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Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Great Depression
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In reference to the Great Depression, Roosevelt proclaimed "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" in his inauguration speech on (Saturday, March 4, 1933). Roosevelt's first weeks in office were called The Hundred Days, as during the first part of his administration he authored and approved a flurry of Congressional acts to institute immediate change and keep the nation's economy from destabilizing. He instituted a four-day "banking holiday" two days after he took office: a four-day period in which all banks in the country closed, allowing the institutions a brief period to recover and reorganize. During this time of crisis Roosevelt addressed the nation for the first time as President on Sunday, March 12, 1933 in the first of many "Fireside Chats."
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Roosevelt tackled the most pressing crisis: the insolvency of the banks. Since the start of the Depression, 11,000 of the nation's 25,000 banks had failed, and millions of Americans had lost their life's savings. Roosevelt realized that if he kept the banks open, panicked depositors would withdraw their money and more banks would fail. On March 6, FDR declared a "bank holiday." Meanwhile, he and his so-called Brain Trust, a group of academics and economic theorists he had brought to the White House, crafted the Emergency Banking Act, a plan which would close down insolvent banks and reorganize and reopen those banks strong enough to survive.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt proved to be one of the greatest presidents in U.S. history. His challenging, emotional upbringing, coupled with a useful sympathetic side that came about through his battle with polio, resulted in his developing a firm, courageous, and yet sensitive leadership style. This kind of leadership enabled Roosevelt to guide the nation through some of the toughest events in its history.
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Roosevelt's "First 100 Days" concentrated on the first part of his strategy: immediate relief. From March 9 to June 16, 1933, he sent Congress a record number of bills, all of which passed easily. To propose programs, Roosevelt relied on leading Senators such as George Norris, Robert F. Wagner and Hugo Black, as well as his own Brain Trust of academic advisers. Like Hoover, he saw the Depression as partly a matter of confidence, caused in part by people no longer spending or investing because they were afraid to do so. He therefore set out to restore confidence through a series of dramatic gestures.
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Roosevelt achieved all this despite being confined to a wheelchair. His disability was hidden from the public. Roosevelt was a great showman. He knew how to charm. He ... knew how to act and recognized a good idea when he saw one. He was not an original thinker, but he brought in a team of first-rate thinkers and drew on their ideas as he saw fit.
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Could President Franklin D. Roosevelt alter this relationship for the better? Many Canadians hoped that would be the case. Although the Toronto Globe and Mail greeted Roosevelt's election cautiously -" [t]he victorious campaigner's speeches were more conspicuous for what they omitted than what they included"-four years of Herbert Hoover's administration and three years of economic chaos prompted it to say that as candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt"gave the impression that he did understand the really big issues surrounding the world depression, the next four years may tell a story different from the last." Possessing fewer doubts, the Montreal Herald predicted that the United States, "fundamentally a member of the British family," would find "in this Dominion and in this Empire their truest friends, ready, willing and anxious to cooperate" in economic reconstruction and rehabilitation.
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Great Depression