Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1941

This is Unit Eleven, part one, on Roosevelt's election and the first hundred days of the New Deal. Unit Ten closed on a line: Hoover acted, but he would not give relief directly to people. This unit follows Roosevelt across it. Hold the anchor's three aims in mind through this part: relief for the suffering, recovery for the economy, and reform. And watch for the moment the line is crossed. It comes with a single act giving the states federal cash for the unemployed. By the end you will be able to explain Roosevelt's new coalition, and why the Twentieth Amendment came too late. To describe the bank rescue in order. To name the first New Deal programmes and what each did. To explain why the government destroyed crops in a year of breadlines. And to describe what the Tennessee Valley Authority did, and who paid first.

Four entries on Roosevelt before the presidency: the man, the governor, the nomination, and the landslide.

Roosevelt before the presidency.

USH2 1501 Roosevelt Before the Presidency

Franklin D. Roosevelt served in the New York senate and as assistant secretary of the Navy, and ran for vice president in nineteen twenty. Polio in nineteen twenty-one left him, the anchor says, essentially paralysed from the waist down. He won New York's governorship in nineteen twenty-eight, one of few Democrats to survive that year's landslide, Digital History notes.

What he did as governor.

USH2 1502 Relief in New York

As governor, Roosevelt created the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, offering public jobs at the prevailing wage and aid in food, shelter and clothing, and the Yawp records that it soon reached one in ten of the state's families. The anchor does not name the agency; the example comes from the Yawp. Frances Perkins, his state labour commissioner, later followed him to Washington.

The nomination of nineteen thirty-two.

USH2 1503 Accepting in Person

In nineteen thirty-two Roosevelt became the first presidential candidate to accept his nomination in person at the convention, flying from New York to Chicago through bad weather, and pledged a new deal for the American people, its details left unstated. The New Deal did not yet exist, the anchor stresses; any hopeful answer was welcome.

The result.

USH2 1504 The Landslide of 1932

Roosevelt won by twenty-three million votes to fifteen million, carrying all but six states and over fifty-seven percent of the popular vote, with a new Democratic coalition of African Americans, ethnic minorities and organised labour. Three million more people voted than in nineteen twenty-eight, the anchor notes.

Four entries on the long winter before the inauguration, the shots in Miami, the address, and the advisers.

The long wait for March.

USH2 1505 The Twentieth Amendment

Four months separated Roosevelt's election from his inauguration in March nineteen thirty-three, a winter of renewed bank panics. The Twentieth Amendment ended presidential terms at noon on the twentieth day of January, but the National Archives dates its ratification to January twenty-third, nineteen thirty-three, too late to shorten this winter.

Six shots in Miami.

USH2 1506 Shots in Miami

On February fifteenth, nineteen thirty-three, the bricklayer Giuseppe Zangara fired six shots at the president-elect in Miami's Bayfront Park. Roosevelt was unhurt, and five people were wounded, among them Chicago's mayor, Tony Cermak, who died nineteen days later, the anchor says; Digital History, which calls Zangara mentally ill, confirms the mayor was killed.

The inaugural address.

USH2 1507 Nothing to Fear

On March fourth, nineteen thirty-three, with a quarter of the workforce jobless, Roosevelt told the nation that the only thing it had to fear was fear itself, and demanded, in Digital History's quotation, broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency. Farm foreclosures were averaging twenty thousand a month, Digital History adds.

His advisers.

USH2 1508 The Brains Trust

Roosevelt's advisers were called the Brains Trust after a New York Times reporter's phrase, among them Rexford Tugwell, Raymond Moley and Adolph Berle, Ivy League intellectuals and New York social workers arriving in Washington. Digital History calls the New Dealers pragmatists who rejected laissez-faire yet disagreed profoundly about how to end the Depression.

Five entries on the New Deal's three aims, and on the first crisis it met: the banks.

The first hundred days.

USH2 1509 Relief, Recovery, Reform

The anchor organises the New Deal by three aims: relief for the suffering, recovery for the economy, and reform. Digital History counts fifteen major bills pushed through Congress in the first hundred days, and the anchor more than fifteen significant laws by the end of nineteen thirty-three, some allegedly voted on with the ink still wet.

The banks.

USH2 1510 The Bank Holiday

Roosevelt's first move was a national bank holiday closing every bank, with Congress called into special session. Digital History counts about nine thousand banks failed since nineteen twenty-nine, holding the savings of twenty-seven million families, fourteen hundred fifty-six of them in nineteen thirty-two alone.

The law that reopened them.

USH2 1511 The Emergency Banking Act

The Emergency Banking Act became law on March ninth, nineteen thirty-three, signed eight hours after Congress first saw the bill, which aides had drafted in four days. Solvent banks reopened under government supervision, the RFC bought stock in troubled ones, and Digital History adds that it gave the president broad powers over the Federal Reserve.

The six days that followed.

USH2 1512 Six Days in March

The bank rescue ran in sequence: the holiday, the Act on March ninth, a radio address on March twelfth, and the reopening of sound banks the next day. On the evening of the twelfth Roosevelt gave the first of his fireside chats, explaining in plain terms what the examinations of the banks had found and what the government had done, and telling listeners that confidence and courage were the essentials of success. When the banks reopened, Digital History records, deposits outran withdrawals, and one adviser later boasted that capitalism was saved in eight days. By March fifteenth, the anchor says, seventy percent of banks had been declared solvent. The order matters: the explanation came the night before the doors opened.

Gold.

USH2 1513 Leaving Gold

Digital History records that during the hundred days Roosevelt took the nation off the gold standard, devalued the dollar and ordered the Federal Reserve of unit six to ease credit. The anchor ties the break with gold to the banking act; the course follows the witness and gives no date.

Three entries on reform: deposit insurance, disclosure for investors, and saving homes.

Deposit insurance.

USH2 1514 Glass-Steagall

In June nineteen thirty-three the Glass-Steagall Banking Act replaced the emergency law, separating commercial banking from investment banking and creating federal insurance of bank deposits through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The two sources give different ceilings: the anchor insures deposits up to two thousand five hundred dollars, Digital History up to five thousand.

The stock market.

USH2 1515 The Securities Act

The Securities Act of nineteen thirty-three required corporations and investment banks selling stocks and bonds to disclose full information to the federal government, so a buyer could know what the company was selling. The anchor pairs it with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates stock trading; Digital History credits the commission with protecting millions of small investors.

Homes.

USH2 1516 Saving Homes

The Home Owners' Loan Corporation refinanced mortgages so that families facing foreclosure could keep their homes, after a quarter of a million families had defaulted in nineteen thirty-two, Digital History counts. By the end of Roosevelt's first term, it says, the programme had made more than one million loans totalling three billion dollars.

Three entries on the farms and the forests, including a policy that looks absurd and was not.

The farms.

USH2 1517 The Agricultural Adjustment Act

The Agricultural Adjustment Act of May nineteen thirty-three paid farmers to grow less, aiming to raise crop prices and so farm incomes, and by the spring of nineteen thirty-four the anchor counts more than four thousand local committees and three million participating farmers. Digital History calls it the nation's first system of agricultural price and production supports.

What the government destroyed.

USH2 1518 Plowing Under

In nineteen thirty-three, a year of breadlines, the government ordered ten million acres of cotton plowed under and six million baby pigs and two hundred thousand sows slaughtered. The anchor gives the reason: a bumper crop, and a programme slow to take effect. The destruction looks absurd and was not. The problem the Act attacked was price, not supply: the Yawp says farm prices had been plummeting as production climbed, states the logic, decreasing supply, thereby raising prices, and records that the market price did rise. The cost fell on those without land. The Yawp says the benefits bypassed the southern tenants and sharecroppers who needed them most.

The young men sent to the forests.

USH2 1519 The Civilian Conservation Corps

The Civilian Conservation Corps hired jobless young men aged eighteen to twenty-five for thirty dollars a month, money they passed to their families, planting saplings and building fire towers from wilderness camps. Digital History counts two and a half million served by nineteen forty-two, but notes the Corps excluded women and set rigid quotas on Black men.

Four entries on relief and work, and the first is the line unit ten said Hoover would not cross.

Direct relief.

USH2 1520 Direct Relief

The Federal Emergency Relief Act gave the states five hundred million dollars in direct grants for the unemployed poor, federal cash for state relief agencies struggling to care for them, as the Yawp describes, with Harry Hopkins overseeing it. Hoover had fought the relief bill of nineteen thirty-one; this was the direct relief he refused.

The first federal jobs.

USH2 1521 The Civil Works Administration

The Civil Works Administration, established in November nineteen thirty-three under Harry Hopkins, put two million six hundred thousand men to work in its first month, and four million within two months, building roads, schools and playgrounds, Digital History records. Roosevelt ended it in March nineteen thirty-four, unwilling, Digital History says, to run a deficit.

The larger building programme.

USH2 1522 The Public Works Administration

The Public Works Administration under Harold Ickes funded large projects such as the Grand Coulee Dam, and from nineteen thirty-three to nineteen thirty-nine built over a third of new hospitals and seventy percent of new public schools. The anchor gives three point three billion dollars set aside; Digital History gives six billion spent over six years.

The industrial codes.

USH2 1523 The Blue Eagle

The National Industrial Recovery Act created the National Recovery Administration, under General Hugh S. Johnson, to write codes of fair practice setting prices, wages and production by industry, and the Blue Eagle in a shop window marked a cooperating business. By midsummer nineteen thirty-three, Digital History counts, over five hundred industries had signed codes covering twenty-two million workers.

One entry to close the part: a river valley remade, and the people in its way.

A river valley remade.

USH2 1524 The Tennessee Valley Authority

The Tennessee Valley Authority Act, signed on May eighteenth, nineteen thirty-three, created a federal corporation to build dams in the Tennessee River basin, controlling floods, improving navigation and producing cheap electric power, the National Archives records, and under David Lilienthal a chain of dams brought electricity to a chronically depressed region. Digital History calls the Act the first direct government involvement in energy production. The anchor adds the cost: the fifteen thousand families displaced by the construction were among its sharpest critics. Unit ten showed the land failing people on the Plains; here government reshapes a landscape, and the people living in its way pay first.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain Roosevelt's new coalition of African Americans, ethnic minorities and organised labour, and why the Twentieth Amendment, ratified in January nineteen thirty-three, came too late to shorten that winter. You can describe the bank rescue in order: the holiday, the Emergency Banking Act, the first fireside chat, and the reopening, with the explanation before the doors opened. You can name the first programmes: deposit insurance and disclosure for investors, home loans, the farm act, the conservation corps, direct relief to the states, the works agencies, and the recovery codes. You can explain why crops were destroyed in a year of breadlines. The problem was price, not supply, and the cost fell on tenants and sharecroppers. And you can describe the Tennessee Valley Authority: dams, flood control and power for a depressed region, and fifteen thousand families displaced.