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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2018
The 1960s was a period of political opening for employment policy, when important questions about unemployment and economic insecurity were debated and a number of ambitious policies were enacted. Yet the Great Society’s employment policy agenda was also fundamentally limited in scope; it comprised interventions that reinforced rather than altered existing labor market mechanisms. Previous work suggests that primarily institutional factors were responsible for this constraint. By contrast, I contend that in addition to institutional factors, there was an ideological boundary condition on the era’s employment policy. The Johnson administration’s policymakers conformed to aspects of the liberal tradition in America, which limited policy options as well as the efficiency and efficacy of implemented policy.
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5. While a full elaboration of the New Deal’s limited employment policy is outside the scope of this work, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt repeatedly spurned opportunities to establish permanent public service employment or income-subsidy programs that would have ensured economic stability for all able-bodied adults, opting instead for temporary programs that underserved the eligible population (“Draft of a National Program of Economic Security, Prepared by Schnapper of CES, October 24, 1934,” 24 October 1934, Folder: “Economic & Social Security June–November 1934,” Box 48, Relief Plans and Programs 1933–38, Memoranda and Reports, Harry Hopkins Papers (Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, hereafter FDRL); Harry Hopkins to President Roosevelt, 20 November 1935, Folder: “White House,” Box 40 Confidential Political File, Harry Hopkins Papers, FDRL; Henry L. Hopkins, “Testimony Before the Bureau of the Budget,” 22 January 1934, Folder: “H.L.H. Testimony Before Bureau of Budget,” Box 80 FERA–WPA Legislation and Legal Proceedings, Harry Hopkins Papers, FDRL, 27; Brock, William Ranulf, Welfare Democracy and the New Deal (Cambridge, 1988), 280, 284;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Brown, Josephine Chapin, Public Relief, 1929–1939 (New York, 1940), 166–69;Google Scholar Rose, Nancy E., Put to Work: Relief Programs of the Great Depression (New York, 2009), 38;Google Scholar Schwartz, Bonnie Fox, The Civil Works Administration, 1933–1934: The Business of Emergency Employment in the New Deal (Princeton, 1984), 42–43;Google Scholar Tugwell, Rexford G., The Diary of Rexford G. Tugwell: The New Deal, 1932–1935, ed. Namorato, Michael Vincent (New York, 1992), 179;Google Scholar Mcmahon, Arthur W., Millett, John D., and Ogden, Gladys, The Administration of Federal Work Relief (Chicago, 1941), 26–27;Google Scholar Witte, Edwin E., The Development of the Social Security Act: A Memorandum on the History of the Committee on Economic Security and Drafting and Legislative History of the Social Security Act (Madison, 1963), 77–78.Google Scholar For more on Roosevelt’s perspective on appropriate federal response to income insecurity, see Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, “The Governors’ Conference at the White House, March 6, 1933,” in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Volume II: The Year of Crisis, 1933, ed. Rosenman, Samuel and Haslitt, William B. (New York, 1938–50), 19;Google Scholar Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “Roosevelt to Relief Administrators, June 14, 1933,” in ibid., 238.
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12. A number of scholars have drawn attention to how institutional factors—such as divided government, federalism, political party patronage, institutional capacity, and policy feedback—shaped and limited employment policy development over the twentieth century. Amenta, Edwin, Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy (Princeton, 1998);Google Scholar Bertram, Eva, “The Institutional Origins of ‘Workfarist’ Social Policy,” Studies in American Political Development 21 (Fall 2007): 203–29;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 128–40, 148–51; Russell, Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race, 12–15; Skocpol, Social Policy in the United States, 242–45; Weir, Politics and Jobs, 5–6, 23, 30. Others have focused on the ways in which interest groups such as business organizations, organized labor, and social movements constrained employment policy development. Collins, Robert M., The Business Response to Keynes, 1929–1964 (New York, 1981);Google Scholar Gordon, Colin, New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America, 1920–1935 (Cambridge, 1994);Google Scholar Swenson, Peter, “Arranged Alliance: Business Interests in the New Deal,” Politics Society 25 (1997): 66–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13. Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 3–8; Russell, Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race, 17–18; Weir, Politics and Jobs, 19–25.
14. Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz refer to this as the second face of power, “the nondecisionmaking process,” or the ability to exclude issues from the political agenda. See “Two Faces of Power,” American Political Science Review 56 (1962): 949.
15. Accounts of the Great Society’s employment policies portray the Department of Labor as the main champion of direct labor market intervention and largely ignore the OEO. Gary Mucciaroni makes a brief reference to an OEO report outlining public employment as a response to the 1967 riots, but he does not systematically evaluate the OEO’s proposals or Johnson’s persistent rejection of them (Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 74). Judith Russell does not mention the OEO’s public employment proposals and instead accuses Shriver and Yarmolinsky of scuttling Wirtz’s “idea of jobs policies” early on for their own institutional gain (Russell, Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race, 149–50). Margaret Weir does not reference the OEO’s calls for public jobs programs, though she does mention other proponents of public employment (Weir, Politics and Jobs, 71–74, 92).
16. Shklar, Judith N., American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 1–15.Google Scholar
17. Locke, John, The Second Treatise of Government (Indianapolis, 1980),Google Scholar chap. 1, sec. 1; chap. 2, sec. 4.
18. Wilentz, Sean, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York, 2005), 27.Google Scholar
19. Shklar, American Citizenship, 64; David R. Roediger charts the process through which in the eighteenth century whiteness was tied to the positive associations between paid labor and independence in America, and blackness came to indicate servility and dependence. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York, 1991), 23, 49.
20. Shklar, American Citizenship, 77–78; Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 342–45.
21. There were two general models for work at this time, one performed by those who were themselves producers and controlled the means of production (land or skills), and one performed by those without land or skills but who provided labor for others in return for wages. The independent producer was not only able to independently support himself and his family, but the laboring itself was seen as the height of dignity and the cornerstone of American prosperity. Foner, Eric, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (Oxford, 1970, 1995), 15;Google Scholar Saxton, Alexander, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (London, 1990), 144–45;Google Scholar Shklar, American Citizenship, 76. However, such independent production was not the only path to economic independence. In an industrializing economy, those without land or skills still ranked above slaves because they could trade their labor for wages. Most prevalent in the more industrialized North, wage labor was contingent on the liberal idea that free men could contract themselves out for compensation. In antebellum America, though, recognition of the unequal power relationship between those paying wages and those receiving wages in return for work lessened the status accorded to wage labor. Such workers were seen as “dependent” on their employers, and despite the rhetoric of self-ownership, the system was even likened to slavery. Workers aspired to work for wages only temporarily, as a stepping stone to the greater goal of owning the means, land or a business, with which to support oneself and eventually employ others. Labor was a path to capital (Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 16–17; Shklar, American Citizenship, 76, 82).
22. Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 20, 23–24.
23. Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon, “A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State,” Signs 19 (1994): 309–36.
24. Permanent public-sector employment is something of an exception to this, though it is often criticized by both political parties. For example, throughout his presidency, President Johnson worked to implement federal hiring ceilings and to reduce the size of the federal workforce (Lyndon B. Johnson: “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” 8 January 1964, online by Peters, Gerhard and Woolley, John T., The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26787 (accessed 14 October 2015);Google Scholar Bureau of the Budget to the President, “June 1967 employment ceilings,” 1 May 1967, Box 7, EX LA 1, White House Central File (hereafter WHCF), Lyndon Baines Johnson Library (hereafter LBJL). While some Great Society programs did contribute to significant public-sector employment growth over the long term, the eventual growth in Food Stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, etc., was not anticipated at the time. In fact, Johnson promised in 1965 that “federal expenditures would decline as a proportion of GNP” and Food Stamps initially “served fewer people than the policy it was intended to replace, the 1930s surplus commodity program” (Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 245–48, 255).
25. Locke, The Second Treatise on Government, chap. 13, sec. 149; Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, 208; Kramnick, Isaac, Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth-Century England and America (Ithaca, 1990), 14;Google Scholar Wood, Gordon, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992), 47;Google Scholar Smith, Adam, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (New York, 1902), 28–29, 160–61, 399–402;Google Scholar Milkis, Sidney M. and Nelson, Michael, The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776–2007, 5th ed. (Washington, D.C., 2008), 78–79.Google Scholar
26. Mettler, Suzanne, Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy (Ithaca, 1998);Google Scholar Fraser, Nancy and Gordon, Linda, “A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State,” Signs 19 (1994) 309–36;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Locke, John, The Second Treatise of Government (Indianapolis, 1980),Google Scholar chap. 1, sec. 1; chap. 2, sec. 4; chap. 7, sec. 90–92; Shklar, American Citizenship, 1–30.
27. Cameron, “The Politics and Economics of the Business Cycle,” 240.
28. Willard Wirtz to the President, 9 December 1963, Folder: “11/22/63–9/2/65,” Box 6, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL.
29. Schultze, Charles L. to Califano, Joseph A., 14 August 1965, Folder: “11/63–9/65 Labor,” Box 6, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL; Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 61–62;Google Scholar Stone, From Widgets to Digits, 258–70.
30. Willard Wirtz to the President, 9 December 1963, Folder: “11/22/63–9/2/65,” LA 2, Box 6, WHCF, LBJL.
31. The Tax Cut, originally proposed by President Kennedy in 1962, was expected to increase aggregate demand by freeing up revenue for individuals to spend on goods and for businesses to spend on increasing production and employment. Bernstein, Irving, Promises Kept: John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier (New York, 1991), 149–50;Google Scholar Brinkley, Alan, John F. Kennedy: The American Presidents Series: The 35th President, 1961–1963 (New York, 2012), 57.Google Scholar
32. This included expansions to the 1962 Manpower Development and Training Act and new training programs under the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act. Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 219–23; Mangum, Garth L., MDTA: Foundation of Federal Manpower Policy (Baltimore, 1968), 97–99, 108, 116.Google Scholar
33. “A Bill: To mobilize the human and financial resources of the Nation to combat poverty in the United States,” 24 February 1964, Folder: “C: BOB Papers on Poverty, Legislative Background on the EOA 1964,” Box 1, Legislative Background on Domestic Crises (hereafter LBDC), WHCF, LBJL; Levine, Robert A., The Poor Ye Need Not Have With You: Lessons from the War on Poverty (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 49.Google Scholar
34. Structural unemployment refers to the mismatch between workers and available jobs, which can be exacerbated by technological change and advancement.
35. Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 46–47, 271–72; Weir, Politics and Jobs, 67, 73–75.
36. The structural unemployment model underlying the MDTA cast the “mechanization of industrial processes, shifts toward higher-skill jobs, and the geographical movement of industry” as the major impediments to full employment and did not address job creation or job quality (“Volume II, Part 1, Programs of the DOL,” Folder: “Administrative History of the Department of Labor,” Box 2, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 683). Unlike traditional Keynesian stimulus through public spending, the Tax Cut’s “commercial” Keynesianism did not directly address or correct labor market features such as job or wage quality (Bernstein, Promises Kept, 149–50; Brinkley, John F. Kennedy, 57).
37. On community action and the culture of poverty, see Sundquist, James L., Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years (Washington, D.C., 1968), 137–41.Google Scholar
38. William Capron, “The Federal Government and Urban Poverty: Discussions at Brandeis University, June 16–17, 1973,” 215.
39. “Manpower Development Assistance,” Folder: “Administrative History of the DOL, vol. 2, pt. 1,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 80; Bill D. Moyers Statement in The Great Society Reader: A Twenty-Year Critique, ed. Barbara C. Jordan and Elspeth D. Rostow (Austin, 1986), 37; Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 210–11; Andrew, Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, 58–59.
40. AFL-CIO Executive Council, “Statement on Waging War Against Poverty,” 21 February 1964, Folder: “D: White House Background Papers on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 2, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 2–4.
41. Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 218.
42. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act expressly forbade discrimination on the basis of race and increased blacks’ access to employment (Brown, Michael K., Carnoy, Martin, Currie, Elliott, Duster, Troy, Oppenheimer, David B., Shultz, Marjorie M., and Wellman, David, Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (Berkeley, 2005), 186–87).Google Scholar
43. Walter E. Heller to the Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Director of the Bureau of the Budget, Administrator of Housing and Home Finance Agency, “1964 Legislative Program for ‘Widening Participation in Prosperity’–an Attack on Poverty,” 5 November 1963, Folder: “B: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL Appendix A.
44. Charles L. Schultze to Joseph A. Califano, 14 August 1965, Folder: “11/63–9/65 Labor, Box 6, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL, 1 (emphasis in original).
45. Walter Heller, “Administratively Confidential, 1965 Legislative Program for ‘Widening Participation in Prosperity’–an Attack on Poverty,” 5 November 1963, Folder: “A: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 2–4; William M. Capron and Burton A. Weisbrod, “Administratively Confidential Preliminary Draft of “Attack on Poverty,” 2 December 1963, Folder: “B: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 4–6.
46. Heller, “Administratively Confidential, 1965 Legislative Program for ‘Widening Participation in Prosperity’–an Attack on Poverty,” 5 November 1963, 5; Capron and Weisbrod, “Administratively Confidential Preliminary Draft of “Attack on Poverty,” 2 December 1963, 6; Walter Heller to Theodore Sorensen, “Poverty Program,” 20 December 1963, Folder: “A: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL; Walter Heller, “Draft: Administratively Confidential ‘Attack on Poverty,’” 20 December 1963, Folder: “A: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 12–24; Walter Heller, “To Readers of Chapter 2 (The Problem of Poverty in America),” 28 December 1963, Folder: “A: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 11.
47. Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 210–11.
48. R. J. Lampman, “For Walter W. Heller’s speech. This is a draft for a section on ‘The Costs of Slack,’” 10 June 1963, Folder: “A: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 5–6; Walter Heller, “1964 Legislative Program for ‘Widening Participation in Prosperity’–an Attack on Poverty,” 5 November 1963, Folder: “B: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 1–2.
49. Johnson, Lyndon B., “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” 8 January 1964, online by Peters, Gerhard and Woolley, John T., The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26787 (accessed 13 November 2015).Google Scholar
50. Draft Presidential Message to Congress, 2 March 1964, “Why Is America Prosperous?,” Folder “F: Legislative History on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 2, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL.
51. A February 1964 memorandum warned that a proposed “clause ‘by providing for everyone who wants to work the opportunity to make his contribution,’ appears to place too much emphasis on job creation” (LW DIV, “Draft:Possible Changes in Poverty Bill,” 2 February 1964, Folder: “C: BOB Papers on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL).
52. Special Message to the Congress Proposing a Nationwide War on the Sources of Poverty, 16 March 1964, online by Peters, Gerhard and Woolley, John T., The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=26109&st=&st1= (accessed 14 November 2015).Google Scholar Background material for this message contrasted the debilitating effects of government assistance with the redemptive, independence-producing effects of citizens securing work in the private sphere and recommended providing training for those who need it, improving education, and providing assistance to those unable to work (“Message on Poverty,” undated, c. early 1964, Folder: “E: Legislative Background on the EOA,” Box 2, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL).
53. Manpower Development Assistance, Administrative History of the DOL, vol. 2, pt. 1, Box 1, LBDC, LBJL, 80; Bill D. Moyers Statement in The Great Society Reader, 37; Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 210–11; Andrew, Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, 58–59.
54. “A Bill: To mobilize the human and financial resources of the Nation to combat poverty in the United States,” 24 February 1964, Folder: C “BOB Papers on Poverty, Legislative Background on the EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL.
55. Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 55–57; Russell, Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race, 34; Sundquist, Politics and Policy, 137–41; Weir, Politics and Jobs, 71–74.
56. In order to get the 1964 Tax Cut passed and keep the 1965 total federal budget under $100 billion, Johnson mandated that the poverty program could not require significant new appropriations (Kermit Gordon to the President, 22 January 1964, Folder: “11/22/63–9/30/64,” Box 25, EX WE 9, WHCF, LBJL; Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 228; Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, 422–23, Weir, Politics and Jobs, 73.
57. Burton Weisbrod to the Council of Economic Advisers, 13 April 1964, Folder: “A: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background on the War on Poverty,” Box 1, LBDC, LBJL, 2 (emphasis in original).
58. William Capron, Transcript of “The Federal Government and Urban Poverty: Discussions at Brandeis University, June 16–17, 1973,” 142–49, 152–53.
59. Walter E. Heller, “1964 Legislative Program for ‘Widening Participation in Prosperity’–an Attack on Poverty,” 5 November 1963, Folder: “B: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, Appendix A, 5.
60. Charles Schultze to William Alger, “Draft Specification,” 28 December 1963, Folder: “C: BOB Papers on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBJL.
61. Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 210–11. The report written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1965 on black families, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” (known as the Moynihan Report), also contributed to the persistence of the cultural diagnosis and approach.
62. Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 63–67; Weir, Politics and Jobs, 80–81.
63. Theodore M. Berry to Sargent Shriver, “White House Manpower Meeting,” 24 April 1967, Box 7, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL.
64. Wilbur J. Cohen, Transcript of “The Federal Government and Urban Poverty: Discussions at Brandeis University, June 16–17, 1973,” 345.
65. Levine Draft, “Second Description of the Public Employment Program,” 28 August 1965, “Manpower federal Coordination (1963–1965),” Box 9, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA, 4; Narrative History, Folder: vol.1, pt. 2, Administrative History of the Office of Economic Opportunity, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 621–22.
66. On the New Deal public employment programs, see “Draft of A National Program of Economic Security, Prepared by Schnapper of CES, October 24, 1934,” Folder: “Economic & Social Security June–November 1934,” Box 48, Relief Plans and Programs 1933–38, Memoranda and Reports, Harry Hopkins Papers, FDRL; Harry Hopkins to President Roosevelt, 20 November 1935, Folder: “White House,” Box 40, Confidential Political File, Harry Hopkins Papers, FDRL; Brock, William Ranulf, Welfare Democracy and the New Deal (Cambridge, 1988), 280, 284; Brown, Public Relief, 1929–1939, 169;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Mcmahon et al., The Administration of Federal Work Relief, 26–27; Rose, Put to Work, 38.
67. Gillette, Michael L., Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History (New York, 1996), 89–91;Google Scholar Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 55–57; Russell, Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race, 34–35; Sundquist, Politics and Policy, 137–41; Weir, Politics and Jobs, 67, 69–70.
68. For example, a January 1965 BOB unemployment program proposal included a program to provide funding to states and cities for temporary public service projects and increasing funding for the DOL’s NYC program and the OEO’s CAPs program (Kermit Gordon, BOB Director, to the President, “Programs to reduce hard-core unemployment,” 13 January 1965, Folder: “Manpower Federal Coordination (1963–1965),” Box 9, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA, 3–6).
69. Willard Wirtz to Kermit Gordon, 23 January 1964, Folder: “Poverty,” Box 12, Kermit Gordon Papers, John F. Kennedy Library (hereafter JFKL); Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, 397; Russell, Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race, 35; Weir, Politics and Jobs, 69–70.
70. Willard Wirtz to the President, 9 December 1963, Folder: “Labor-Wirtz Memos,” Box 23, George Reedy Papers, Office Files of the White House Aides, LBJL; Volume I, Administration of the DOL, Folder: “Administrative History of the DOL,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, iv.
71. On Wirtz’s cultural diagnosis of poverty, see Wirtz to Gordon, 23 January 1964, Folder: “Poverty,” Box 12, Kermit Gordon Papers, JFKL, 1–2; Willard Wirtz to Charles Schultze, 29 July 1965, Folder: “Community Work and Training,” Box 9, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR 60.11, National Archives (hereafter NA). On Wirtz’s support for private job creation from economic growth, see Chapter on Social Problems, Folder “A: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background on the War on Poverty,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 5. On Wirtz’s concerns about public works, see Willard Wirtz to the President, 11 March 1964, Folder: “11/63–9/65 Labor,” Box 6, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL; Jack Valenti to the President, 12 November 1964, Folder: “11/63–9/65 Labor,” Box 6, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL; Willard Wirtz to Frank L. Lewis, “Secretary of Labor’s Report to the President on Employment and Unemployment in Urban Slums,” 31 December 1966, Folder: “Concentrated Employment Program,” Box 10, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA, 24–28.
72. Wirtz to Gordon, 23 January 1964, Folder: “Poverty,” Box 12, Kermit Gordon Papers, JFKL, 1–2 (emphasis in original).
73. Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 55–57; Russell, Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race, 34–35; Sundquist, Politics and Policy, 137–41; Weir, Politics and Jobs, 67, 69–70.
74. Wirtz to Gordon, 23 January 1964, Folder: “Poverty,” Box 12, Kermit Gordon Papers, JFKL, 1–2.
75. Ibid., JFKL, 4–5.
76. Ibid., JFKL, 4–5 (emphasis in original).
77. Bernstein, Promises Kept, 122; Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 212; Mangum, MDTA, 20.
78. Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 219–23; Mangum, MDTA, 38–41, 97–99, 108, 116; Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 60; Patterson, James T., America’s Struggle Against Poverty in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 2000), 124;Google Scholar Weir, Politics and Jobs, 74.
79. Lee C. White to the President, 4 December 1963, Box 6, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL.
80. Chapter on Social Problems, Folder “A: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background on the War on Poverty,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 5. There is also evidence that the main disagreement between the DOL and CEA was about the relative importance of job training, rather than whether or not to implement public employment. While CEA Chairman Heller saw job training as an important component alongside the community-action approach, Wirtz wanted to scrap the community-action approach and use all the funding for job training (Chapter on Social Problems, Folder “A: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background on the War on Poverty,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 5).
81. Wirtz did include Area Redevelopment projects, which were effectively public works, but he did not call for expansion or change to the program. (Wirtz to Gordon, 23 January 1964, Folder: “Poverty,” Box 12, Kermit Gordon Papers, JFKL, 5, 7–10, 12).
82. Willard Wirtz to Bill Moyers, 29 February 1964, Folder: “F: Legislative History on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 2, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL.
83. Willard Wirtz to the President, 11 March 1964, Folder: “11/63–9/65 Labor,” Box 6, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL.
84. Burton Weisbrod to Walter Heller, “Secretary Wirtz’s Performance at the Poverty Bill Hearings,” 19 March 1964, Folder: “B: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL.
85. Jack Valenti to the President, 12 November 1964, Folder: “11/63–9/65 Labor,” Box 6, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL.
86. For Wirtz lobbying for job training, see Chapter on Social Problems, Folder “A: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background on the War on Poverty,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 5. For Wirtz on the need for “community work-training for adult workers,” see Wirtz to Schultze, 29 July 1965, Folder: “Community Work and Training,” Box 9, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA. For Wirtz on subemployment in urban areas and proposed training solutions see Willard Wirtz to Frank L. Lewis, 31 December 1966, “Secretary of Labor’s Report to the President on Employment and Unemployment in Urban Slums,” Folder: “Concentrated Employment Program,” Box 10, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA, 24–28.
87. Wirtz to Schultze, 29 July 1965, Folder: “Community Work and Training,” Box 9, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA, 4. The WEP, administered by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, was “designed to help unemployed fathers and other needy persons to secure and retain employment” and was aimed at the thirty-four states that had not implemented the work-training provisions of the 1962 Social Security Act amendments (Hazel Guffey to Seidman, 7 January 1965, “Organisational [sic] Problems in the Poverty Program,” Box 9, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA, 2). A 1967 review of WEP reported that while some sites provided quality services, some were “disguised work-relief projects” (William Gorham to Joe Califano, 20 April 1967, Box 228, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 61.1a, NA, 1).
88. Wirtz to Schultze, 29 July 1965, Folder: “Community Work and Training,” Box 9, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA, 4.
89. Frank L. Lewis to BOB Director, “Labor-HEW administrative responsibilities for the Work Experience Program and the Community Work and Training,” 11 April 1967, Box 9, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget, SR. 60.11, NA.
90. Wirtz to the President, “Job Development Program,” 9 April 1965, Box 6, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL; Joseph Califano to Willard Wirtz, 14 October 1965, Box 36, FG 600/Task Force, WHCF, LBJL.
91. “Employability” was a category left over from the New Deal that sought to distinguish between those who could be expected to work in the private labor market based on their physical ability and lack of other legitimate duties such as childcare, and those who were either physically incapable of work or needed to perform household labor such as childcare. For the DOL, “employability” was also problematic because it “is very difficult to measure since there is no objective standard for it and it depends on economic conditions as well as on the abilities and desires of individuals,” such as the many women who stay home to take care of their families (Charles L. Schultze to Joseph Califano, 14 August 1965, Folder: “11/63–9/65 Labor,” Box 6, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL).
92. Willard Wirtz to the President, 9 December 1963, Folder: “Labor-Wirtz Memos,” Box 23, George Reedy Papers, Office Files of the White House Aides, LBJL.
93. Volume I, Administration of the DOL, Folder: “Administrative History of the DOL,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, iv.
94. Willard Wirtz to Frank L. Lewis, 31 December 1966, “Secretary of Labor’s Report to the President on Employment and Unemployment in Urban Slums,” Folder: “Concentrated Employment Program,” Box 10, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA, 25; R. J. Lampman, “For Walter W. Heller’s speech. This is a draft for a section on ‘The Costs of Slack,’” 10 June 1963, Folder: “A: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 5–6; Heller, “1964 Legislative Program for ‘Widening Participation in Prosperity’–an Attack on Poverty,” 5 November 1963, Folder: “B: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 1–2. For example, according to the DOL’s own survey, in 1966 only 44 percent of the unemployed poor in urban slums attributed their unemployment to “lack of education, training, skills, or experience” ( Meier, Derek I., “The Concentrated Employment Program,” Urban Law Annual; Journal of Urban and Contemporary Law, January 1971, http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1823&context=law_urbanlaw (accessed 2 August 2017), 164).Google Scholar
95. Wirtz to Lewis, “Secretary of Labor’s Report to the President on Employment and Unemployment in Urban Slums,” 31 December 1966, Folder: “Concentrated Employment Program,” Box 10, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA, 1, 19, 24–29, 34.
96. In January 1964, HEW also unsuccessfully advanced a proposal for a public works program alongside increased cooperation with the private sector to increase the supply of jobs (Wilbur Cohen, “Staff memorandum on ‘Outline of a Proposed Poverty Program,’” 10 January 1964, Folder: “BOB Papers on Poverty C, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL).
97. There is some disagreement about whether Shriver or Wirtz originated this proposal. Michael Gillette claims that Wirtz proposed the program (Launching the War on Poverty, 89). However, Adam Yarmolinsky, who was present at the meeting, states that Shriver presented the plan, was the “original proponent of jobs as a solution” and made an “impassioned speech for jobs which the president completely ignored.” Since Yarmolinsky also notes that Wirtz supported Shriver in his proposal, this is not an example of them competing but, rather, cooperating (Adam Yarmolinsky, Transcript of “The Federal Government and Urban Poverty: Discussions at Brandeis University, June 16–17, 1973,” 287–88).
98. Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 57.
99. Ibid., 57, quoting Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War Against Poverty (New York, 1969), 84.Google Scholar
100. Walter Heller, “To Readers of Chapter 2 (The Problem of Poverty in America),” 28 December 1963, Folder: “A: CEA Draft History of the War on Poverty, Legislative Background–EOA 1964,” Box 1, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 21.
101. Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 57–58.
102. Secretary of Commerce to the President, 8 January 1964, Box 43, FI 4/FG Budget Appropriations, Federal Government, WHCF, LBJL.
103. “Volume II, Part 1, Programs of the DOL,” Folder: “Administrative History of the Department of Labor,” Box 2, LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 683; Mangum, MDTA, 17, 20.
104. Magnum, MDTA, 97–99, 108, 116; Patterson, America’s Struggle Against Poverty in the Twentieth Century, 124.
105. Eva Bertram notes that in the 1990s “New Democrats” proposed a “work-first strategy” that made this approach explicit, though the evidence from the 1960s demonstrates that this strategy had long been applied to poor and disadvantaged workers and unemployed. Bertram, Eva, The Workfare State: Public Assistance Politics from the New Deal to the New Democrats (Philadelphia, 2015), 208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
106. The original Keynesian idea of an economic stimulus through government spending on social programs provided a mechanism to help ameliorate market inequalities, whereas the Tax Cut was a commercial interpretation that left everything in the hands of the private sector. Bernstein, Promises Kept, 149–50; Brinkley, Alan, John F. Kennedy: The American Presidents Series: The 35th President, 1961–1963 (New York, 2012), 57.Google Scholar
107. Johnson, Lyndon B., “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” 8 January 1964, online by Peters, Gerhard and Woolley, John T., The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26787 (accessed 14 October 2015).Google Scholar
108. Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 237–38, 246–47; Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 74–75.
109. In a November 1964 address Johnson stated: “Unemployment is still far too high. More young people than ever are looking for their first jobs. We have 3,200,000 18-year-olds who want to go to school or want to find a job this year. Educational opportunities, therefore, must be increased” ( Johnson, Lyndon B., “Remarks at the Swearing In of Gardner Ackley as Chairman and Arthur Okun as Member of the Council of Economic Advisers,” 16 November 1964, online by Peters, Gerhard and Woolley, John T., The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26722, accessed October 14, 2015).Google Scholar
110. Johnson, Lyndon B., “Remarks at a Luncheon of the Committee for Economic Development,” 19 November 1964, online by Peters, Gerhard and Woolley, John T., The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26726 (accessed 14 October 14, 2015).Google Scholar
111. Gardner Ackley to the President, “A Stronger Fiscal Policy for 1965?,” 13 December 1964, Box 32, EX BE 5-4, WHCF, LBJL; Dillon, Gordon, and Ackley to the President, “Troika Review of Economic and Fiscal Outlook,” 7 December 1964, Box 32, EX BE 5-4, WHCF, LBJL. The Sustaining American Prosperity Task Force (made up of economists, including CEA Member Oakun) recommended “permanent grants-in-aid to local public facilities now being made under the Accelerated Public Works program” (“Sustaining American Prosperity, A Task Force Report for the President of the United States,” 17 November 1964, Folder: “Task Force, Bill Moyers Papers,” Box 4, LBJL, 18.)
112. Johnson, Lyndon B., “Remarks to the National Industrial Conference Board,” 17 February 1965, online by Peters, Gerhard and Woolley, John T., The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=27433 (accessed 14 October 2015).Google Scholar
113. Levine “Draft, Second Description of the Public Employment Program,” 28 August 1965, Folder: “Manpower federal Coordination (1963–1965),” Box 9, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA, 1–2.
114. “Narrative History,” Folder: “vol. 1, part 2, Administrative History of the Office of Economic Opportunity,” LBDC, WHCF, LBJL, 621–22.
115. Joseph A. Kershaw to Joseph Califano, “Possible participation of the health field in the proposed ‘Public Employment Program,’” 18 October 1965, Box 7, LA 2, LBJL.
116. Kermit Gordon, to the President, “Programs to reduce hard-core unemployment,” 13 January 1965, Folder: “Manpower Federal Coordination (1963–1965),” Box 9, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA, 1–2; Walter Heller to the President,“What Price Great Society,” 21 December 1965, WE/MC Box 98, WHCF, LBJL.
117. Troika to the President, 22 August 1966, Box 23, FI 4, WHCF, LBJL.
118. Sargent Shriver to Charles Schultze, 6 September 1966, Box 9, Folder: “Manpower Federal Coordination (1966–67),” Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR 60.11, NA.
119. Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 247–48; Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 58.
120. Congress also transferred authority for the Work Experience Program from the Department of Health and Human Services to the DOL (“Antipoverty Funds Reduced and Earmarked,” CQ Almanac, CQ Press Library, 1966, https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal66-1301316 (accessed 2 August 2017).
121. Robert A. Levine to Sargent Shriver, 11 October 1966, Subject: Work Training Programs, Folder: “National Work and Training Program, 1966,” Box 10, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA, 1–7.
122. Sargent Shriver to John W. Gardner, “Draft Memo,” undated, c. late 1966, Folder: “National Work and Training Program, 1966,” Box 10, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA, 1–3.
123. William B. Cannon, to Charles Schultze, “Job Programs and Community Action,” 1 November 1966, Folder: “National Work and Training Program, 1966,” Box 10, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR. 60.11, NA, 1–2.
124. Brown, Race, Money, and the American Welfare State, 285–89.
125. Phillip S. Hughes, to Joseph Califano, “Kennedy–Javits, Nelson–Scheuer, and the new Concentrated Employment Program,” 4 May 1967, Folder: “OEO Legislation 1968,” Box 29, James Gaither Papers, Office Files of the White House Aides, LBJL.
126. Joe Califano to the President, 11 August 1967, Box 165, EX LE/WE9, WHCF, LBJL; “Antipoverty Program Survives Assault, Gets $1.8 billion,” CQ Almanac, CQ Press Library, 1967, https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal67-1313423 (accessed 2 August 2017).
127. Charles Schultze to Joseph Califano, 12 July 1967, Folder: “Urban Slum Employment Task Force,” Box 10, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget, SR. 60.11, NA, 2–3 (emphasis in original).
128. “Antipoverty Program Survives Assault, Gets $1.8 billion,” CQ Almanac, CQ Press Library, 1967, https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal67-1313423 (accessed 2 August 2017).
129. Willard Wirtz to the President, “Concentration of the Manpower and Poverty Programs on the City Slums and Ghettoes,” 4 January 1967, Box 232 T2-1, Record Group 51, Bureau of the Budget SR 61.1a, NA.
130. Joseph Califano to the President, 12 September 1967, Box 8, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL.
131. Willard Wirtz to the President, 12 September 1967, Box 8, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL; Joseph Califano to the President, 20 September 1967, Box 8, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL; “Small Business Administration Memo to All Area Administrators,” 19 December 1967, Box 8, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL.
132. Willard Wirtz to the President, “Negro Unemployment and the Riots,” 1 August 1967, Box 8, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL; Wirtz to the President, “Use of Training Opportunities; Preliminary Report,” 5 August 1967, , Box 8, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL.
133. Secretary of Commerce to the President, “Test Program for Job Development,” 28 December 1967, Box 8, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL.
134. William D. Carey to Jim Gaither, “Concentrated Employment Project,” 5 July 1968, Box 17, Jim Gaither Papers, Office Files of the White House Aides, LBJL.
135. Joseph Califano to the President, 11 January 1968, Box 9, LA 2, WHCF, LBJL.
136. Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 68–69; Russell, Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race, 5–6; Weir, Politics and Jobs, 5–6, 23, 30.
137. On the rise of less stable, service-sector jobs, see Doeringer, Peter B. and Piore, Michael J., Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis (Washington, D.C., 1970), 273–74;Google Scholar Caplow, Theodore, Bahr, Howard M., Chadwick, Bruce A., and Modell, John, Recent Social Trends in the United States, 1960–1990 (Montreal, 1994), 149–50;Google Scholar Lee, Donghoon and Wolpin, Kenneth I., “Intersectoral Labor Mobility and the Growth of the Service Sector,” Econometric Society 74, no. 1 (January 2006): 1, 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar