With its years of existence, The United States had seen 31 Presidents who governed its citizens and created amendments and laws; however, in 1933, a man with different views and a different character than his predecessors, gave his citizens, who at one point had no hopes for the future, assurance of a better life. His name was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a man born in Hyde Park destined to lead America through financial and foreign crises. Raised to the Presidency from just a position as a politician of the New York State Legislature, Roosevelt pledged to serve the citizens of the United States. His thirst for a better life created him into a workaholic, working all the way until bedtime (Smith 234). Franklin D. Roosevelt has a specific resonance …show more content…
Organizations such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union criticized the President for allowing vice to thrive in the nation once again. He started to institute a plan called the New Deal, a way for American citizens to escape the Great Depression. Nothing he did as part of the New Deal can label him as a “Dictator”. He passed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, which enabled the federal government to build dams along the Tennessee River to generate inexpensive hydroelectric power. The next week, he instituted the Industrial Recovery Act that guaranteed workers’ rights to unionize and protest for better working conditions and higher wages. In addition to these laws and acts, Roosevelt had also passed 12 other major laws just within the first hundred days of his Presidency. The “First Hundred days” made Roosevelt a revered figure for the common American citizen. There is nothing about his policies that show him trying to achieve total dominance by becoming a dictator. He made the government stronger to bring America out of the Great Depression. Even though Roosevelt’s plan was good on paper, it did not seem to relinquish the depression. Unemployment was still a problem and people got angrier and more desperate (History). Roosevelt launched with another set of programs, referred to unofficially as the Second New Deal. One of the major parts of this deal was the Works Progress Administration, which provided jobs for the unemployed (History). These jobs were usually government jobs, such as working at post offices, building bridges, highways and parks. Roosevelt attacked cruel working conditions by helping to pass the Wagner Act, which created the national Labor Relations Board whose main goal was to prevent businesses from treating their workers unfairly. One of the Acts he passed that is still dominant today