Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term as president began on March 4, 1933, when he was sworn in as the 32nd president of the United States, and his second term ended on January 20, 1941, when he was sworn in for a third term. Roosevelt, the Democratic governor of the largest state, New York, was elected president after beating his Republican opponent, incumbent President Herbert Hoover, in the 1932 presidential election. During the Great Depression, Roosevelt oversaw the execution of the New Deal, a set of policies aimed at providing assistance, recovery, and reform to Americans and the American economy. He also oversaw a realignment that positioned his New Deal Coalition of labor unions, large city machines, white ethnics, African Americans, and rural white Southerners as the dominant force in national politics until the 1960s, and characterized modern American liberalism.
Roosevelt led unprecedented big legislation and issued a slew of executive orders during his first hundred days in office. The Emergency Banking Act helped to stop a bank run, while the Banking Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 ushered in important financial changes. Roosevelt presided over the creation of various institutions to help unemployed workers, including the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration, and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration was founded by the Roosevelt administration to implement new policies aimed at preventing agricultural overproduction. It also established various agencies to overhaul the industrial sector, the most notable of which was the National Recovery Administration, which was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
Roosevelt presided over the Second New Deal following his party’s victory in the 1934 mid-term elections. It contained the largest work relief agency, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), as well as the Social Security Act, which established a national old-age pension scheme known as Social Security. The New Deal also introduced a national unemployment insurance program and the Aid to Dependent Children program, which helped single-parent households. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, a third key piece of legislation, guaranteed workers the right to collective bargaining and established the National Labor Relations Board. As a result, union membership grew quickly. Following re-election in 1936, the second term was marked by a string of misfortunes. Roosevelt attempted to expand the Supreme Court, but his proposal was shot down by Congress. In his second term, Roosevelt had little luck passing domestic legislation, as the bipartisan Conservative Coalition opposed most of his plans. The Fair Labor Standards Act is one example of a success.
The United States reached its pinnacle of isolationism during the 1930s. The Good Neighbor Policy, in which the United States took a non-interventionist position in Latin American problems, was Roosevelt’s most important foreign policy endeavor during his first term. As Nazi Germany, Japan, and Italy waged aggressive wars against their neighbors in the late 1930s, foreign policy issues rose to the fore. Congress created the Neutrality Acts, a set of rules prohibiting trade with belligerents, in response to fears that the US may be lured into foreign conflicts. Roosevelt supplied aid to China, the United Kingdom, and France after Japan attacked China and Germany invaded Poland, but the Neutrality Acts barred the US from becoming involved. Roosevelt provided aid to the British and began to build up American military might after the fall of France in June 1940. Roosevelt defeated Republican Wendell Willkie, an internationalist who mainly avoided criticizing Roosevelt’s foreign policy, in the 1940 presidential election. He went on to complete a third term and the first three months of a fourth. See Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third and fourth stints in office.
Quiz on what caused the Roosevelt recession.
In June 1937, federal spending was reduced to suit Roosevelt’s long-held conviction in a balanced budget. He hoped that by this time, the economy had recovered sufficiently to fill in the voids left by government cuts. Cutbacks, on the other hand, resulted in the so-called Roosevelt Recession.
What were the key issues addressed by the Second New Deal?
What were the key issues addressed by the second New Deal? With the adoption of the Social Security Act, the Second New Deal addressed the needs of the elderly, destitute, unemployed, and crippled. Workers were given the ability to form unions and engage in collective bargaining under the Wagner Act.
In 1937 and 1938, which of the following triggers a severe recession?
Both monetary and fiscal contractionary policies contributed to the recession by lowering aggregate demand. Cuts in federal spending and tax increases at the request of the US Treasury resulted in the loss of numerous employment, with ramifications for the larger economy. Historian Robert C. Goldston also pointed out that the budgets for two crucial New Deal job programs, the Public Works Administration and the Works Progress Administration, were drastically reduced in the 19371938 fiscal year, which Roosevelt signed into law. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve’s tightening of the money supply in 1936 and 1937 raised interest rates, discouraging company investment. Mainstream economists place varying degrees of weight on each of these factors: Monetarists and their predecessors have tended to stress monetary issues and the drawbacks of using fiscal policy to regulate the economy, whereas Keynesian economists give equal weight to both monetary and fiscal variables. New Keynesian models emphasize conditions (such as the zero lower bound) where monetary policy appears to be ineffective.
What was the focus of the Second New Deal quizlet?
The Second New Deal, initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and expressed in his State of the Union Address in January 1935, focused on and expanded the federal program to include the unemployed, to assist the unemployed in finding work, to assist the rural poor, organized labor, and social welfare.
What causes contributed to the 1937 recession?
According to one theory, the 1937 recession was sparked by inflation fears prompting premature tightening of monetary and fiscal policies.
What causes contributed to the 1937 recession quizlet?
What causes contributed to the 1937 recession? These were spending cuts made by the government to balance the budget due to mounting national debt concerns. – FDR responded by restoring funds to the WPA and other programs that had been curtailed, thereby assisting unemployed Americans.
Which of the following best characterises the 1937 recession quizlet?
During the Great Depression, the Recession of 1937-1938 was an economic depression. Production, profits, and wages had all returned to 1929 levels by the spring of 1937. Although unemployment remained high, it was somewhat lower than the 25% rate observed in 1933.
Background
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he campaigned on a vow to restore American confidence and pull the country out of the Great Depression. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” Roosevelt said in his inaugural address. His goals were to assuage Americans’ anxieties about the economy, establish strategies to address the Great Depression’s difficulties, and secure public support for his initiatives.
Roosevelt began formulating programs to alleviate the economic troubles that the American people were facing almost immediately after his election. These measures were dubbed the New Deal when President Franklin D. Roosevelt pledged a “new deal for the American people” in a campaign speech. The New Deal had three main objectives: poverty relief, economic recovery, and financial reform. Congress passed 15 important pieces of legislation establishing New Deal agencies and programs during the Hundred Days. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was one of them, and it was created to safeguard depositors from losing their money if a bank failed. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was another program that put thousands of men to work on projects in national forests, parks, and other public resources. During the Great Depression, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) was established to help farmers in their terrible situation by adopting a policy of production quotas and federal subsidies. In June 1933, Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) to address the issues of industry and labor. In order to foster industrial progress, the NIRA established codes of fair treatment for various industries. The National Recovery Administration was also established as a result of this legislation (NRA). One of the most comprehensive and contentious of the early New Deal programs was the National Rifle Association (NRA). Its goals were twofold: first, to stabilize the economy by establishing “fair” business practices, and second, to increase purchasing power by creating jobs, establishing labor regulations, and raising salaries. The NRA also reflected liberal expectations for comprehensive planning and trade union hopes for safeguarding of basic hour and salary standards. The NRA was led by General Hugh S. Johnson, who suggested a “blanket code” promising all employers to follow the same labor standards. He began a crusade in mid-July 1933 to rally public support for the NRA and its compliance symbol, the “Blue Eagle,” with the phrase “We do our part.” The eagle, which was based on an Indian thunderbird, was displayed in storefronts and branded on items to demonstrate a company’s compliance. In September, there was even a parade down Fifth Avenue in New York with over a quarter-million marchers to show support for the NRA and the “Blue Eagle.”
While developing plans to aid America’s recovery from the Great Depression, Roosevelt also needed to assuage Americans’ worries and restore their trust in the New Deal’s policies, especially the NRA. FDR used the radio, the most direct means of communication with the American people, as one of his methods. Almost every home had a radio in the 1930s, and families would spend several hours a day gathered around the radio, listening to their favorite shows. “Fireside Chats” was the name Roosevelt gave to his radio discussions about public concerns. The informal and easygoing discussions gave Americans the impression that President Roosevelt was speaking directly to them. Throughout his presidency, Roosevelt used fireside chats to address the American people’s fears and concerns, as well as to inform them of the US government’s viewpoints and activities.
The NRA was the subject of the featured document in this class, Fireside Chat on the Purposes and Foundations of the Recovery Program. Although this radio message, broadcast on July 24, 1933, addressed some of the Great Depression’s challenges and issues, it also focused on what industry, employers, and employees could do to help the economy recover.
For a while, the NRA was effective. It offered the American people hope that they might overcome their anxieties of the Depression and the downward trend in salaries and prices. With the daily annoyances of code enforcement, however, resentment among businessmen grew after the recovery began. Within two years, the NRA had gained a slew of adversaries, and by May 1935, it had been declared illegal by the Supreme Court. The NRA’s experiment was widely seen as a failure. Nonetheless, the regulations established new business and worker requirements, such as the 40-hour workweek and the elimination of child labor. With the acceptance of collective bargaining, the NRA also aided the growth of unions.
Resources
Frederick Lewis Allen is a writer. Only Yesterday and Since Yesterday: A Popular History of the 1920s and 1930s is a popular history of the 1920s and 1930s. Bonanza Books, New York, 1986.
The Reader’s Companion to American History, edited by Eric Foner and John A. Garraty. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1991.
George Brown Tindall, David E. Shi, George Brown Tindall, George Brown Tindall, George Brown Tindall, George Brown Tind A Narrative History of the United States of America. W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1992.
Why did the Great Depression happen?
What were the primary factors that contributed to the Great Depression? The stock market crash of 1929, the collapse of world trade due to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, government policies, bank failures and panics, and the fall of the money supply are all thought to have contributed to the Great Depression. The primary possibilities are discussed in this video by Great Depression scholar David Wheelock of the St. Louis Fed.