on the 400 richest people in America shows that, once again, they're enjoying record wealth - $2.7 trillion, up from $2.4 trillion. And yesterday, the stock market hit a record high too, 23,328.

Sadly, the prosperity of the few isn't doing much for everyday Americans. For example, wages are still stagnant and evictions are running rampant. With respect to the latter, Harvard Professor Matthew Desmond recently said, "If you look at the numbers, city by city, they're just shocking. There are 40 evictions a day that happen in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and 60 marshal evictions a day in New York City. The last time we rolled out the American Housing Survey, we asked renters: 'do you think you'll be evicted soon?' and 2.8 million renting homes said 'yes' to that question... we're evicting people not in the tens and hundreds of thousands, but rather millions."

Just another painful lesson in the failure of trickle-down economics. But it doesn't matter. Tens of millions of Americans will continue to vote for right-wing politicians who, in turn, will continue to push for more tax cuts for the rich. And so the nightmarish loop of economic failure and soaring income & wealth inequality continues.

New Deal Hard Times Art (5/10): "God's Shadows"

Above: "God's Shadows," a wood engraving print by Todros Geller (1889-1949), created while he was in the WPA's art program, 1940. According to his Wikipedia page, Geller "regarded art as a tool for social reform... His work was commissioned for stained glass windows, bookplates, community centers and Yiddish and English books." Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

According to a recent brief by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, "On any given night, over 175,000 people are unsheltered, sleeping outside or in places not meant for human habitation. On a positive note, unsheltered homelessness has been declining nationally for several years, but some jurisdictions, particularly some large cities, report increases." The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported that "Despite money and effort, homelessness in SF as bad as ever," with area residents complaining about "tent encampments, needles and human feces." One San Franciscan in the article said:

"The Powell Street BART Station is basically a homeless shelter, and not a well-maintained one. There are homeless people sprawled all over the place, sometimes shooting up, sometimes with clothes not completely covering their backsides. Some people have seen people masturbating. There's the smell, the dirt. The needles, the human waste, the garbage. I just don't understand why we think it's OK."

Actually, of course, probably very few people think homelessness is okay, but our collective, rigid, and even religious devotion to "free markets" and "job creators"--coupled with the brainwashing we've been subjected to about the evils of "big government"--prevents us from effectively dealing with the problem. Rates of homelessness go up and down, depending on the number of band-aid solutions at any given time, but the core problems underlying homelessness, for example, lack of affordable housing, lack of good-paying jobs, income & wealth inequality, right-wing attacks on the social safety net, mental health problems, and so on, are likely to continue for many years to come.

During the New Deal, there were many policies and programs that effectively dealt with the homeless and the near-homeless, for example, more affordable housing opportunities; transient and homeless work camps for the willing & able-bodied; and a jobs program--the Civilian Conservation Corps--for young men who were wandering around the countryside, on trains or hitchhiking, in a fruitless search for work. We could do the same things today, if we had enough energy and empathy.

"Seeing who is walking into soup kitchens and who we're seeing when we do outreach, they're barely hanging on... they're recently released from the hospital with colostomy bags. There are people with cancer on the streets, severe diabetes, heart disease, a lot of really severe mental illness combined with addictive disorders."

--Jennifer Friedenbach, Director, Coalition of Homelessness, "Despite money and effort, homelessness in SF as bad as ever," San Francisco Chronicle, June 26, 2017 

New Deal Hard Times Art (4/10): "Two on a Bench"

Above: "Two on a Bench," A lithograph by Eli Jacobi (1898-1984), created while he was in the WPA's Federal Art Project, 1939. According to the Asheville Art Museum, "Jacobi worked for the Graphic Arts Division of the WPA Federal Arts Project in New York. His specialty was block printing. Jacobi was also successful as a magazine and book illustrator. He was a contributing illustrator to Nation, Saturday Review, and Living Age magazines." Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Gibbes Museum of Art.

Many people, especially those on the political right, often praise capitalism for fostering competition. And in every competition, of course, there are winners and losers. So what do we do with the losers of capitalism? Well, many people, especially those on the political right, would have us neglect and shame them, by cutting back on social safety net programs and labeling the losers "takers," "parasites," and "lazy good-for-nothings." To me, it seems intellectually dishonest and/or very cruel to, on the one hand, praise competition; and then, on the other hand, pretend there are no losers in the competition or, if acknowledged, neglect and shame them.

If we are going to praise capitalism, and glorify the competition it creates, then we should at least have the honesty and compassion to help the losers of capitalism get back in the game - through more liberal debt relief, using the government as an employer of last resort, better access to health care & medicine, more free or even paid job training, and perhaps even a universal basic income. In other words, we need to give more life to the general welfare sections of the Constitution (the Preamble and Article I, Section 8), to counteract the inherent negligence of capitalism and competition.

But will we do so? Well, considering that intellectual honesty about capitalism and competition would ultimately require hard work (e.g., crafting legislation, creating programs, staffing programs, evaluating programs, etc.), whereas intellectual dishonesty requires little more than insulting the poor, self-righteous rhetoric, and dog whistles, I think we can safely assume that we're going to continue to ignore and pooh pooh the general welfare sections of the Constitution, even as our quality of life is continually whittled away by debt, stagnant wages, job outsourcing, and financial fraud by the financial elite.

"In its Preamble, the Constitution states that it was intended to form a more perfect Union and promote the general welfare; and the powers given to the Congress to carry out those purposes can be best described by saying that they were all the powers needed to meet each and every problem which then had a national character and which could not be met by merely local action."

--President Franklin Roosevelt, March 9, 1937, Fireside Chat

New Deal Hard Times Art (3/10): "Starving Woman"

Above: "Starving Woman," an artwork by Marjorie Eakins (1910-1974), probably created while she was in the WPA's Federal Art Project, 1939. According to AskArt, Eakins was  born in San Francisco, went to San Francisco State College and the California School of Fine Arts (today called the San Francisco Art Institute), studied under the muralist Diego Rivera, and "During the 1930s she produced lithographs for the WPA." There's little or no information on this artwork on the Internet, so it's hard to know exactly what the artist intended. For example, what is the woman starving for? Love? Hope? Well, judging by her gaunt face, the artist probably meant "starving" in the literal sense: not enough food, malnutrition. Today, as the wealthiest Americans keeping eating up more and more of the nation's wealth, and gleefully scavenging off the financial carcasses of the lower classes, and howling for more tax cuts, food insecurity is a persistent problem in the United States - and the food that is available (i.e., affordable) to lower income groups is often very high in sugar, salt, and fat - but low in vitamins and minerals (see, e.g., "Poverty, tight budgets foster food insecurity in West Las Vegas," Las Vegas Review-Journal, October 14, 2017. Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Ackland Art Museum.

Above: A WPA poster promoting good nutrition. Through public information campaigns, recreation programs, surplus food distribution, garden projects, school lunches, expanded healthcare services, and more, the New Deal improved America's health and fitness. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

New Deal Hard Times Art (2/10): "One Third of a Nation"

Above: A WPA poster promoting the WPA's production of One Third of a Nation. In her 1940 book Arena, WPA Theatre Director Hallie Flanagan devotes an entire chapter to One Third of a Nation, "A play about people living in slums, about the historic development of slums and about their tragic effect on human lives" (p. 211). One Third of a Nation was perhaps the WPA's most successful theatre production (see, e.g., Susan Quinn, Furious Improvisation, 2008, pp. 225-228), but it also made enemies. Flanagan recalled one theatre owner who said, "Big money is going to fight this play... Big-monied people like landlords don't want people thinking about slum conditions" (Arena, p. 220). Image courtesy of George Mason University.

In his inaugural address to begin his second term as president, Franklin Roosevelt said: "I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day... 

I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children... I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished... Government is competent when all who compose it work as trustees for the whole people. It can make constant progress when it keeps abreast of all the facts. It can obtain justified support and legitimate criticism when the people receive true information of all that government does... If I know aught of the will of our people, they will demand that these conditions of effective government shall be created and maintained. They will demand a nation uncorrupted by cancers of injustice..."

Roosevelt's heart was in the right place, but he was wrong about the American people demanding and maintaining good government. Through apathy, celebrity distraction, and a powerful lack of empathy, the American people have allowed their federal and state governments to be hi-jacked by the super-wealthy and their political marionettes. The government doesn't serve average Americans today - it threatens them with incarceration and poverty, places them in inescapable debt, and allows their livelihoods to be sent overseas. Today, the government doesn't tax record-breaking wealth more; instead, it places ruthless restrictions on debt relief for struggling Americans (e.g., student loan debtors and the entire territory of Puerto Rico). Today, the government doesn't ensure universal health care; instead, it allows pharmaceutical companies to overcharge and overdose us. Today, our government is not effective and just, as Roosevelt had hoped; instead, it is corrupt and foul-minded, neglecting those who are suffering and coddling those who are not.

"It is perverse and obscene. We are creating a generation of indentured people. It is mind-boggling that we would do this to a whole generation of young people."

--Daniel Austin, law professor, Northeastern University, on inescapable student loan debt ("Joe Biden Backed Bills To Make It Harder For Americans To Reduce Their Student Debt," International Business Times, September 15, 2015)

New Deal Hard Times Art (1/10): "Buried Treasure"

Above: "Buried Treasure," a crayon lithograph by Mabel Dwight (1876-1955), created while she was in the WPA's Federal Art Project, 1939. According to the Brier Hill Art Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts, "During the Depression, Dwight produced a series of powerful anti-fascist works and, as a participant in the Federal Arts Project, she created twenty-five lithographs dealing with social matters." Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Above: During the New Deal, there were several initiatives to alleviate hunger: CCC boys got three square meals a day at their barracks and work sites; the WPA served hot lunches to underprivileged children; and the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation (FSCC) distributed food & food items to those in need. The U.S. Food Stamp program also had its genesis in the New Deal, managed by the FSCC. The two stamps you see here were used in that program. Image scanned from personal collection.

WPA library services helped develop young minds

Above: This young child is exploring the world with a WPA-provided book in Athens County, Ohio, ca. 1935-1943. WPA workers brought millions of books to millions of children - and to adults too. The WPA staffed existing libraries, built new libraries, repaired books, wrote books, transcribed books into Braille, constructed talking books, held storytelling events, and delivered books by car, by truck, and by horse. Today, however, many libraries have to beg for government support - because the political right is forever trying to take money away from the common good in order to give tax cuts to millionaires & billionaires. Which approach do you think is better for America's children? Healthy funding for libraries, or tax cuts for the rich? Photo courtesy of the National Archives.

The New Deal lithographs of Harold Anchel

The following lithographs were made by Harold Anchel (1912-1980), between 1935 and 1943, while he was in the WPA's art program.

Above: "Knitting." Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Above: "Cafeteria." Image courtesy of the Illinois State Museum.

Above: "City Playground." Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Above: "Woman." Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Above: "Horseshoe Pitching." Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Above: "Dance Hall." Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Baltimore Museum of Art.