Critics of the New Deal

The New Deal created resistance from all sides of the political spectrum by 1934. Two of the major critics of the New Deal were Louisiana Senator Huey P. Long and Father Charles Coughlin. Long was a supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Coughlin was a supporter of Roosevelt as well and the United States Supreme Court. Meanwhile businessmen, bankers, the rich, and conservatives increasingly opposed the New Deal and because of Roosevelt’s toleration of budget deficits and the removal of the gold standard.
Huey Long opposed the New Deal because he believed it to be too generous to corporate interests. As we can see from his Share Our Wealth plan, which attempted to strip the rich of their fortunes and redistribute them to the rest of the population, he did not like the fact that the wealthy were being helped even more than normal. Even though the New Deal appealed to the unemployed it also helped corporate welfare. Long’s plan was reform, recovery, and relief in one package, which was extremely popular in Louisiana.
Father Charles Coughlin disliked the New Deal because he thought Roosevelt was too friendly to the bankers and did not live up to what he said he was going to do in his inaugural speech. He was a strongly opinioned man and with his radio station he was able to state them publicly causing controversy and eventually forcing the cancellation of his radio program and forbade the dissemination through the post of his newspaper, Social Justice. In 1934 Coughlin announced the initiation of a new political organization called the Nation’s Union of Social Justice, which called for monetary reforms, the nationalization of major industries and railroads, and the protection of the rights of labor.