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See Also

Elections of 1932, U.S.

Great Depression in the United States

National debt

New Deal

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Social Security Act of 1935

Unemployment in the United States

Works Progress Administration

The 1930s in America

Morgenthau, Henry T., Jr.

by Frederick B. Chary

Identification U.S. secretary of the Treasury

As secretary of the Treasury during the era of the New Deal, Morgenthau helped shape the goals of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration while attempting to adhere to sound economic and financial principles. He was especially critical in the framing of the Social Security Act.

Henry T. Morgenthau, Jr., was a member of a prominent New York City Jewish family. His father, Henry, Sr., was a real estate tycoon. His mother was Josephine Sykes. His son, Robert, became district attorney for the county of New York. Morgenthau graduated from Cornell University in agriculture and architecture and later was an editor of the journal American Agriculturist. He met Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, in 1914 and was their neighbor in Hyde Park, New York. As governor of New York, Roosevelt appointed Morgenthau conservation commissioner and to an agricultural committee.

Morgenthau worked on Roosevelt’s campaigns for governor (1928) and president (1932). Roosevelt appointed him as secretary of the Treasury in 1933, a position he held until Roosevelt died in 1945. Morgenthau’s personal financial policy was to maintain a balanced budget, but because of his loyalty to Roosevelt, he managed the Keynesian deficit policy of the New Deal. Therefore, he was in charge of $370 billion of expenditures, three times the amount spent by all previous Treasury secretaries combined.

Morgenthau supported the idea of a special budget for New Deal projects in order to keep regular government spending under control. He opposed some programs but sponsored others. However, he believed the programs should end when the country recovered from the Depression. He succeeded in his desire to establish a special-account Social Security, instead of financing coming from the general fund.

In 1937, Morgenthau broke publicly with Roosevelt over continued deficit spending. Conservative bankers did not believe him and blamed him along with the president for the Keynesian policies.

Impact

Morgenthau helped change economic matters in the U.S. federal government and in the lives of individual Americans. Although he was a fiscal conservative, he helped make Keynesian deficit-spending policies an instrument of national economic practice.

Further Reading

1 

Blum, John Morton. Roosevelt and Morgenthau. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970.

2 

Shlaes, Amity. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Chary, Frederick B. "Morgenthau, Henry T., Jr.." The 1930s in America, edited by Thomas Tandy Lewis, Salem Press, 2011. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=1930_140940801409.
APA 7th
Chary, F. B. (2011). Morgenthau, Henry T., Jr.. In T. T. Lewis (Ed.), The 1930s in America. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Chary, Frederick B. "Morgenthau, Henry T., Jr.." Edited by Thomas Tandy Lewis. The 1930s in America. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2011. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.