FDR New Deal

8 Pages 1920 Words

“I pledge you – I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people”,
Roosevelt at the Democratic convention in 1932 in Chicago.

Relief, recovery, and reform. These were the three main points in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s approach to getting America back on its feet, when he was inaugurated in 1933. In the midst of the worst recession God’s own country had ever seen, here was a man who finally cared, and a man who wanted to do something about the problems that America had faced for some years now. Unlike the president before him, Herbert Hoover, who blamed foreign countries for America’s hardship and who wanted to see the economy be left alone for it to rise again, Roosevelt wanted to deal with the crisis hands-on, and with each troubled issue separately. Not being afraid of abandoning political principles for the sake of a better outcome, he saw each problem as exactly that, a problem. A problem that needed to be solved.
The New Deal can be broken into two New Deals. The first New Deal was initiated virtually the first day Roosevelt was in office. His first initiative was to end the banking industry crisis sparked by the depression. With his and the New Deal’s very pragmatic way of dealing with problems, Roosevelt simply closed all banks, then reopening the ones seemingly strong enough to survive, while closing the weak ones, and financially aiding those with momentary solvency difficulties. This immediately reinstated Americans trust in the banking system, causing the American people to once again making deposits instead of withdrawals, and thereby eliminating the crisis. This kind of experimental policy-making was typical for Roosevelt’s New Deal. Many of his initiatives were successful, but quite a few also failed to succeed. The point was that finally somebody tried to do something at least. For too many years, government officials had sat on their hands and tried to let the crisis solve itself. Now the New...