{"id":364,"date":"2015-02-25T01:01:29","date_gmt":"2015-02-25T01:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/?page_id=364"},"modified":"2018-02-27T15:01:34","modified_gmt":"2018-02-27T15:01:34","slug":"1930s-great-depression","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/timeline\/1930s-great-depression\/","title":{"rendered":"1930s –Great Depression"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overview<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"fdr-cover-323\"<\/a>When Franklin Roosevelt took the oath of office as president on March 4, 1933, the nation’s economic crisis had become the most severe in its history. \u00a0Not only was unemployment rising and poverty widespread, but the banking system appeared to be\u00a0in a state of near\u00a0collapse. \u00a0Over nine thousand banks had failed since 1929. \u00a0President Roosevelt then initiated a period of unprecedented federal government activity, including dramatic executive action (such as temporarily closing banks) and a flurry of legislative proposals coordinated closely with a Democratic-controlled Congress. \u00a0The result was fifteen major pieces of domestic legislation signed into law by June 1933, a remarkable period known as the Hundred Days<\/a>. \u00a0Subsequently, the Roosevelt administration and the its allies in Congress pushed through a series of additional reforms This “New Deal”<\/a>\u00a0involved a much larger role for the federal government in the American economy. \u00a0These changes, such as the Wagner Act and the Social Security Act, provoked fierce opposition –from conservatives in Congress and on the Supreme Court and also from some left-wing critics<\/a>, such as Louisiana Democrat Huey Long, who attacked FDR for not going far enough. \u00a0Yet despite all of this opposition, Roosevelt won a landslide reelection in 1936. \u00a0The New Deal\u00a0never quite succeeded in defeating the Great Depression \u00a0–only the mobilization of World War II would finally succeed in doing that– but Roosevelt’s efforts had a profound effect on the regulatory role of the federal government and on the domestic agenda-setting power of the American president. One of the most compelling personal accounts of the Depression that helps illustrate at least indirectly how ordinary Americans experienced that transformation remains Russell Baker’s memoir,\u00a0Growing Up\u00a0<\/em>(1981).<\/a><\/p>\n

Online Textbook Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n

1930s from Digital History<\/a> (Mintz and McNeil)<\/p>\n

Featured Videos<\/b><\/span>
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