Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal

In his first Inaugural Address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued a call to action for the New Deal, stating: “Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now,” (Roosevelt). He wanted to fix the problems that had resulted from the Great Depression, and in many ways he succeeded with his New Deal. Roosevelt created programs to provide direct and indirect relief to his people, applied reforms to clean up banking and finance, and facilitate economic recovery to get the U.S. back on track and keep another crisis from occurring. Those who disagree believe that FDR didn’t do enough for America’s poor, or that his deficit spending resulted in even worse consequences for America later on. When

Aid came in the form of both direct and indirect relief for the American public, lifting the American people out of unemployment, putting roughly ten percent of Americans back into the workforce by the end of the New Deal in 1939 (“Graph of U.S. Unemployment Rate, 1925-1945”). Direct aid came from the FERA, which helped the poor and unemployed. The WPA, one of several laws that provided government employment via public works jobs, alone employed eight and a half million people with jobs over an eight year period (“Timeline of Selected New Deal Legislation, 1934-1936”)! Farmers were also helped by the New Deal with the AAA, SODAA, and FSA, and homeowners were given aid to keep their homes by the HOLC and the FHA (15LN). Wealthy businessmen were limited by the New Deal reforms because of the NIRA, GSA, and SEC’s limitations on banking, the stock market, and industry and the protection of labor and union rights by the NLRA (15LN and “Timeline of Selected New Deal Legislation, 1934-1936”). The unemployed, which made up 25% of the population in 1933, farmers, and laborers benefitted most from New Deal legislation, which limited harmful

In Battle Creek, Michigan, workers were “thankful for what we [they] receive[d],” asking President Roosevelt to “continue this W.P.A. program [that] makes us feel like … American citizen[s] to earn our own living,” (“Workers Ask for the Continuation of the W.P.A.”). Others wrote letters to the president, first lady, and other officials to say that, “the relief situation is deplorable … Little consideration is being shown [to] the victims of the depression … We hardly know there is [a Public Works Program],” (“Four Views of the New Deal”). Charles H. Houston, an NAACP representative, thought that Social Security didn’t help enough people, especially Negro sharecroppers, cash tenants, and domestic servants (“The NAACP Challenges Social Security”). They believed that the New Deal didn’t do enough, but other letters argued that it wasn’t enough: “government spending … has reached a point where it is creating a mountainous debt which future taxpayers will have to shoulder … a large group of people [would] much rather ‘get along’ on what they receive from the dole than to [work],” (“Four Views of the New Deal”). Due to the large variance and lack of a commonality in the nature of people’s complaints about the New Deal, there wasn’t any change that FDR could make that would keep everyone happy; he could only continue on his current reform