Student Question
What major domestic policy initiatives did Truman undertake according to chapter 23 of Give Me Liberty!?
Quick answer:
In Chapter 23 of Give Me Liberty!, Eric Foner outlines President Truman's major domestic policy initiatives aimed at transitioning the U.S. to a peacetime economy. Truman's "Fair Deal" sought to raise living standards by increasing the minimum wage, expanding public housing, improving education and Social Security, and introducing health insurance. Despite Congressional opposition, he pushed for civil rights, desegregating the military by executive order, and addressed labor strikes with the Taft-Hartley Act.
In Give Me Liberty!, Eric Foner describes how President Harry Truman was tasked with transitioning the United States from “a wartime to a peacetime economy,” and this meant partly reviving the New Deal, now called the Fair Deal. Let’s look at this in more detail.
Truman wanted to raise the standard of living for regular Americans, and for the president, this meant increasing the minimum wage, providing more public housing, aiding education, improving Social Security, and making sure people had health insurance. Truman was also especially concerned with the wave of labor strikes that was sweeping the country in the late 1940s, and he feared that they would “disrupt the economy.” His “fact-finding boards” recommended wage increases, but Truman focused more on getting court orders that forced workers to return to their jobs.
Congress definitely did not agree with Truman’s initiatives or his Fair Deal, and it blocked nearly all measures. But it did fight against strikes, passing the Taft-Hartley Act, which gave the president the power to order a “cooling off period” of eighty days and outlawed the union-only “closed shop” in the workplace.
Truman also worked toward greater civil rights for minorities, appointing the Commission on Civil Rights to study the issue and presenting a civil rights act to Congress, which voted it down. Truman did, however, desegregate the armed forces by executive order.
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