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Election of 1932
Republicans nominated Herbert Hoover to run for president in the election of 1932. The Democrats chose Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). He had been born to a wealthy New York family and served as the governor of New York. Franklin Roosevelt won the election of 1932 by a sweeping majority, in both the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Beginning in the election of 1932, blacks became a vital part of the Democratic Party, especially in the urban centers of the North. -
FDR and the Three R's
On March 6-10, President Roosevelt declared a national banking holiday as a prelude to opening the banks on a sounder basis. The Hundred Days Congress/Emergency Congress (March 9-June 16, 1933) passed a series laws to help improve the state of the country. This Congress also passed some of FDR's New Deal programs, which focused on: relief, recovery, reform. Short-range goals were relief and immediate recovery, and long-range goals were permanent recovery and reform. -
Creating Jobs for the Jobless
FDR created jobs with federal money to jumpstart the economy.
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) employed about 3 million
men in government camps. Their work included reforestation, fire fighting, flood control, and swamp drainage. The Federal Emergency Relief Act was Congress's first major effort to deal with the massive unemployment. It created the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) which gave states direct relief payments or money for wages on work projects -
Good neighbor policy
FDR started the Good Neighbor policy, in which America would not intervene or interfere with Latin American countries. All marines left Haiti in 1934. America also released some control over Cuba and Panama.
When the Mexican government seized American oil properties in 1938, President Roosevelt held to his unarmed intervention policy and a settlement was eventually worked out in 1941. -
Social Security
The Social Security Act of 1935 provided federal-state unemployment insurance. To provide security for old age, specified categories of retired workers were to receive regular payments from Washington. Social Security was inspired by the example of some of the more highly industrialized nations of Europe.
The purpose of Social Security was to provide support for urbanized Americans who could not support themselves with a farm. Republicans opposed it -
Election of 1936
The Republicans chose Alfred M. Landon to run against President Roosevelt in the election of 1936. The Republicans condemned the New Deal for its radicalism, experimentation, confusion, and "frightful waste."
Democrats had significant support from the millions of people that had benefited from the New Deal programs.
President Roosevelt was reelected as president in a lopsided victory. FDR won primarily because he had appealed to the "forgotten man" (South, blacks, urbanites, poor). -
New deal or raw deal
Opponents of the New Deal charged the President of spending too much money on his programs, significantly increasing the national debt. From 1932 to 1939, the national debt increased from $19 trillion to $40 trillion.
The New Deal did not end the depression; it just gave temporary relief to citizens. Many economists eventually argued that not enough deficit spending was used.
Not until World War II was the unemployment problem solved. -
World War II
On August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression treaty with Hitler. The Hitler-Stalin pact meant that Germany could make war on Poland and the Western democracies without fear of retaliation from the Soviet Union.
Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Britain and France, honoring their commitments to Poland, declared war on Germany; World War II had started.
Although Americans were strongly anti-Nazi, they wanted to stay out of the war.