Roosevelt: Domestic Affairs. Economic conditions had deteriorated in the four months between FDR's election and his inauguration. Unemployment grew to over twenty- five percent of the nation's workforce, with more than twelve million Americans out of work. A new wave of bank failures hit in February 1. Upon accepting the Democratic nomination, FDR had promised a . In trying to make sense of FDR's domestic policies, historians and political scientists have referred to a . ![]() But the boundaries between the first and second New Deals should be viewed as porous rather than concrete. In other words, significant continuities existed between the first and second New Deals that should not be overlooked. One thing is clear: the New Deal was, and remains, difficult to categorize. Even a member of FDR's administration, the committed New Dealer Alvin Hansen, admitted in 1. Roosevelt certainly believed in the premises of American capitalism, but he also saw that American capitalism circa 1. How much, and what kind of, reform was still up in the air. Upon entering the Oval Office, FDR was neither a die- hard liberal nor a conservative, and the policies he enacted during his first term sometimes reflected contradictory ideological sources. ![]() This ideological and political incoherence shrank in significance however, next to what former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes described as a . Above all, FDR was an optimist, offering hope to millions of Americans who had none. From 1933 until 1941, President Roosevelt’s programs and policies did more than just adjust interest rates, tinker with farm subsidies and create short-term make-work programs. They created a brand-new, if tenuous, political coalition that included white working. The role of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the history of the United States of America. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York, on January 30, 1882, the son of James Roosevelt and Sara Delano Roosevelt. 488 CHAPTER 15 MAIN IDEAMAIN IDEA Terms & Names A New Deal Fights the Depression After becoming president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt used government programs to combat the Depression. ![]()
President Obama Announces Multi-Sector Effort and Call to Action to Give Americans Pathways to Well-Paying Technology Jobs; Makes Available $100 Million in Grants The President and his Administration are focused on promoting middle class economics to ensure that all Americans can contribute to and. His extreme self- confidence buoyed an American public unsure of the future or even present course. This intoxicating mix made FDR appear the paragon of leadership, a father- figure who reassured a desperate nation in his inaugural address that . He claimed he would try something to end the depression, and if it worked he would move on to the next problem. If it failed, he would assess the failure and try something else. Lifting America out of the Depression was a large task. To help him, FDR depended on a sizeable coterie of advisers to a degree unprecedented in the history of the presidency. FDR brought many veterans of his governorship to Washington. Raymond Moley, a professor of public law and a member of the . Francis Perkins, who had known FDR since their days in the state legislature, became the first women ever to hold a cabinet office, taking charge at the Department of Labor. In the main, these advisers were political liberals. With this collection of advisers, FDR set up his White House staff. Eschewing a hierarchical form of organization, or even one with each aide given a clearly delineated duty, Roosevelt instead meted out tasks to his advisers, sometimes charging them with similar duties. Additionally, FDR often appointed advisers of clashing temperaments and beliefs to the same policy issue, leading to internal confrontations and squabbling. The benefits of this system were that FDR received political and policy advice from a range of advisers with different ideological predilections and political connections. It also left the President with an array of options and allowed him to forge a consensus within his own administration about the direction, both in terms of policy and politics, of his presidency. Finally, it produced a degree of flexibility in the policymaking process, which harmonized with Roosevelt's often experimental approach to the New Deal. The main drawback to this type of governance was that the New Deal often appeared to be moving in several directions, many of them contradictory, all at once. The First New Deal: Saving Capitalism? The First New Deal began almost immediately upon Roosevelt's assumption of the presidency. In general, the First New Deal looked to stabilize the U. S. He sought to achieve this last objective by building partnerships between business and government to resuscitate industrial production. In carrying forward this agenda, FDR began to recreate the role of the federal government in American economic and political life. Banking and Finance. FDR's immediate task upon his inauguration was to stabilize the nation's banking system. On March 6, Roosevelt declared a national . FDR also called Congress into emergency session where the legislature enacted, nearly sight unseen, the President's banking proposal. Under this plan, the federal government would inspect all banks, re- open those that were sufficiently solvent, re- organize those that could be saved, and close those that were beyond repair. On March 1. 2, FDR went on the radio—giving the first of many . During the following weeks, Americans returned nearly $1 billion dollars to bank vaults. FDR then won a significant number of other reforms related to the nation's financial sector. In May 1. 93. 3, he signed the Securities Act, which required corporations and stockbrokers to release accurate information about stocks to investors. In June 1. 93. 3, he signed the Glass- Steagall Act, which created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, guaranteeing the savings of average citizens, and prevented commercial banks from engaging in investment banking, which they had been carrying on in scandalous fashion. In 1. 93. 4, the Securities and Exchange Act created the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which was charged with regulating financial markets. Roosevelt in 1. 93. America off the gold standard, and the Banking act of 1. A reorganized Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) spun off subsidiaries such as the Federal National Mortgage Association (. Taken together, these innovations, one write has said, marked the beginning of the end of Wall Street's domination of finance capitalism. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) made direct cash allocations available to states for immediate payments to the unemployed. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) put 3. Finally, the Civil Works Administration (CWA) spent almost $1 billion on public works projects, including airports and roads. Roosevelt shut the CWA after only four months, however, because it was so costly. The benefits of these three programs were obvious: they provided relief for millions of Americans on the verge of outright starvation and gave unemployed Americans jobs. Conservative attacked relieve programs as handouts to the undeserving poor and derided the CCC and CWA as . In fact, Americans in the twenty- first century continue to enjoy the picnic tables, the cabins, and the forest roads built by FDR's . FDR and his advisers believed that overproduction had caused gluts in the farm market, dropping prices, and, in turn, sending farmers' incomes plummeting. The AAA aimed to inflate farmers' incomes by offering cash incentives to farmers who agreed cut production. The AAA originally covered wheat, corn, cotton, hogs, milk, rice, and tobacco, but Congress added new commodities to the program in the ensuing years. Over three million farmers joined the AAA program in its first year, and farm income did increase by more than fifty percent between 1. Despite these impressive gains, the benefits of the AAA too often accrued to large farm- owners rather than the millions of poor white and African- American tenant farmers and sharecroppers who lived in abject poverty. Moreover, AAA policies stressed the lowering of production—which in a few cases in 1. With many Americans hungry and ill- clothed, critics labeled such policies . The Farm Credit Association, another offshoot of the RFC, lent more than a billion dollars to families to save their farms from foreclosure. The Federal Emerency Relief Administration and the Resettlement Administration sponsored experimental rural communities and greenbelt towns. The Farm Security Administration (FSA) enabled tenant farmers to buy farms and built modern labor camps for migrants like John Steinbeck's fictional Joads. Perhaps nothing did more to rescue the farm family from isolation than the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) which brought electricity for the first time to millions of rural homes and with it such conveniences as radios and washing machines. The REA is only one example of FDR's interest in public power, which he had sponsored as governor of New York. Huge dams—Grand Coulee and Bonneville—transformed the economy of the Pacific Northwest. Still more important was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The Tennessee Valley stretched some 4. Virginia to Mississippi and was the poorest region in the nation. The TVA aimed to marshal the area's natural resources into an engine of economic uplift by building dams and power plants that would bring jobs, electricity, and flood control to the Valley. A number of Tennessee Valley natives criticized the TVA for displacing thousands of people—usually poor farmers—to make way for power plants and dams. But by the end of the 1. TVA had brought millions of southern Americans electric power, roads, and jobs in regions that previously had no phones, electric lights, or stable employment. In later years, the TVA's dams and power plants wreaked havoc on the environment by spewing pollution. The TVA however, also did a great deal to restore badly eroded hillsides, and another New Deal agency, the Soil Conservation Service, trained farmers in the proper methods of cultivation. As Theodore Roosevelt is the father of forest conservation, Franklin Roosevelt is the father of soil conservation. Resuscitating American Industry. Finally, in some of the most controversial legislation of his administration, Roosevelt set out to help American industry get back onto its feet. The centerpiece of his industrial recovery program was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) that Congress passed in June 1. Drawing its inspiration from the federal government's efforts at economic planning during World War I and the voluntary trade associations of the 1. NIRA provided for national economic planning as opposed to individualistic and competitive, laissez- faire capitalism. The NIRA created two new agencies, the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the National Recovery Administration (NRA). WGBH American Experience. In 1. 93. 2 Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected overwhelmingly on a campaign promising a New Deal for the American people. Roosevelt worked quickly upon his election to deliver the New Deal, an unprecedented number of reforms addressing the catastrophic effects of the Great Depression. Unlike his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, who felt that the public should support the government and not the other way around, Roosevelt felt it was the federal government’s duty to help the American people weather these bad times. Together with his “brain trust,” a group of university scholars and liberal theorists, Roosevelt sought the best course of action for the struggling nation. A desperate Congress gave him carte blanche and rubber- stamped his proposals in order to expedite the reforms. During the first 1. His first act as president was to declare a four- day bank holiday, during which time Congress drafted the Emergency Banking Bill of 1. Three months later, he signed the Glass- Steagall Act which created the FDIC, federally insuring deposits. The Civil Conservation Corps was one of the New Deal’s most successful programs. It addressed the pressing problem of unemployment by sending 3 million single men from age 1. Living in camps in the forests, the men dug ditches, built reservoirs and planted trees. The men, all volunteers, were paid $3. The Works Progress Administration, Roosevelt’s major work relief program, would employ more than 8. The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and the National Recovery Administration (NRA) were designed to address unemployment by regulating the number of hours worked per week and banning child labor. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), created in 1. The Agricultural Adjustment Act subsidized farmers for reducing crops and provided loans for farmers facing bankruptcy. The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) helped people save their homes from foreclosure. While they did not end the Depression, the New Deal’s experimental programs helped the American people immeasurably by taking care of their basic needs and giving them the dignity of work and hope.
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