President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” created a variety of new federal programs that aimed to put Americans back to work and to regulate the economy to prevent another Depression. State governments, too, worked to help citizens cope with the effects of the Depression. Governments also took the opportunity to introduce other kinds of reforms — regulating industry to protect workers’ health and safety, for example.

In this chapter you’ll read about some of the programs enacted by the State of North Carolina and by the federal government during the 1930s. These programs were meant to create jobs and improve people’s lives, and many did — but others, intentionally or unintentionally, hurt some of the people who needed the most help.

Section Contents

• Ending Child Labor in North Carolina
• Primary Source: Excerpt of Child Labor Laws in North Carolina
• Primary Source: Statute on Workplace Safety
• The Fair Labor Standards Act
• Tobacco Bag Stringing: Life and Labor in the Depression
• Primary Source: Mary Allen Discusses a Farm Family in Sampson County
• Primary Source: Interviews on Rural Electrification
• The Live at Home Program
• 4-H and Home Demonstration During the Great Depression
• Eugenics in North Carolina
• Primary Source: Records of Eugenical Sterilization in North Carolina
• The Blue Ridge Parkway
• Roads Taken and Not Taken: Images and the Story of the Blue Ridge Parkway “Missing Link”
• The Great Smoky Mountains National Park