Abstract
When President Franklin Roosevelt formed National Administration (NYA) in June 1935, he declared that it would address the most pressing and immediate of American young people. In this book, Richard A. Reiman explores various and sometimes conflicting ways in which NYA planners and administrators defined those needs and attempted to answer them. As Reiman notes, NYA was set up to assist millions of youth who, during Depression years, were out of school, out of work, and ineligible for New Deal's own Civilian Conservation Corps. Contrary to popular belief, he argues, New Dealers did not envision NYA primarily as a junior WPA, a trigger for civil rights reform, or a springboard for careers of liberal administrators. Rather, its designers saw it as a reform agency that would advance and protect democracy by countering totalitarian appeals to young people and by equalizing educational opportunities for rich and poor. Woven into successive drafts establishing NYA, these twin purposes united programs of planners as disparate as Aubrey W. Williams, Mary McLeod Bethune, John Studebaker, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Taussig, and FDR himself. Like their separate agendas, Reiman shows, planners' shared concerns for democratic values were products of thinking that had arisen during Progressive Era - a time when an awareness of social effects of child development first occurred. During 1930s, fears of fascism and totalitarianism added fuel to these concerns and shaped much of nature of NYA's prewar appeal. Based on a wide range of sources, including NYA-related documents at National Archives and Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, The New Deal and American Youth is a study of this important agency. By showing how NYA served as an instrument for realizing so many New Deal ambitions, it offers rich insights into not only NYA but New Deal as well.
Published Version
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