The New Deal and Its Critics

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The New Deal and Its Critics
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Franklin Roosevelts First Inaugural Address

• Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882 1945) served as
  the 32nd President of the United States and was
  elected to four terms in office.
• He served from 1933-1945, and is the only
  President to serve more than two terms.
• During the Great Depression of the 1930s,
  Roosevelt created the New Deal to provide relief
  for the unemployed, recovery of the economy, and
  reform of the economic system.
• His most famous legacies include the Social
  Security system and the regulation of Wall
  Street.
• His aggressive use of an active federal
  government reenergized the Democratic party.
  Roosevelt built the New Deal coalition that
  dominated politics into the 1960s.
• Roosevelt's administration redefined liberalism
  for subsequent generations and realigned the
  Democratic Party based his the New Deal

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"On the Banking Crisis"

• When Roosevelt was inaugurated in March 1933, the
  U.S. was at the depths of the worst depression in
  its history.
• A quarter of the workforce was unemployed.
  Farmers were in deep trouble as prices fell by
  60. Industrial production had fallen by more
  than half since 1929.
• The most pressing issue was the nation-wide run
  on the banks. The banking system had collapsed
  completely.
• After his inauguration on March 4, 1933,
  Roosevelt faced the bank panic, and declared that
  "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
• The very next day he announced a plan to allow
  banks to reopen, which they largely did by the
  end of the month.
• He presented his first proposed step to recovery
  during his first fireside chat.

Lines inside a Savings Loan during the Banking
Crisis.
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"The First Hundred Days"

• Roosevelt's "First 100 Days" concentrated on the
  first part of his strategy immediate relief.
• From March 9 to June 16, 1933, Franklin D.
  Roosevelt sent Congress a record number of bills,
  all of which passed easily.
• Like Hoover, he saw the Depression as partly a
  matter of confidence, caused in part by people no
  longer spending or investing because they were
  afraid to do so.
• He therefore set out to restore confidence
  through a series of dramatic gestures.
• Roosevelt detailed his plan for his first 100
  days in office to the American people during his
  second fireside chat.

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National Recovery Administration

• The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of
  June 16, 1933 was a set of United States federal
  laws and codes that authorized the President to
• regulate businesses in the interests of
  promoting "fair" competition
• supporting prices and wages
• creating jobs for unemployed workers
• stimulating the United States economy to recover
  from the Great Depression
• The law created a National Recovery
  Administration (NRA), an executive agency
  exercising powers which Congress had delegated to
  it, to promote compliance on the part of
  corporations.
• Firms which voluntarily complied could display
  the Blue Eagle.

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Dust Bowl

• Dust Bowl" was a term born in the hard times
  from the people who lived in the drought-stricken
  regions during the great depression.
• In 1932, 14 dust storms were reported in farming
  areas.
• In 1933, 38 dust storms were reported.
• Crops were dying, the over plowed fields were
  full of dust in the drought ravaged country, and
  people were starving.

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"The Search for Social Justice"

• Father Charles Coughlin was politically radical,
  a passionate democrat, but also a bigot who
  freely vented angry, irrational charges and
  assertions.
• A Catholic priest, he broadcast weekly radio
  sermons that by 1930 drew as many as forty-five
  million listeners.
• By the mid-1930s, his talks took on a nasty edge
  as he combined harsh attacks on Roosevelt as the
  tool of international Jewish bankers with praise
  for the fascist leaders Benito Mussolini and
  Adolph Hitler.
• He began as an early Roosevelt supporter, coining
  a famous expression, that the nation's choice was
  between "Roosevelt or ruin."
• Later in the 1930s he turned against FDR and
  became one of the president's harshest critics.
• His program of "social justice" was a very
  radical challenge to unbridled capitalism and to
  many of the political institutions of his day.

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Huey Long

• During his three brief years in the U.S. Senate,
  Huey Long became one of the most flamboyant and
  provocative Senators in the nation's history.
• He earned the enmity of his fellow Senators due
  to his frequent use of the filibuster to make
  some "point of principle" about which he was
  especially passionate.
• He used the floor of the Senate to the
  fullest--taking the Senate floor to place in the
  official record his arguments for his Share The
  Wealth program, and to proselytize for his
  general world-view.

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Social Security

• The Social Security Act was passed by Congress in
  1935 as part of the New Deal.
• Initially, the term Social Security covered
  unemployment insurance.
• FDR promised that participation in the program
  would be completely voluntary and that
  participants would only have to pay 1 of the
  first 1,400 of their annual incomes into the
  Program.
• The money the participants put into the
  independent "Trust Fund" rather than into the
  General operating fund were to be used to fund
  the Social Security Retirement Program and no
  other Government program.
• The annuity payments to the retirees were never
  to be taxed as income. In the calendar year 2004,
  it paid out almost 500 billion in benefits.

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Challenge to Liberty

• Hoover was badly defeated in the 1932
  presidential election.
• After Roosevelt assumed the presidency, Hoover
  became a critic of the New Deal, warning against
  tendencies toward statesism.
• His misgivings are in the book, "The Challenge to
  Liberty," where he talked of fascism, communism,
  and socialism as enemies of traditional American
  liberties.

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• Multimedia Citations
• Slide 2 http//www.historyplace.com/specials/cale
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• Slide 3 http//newdeal.feri.org/images/ab16.gif
• Slide 4 http//www.acmi.net.au/AIC/FIRESIDE_CHAT.
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• Slide 5 http//www.albionmich.com/history/histor_
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• Slide 6 http//www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/image
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• Slide 7 http//www.wfu.edu/louden/Political20Co
  mmunication/Bibs/coughlinmic.jpg
• Slide 8 http//www.senate.gov/artandhistory/histo
  ry/resources/graphic/large/HueyLong.jpg
• Slide 9 http//www.ssa.gov/history/pics/fdrvalid.
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• Slide 10 http//www.hooverassociation.org/challen
  geliberty.htm