FDR and the New Deal

“Probably no president of the United States had a happier and more secure childhood than Franklin Roosevelt,” wrote presidential historian Nathan Miller in FDR: An Intimate History, his comprehensive biography of the 26th chief executive of the United States government.

Roosevelt’s mother, Sara Delano — whose ancestors came to America in 1621 — could recite her family tree all the way back to William the Conqueror. His father, James, belonged to a wealthy New York family whose real estate holdings predated the Civil War. “It was a comfortable world,” Miller wrote, “a world of hospitality, horses and hounds that flowed at [an] unhurried pace...”

And yet it was Roosevelt who, upon his inauguration on March 4, 1933, unleashed the fastest, most effective, and most far-reaching economic and social reforms in the U.S. history — a whirlwind of bold measures designed to better the lives of the poor and of working Americans.

The administrative and policy makeover was badly needed. The country’s economy was severely crippled by the worldwide Great Depression of 1929, and Roosevelt’s conservative predecessor, President Herbert Hoover, had left the recovery up to the free market forces, which were too weak to overcome the crisis.

By the time Hoover stepped down, 13 million Americans were unemployed and many of them hungry. Millions of others lost all of their savings in banks that went bankrupt. Hundreds of thousands of people who were made homeless lived in shanty towns called “Hoovervilles.” Because of the significant number of bank closures, the coin shortage was so bad that storekeepers accepted postage stamps instead of pennies.

As Roosevelt told the huge crowd attending his inauguration, “This nation asks for action, and action now... We must act, and act quickly.” It was a call as urgent as an SOS on a stormy sea and, fortunately, both the new president and the United States Congress were ready to launch a major rescue operation. 

The 51-year-old Roosevelt was well equipped for the monumental task. His patrician background and political success as the governor of the State of New York had given him the self-confidence he needed for leadership. On a personal level, his dogged, long-standing fight against polio — which deprived him of the use of his legs when he was 39 years old — steeled him for the struggle with setbacks and for sudden calamities, such as was the outbreak of the Second World War.

As for Congress, even Republican lawmakers were so appalled by the results of Hoover’s inertia that they were ready to support the radical ideas of a Democrat in the White House. The inventive and hard-working Roosevelt — FDR, as he was commonly known — responded by flooding the legislature with trail-blazing proposals he called “The New Deal.”

By the end of the day he took office, Roosevelt had set the pace for his administration by swearing in his entire Cabinet without the traditional Senate hearings and announced that he would summon Congress to a special session dealing with the economic meltdown. He also announced that he would convene a meeting of leading bankers to get their ideas on how to resolve the banking crisis.

The resulting Emergency Banking Act was passed five days later by a Senate vote of 73 to 7. The next day, FDR sent his economic bill to Congress, calling for a 13 percent reduction — including a trimming of the congressional salaries — of the 1934 budget. It was passed by the House of Representatives 266 to 138 thanks to the “ayes” of 69 Republicans that partly offset the “nays” of 92 Democrats.         

Following these two emergency measures, FDR began introducing a series of important bills that made up the core of the “New Deal.” One of his main proposals submitted to Congress included The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), which was designed to help reduce price-depressing food surpluses and boost the poverty-level incomes of farmers who represented 40 percent of the U.S. population. The law offered them subsidies for conserving the land and reducing food production. Another bill was submitted to Congress to create the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and hire 250,000 unemployed young men for building flood-control projects and reforesting national parks. Roosevelt also asked Congress to enact the Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) to provide jobs, cash, and food for the worst victims of the Great Depression. The Home Owners’ Loan Act helped avert the foreclosure of tens of thousands of homes by providing low-interest loans to the owners. The National Industrial Recovery Act was passed by five votes in the Senate; the law, which was vigorously fought against by big business and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, included the founding of the Public Works Administration with authority to build highways, dams, and federal buildings.

These major measures, along with several others — all of which were enacted, with bipartisan votes, within Roosevelt’s first 105 days in office — erected the legislative framework for his “New Deal” and made him one of the most popular presidents in American history.

Implementing the New Deal

FDR was a natural politician, and he put his talents fully to work to ensure the success of his program. One important tool for winning over the public was his “Fireside Chats” — evening radio broadcasts in which he spoke plainly and thoughtfully about his work and plans. These conversations were so effective that just one week after he asked the public to stop keeping their savings at home, two-thirds of the nation’s 18,000 banks were back in business.

His obvious dedication to his job went a long way towards calming the public anxiety — a reminder perhaps of what Roosevelt was famously quoted for from his inaugural address that “the only thing we [the nation] have to fear, is fear itself.” As Congress enacted one New Deal program after another, FDR won an enthusiastic following. Best of all, the economy’s early response to the New Deal was almost as upbeat as the public’s. By mid-June of 1933, the New York Times Weekly Business Index had risen to 87.1 points from 52.3 points in March. The CCC camps started working, and the subsidized farmers were bringing their produce to the markets.

Not everyone was happy. Roosevelt was bitterly denounced by the moneyed elites as a “traitor of his class”; the rightist “Liberty League” accused him of trying to promote socialism; and Detroit’s radio preacher, Father Coughlin, viciously denounced “Franklin Double-Crossing Roosevelt” of “out-Hoovering” Hoover. On the far left, some intellectuals declared FDR to be a “wily, slippery confidence man.”

Most of these voices grew quiet when, in 1936, Americans re-elected FDR with an unprecedented (and still unmatched) plurality of nearly 11 million votes. But one important group of FDR’s critics, the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, remained dead-set against his policies.

Arch-conservative and oblivious to the nation’s hardships, the justices struck down two key measures of the New Deal in 1935 — the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act — and tried to dismantle the New Deal almost as fast as it was adopted by Congress.

Their campaign reached its height in June 1936, when the court declared a New York state law setting minimum wage for women and children as unconstitutional. The 5 to 4 decision allowed women and children to continue being exploited by sweatshops paying low wages.

The ruling by the justices, one historian wrote, “convinced even the most reverent that five stubborn old men had planted themselves squarely in the path of progress.” FDR denounced the court for creating a “‘no-man’s-land’ where no Government — State or Federal — can function.” He asked Congress to empower him to appoint an additional justice for any member of the court over age 70 who did not retire. His goal was to name as many as six additional Supreme Court justices, as well as up to 44 judges to the lower federal courts. Even for Roosevelt’s closest supporters in Congress, that was a reform proposal that went too far. His so-called “court-packing plan” was held up in committees for 165 days and was eventually defeated, 70 to 22, in the Senate.

In a way, however, it was not a lost attempt to overcome the judicial opposition. Alarmed by FDR’s proposal, two justices began switching their votes, and subsequent resignations enabled Roosevelt to nominate several justices. Most of the New Deal laws were eventually implemented, although they did not restore the country’s economy — that only happened after Second World War and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which created a massive demand for food and industrial products.

But by 1945, when FDR died while in office, his reforms had placed the American institutions firmly on a new progressive path. As Supreme Court Justice John Clarke told FDR, “You have put a new face upon the social and political life of our country.”