Bibliographic Details
Author: Lizabeth Cohen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 1990
Thesis Statement
In Making a New Deal, Lizabeth Cohen profoundly reinterprets the origins and nature of the New Deal by demonstrating how its transformative power emerged from the intricate interplay between evolving mass consumer culture and the lived experiences of diverse industrial workers—particularly immigrant and African American populations—in urban centers like Chicago. Cohen argues that the shared “public culture” forged through common experiences with mass media and chain stores during the 1920s, which initially transcended but did not erase ethnic and racial particularities, laid the crucial groundwork for the eventual political mobilization of a unified working class. This class, facing the economic ravages of the Great Depression, embraced the Democratic Party and the New Deal’s promise of economic security, thereby fundamentally reshaping American politics and society from the bottom up as much as from the top down.
Summary
Lizabeth Cohen’s Making a New Deal offers a groundbreaking re-evaluation of the interwar period and the New Deal by examining the experiences of industrial workers in Chicago. Challenging purely top-down political histories, Cohen demonstrates how changes in working-class culture and daily life were integral to the New Deal’s success. She begins by meticulously detailing the vibrant, yet largely segregated, “private cultures” of Chicago’s ethnic and racial working-class communities in the 1920s. These enclaves, with their own institutions, languages, and commercial networks, provided a sense of belonging and cultural continuity for immigrant and Black migrants.
However, Cohen argues that this insulation began to erode with the rise of a pervasive mass consumer culture. Radio, movies, and national chain stores like Woolworth’s and A&P offered common cultural touchstones and increasingly accessible goods, fostering a nascent “public culture” that cut across ethnic and racial lines. While these new cultural forms didn’t immediately erase differences, they created a shared experience that subtly chipped away at the insularity of private cultures, preparing the ground for broader solidarities.
The economic devastation of the Great Depression acted as the catalyst, pushing diverse working-class groups beyond their traditional community allegiances. As private ethnic charities and informal networks proved inadequate to address widespread unemployment and poverty, workers increasingly turned to collective action and state intervention. This shift culminated in the explosive growth of CIO industrial unionism, which explicitly embraced a strategy of organizing across ethnic and racial divisions, and the widespread embrace of the Democratic Party and the New Deal’s programs.
Cohen illustrates how New Deal policies, from unemployment relief to public housing, were not merely imposed from Washington but were often interpreted, adapted, and sometimes resisted by local communities. She argues that the New Deal effectively capitalized on the emergent “public culture” of the 1920s, offering a national political solution that appealed to a newly forged, more unified working-class identity. The book concludes by analyzing the triumphs and limitations of this new public culture, particularly in the context of persistent racial discrimination, demonstrating how the New Deal both fostered greater class solidarity and struggled to overcome deep-seated racial divisions.
Chapter Breakdown
- Introduction: Culture and the New Deal – Cohen introduces her thesis, arguing for a cultural interpretation of the New Deal’s origins, focusing on how working-class experiences and the rise of mass culture transformed political consciousness and participation.
- Part I: Private Cultures in a Public World (1920s)
- Chapter 1: The Making of Ethnic Workers and Ethnic Communities – Explores the formation and characteristics of distinct ethnic and racial working-class communities in Chicago during the early 20th century, highlighting their internal structures and reliance on “private cultures.”
- Chapter 2: Ethnic Commercial Cultures – Examines the internal economic life of these communities, including small businesses, ethnic media, and local institutions that served their specific cultural needs and reinforced their distinctiveness.
- Chapter 3: Mass Culture, Class Culture: The Impact of Radio, Movies, and Chain Stores – Analyzes how new forms of mass consumption and media (radio, movies, national chain stores) began to penetrate these private cultures, creating shared experiences and a nascent “public culture” that transcended ethnic boundaries.
- Part II: From Private to Public Culture (Depression & New Deal)
- Chapter 4: Industrial Workers and the Crisis of the Depression – Details the devastating impact of the Great Depression on Chicago’s industrial workers, illustrating how the economic crisis overwhelmed private community resources and exposed the limits of existing systems of support.
- Chapter 5: From the CIO to the New Deal – Traces the rise of industrial unionism through the CIO, emphasizing how it successfully organized diverse ethnic and racial groups by appealing to common class interests rather than ethnic loyalties, and how this translated into political support for the New Deal.
- Chapter 6: The Promise of the New Deal – Explores how various New Deal programs—from public works to social security—were experienced and interpreted by working-class families, highlighting their role in solidifying a unified working-class identity and political allegiance to the Democratic Party.
- Chapter 7: Housing and the Limits of a Public Culture – Examines the promises and failures of New Deal public housing initiatives, particularly in revealing the enduring power of racial segregation and the limitations of the “public culture” to fully overcome deep-seated racial prejudices.
- Conclusion: New Deal Legacy: The Public and Private in Postwar American Life – Reflects on the lasting impact of the New Deal, the emergence of a more unified working-class political identity, and the complex interplay between public and private spheres that continued to shape American society after 1939.
Scholarly Reception
Lizabeth Cohen’s Making a New Deal was met with immediate and widespread acclaim within the historical profession, earning the Bancroft Prize in 1991, one of the most prestigious awards in American history. It quickly became a canonical text, fundamentally reshaping the fields of labor history, urban history, and 20th-century American political and social history. Historians lauded its sophisticated integration of cultural analysis with political and economic history, moving beyond traditional top-down narratives to illuminate the agency of working-class people in shaping national policy. The book was praised for its meticulous research, innovative methodology, and elegant prose, which made complex arguments accessible. While some critics debated the extent to which the “public culture” truly overcame ethnic and racial divisions, particularly in its implications for later civil rights struggles, its central argument about the New Deal’s cultural foundations and the formation of a modern working-class identity remains profoundly influential and widely accepted. It set a new standard for understanding the dynamic relationship between cultural change, economic upheaval, and political transformation.
Representative Quotes:
- “Cohen’s book is a rich and subtle argument for the power of culture to shape political action. It moves beyond institutional histories to offer a nuanced understanding of how people experienced, interpreted, and ultimately helped to construct the New Deal.” – James R. Barrett, The Journal of American History
- “This is a meticulously researched and brilliantly argued book that succeeds marvelously in its ambition to bridge the gap between social and political history… Cohen masterfully reconstructs the daily lives of Chicago’s industrial workers, showing how they experienced and interpreted the social and economic upheavals of the interwar period, ultimately forging a new political identity.” – Alan Dawley, The American Historical Review