Franklin D. Roosevelt and The New Deal
Franklin D. Roosevelt and New Deal
As one of the greatest Presidents in the American history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) saved the U.S. from the Great Depression by carrying out his famous "A New Deal." But criticism of FDR's New Deal has never stopped since the day it was created. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in his article "FDR was overrated" notes that "…government spending revived economic activity under Roosevelt has had extremely damaging consequences for the rest of the 20th century."(Evans-Pritchard, 24) William J. Barber also complains that FDR's New Deal gave American a "big government legacy". Do these words really tell the truth about what happened in 1930's? Is it fair to FDR's great attempt to help the nation recover from the Great Depression?
To answer these questions we should have some basic background knowledge of FDR himself. Franklin D. Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York on January 30, 1882. In the year 1903, he finished his law study at Columbia University and practiced law with a prominent New York City law firm. He entered politics in 1910 and was elected to the New York State Senate as a Democrat from his traditionally Republican home district. In 1905, he had married a distant cousin, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, who was the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was reelected to the State Senate in 1912. In 1928 Roosevelt was elected governor. Following his reelection as governor in 1930, Roosevelt began to campaign for the presidency. His activist approach and personal charm helped to defeat Hoover in November 1932 by seven million votes. Roosevelt easily defeated Alfred M. Landon in 1936 and went on to defeat by lesser margins, Wendell ...
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...a striking success. Mr. Roosevelt may have given the wrong answers to many of his problems. But he is the first president of modern America who has asked the right questions.
Bibliography:
Work Cited
Barber, William J., "FDR's big government legacy" Regional Review, Summer97, Vol. 7 Issue 3, p18
Center for New Deal Studies—Roosevelt University
http://www.roosevelt.edu/newdeal/
Edsforth, Ronald The New Deal—America's Response to the Great Depression The Blackwell Publishers. Malden, Massachusetts. 2000
Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose. "FDR was overrated" Alberta Report / Newsmagazine, 5/29/95, Vol. 22 Issue 24, p23
"FDR and the New Deal"
Economist, 12/31/99, Vol. 353 Issue 8151, Millennium issue p49
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/
New Deal Network
http://Newdeal.feri.org/
Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy as a great president, lives on today through his policies. The Panama Canal now saves ships thousands of miles, and National Parks inspire people to conserve the resources of this earth. His social justice policies keep businesses honest and force them to be fair. But like all humans he had flaws. One of his major weaknesses was he thought anyone who did not agree with him was un-American, and during World War One was suspicious of German Americans. While on state Legislature, he tried to fire a judge based on corruption because he reached a verdict Roosevelt did not agree with. But Roosevelt’s great intelligence, strength, and curiosity outweighed his flaws, and it is not surprise he is considered as one of America’s greatest presidents.
7 Hamilton Fish, FDR: The Other Side of the Coin, (New York: Vantage Press 1976), pp.
FDR wanted, and received, a lasting effect on the government.
The Great Depression of 1929 to 1940 began and centered in the United States, but spread quickly throughout the industrial world. The economic catastrophe and its impact defied the description of the grim words that described the Great Depression. This was a severe blow to the United States economy. President Roosevelt’s New Deal is what helped reshape the economy and even the structure of the United States. The programs that the New Deal had helped employ and gave financial security to several Americans. The New Deals programs would prove to be effective and beneficial to the American society.
"America's Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal."DPLA. Digital Public Library of America. Web. 20 Nov 2013. .
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the start of the great depression which hit America and much of the industrialised world during the 1930’s. The cycle of prosperity turned into a spiral of depression as consumer spending fell by almost half, unemployment rose to over 12 million and there was widespread poverty and homelessness. The Hoover government’s ‘rugged individualism’ meant that people did not receive any relief from the federal government and led to a loss in support for Hoover as people blamed him for their problems. After his landslide victory in 1932, President Roosevelt vowed that through his reforms and economic policies, America would return to the road of prosperity. In 1933 he set out the ‘New Deal’ which sought to deliver relief, recovery, and reform. It could be argued that although the New Deal was effective in certain aspects such as short term relief, it did not end the depression; rather the war was the decisive factor.
Powell, Jim. “Theodore Roosevelt, Big-Government Man.” The Freeman, 24 February 2010. Accessed 29 January 2014. http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/theodore-roosevelt-big-government-man#axzz2snGBgzPC.
The "New Deal" The Roosevelt Institute. The Roosevelt Institute. Web. The Web. The Web.
In his presidential acceptance speech in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed to the citizens of the United States, “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.” The New Deal, beginning in 1933, was a series of federal programs designed to provide relief, recovery, and reform to the fragile nation. The U.S. had been both economically and psychologically buffeted by the Great Depression. Many citizens looked up to FDR and his New Deal for help. However, there is much skepticism and controversy on whether these work projects significantly abated the dangerously high employment rates and pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depression. The New Deal was a bad deal for America because it only provided opportunities for a few and required too much government spending.
Franklin Roosevelt’s “optimism and activism that helped restore the badly shaken confidence of the nation” (pg. 467 Out of Many), was addressed in the New Deal, developed to bring about reform to the American standard of living and its low economy. It did not only make an impact during the Great Depression. Although, many of the problems addressed in the New Deal might have been solved, those with the long lasting effect provide enough evidence to illustrate how great a success the role of the New Deal played out in America’s history to make it what it is today.
McElvaine, Robert S. The Depression and New Deal: A History in Documents. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.
The era of the Great Depression was by far the worst shape the United States had ever been in, both economically and physically. Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and began to bring relief with his New Deal. In his first 100 days as President, sixteen pieces of legislation were passed by Congress, the most to be passed in a short amount of time. Roosevelt was re-elected twice, and quickly gained the trust of the American people. Many of the New Deal policies helped the United States economy greatly, but some did not. One particularly contradictory act was the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which was later declared unconstitutional by Congress. Many things also stayed very consistent in the New Deal. For example, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and Social Security, since Americans were looking for any help they could get, these acts weren't seen as a detrimental at first. Overall, Roosevelt's New Deal was a success, but it also hit its stumbling points.
But for the majority of the country during one of our toughest times, he was what we needed. Without consulting history, it’s impossible to judge what he did very negatively. The old ways weren’t working, and while President Hoover tried to do something, it wasn’t enough. President Roosevelt was more successful with the actions he took for relief during the Great Depression. References: EyeWitness History editors.
The New Deal period has generally - but not unanimously - been seen as a turning point in American politics, with the states relinquishing much of their autonomy, the President acquiring new authority and importance, and the role of government in citizens' lives increasing. The extent to which this was planned by the architect of the New Deal, Franklin D. Roosevelt, has been greatly contested, however. Yet, while it is instructive to note the limitations of Roosevelt's leadership, there is not much sense in the claims that the New Deal was haphazard, a jumble of expedient and populist schemes, or as W. Williams has put it, "undirected". FDR had a clear overarching vision of what he wanted to do to America, and was prepared to drive through the structural changes required to achieve this vision.
In the 1930’s, the United States fell into a great depression because of a major stock market crash that destroyed the economy for many years. When the 1933 election came, a new president was elected; Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His plan was to create a New Deal to solve the Nation’s problems. This New Deal relieved much economic troubles in the country, gave faith to American citizens in the United States’ banking system, and gave jobs to millions of people unemployed by the crash. Without President Roosevelt’s actions, the road to the nation’s recovery would be much longer.