File
FDR’s New
Deal
Relief, Recovery, and
Resistance
Election of 1932
“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and to try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“This campaign is more than a contest between two men. . . It is a contest between two philosophies of government.” – Herbert
Hoover
A Diverse Team
Republicans: Henry Wallace as Secretary of
Agriculture, Harold Ickes as Secretary of the Interior
A Woman: social worker Frances Perkins as secretary of Labor
A Wife: Eleanor Roosevelt as a sympathetic public face for the administration
“Black Cabinet”
Informal circle of advisors
Mary McCleod Bethune
FDR reluctant to support measures aimed directly at assisting black Americans
“” -
NAACP & the push for an anti-lynching law
The First Hundred Days
15 bills in the first Hundred Days
Rebuilding confidence
Fireside chats
Financial Reform
FDIC
Helping Farmers
AAA
Helping Rural Southerners
TVA
Industrial Relief and Recovery
CCC
NRA
PWA
Second New Deal
Works Progress Administration
Social Security Act
Pension System for Retirees
Unemployment Insurance
Disability Insurance
Flaws
Widows vs. Widowers, “Holes just large enough for
Rural Electrification Administration
In 1935
Legacy of FDR and the New
Deal
Programs such as Social Security, the FDIC, and the SEC still exist to this day
Creation of US welfare State
Expanded role of Federal Government in economic matters
“Promote the general welfare”
Evolving role of the president
Expanded size of executive branch
Closer relationship between president and citizens through mass media
Increased role in social and economic policy
22 nd amendment (2-term limit)
Opposition to the New
Deal
From the Right, from the Left, and from Below
Opposition from the Right
Hoover and other Conservatives claimed that the New Deal destroyed free enterprise and brought the country closer to fascism
“the most stupendous invasion of the whole spirit of liberty.”
Leading politicians and captains of industry formed the American Liberty
League in 1934 to oppose FDR
Opposition from the Left
Socialists claimed that the administration was too concern with saving the banking system
American Communist Party: New Deal is a
“capitalist ruse.”
Oppositions from Populists
Public figures with Populist roots clamored for more aggresive help for the poor
Francis Townsend
Government wealth redistribution
Father Charles Coughlin
Wealth redistribution plus anti-Communism and anti-Semitism
Huey Long
“Share Our Wealth” program
Assassinated in 1935
