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.