4.6 Election of 1932 and Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Republicans refused to abandon Hoover in 1932, but his heart really wasn’t in the election. Democrats nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Democratic Platform blamed the Depression on the Republicans, called for a 25% cut in federal spending, and promised a balanced budget. It also vowed to provide federal public works and unemployment relief without disclosing how this might be done.
Roosevelt easily won the election, but he inherited a challenge that was daunting: more than 12 million unemployed, 30 banks a week failing, factories sitting idle, farms on the auction block, and prices plummeting. People who had scorned government, including businessmen, were baffled and now looked to Washington to solve the crisis and care for the citizens.
Before FDR and the New Deal, the White House was far removed from ordinary citizens. The only federal agency with which they had any contact was the post office. Roosevelt came from a privileged background, although he suffered his share of tragedies in his early life including a bout with polio that left him a paraplegic. Although this was considered a death knell to political ambitions, Roosevelt was able to overcome this and re-enter politics. In 1932 he was the sitting governor of New York. During his term as governor, he “introduced the first comprehensive unemployment relief program and helped pioneer efforts to expand public utilities.” 1
On July 1, 1932, when accepting the Democratic nomination (he was the first to do so in person at the convention), he promised “a new deal for the American people.”2 Newspapers seized on this line and soon they called FDR’s plan the “New Deal”. When he declared it, there wasn’t really a plan in place, but by the time he was in office, he had the people and plan in place to do something about the crisis. With the help of his Brain Trust, a group of academics and experts upon whom he relied, Roosevelt was able to begin attacking the Depression on day one.
Though the New Deal never brought full recovery, it did improve economic conditions and provide relief for millions of Americans. Equally significant, it made lasting reforms in the nation’s economic system and committed the federal government to a more active role in managing the ups and downs of the business cycle. In doing so, it extended the Progressive drive to soften industrialization, and translated decades of growing concern for the disadvantaged into a federal aid program. For the first time, Americans believed Washington would help them through a terrible crisis. In short, during the Roosevelt years the liberal state came of age: active, interventionist, and committed to social welfare.
Notes
- Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, eds., “Chapter 23,” The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open US History Textbook (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018), VII. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the “First” New Deal, at http://www.americanyawp.com/text/23-the-great-depression/.
- Library of Congress, “Great Depression and World War II, 1929 – 1945: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1933 – 1945,” The Library of Congress, accessed January 10, 2019, http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/depwwii/newdeal/.
