272 New Deal, U.S Dorothea Lange’s classic photo of a migrant mother in California reveals the social cost of the depression in 1935 as more directly committed to assisting the unemployed, industrial workers, and the elderly than the First New Deal of 1933–34 The administration instituted the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a considerable expansion of earlier work relief programs that eventually employed more than million people The National Labor Relations Act extended the labor rights of the NIRA by establishing a National Labor Relations Board to arbitrate collective bargaining This guaranteed unions increased protections and served to systematize relations between massproduction workers and their employers Perhaps the most far-reaching legislation of the New Deal era, the Social Security Act established a “safety net” for Americans, providing not only an old-age pension but also unemployment insurance and federal assistance for needy, dependent children and the disabled Despite its enormously ambitious agenda, the New Deal did not produce the hoped-for economic recovery The gross national product slowly increased during Roosevelt’s first term in office, but in 1937 the country suffered through a significant downturn known as the “Roosevelt Recession,” when business profits dropped by 80 percent Farm prices increased by 50 percent between 1932 and 1936, but much of the scarcity in agriculture was brought on by an environmentally devastating dust bowl that engulfed the Plains states The problem of unemployment remained intractable Unemployment statistics looked much the same throughout the New Deal era: 21.7 percent of American workers were unemployed in 1934, 20.1 percent in 1935, and 19.0 percent in 1938 The general economic mobilization during World War II—and not New Deal policy—finally enabled the country to recover from the Great Depression Historians have pointed to several problems with the implementation of New Deal programs that impeded their effectiveness For example, the National Recovery Administration struggled with the unwieldy task of administering competition and production codes for more than 550 separate industries Small businessmen complained about having no voice in the NRA, and fewer than 10 percent of the code authorities included labor representatives Large businesses sought to protect their own self-interest and so engaged in pricefixing measures, instituting rules that forbade selling “below cost.” Consumers were thus denied the chance to buy inexpensive goods The benefits of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration were also unevenly distributed, favoring rural landowners rather than tenant farmers and sharecroppers, who constituted onefourth of the population in the South during the 1930s A widespread practice by landowners was to evict their tenants, take that land out of production, and collect payment from the AAA The president expressed ambivalence about his administration’s relief efforts Although these programs were established with the idea that work relief could restore a sense of dignity among the unemployed, Roosevelt was concerned that relief would become “a habit with the country.” Historians have debated the legacy of the New Deal During the 1950s, many viewed the New Deal as a triumph for liberalism and democracy In the 1960s, revisionist historians argued that the New Deal consistently pushed an agenda of “corporate liberalism.” Their analysis held that the depression decade offered an unprecedented opportunity to substantively change