United States

Hoover’s failures and mistakes guaranteed that whoever the Democrats nominated in 1932 would become the next president. Their candidate was Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York. He won the election by a large margin, and the Democrats won majorities in both branches of Congress.

Franklin D. Roosevelt New Deal pin, 1932.Collection of David J. and Janice L. Frent

The New Deal

The first New Deal

Roosevelt took office amid a terrifying bank crisis that had forced many states to suspend banking activities. He acted quickly to restore public confidence. On Inaugural Day, March 4, 1933, he declared that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The next day he halted trading in gold and declared a national “bank holiday.” On March 9 he submitted to Congress an Emergency Banking Bill authorizing government to strengthen, reorganize, and reopen solvent banks. The House passed the bill by acclamation, sight unseen, after only 38 minutes of debate. That night the Senate passed it unamended, 73 votes to 7. On March 12 Roosevelt announced that, on the following day, sound banks would begin to reopen. On March 13, deposits exceeded withdrawals in the first reopened banks. “Capitalism was saved in eight days,” Raymond Moley, a member of the president’s famous “brain trust,” later observed.

In fact, the legal basis for the bank holiday was doubtful. The term itself was a misnomer, intended to give a festive air to what was actually a desperate last resort. Most of the reopened banks were not audited to establish their solvency; instead the public was asked to trust the president. Nevertheless, the bank holiday exemplified brilliant leadership at work. It restored confidence where all had been lost and saved the financial system. Roosevelt followed it up with legislation that did actually put the banking structure on a solid footing. The Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 separated commercial from investment banking and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to guarantee small deposits. The Banking Act of 1935 strengthened the Federal Reserve System, the first major improvement since its birth in 1913.

With the country enthusiastically behind him, Roosevelt kept Congress in special session and piece by piece sent it recommendations that formed the basic recovery program of his first 100 days in office. From March 9 to June 16, 1933, Congress enacted all of Roosevelt’s proposals. Among the bills passed was one creating the Tennessee Valley Authority, which would build dams and power plants and in many other ways salvage a vast, impoverished region. The Securities Exchange Act gave the Federal Trade Commission broad new regulatory powers, which in 1934 were passed on to the newly created Securities and Exchange Commission. The Home Owners Loan Act established a corporation that refinanced one of every five mortgages on urban private residences. Other bills passed during the Hundred Days, as well as subsequent legislation, provided aid for the unemployed and the working poor and attacked the problems of agriculture and business.

U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signing the Agricultural Adjustment Act, a farm-relief bill, 1933. Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace is standing second from right.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Relief

Nothing required more urgent attention than the masses of unemployed workers who, with their families, had soon overwhelmed the miserably underfinanced bodies that provided direct relief. On May 12, 1933, Congress established a Federal Emergency Relief Administration to distribute half a billion dollars to state and local agencies. Roosevelt also created the Civil Works Administration, which by January 1934 was employing more than 4,000,000 men and women. Alarmed by rising costs, Roosevelt dismantled the CWA in 1934, but the persistence of high unemployment led him to make another about-face. In 1935 the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act provided almost $5,000,000,000 to create work for some 3,500,000 persons. The Public Works Administration (PWA), established in 1933, provided jobs on long-term construction projects, and the Civilian Conservation Corps put 2,500,000 young men to work planting or otherwise improving huge tracts of forestland. For homeowners, the Federal Housing Administration began insuring private home-improvement loans to middle-income families in 1934; in 1938 it became a home-building agency as well.

Agricultural recovery