|
Point of Comparison... FDR's first year
Under the constitutional rules that still existed in 1932, a newly elected U.S. president did not officially take his oath of office until the March after his victory - a gap of four months. This old tradition, which had worked well enough in the slower-paced world of Washington and
Jefferson, was now dangerously out of date in the face of the Great Depression. The economic crisis was not prepared to wait out the winter until the new president took office. During January and February 1933, America sank into an even grimmer slump. Between one-quarter and one-third of the entire U.S. workforce was unemployed because of the collapse of businesses across the country. Hundreds of thousands of homeless and destitute people were living in refugee camps on the outskirts of cities. Up to 2 million more people were wandering the countryside, looking for any kind of work that would help them feed their families. The American banking system was also on the brink of total failure, with 38 governors forced to close all the branches in their states to avoid financial panic. With the United States effectively leaderless, the threat of mass riots, even political revolution, seemed close at hand.
On March 4, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt gave his first inaugural address as president of the United States. Recognizing the tide of anxiety that was sweeping the nation, Roosevelt stressed the need for calm in midst of crisis. In words that were to become famous, he urged his countrymen to realize that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
Once the formalities were over, Roosevelt quickly settled down to work. He began by ordering all the nation's banks to close for a few days, in a much-needed "holiday" to pacify panicking investors. Then he made the first of his special radio addresses to the American people, which were eventually known as Roosevelt's "Fireside Chats." These talks, which were written in an intimate, homey style - very different from the impersonal lectures that political leaders usually gave on the radio - were effective at creating the illusion that Roosevelt was speaking one-to-one with families across the country. His upbeat, self-assured manner was effective and helped renew popular confidence in the government. Once the banks reopened, people began to redeposit their savings. The immediate financial alarm was over, partly thanks to that well-timed Fireside Chat.
Roosevelt next ordered Congress to convene for a special emergency session. The first three months of this session, known as the "Hundred Days," saw a flurry of activity as new laws were hurriedly introduced to try to tackle the country's worst economic problems. Recalling Roosevelt's pledge at the Democratic Party convention the year before, the policies of the new administration were described as "The New Deal." Actually, when Roosevelt had used that phrase previously, he did not have a specific set of policies in mind. The New Deal was more of a random collection of ideas and initiatives than a carefully planned agenda. However, the expression captured the imaginations of Americans everywhere and became inseparable from Roosevelt's presidency.
Ironically, one of Roosevelt's first actions was a flop. He introduced the Economy Act that drastically reduced payments to veterans and federal employees to skim $500 million off the budget. This was not only highly unpopular, it also made the economic situation even worse by lowering the amount of money available to consumers, stifling business growth. Cost cutting of this kind was at odds with many of Roosevelt's other New Deal schemes, and demonstrate how little overall consistency there was behind many of his decisions.
Another of Roosevelt's early decisions was a lot more welcome than the Economy Act. For over a decade, "Prohibition" had made it illegal to sell alcohol in the United States, and had encouraged widespread corruption and organized crime in America's big cities. In 1933, the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution repealed Prohibition laws and allowed the consumption of beer and liquor once again. That same year another constitutional amendment, the 20th, changed the rules governing the timing of presidential terms. From now on, new presidents would enter office on the January 20 after their election. The dangerous four-month lapse that had almost wrecked the country in 1932 was gone at last.
Roosevelt's first year saw the creation of a series of federal laws and agencies intended to tackle various aspects of the Depression. The first was the Civilian Conservation Corps, which recruited 120,000 jobless young men to work in the country's national parks and forests. The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act protected farmers from losing their homes and livelihoods if they could not pay their mortgages. Roosevelt later introduced a wider scheme for non-farmers, known as the Home Owners' Loan Corporation.
One of the most ambitious new aid organizations was the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, run by Roosevelt's trusted adviser, Harry Hopkins. FERA was given $500 million by Congress to spend on welfare support for the unemployed and did much to help desperate citizens through the worst years of the Depression. The National Industrial Recovery Act strengthened union rights and introduced government control of production and prices. Other early measures reorganized the nation's banks and stock markets to prevent the kind of near-catastrophes that had almost taken place in Hoover's presidency.
Unfortunately for Roosevelt, two of his biggest projects did not turn out so well. The National Recovery Agency was intended to draw up standard rules and practices for all American businesses, and to introduce agreements about minimum wages and maximum hours. In practice, the agency only managed to anger everyone - labor unions and businessmen alike - and failed in its bid to revive commercial trade. The Agricultural Adjustment Act was a scheme to pay farmers to reduce their production, with the hope of raising agricultural prices. After some limited early success, this strategy failed to prove effective. The Supreme Court eventually decided that both the NRA and the AAA were unconstitutional and abolished them.
One of the best known of all Roosevelt's initiatives in his first year was the Tennessee Valley Authority. In 1933, the area surrounding the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers - including Tennessee itself, and also parts of Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina - was among the poorest and least developed in the United States, and had been badly hit by the Great Depression. The TVA, a federally owned business, took over a large fertilizer manufacturer and hydroelectric plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and began building a series of dams along the river systems to control their flood waters and produce power. TVA initiatives introduced electricity to homes and farms across the region, replanted trees in deforested zones, fertilized the eroded soil, and cleaned up wildlife and fishing preserves. The TVA also created many badly needed jobs and improved the quality of life for people across the southern United States.
Perhaps Roosevelt's most urgent concern was to provide work for the jobless. He saw great evil in having so many millions of Americans unemployed, not only because of the hardship they were facing but also because their discontent might be harnessed by a would-be dictator. As he said in a Fireside Chat in 1938: "Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men." He had originally hoped that an agency called the Public Works Administration would produce the necessary jobs, but its administrators took a timid approach to their mission and accomplished very little. Harry Hopkins suggested a more ambitious job-creation scheme, which was to become the Civil Works Administration. At first, the CWA was a runaway success. In two months, Hopkins put 4 million Americans back to work in federal employment programs. However, Roosevelt was worried that the administration would grow so big that it would become a massive drain on the government's funds, so he closed it down. This was probably one of Roosevelt's biggest mistakes during his first term in office, because during its brief life the CWA not only created jobs but also gave a vital stimulus to the national economy. Roosevelt could be too cautious as well as too bold.
Roosevelt's first year was a mixed bag of successes and failures. Although it did not completely turn back the Depression, it at least it restored some badly needed confidence to the American people. A big part of that revival was simply due to Roosevelt's charismatic personality. Roosevelt was a master of public relations and knew exactly how to communicate his ideas to the public. He was an expert at using the press to advertise his policies. Roosevelt inspired an extraordinary amount of affection within ordinary citizens, who came to see him not merely as a distant political leader but as a friend. If Roosevelt was able to transform the mood of the country in his first year, it was not so much because of any specific policy he introduced but because he convinced people that there was someone in Washington who wanted to help them.
Sources:
Buhite, Russell D., and Levy, David W., eds. FDR's Fireside Chats. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma, 1992.
McElvaine, Robert. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2002.
_________________ 
|
.
