Roosevelt to the Rescue

“Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

-FDR’s Inaugural speech 3/4/33

Thinking Skill: Explicitly assess information and draw conclusions

Objective: Assess the success of FDR’s first “100 days” in office

Democratic Party Platform -1932Democratic Party Platform -1932

• Repeal Prohibition• Aid to farmers• Balanced budget• Roosevelt promised a

“New Deal” for all Americans

• Most importantly… He wasn’t Hoover

FDR’s Leadership Skills

• Emphasized relief,

recovery, & eventual

reform• Exuded confidence,

charisma, personality• “Fireside Chats” were

reassuring• Open to suggestion, willing to experiment

(would try anything)•“Brain Trust”•Eleanor•Frances Perkins•“forgotten man”

Run on the Banks

Banking and MoneyRemedies

•Four day “bank holiday” to halt runs

•Emergency Banking Relief Act licensed “healthy” banks to reopen

-Fireside chat to regain confidence Fireside Chat

•FDIC insured deposits up to $5000 & separated deposit banking from investment banking

•Loosened gold standard to put more currency into circulation (and create inflation)

Securities/Stocks

• SEC—Securities Exchange Commission• -regulates stock exchanges and investment

advisors• -action could be taken against fraud (issuing the

arrest warrants to people who publish dishonest financial statements, investigating dishonest stock brokers who steal from their clients.)

• -Financial information required before stocks sold(preventing illegal “insider trading”)

Industry and Labor

•RFC (not New Deal agency) continued low interest loans to businesses

•NRA set production limits, wages, and conditions

-Banned child labor

-National campaign to buy from NRA businesses

•Wagner Act legalized unionization/collective bargaining

-Est. NLRB to deal with labor law violations

•FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act) - 1938

Remedies

NRA: “We Do Our Part”

Infighting, code violations, & Johnson’s departure foreshadowed the Supreme Court’s ruling the NRA unconstitutional in 1935

Unemployment

Unemployment

•CCC employed young men 18-25 in reforestation, park maintenance, soil erosion

•FERA provided $500 million to state/local relief

•PWA built dams, bridges, and public buildings

•NYA, CWA, WPA

Remedies

CCC employees constructing a retention wall

From the “American Experience” CCC documentary

• Jonathan Alter, Writer: When Franklin Roosevelt took office in March of 1933, the official

unemployment rate was 25%. But that grossly underestimated how many people were actually

looking for work or unemployed

• Vincente Ximenes, Joined the CCC in 1938: I remember having, you know, discussions withindividuals who were so angry that they were saying, you know, “To heck with thegovernment. Maybe this whole system maybe ought to be changed.” The seeds were there. Imean, the people were there who were angry enough to do it. I would say that FDR is the onethat saved this country, you know, from having a revolt.

• Jonathan Alter, Writer: When Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, it was almost a perfectmatch of man and moment. He was somebody who could inspire people and used the crisis toredefine what we owe each other as a people. That’s one of the reasons why the New Dealreally was a “New Deal” between the public and the government.

• Jonathan Alter, Writer: Roosevelt believed that work was ultimately more important thanrelief. He wanted to put people to work as quickly as possible. The Civilian ConservationCorps was really the first of several jobs programs that Roosevelt developed, but the CCC wasvery close to his heart. And he took a very direct interest in it. And he designed a lot of itbecause he did have this longtime interest in conservation.

• Franklin Delano Roosevelt (archival): First, we are giving opportunity of employment for aquarter of a million of the unemployed, especially the young men who have dependents. Letthem go into forestry and flood prevention work. That is a big task because it means feedingand clothing and caring for. And we added twice as many men as we had in the regular armyitself. And in creating the Civilian Conservation Corps, we are killing two birds with onestone. We are clearly enhancing the value of our natural resources. And, at the same time,we are relieving an insatiable amount of actual distress.

• Jonathan Alter, Writer: The most amazing to me, was the speed with which he got it going.Three months later, by summer of 1933, 250,000 young men were in the CCC. It was thefastest mobilization in American history, and it has never been matched since.

• Vincente Ximenes, Joined the CCC in 1938: There was a CCC camp in our community inTexas. And there were some farmers who didn’t like FDR and what he did. He was called acommunist, a socialist, and whatever, any name you could find. So, therefore, the CCC-ersalso, of course, were no good as far as they were concerned. There was large numbers ofpeople who felt that government intervention is not good for the country.

• Clifford Hammond, Joined the CCC in 1934: I joined the CC’s in September of 1934. I was 18when I went in. And they took them up to 25. I liked it mainly because that was the only timein my life I ever had two pair of shoes. You had your medical and three squares a day. Andyou only worked about six hours a day. I had been accustomed to working 12, 14 hours a dayon the farm. I thought I really had it made.

• Jonathan Alter, Writer: Franklin Roosevelt was a very clever politician. And he planted CCCcamps all over the country in strategically designated congressional districts. And that helpedto build public support for the program. And, when he ran for reelection in 1936, which wasreally a referendum on the CCC and Social Security and the other New Deal programs, hecarried all but two states, Maine and Vermont. He had the largest victory since GeorgeWashington.

• Jonathan Alter, Writer: If you go out on a hike, now, all over the United States, there’s avery good chance that the trail you’re hiking on was cut by the CCC. The first ski trails in theUnited States, in Vermont, were also cut by the CCC. So a paralyzed President, who couldn’twalk, much less ski, indirectly launched the American ski industry.Any agency of government that manages to plant 2.3 billion — with a “b” — trees to create800 state parks, to save the topsoil of the United States, has to be considered one of the mostpro-environmental organizations ever established.

• Vincente Ximenes, Joined the CCC in 1938: Without the CCCs, I really… I really don’t knowwhat we would have done. We did not have an army prepared to go to war. And here wasapproximately two and a half or three million men who were prepared and had beenorganized to work together. I joined the Air Force in 1941. And they didn’t have to do a hellof a lot of training for me. I was prepared.

• Jonathan Alter, Writer: The CCC not only was a major foundation of our ethic of nationalservice in this country, but also an ethic of conservation. After generations of Americansessentially raping the land for whatever it was worth economically, as happens in so manyother parts of the world, suddenly there’s a break in that in the ’30s. And you have a prettylarge chunk of a generation, three million people, who have some experience in conservingthe land instead of exploiting the land, who care about what we leave behind.

• Jonathan Alter, Writer: Who were the people who pioneered the environmental movementin this country and who now are helping us to transition to more of a green ethic? Many oftheir parents and grandparents were in the CCC. An ethic of conservation is then born anddeveloped and nurtured and built, because it’s all a generational conversation that takesplace, that one thing builds on another, builds on another.

Farming

•AAA hoped to restore farmers’ purchasing power with subsidies

•Farm Credit Association (FCA) assisted in refinancing of farm mortgages

•TVA, REA

Remedies

Farm Credit Associationattempted to prevent…

Housing

• HOLC-help save from foreclosures

• FHA – insures mortgages

Old Age, Disabilities, Survivors

• Social Security Act

• -created in response to Dr. Townsend

• Pensions, unemployment insurance, aid to disabled and dependents

• Accounts for ¼ of the federal budget today

Environment

Remedies

•TVA provided cheap electricity, flood control, & recreation

• CCC

Norris Dam in Norris, TNNorris Dam in Norris, TN

What Hoover Said

• In a 1934 book entitled In a 1934 book entitled TheThe Challenge to LibertyChallenge to Liberty, he , he described the New Deal as "the described the New Deal as "the most stupendous invasion of the most stupendous invasion of the whole spirit of liberty" in the whole spirit of liberty" in the nation's history.nation's history.

Questions from the chart

• Remedies?

• Where did New Deal fall short?

• Role of Government?

• Did the New Deal solve the GD??

Criticisms of FDR • Roosevelt was strongly criticized for his economic

policies, especially the shift in tone from individualism to collectivism with the dramatic expansion of the welfare state and regulation of the economy

• Economist Thomas DiLorenzo said "FDR’s New Deal made the Great Depression longer and deeper. It is a myth that Franklin D. Roosevelt 'got us out of the Depression' and 'saved capitalism from itself,' as generations of Americans have been taught by the state’s education establishment”

Critics -from the right

• Those who tended toward the political right wing tended to criticize the New Deal for attempting too much. It would have been enough, they suggested, if FDR had tried to help large businesses, or simply tried to manipulate the amount of money in the system through the federal banking system. Despite this, he insisted on interfering with the spheres of labor and farming. This resulted in what many people considered a tragic and unforgivable waste of crops. In addition to this “heinous crime”, it also (despite FDR’s original pledge) increased the national debt dramatically.

Critics - from the left

• Those who tended toward the political left wing, on the other hand, tended to be of the opinion the New Deal was insufficient, and said FDR could have fixed a lot more a lot faster if only he were willing to do more with his New Deal reformations. In the end it took WWII to bring America out of the depression, which made many people wonder why the nation had given up so much in chasing FDR’s New Deal

The New Deal Coalition

An American political term that refers to the alignment of interest groups and voting blocs that supported the New Deal and voted for Democratic presidential candidates from 1932 until the late 1960s. It made the Democratic Party the majority party during that period, losing only to Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956.

Franklin D. Roosevelt forged a coalition that included the Democratic state party organizations, city machines, labor unions, blue collar workers, minorities (racial, ethnic and religious), farmers, white Southerners, people on relief, and intellectuals. The coalition fell apart around the bitter factionalism during the 1968 election, but it remains the model that party activists seek to replicate

To Be Continued…

Agree/disagree?

• FDR over-extended his presidential authority during the 1930s

• All things considered, The New Deal solved the problems of the Great Depression

• The New Deal fell short in many significant areas (if agree, specify)

• The New Deal created the dangerous problem of assistance leading to dependence