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Article: Youth Agencies of the New Deal
- Article from:
- Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society
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Youth Agencies of the New Deal
The Great Depression threatened the futures of tens of millions of Americans, but perhaps none so enduringly as the young. In keeping with the cultural pluralism of the times and the response of the federal government to World War I, Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration attacked the Depression with a host of "alphabet agencies" targeting the group identities of the unemployed. But whether the nature of what was called "the youth problem" lay in the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, by the Depression, or by a world careening toward fascism was a source of dispute. Hence, the youth problem was a catch-all phrase encompassing a variety of ...