FAIR DEAL

FAIR DEAL was the phrase adopted by President
Harry S. Truman to characterize the program of domestic
legislation his administration sought to pass through
Congress. In September 1945 Truman sent to Congress
a twenty-one point program,based in part on the Dem-
ocratic
platform of 1944. The Fair Deal called for a fullemployment
law,the permanent establishment of the Fair
Employment Practices Committee,and progressive legislation
on housing,health insurance, aid to education,
atomic energy,and the development of the St. Lawrence
Seaway. Congress passed the Employment Act of 1946,
which established the Council of Economic Advisers,but
Republican victories in the 1946 midterm congressional
elections blocked further passage of Fair Deal legislation.
In 1948 Truman defeated the Republican candidate,Governor
Thomas E. Dewey of New York,and Democrats
recaptured control of Congress. In his annual message to
Congress in January 1949,during which he coined the
phrase “Fair Deal,” Truman asked for laws on housing,
full employment,higher minimum wages, better price
supports for farmers,more organizations like the Tennessee
Valley Authority,the extension of social security,
and fair employment practices. Congress responded by
passing a slum clearance act,raising the minimum wage,
and extending social security benefits to 10 million more
people. The coming of the KoreanWar in June 1950 and
a general prosperity lessened interest in the Fair Deal program,
but many of Truman’s social welfare proposals—as
well as his proposals for the development of atomic energy
and the St. Lawrence Seaway,for example—were
legislated in subsequent administrations.


“Falsies!” Two months before Republican Dwight D.
Eisenhower’s victory in the election to succeed President
Harry S. Truman,Fred Little Packer’s cartoon in the New York
Mirror, 6 September 1952,mocks the Democrats and
Truman’s Fair Deal program by claiming that the nation’s
economy only seems prosperous,because of inflation and
spending on the Korean War. Library of Congress