Currently, scholars hold that the government’s principal contribution to the California wine industry’s recovery from Prohibition in the 1930s was to get out of the way, freeing entrepreneurs to conduct business properly; according to this interpretation, the United States only taxed the product and impeded progress. But this article argues that in the areas of regulation, promotion, and protection of the wine industry, the federal government provided a framework for California winemakers to succeed and that, moreover, it often did so at their request and in cooperation with them. Though New Deal laws and regulations did not benefit all stakeholders equally, they did work to bring economic recovery to an industry that suffered from both Prohibition and the Depression.

This article examines the Committee for Constitutional Government, a conservative organization that spearheaded a novel form of mass-based mobilization and direct-mail propaganda to counter New Deal reforms from 1937 to the late 1950s. I argue that the members of the committee offered a supple and variegated response to New Deal liberalism, one with deep roots in the American past. Organizationally, the committee differed from other conservative groups of the period in the vastly greater reach of its propaganda, the small-donor financial base of its operations, and its extensive cultivation of a grassroots movement committed to right-wing reform. The committee was a critical political actor from 1937 to 1955, systematically shaping legislation and countering the trend toward social democracy in America. The ultimate result of its campaigns was to retard the growth of the administrative state and help formulate a cogent conservative critique of reformist liberalism.

This article argues that 1961 to 1967 was a critical period when federal, state, and academic institutions looked with hope toward emerging methods in behavioral and social psychology to train juvenile justice officials and to treat delinquent children. Reflecting liberal optimism regarding the possibility of reforming individual behavior without structural change, the Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Offenses Control Act of 1961 provided project funding to cities, nonprofits, and universities. Using the University of North Carolina’s Training Center on Delinquency and Youth Crime as a case study, this article examines how federal funding was used for “experiments” with group therapy, youth incarceration, and cocreation of juvenile justice. Though largely inconclusive, these experiments demonstrated the existence of alternatives to the hyperinstitutionalization of juvenile offenders that accelerated after the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision of In re Gault.

For five decades now the various levels of government in the United States, through the use of affirmative action and diversity policies, have sought a more racially and gender-wise equitable society with respect to equal employment opportunity. Governments established hiring goals for women and racial minorities. Goals became quotas as state and local governments (and private employers) that were dependent on federal money made certain that goals produced desired results by preferring people based on their race or gender. This article is a case study of how the Commonwealth’s welfare cabinet over two decades ago used long-standing civil service regulations and policies to pursue preferential employment practices while conterminously pursuing greater societal equity by reducing governmental oversight of welfare programs. All this foreshadowed President Biden’s iteration of affirmative action—federal equity directives regarding employment preferences and greater conditions of equality. After the events described herein, Democratic Kentucky transformed itself into a Republican state.