The Roosevelt Years (Recap: The Great Crash /Effects of the Great Depression / Hoover and the Failure of the Progressive Tradition) Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Election of 1932 The New Deal and the “Hundred Days”

The Great Depression,

“Black Tuesday,” October 29, 1929

A Dysfunctional Market “While Oregon sheep raisers fed their mutton to the buzzards, I saw men picking for meat scraps in the garbage cans of New York and Chicago. I talked to one man in a restaurant in Chicago, he told me of his experience in raising sheep. He said that he killed 3,000 sheep this Fall and threw them down a canyon because it cost a dollar and 10 cents to ship a single sheep and he would get less than a dollar for it. He said he could not afford to feed the sheep and he would not let them starve so he just cut their throats and threw them down a canyon.” Oscar Ameringer, 1932.

Distribution of Wealth in 1929 In 1929, the top.1% of American families had an income that was equal to the combined income of the bottom 42% combined. In 1929, The top.1% held 34% of the nation’s savings. Nearly 80% of the nation’s families had no savings whatsoever.

1998

Worse in 2010?

Gross Domestic Product: 1929: $103.8 billion 1933: $56.2 billion 1939: $91.9 billion

Bank Suspensions: 1925: : : 4,004

Bank Failure Wave:

Unemployment: 1929: 3.2% (1.6 million) 1933: 24.9% (12.8 million) 1930s average: 17%

Some Social Impacts of the Crash Marriage Rate Drops 22% Birth Rate Drops 15% (Baby Boom is Linked to Drop in 1930s) Divorce Rate Drops 25%

“The fundamental business of the country [is] on a sound and prosperous basis.” -- Herbert Hoover, October 1929

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882 – 1945)

“You have nominated me and I know it, and I am here to thank you for the honor. Let it be symbolic that that in doing so I broke traditions. Let it from now on be the task of our Party to break foolish traditions.... I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.” -- Franklin D. Roosevelt accepting the Democratic nomination, 1932

“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it and try another. But above all, try something.” FDR radio address, May 1932

“What is the state? It is the duly constituted representative of an organized society of human beings, created by them for their mutual protection and well-being. The state or the government is but the machinery through which such mutual aid and protection is achieved. Our government is not the master but the creature of the people. The duty of the state towards the citizens is the duty of the servant to its master.” -- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1931

“Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold- blooded and the sins of the warm- hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the constant omission of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.” -- Roosevelt, 1936

The effects of Glass-Steagall Act (Banking Act of 1933)

Public Works Administration (PWA) Works Progress Administration (WPA) Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

The National Recovery Administration (NRA),

The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA),