New York Progressives' Influence on the New Deal - "Franklin D. Roosevelt tapped New Yorkers to play key roles in his administration and shape the federal programs that brought economic relief and physical transformation to the entire country."[1] (previously)

• The Revolution of '28: Al Smith, American Progressivism, and the Coming of the New Deal (begins 13:45) - "Dr. Robert Chiles discusses [2018] book on former four-term governor Al Smith."
• The Happy Warrior's Legacy - "How Al Smith's Albany became Roosevelt's Washington.

When Assemblyman Smith saw reports of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, he understood immediately what he was looking at. The fire, and the deaths weren't just an accident. They were the predictable result of an economic system that treated employees — those young immigrant women, hoping to build better lives — as inputs to a production process; with no concession to their employees' dignity or lives.

Al Smith's conscience had been formed in the immigrant Catholic parishes of lower Manhattan, in a Church that had told the world, twenty years before — in words it had itself not used in many years — that what happened that March day in Manhattan was wrong. That it was a sin.

That Church was Pope Leo XIII's Church. The words were Rerum Novarum.[2,3]

The intellectual tradition spurred by Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical manifested in G.K. Chesterton's distributism, to Jacques Maritain's personalism, and Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker. These were movements of thought and conscience and direct service: enormously important, but operating at the level of ideas and personal witness.

Al Smith is not usually discussed alongside G. K. Chesterton and Dorothy Day, but he belongs in their company. Where they applied Pope Leo XIII's principles to economics and philosophy and works of mercy, Smith applied them to workmen's compensation law, factory safety codes, public housing, and the hours women and children could be required to work. From encyclical to intellectual, from intellectual to activist, from activist to legislator — each stage spoke with conviction: human dignity is not mere sentiment, but a structural demand that the state exists, in part, to enforce.

• Al Smith - "After being approached by Frances Perkins, an activist, to improve labor practices, Smith sought to improve the conditions of factory workers... Their findings led to thirty-eight new laws regulating labor in New York State, and gave each of them a reputation as leading progressive reformers working on behalf of the working class. In the process, they changed Tammany's reputation from mere corruption to progressive endeavors to help the workers."
• Heather Cox Richardson: "Frances Perkins, and all those who worked with her, transformed the horror of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire into the heart of our nation's basic social safety net. 'There is always a large horizon... There is much to be done,' Perkins said. 'It is up to you to contribute some small part to a program of human betterment for all time.'"

But she was not done. In 1919, over the fervent objections of men, Governor Smith appointed Perkins to the New York State Industrial Commission to help weed out the corruption that was weakening the new laws. She continued to be one of his closest advisers on labor issues. In 1929, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt replaced Smith as New York governor, he appointed Perkins to oversee the state's labor department as the Depression worsened. When President Herbert Hoover claimed that unemployment was ending, Perkins made national news when she repeatedly called him out with figures proving the opposite and said his "misleading statements" were "cruel and irresponsible." She began to work with leaders from other states to figure out how to protect workers and promote employment by working together.

In 1933, after the people had rejected Hoover's plan to let the Depression burn itself out, President-elect Roosevelt asked Perkins to serve as Secretary of Labor in his administration. She accepted only on the condition that he back her goals: unemployment insurance, health insurance, old-age insurance, a 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, and abolition of child labor. She later recalled: "I remember he looked so startled, and he said, 'Well, do you think it can be done?'"

She promised to find out.

Once in office, Perkins was a driving force behind the administration's massive investment in public works projects to get people back to work. She urged the government to spend $3.3 billion on schools, roads, housing, and post offices. Those projects employed more than a million people in 1934.

In 1935, FDR signed the Social Security Act, providing ordinary Americans with unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services.

In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage and maximum hours. It banned child labor.

• HCR: "Perkins recognized that the central purpose of government was not to protect property; it was to protect the communities of people who lived in the nation. She recognized that children, the elderly, women, and disabled Americans, all of whom contributed to society whether or not that contribution was recognized with a paycheck, were as valuable to the survival of a community as male workers and the wealthy men who employed them."

"The people are what matter to government," she said, "and a government should aim to give all the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life."

A majority of Americans of both parties liked the new system, but the reworking of the government shocked those who had previously dominated the country. As soon as the Social Security Act passed, opponents set out to destroy it along with the rest of the new system. A coalition of Republican businessmen who hated both business regulation and the taxes that paid for social programs, racists who opposed the idea of equal rights for racial and ethnic minorities, and religious traditionalists—especially Southern Baptists—who opposed the recognition of women's equal rights, joined together to fight against the New Deal.[4,5]

• FDR and Al Smith: An Unlikely Political Alliance - "As other senators brushed by, Perkins raised her eyes to Roosevelt's and told him about the fifty-four-hour bill, explaining how it would improve the lives of working women and would help, in some small way, to ease the exploitation of industrial workers. The young senator did not attempt to disguise his utter lack of interest. 'No, no,' he said as he waved her way. 'More important things. Can't do it now. Can't do it now. Much more important things.' He rushed away, head in the air, leaving Frances Perkins to wonder how this man Roosevelt could be so 'absurd'—a favorite word of hers."
• Frances Perkins - "When Roosevelt tapped her as labor secretary in 1933, Perkins drew on the New York State experience as the model for new federal programs. She put every ounce of her formidable energy into weaving a safety net for a Depression-scarred society, securing a remarkable array of benefits for American workers. Frances Perkins had large ambitions—not for herself, but for the world in which she lived. Her vision found concrete expression in such landmark reforms as the Wagner Act, which gave workers the right to organize unions and bargain collectively, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established for the first time a minimum wage and a maximum workweek for men and women. Perkins also chaired the Committee on Economic Security, which developed and drafted the legislation that became the Social Security Act in 1935." (Frances Perkins: The Woman Behind the New Deal; oh and Robert F. Wagner ;)

of course, new york progressives -- like AOC and mamdani -- are lighting the way once again! also btw... The Reconstruction Papers - "The PDF is free to the public."

For nearly a century, the conservative movement's white whale was the government the New Deal and the Great Society had built. Republicans chipped away at it but feared the political ramifications of going too far. Now, Donald Trump and men in his inner circle like Russell Vought have come promising to do what their predecessors could not, and kill the beast outright. In its place they intend to leave a fascist, personalist, but otherwise greatly diminished state.[6] If they are going to shoot their shot, then liberals need to be ready to shoot ours. The Reconstruction Papers is a guide to what that shot should look like. The aim is not to go back to normal, or repair the damage, but to offer bold plans of action for political liberals who manage to retake power from the fascists, as soon as 2029.

HCR: We're Watching MAGA Collapse - "[I]n the two years between this election and the next one, we get to decide what the major issues for the American government are going to be. What do we want to see happen? Like what are our top things? And the people who best articulate those for us are going to be the people that we get behind in the 2028 election... What do we want the government to do? [I]n the long term as you're watching MAGA collapse... also think about what comes next because this is going to be so important going forward. We're not just saying what we don't want but we're also saying what we do want."