Social Policies of the 1930s 
During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt initially proposed temporary initiatives to ameliorate the effects of the economic emergency. However, these tentative measures, labeled the First New Deal, represented a major break with the social policies of both the 1920s and the Progressive Era, because they established the precedent that the fed-eral government should play an active role in regu-lating the economy and in the social welfare field. The Second New Deal (1936-1939) went much further. The social and labor policies created in these years produced an enormous and permanent strengthening of government's role in financing and organizing relief for needy citizens. Through the passage of the 1935 Social Security Act, Roosevelt created the cornerstone of the U.S. welfare state, which cemented the federal government's responsi-bility to care for certain categories of the poor. During the Second New Deal, Congress also passed the Fair Labor Standards Acr, establishing a national minimum wage, the 40-hour workweek, and national child labor laws, and the National Labor Relations Act, which gave workers the legal right to bargain collectively with management (Estey, 1967; Patterson, 2001).