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History & Society
Fair Deal
United States history
Harry S. Truman
Fair Deal, in U.S. history, President Harry S. Truman’s liberal domestic reform program, the basic tenets of which he had outlined as early as 1945. In his first postwar message to Congress that year, Truman had called for expanded social security, new wages-and-hours and public-housing legislation, and a permanent Fair Employment Practices Act that would prevent racial or religious discrimination in hiring. Congress was preoccupied with problems of inflation and of converting the country to a peacetime economy, however, and paid little heed to the proposals. In 1946 Congress did pass the Employment Act, clearly stating the government’s responsibility for ...(100 of 174 words)