106 thoughts on “Blog #32 – Was the New Deal too radical?”

1. Jacob gluski March 25, 2012 at 11:53 am

   Jacob Gluski
   3-25-12
   Was the New Deal Too Radical?
   When the greatest conflict in human history reared its head in the fall of 1939 the nation was still withering in the depths of the depression. Even by the most liberal estimates of unemployment was still at 11%, or about where we were in the height of the “great recession”. Why did the new deal fail? I think that despite the enthusiasm of FDR his advisor harry and the brain trust the nation didn’t need much of what they did. Without a doubt their needed to be banking reform, and what they did with that as well as the silver standard were needed to stabilize the economy. But many of the programs that tended to favor farmers and social reform really were just too radical, harmful and unneeded. Much of these unneeded programs stemmed from FDR’s belief that the government (federal) should care for its citizens from cradle to casket. I do believe that minimum wage as well as elimination of child labor (legally, for child labor was already almost gone from the US by this time) were beneficial reforms that continue to benefit us to this day. But programs and acts like the NRA, AAA, SSa, and many others of the alphabet soup programs. These programs could have posed as a stepping stone to socialism, a fear that I feel is, sadly, quite valid. But there were two major agencies that really were helping to build the nation to prepare it for war, to unify the nation, to put people back to work, and to stimulate the stabilization of industry. I am talking of course of the CCC and CWA. These two programs alleviated so many of the problems plaguing the country during the great depression. This helped to change the very fabric of America. It helped to mobilize the world and set the US up to become the world’s leading superpower. But the bulk of funding for these two crucial programs was cut along with others, this created the Roosevelt recession. Because of how many laws were passed regarding the new deal it really is a mixed bag. It contains seriously needed Banking reforms, as well as a very few social reforms, but it also contains programs like a permanent Social Security. As well as long term a program for unemployment compensation. Thankfully the food stamp program didn’t last beyond world war two, at least up until the 60s, but that doesn’t speak to FDR’s radicalism. So out of all the ND reforms about 2/3s were very good temporary solutions and the other 3rd were needed short term to help offset the anguish caused by the depression. But the problem with those last 3rd of the programs is that some of the stayed around as a part of long term programs that went beyond the depression. These programs moved America farther away from Capitalism and prosperity of all. I try to not be too negative especially regarding FDR, I view him as one of the best (2nd best) Presidents that the country has ever had, because much of what he did was needed and helpful. So I think that it was slightly too radical, the programs should have continued till about 1939, then many should have stopped forever/until another depression. Specifically I think that unemployment insurance and social security both go against the very fiber of what this country was built on and helped to institute the beginnings of a welfare state that many modern politicians seem to want for the country. In essence these programs continued presence changed the very character of the American individual. But other temporary programs saved democracy’s continued existence, Capitalism and probably the free world, for if America didn’t have the infrastructure that the CWA and CCC created we would not have been able to respond to WWII and the allies would have been destroyed. For without American war-products, scientific inventions/techniques, and soldiers the war would have been a lot swifter. So the end result was a new chance at success. But world war two was the catapult that ultimately solved the nation’s biggest problems, as well as much of the world’s. But there was the massive human cost of the war. If the US and other countries had been able to put policies in place and keep the world economy stable this war may never have happened, although I doubt another world war could have been avoided. This is my favorite time period in history and I could go on about this quite a bit more but I won’t.
2. Bradley S- 2nd Hour March 25, 2012 at 3:47 pm

   I do not think the New Deal was too radical to solve America’s economic problems during the Great Depression. Some argue that the government’s increasing involvement in the economy and lives of American citizens reached too high of heights, but this protection is the job of any government. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the National Recovery Administration in 1933 to create more fair competition codes and to set minimum wage levels and maximums regarding work hours. Small businesses and the working men and women needed laws and regulations like these to be able to survive (at whatever standard living conditions it was at in that time). Other parts of the New Deal that were necessary for proper recovery include The Public Works Administration and the Civil Works Administration which employed millions of people and put them to work on many public works projects. Works of the PWA included large-scale things like hospitals and tunnels while the CWA focused on smaller projects like roads and parks. Both of these supplied so many disillusioned Americans with bread back on their tables and should not be considered radical because it is the government’s job to look after its people. If that means declaring an eight-day banking holiday for a few days to reorganize and reopen the nation to stable banks, so be it. I do think that the New Deal, however, should have been more radical when it came to social equality. In this time, many more ghettos (especially those of African Americans and those of Latin American descendant) increased in the shadows of major cities like New York City. Racism was prevalent all over in governments and workplaces so jobs and relief were not equally rationed among all of the citizens. I do not believe the New Deal should have been too much more radical because then I would feel that the government would have a little too much power. I would have supported a progressive tax, but I think it’s gone too far where it is flat-out illegal to own a certain amount of money (as proposed by Senator Huey Long in his ‘Every Man a King’ speech). Wealth should be spread out, but that does not mean that every family gets an income of $5,000 (in those days) annually–that, to me, sounds a bit irrational because then, what purpose would there be for the people to work hard? Overall, I feel that President Roosevelt kept a nice balance regarding government relief and interference to best protect its people.
3. Daniel Poberesky March 25, 2012 at 10:06 pm

   The major goals of the New Deal, as FDR proposed, were relief, recovery, and reform to the nation’s economy. Many plans and programs were developed to achieve these goals, however, the New Deal was not radical enough since it was able to solve only part of the problems in the country during the period of depression and after. The New Deal improved role of the federal government in economic affairs, established rules and limits of government’s control of private lives, The New Deal also marked the commitment of the federal government to active programs in the areas of social welfare, regulation of business, and management of the economy. The New Deal greatly reduced unemployment rate, many people were able to get jobs or keep the jobs instead of being laid-off, but at the same time many of the jobs were considered as “forced labor” and only provided temporary relief. The New Deal did not end the Great Depression because the huge production of goods and services for the war needs, that brought back economic wealth, did not start until 1941, during World War II, and the lowest unemployment rate was achieved only in 1942. Another success of the Great Deal was that quality of life in agricultural areas improved through influence of public organizations. Another success was that rights of racial minorities were extended, more freedom was given and supported by government, but at the same time no significant progress was made in the area of civil rights. The conclusion is that the New Deal was not radical enough and did not solve all the problems or achieved all the goals, but still caused a permanent transformation of the United States.
4. LeDea Bond-5th hour March 25, 2012 at 11:21 pm

   I don’t think the New Deal was too radical to solve America’s economic problems. When FDR became president in 1933, he was under a lot of pressure to fix the economic situation. He wanted to fix the situation with the 3 R’s, recovery, relief, and reform. The New Deal brought a ton of change and with any type of change there is always someone who doesn’t agree. The new deal wasn’t as radical as Huey Long or Charles Coughlin wanted it to be, but it wasn’t conservative either. Huey’s Share the Wealth plan was very radical and it threatened many of the wealthy. With Charles Coughlin, his newspaper called for many radical reforms and it criticized the New Deal as not going far enough to relieve the suffering. Charles felt that FDR’s new deal wasn’t radical enough to fix the broken economy. I agree with him, but I don’t think the New Deal should have been as radical as Coughlin wanted. It wasn’t radical enough to solve America’s economic problems. The New Deal was made to end the depression, but it didn’t. There was still a lot of unemployment throughout The New Deal. FDR’s program didn’t benefit everyone like blacks and Latinos because a lot of the relief was passed out at the state level. I think FDR’s program should have been more radical in the sense to help everyone and do what it was designed to do, end the depression. Franklin imposed reform but he still failed to do anything about the economic situation. I think FDR reform changes weren’t as important as the economic situation because the changes he made would have still come without the New Deal because it was influenced by the Progressive era. The New Deal brought a lot of changes and reforms within America but it wasn’t radical enough to solve America’s economic problems.
5. Brooke Billings March 26, 2012 at 12:11 am

   The poor state of the American economy was threatening to throw the United States into chaos when the Great Depression struck. FDR was pressured to do all that he could to revive it, and reemploy the American people. FDR’s solution to America’s broken economy, the New Deal, focused on relief, recovery and reform. FDR spent much of his presidency centered on relief programs, when he should have been focused on reform; therefore, the New Deal should have been more radical in aiming to execute long term changes instead of putting a band aid on the economy. FDR’s many “alphabet” relief programs assisted in temporarily healing the economy, but their long term affects were scarce. It is impossible to reemploy almost 25% of America with pricy programs that only employ a fraction of the unemployed. FDR should have attempted to mend the causes of the Great Depression, such as the unstable banking system and unfair labor practices. Roosevelt spent billions of dollars on programs that employed few, when that money could have been put to use elsewhere for more beneficial causes. FDR admitted himself that his solutions were not always well thought out. America’s economy at that time needed a president that would put into action well thought out bills and reforms that would not only mend the economy, but prevent future crashes. The last thing America needed to do was throw billions of dollars at government programs that might not even prove to be effective.
   FDR’s programs are further proved to be only mildly effective, when American’s were forced to turn to mad demagogues. These demagogues were spewing communist and socialist ideals that Americans were buying. The economy was doing so poorly that Americans were willing to attempt fascism and communism because capitalism seemed to be failing. If FDR had been more radical in his reforms, the American public would not have lost faith and turned their back on what freedoms the nation had been built upon.
   The textbook states that it took WW2 to pull America out of the Great Depression; therefore, FDR’s programs built a welfare state that depends on the government for jobs and food, without even pulling the nation out of the Depression. If FDR had acted more radically in his reforms by first regaining America’s trust in the banking system by reforming it, encouraging businesses to flourish while instituting fair labor practices to prevent the abuse of the worker, and cutting down on spending to prevent excess taxation America’s economy would have healed itself. All the economy needed, at that time, was for the pieces to be positioned correctly for it flourish and accelerate, the last thing the economy needed was FDR’s mild relief programs that encouraged huge spending.
6. geoffwickersham (Post author) March 26, 2012 at 11:39 am

   Was the New Deal too radical to solve America’s economic problems? Or wasn’t it radical enough to fix the broken economy? Why?

   I think the New Deal was on the edge of being too radical to solve America’s economic problems. To start, the country wasn’t used to the activist government; the US was controlled by a lassez-faire style government for 12 years. Thus, the American people weren’t exactly sure how to adjust. Next, FDR’s plans and ideas had more popularity than either Long or Coughlin. According to the website below, FDR had 57.41% of the popular votes in the election of 1932, and in the election of 1936, he went up to a 60.8% popular vote. This, compared to the less than a million votes for Coughlin’s candidate, showed the American people agreed with FDR’s economic change, rather than a more radical change. If his ideas were too radical, then many Americans probably wouldn’t have agreed, and his popularity wouldn’t have increased like it did. FDR’s New Deal went after all the problems the American economy was facing. The Securities and Exchange Commerce (SEC) regulated the stock market and looked for insider trading and stock manipulation. This ensured some trust was put back into the government, and showed the American people that the government wasn’t just for big corporate businesses. The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) helped the people struggling with their house loans by putting a moratorium on their home loans. This allowed the homeowner’s time to get back on their feet, which also put trust back into the government, and showed the government actually wanted to help. The Wagner Act established union rights. The Social Security Act helped the old-age, the unemployed, the disabled, and the orphaned. The Fair Labor Standards Act abolished child labor, and established benefits for the workers, including maximum and minimum wages, and maximum work week hours. All of these had focused on unions, jobs, and the unemployed. This provided the American people with hope that the economy would get better. The New Deal assured the American people’s hope and trust back into the government.

   Rachel S.
7. Avery Katzman March 26, 2012 at 11:57 am

   FDR’s New Deal was justs radical enough to the where he helped point us in the right direstion to get out of the Great Depression. FDR made many new programs, that helped the american public trust the banks again. One of the most important programs FDR set up was tha FDIC it helped the american public trust the baks again and helped with banking reforms. Another great program he set up was the WPA and CCC were two great programs that decreased unemployment and helped the american publics self-esteem boost dramatically. Although I do not agree with FDR’s AAA, NIRA, and the FSA these are the top three programs I hate. the NIRA I guess was good because it enforced a minimum wage but the effect this took on the american public was awful. Inflation went up like crazy people didn’t buy anything plus The continuous cycle of overproduction and underconsumption put businesses back into a slump. Later this was considered uncostitional. The AAA was a bad program too because there was too much goverment involvent in the citzens life and the goverment made farmers kill livestock while people were starving. This was also considered unsostiitonal. The FSA was just bad becasue it gave out $1 million dollars to farmers that sounds fantastic but inreality when the giverment just hands out money to the public like it’s candy there is no progress nobody does anything just like our social welfare system today. Due to these three programs I believe this is why we got into the FDR recession of 1937-1938.
8. Alexis Zerafaaaaaaaa March 26, 2012 at 2:13 pm

   Was the New Deal too radical to solve America’s economic problems? The New Deal could be considered very radical because it was the first time the government had attempted to assist the people during times of economic hardship. The government, quite against normal capitalist ideals, was working with business to solve the issue. NWA attempted to do this very thing and as a result it was shot down, it was full scale revolutionary in most eyes and this is America, we can’t have that, we only get halfsies. The Public Works Administration replaced this as did many other programs which offered up work opportunity. To old conservatives and those who hate change these itself could seem revolutionary and a bit unsettling, they did not want to work for the man. However, FDR was still not the new Lenin of America, opportunity was still afforded to entrepreneurship and you did not need to accept the relief offered by the government. Was it radical enough to fix the broken economy The new deal was not radical enough however to fix the economy because it didn’t. It did not fix the economy or end the depression. The fact is that some people say the new deal actually prolonged the depression. Critics say the New Deal failed because some of the government’s actions suppressed competition, slowing the economy’s ability to rebound. All in all, the New Deal more than tripled the tax burden from 1933 to 1940: $1.6 billion to $5.3 billion. Serious deficit-spenders don’t raise taxes. But Roosevelt did. Is it any wonder that net investment dropped $3.1 billion during the decade or that unemployment was about as high in 1939 as it was in 1932? On another note a central culprit was the National Recovery Administration (NRA), from 1933. The goal of the NRA was to lift wages for workers. But to do this, it encouraged industry leaders to meet and establish minimum prices and wages, effectively creating cartels. The result was wholesale prices rising 23 percent in two years.
9. Mitchell August March 26, 2012 at 4:24 pm

   BLOG #32
   Mitchell August

   When FDR took office America was not in a recession, we were in a depression; A full-scale economic depression. Our economic systems that we had been depending on for 12 years crumbled right in front of us, leaving America in a state of panic. If there was time for radical change this was it; the old ways were not working and Hoovers laid back methods were not pushing us out of the depression. Some argue that the New Deal was too radical, but changes had to be made. The new deal was quick and concise it fixed errors in our systems that had not been addressed before and eliminated the out dated ones. Unemployment rate had skyrocketed and our profit line was moving in the wrong direction. Yes the New Deal did not do the best job of crossing the color barrier or racial borders but the time period was not the same. As ridiculous as it sounds and as terrible as it is, racial equality was not the presidents first priority The New Deal’s attention was not to be racist or condescending towards any race, the new deal was flawed in this way because all the same benefits were not given to African Americans or other races. If the new deal would have been less radical or more gradual than it would not have worked at all and we would have been going down the same path Hoover was taking us down. FDR’s new deal was not perfect, it did not get us out of the Great Depression and it did a bad job with unemployment and racial inequality but it was the right idea, and the type of change the nation needed. People fear change especially change of this proportion but the time period called for it and was what the people of America needed. The changes could have been better executed and had stronger effects but the New Deal did not do damage and was the right concept.
10. Julie Furton March 26, 2012 at 4:37 pm

    No, I feel that the New Deal was just radical enough for the country at that point in time. When Roosevelt entered office, he had a huge problem to fix which was the broken economy and broken dreams of most of America and he had to make some serious changes. His New Deal was a new type of government approach for the country considering they had just gone through a 12 year period of hands off approach and of course with this change came critics. In just the first 100 days, Roosevelt passed many acts and started to get certain parts of the country back on their feet. Just the TVA alone helped to provide thousands of jobs and cheap energy for the entire Tennessee Valley area where the depression had hit hard. Since the depression had been such a major turning point in the country’s economy, there was no way that FDR could have just kept doing the same things that Hoover was doing, it just wouldn’t be enough and he needed a completely new mindset and new methods. The New Deal was definitely not too radical. If there had been less effort by FDR and less new acts then the country could have dropped even lower. At the time FDR was elected, the country needed to do a complete 180 to get back on our feet and if FDR hadn’t continually pushed all of those acts through congress, the depression could have continued for years. When Roosevelt began to cut back on his spending and job programs, the country fell into another depression which goes to show that FDR’s new deal was working, it was only when he tried to cut back that it stopped. The new deal was definitely radical and if it had been any more so, it could have completely failed all together. Yes, there was still unemployment but it wasn’t like overnight the country would be perfect again. The New Deal did not benefit all but if it had tried too then there would have been even more unrest from those who weren’t getting any aid. No matter what the critics say, the New Deal did help the country and if it had been pushed any further toward either of the extremes, it could pushed the country completely over the edge.
11. Sam E March 26, 2012 at 4:53 pm

    FDR’s New Deal wasn’t radical enough. If its goal was to fix the economy, but it took a second world war to do so, then it did not achieve that goal. If more radical change had taken place, yes people would be blown away thanks to something they didn’t expect at all, like help for that Latinos and blacks. If FDR had focused more on the people hit the hardest and soonest by the Depression, then the Depression may not have lasted as long. By helping the most destitute, the rest of society should be able to be washed along with the tide of recovery for the poorest. Since laissez-faire didn’t work, Roosevelt should have outright told the nation maybe in one of his fireside chats that a MASSIVE wave of change is coming, to hold on tightly to whatever they can, and to not worry since FDR has it all under control. One mistake that FDR made, in my mind, is stopping something that was working, some of the job providing programs. The CCC was disbanded in 1942, a year after when the U.S. came into WW2. The lack of men to support the CCC caused that. The PWA was another vital administration that FDR stopped and shouldn’t have. There are always things, especially back then, that can be bettered with the aid of a bunch of hard working people. Similarly, the WPA should not have stopped in 1943 because of the culture and jobs that were brought by it. A full sixth of the 12 million unemployed were helped by the WPA alone. Yes I am aware that those years are in the middle of WW2, so they pretty much had to be stopped because of the lack of people. I reiterate, if the goal of the New Deal was to get the country out of the Depression and a war did, the changes were not happening fast enough.
12. Mason Cavanaugh March 26, 2012 at 5:03 pm

    The New Deal, was it too radical? I believe that the New Deal was not too radical at all, especially in comparison to Father Coughlin, and Huey Long. The ideas of Father Coughlin were much too radical for the people to agree with, and he lost supporters because of it. Huey Longs radical ideas would negatively affect the rich, and corporations, which was also too radical. The New Deal had the three R’s relief, recovery, and reform to help fix the destroyed nation. These were good principles to help the country and helped partially. If anything, the New Deal was not radical enough, because it only helped some issues and didn’t completely pull us out of the depression. A large thing the New Deal did was strengthen Government influence in Welfare programs and others as well as management of business and the economy. Even though FDR’s New Deal didn’t completely end the Depression like he had hoped, it did help employ many people. Even though many were employed, not all people benefited, like Blacks and Latinos. Since there was still a lot of prejudice in certain states, they did not receive as much relief or any. FDR was very pressed to make the New Deal, and it could not be perfect. The new adjustments to the government were hard for people to adapt to, but did help as well. Not everyone can benefit from one mutual deal. For the position he was in, FDR did fairly well, and helped the nation take the first steps out of the Great Depression. Huey Longs solutions would have been worse, because they appealed to only to the poor. Father Coughlin was much too extreme, and his plan would not work either. The New Deal did what it was intended to by opening up jobs, and having a government influence on the economy, but it just did not do as much as FDR thought it would.
13. Kevin Berkowitz March 26, 2012 at 5:05 pm

    I believe that the New Deal was too radical for what he was trying to achieve. I believe the New Deal was too radical because of how the some people said FDR was making alphabet soup. Instead of trying to focus on one thing at a time he and the hundred day congress were making the SEC, FHA, NLRB, AAA, and other organizations. FDR was trying to fix everything at the same time. However he should have focused on the biggest issues of the time and should have tried to fix one thing at a time and have his biggest focus there. Since he did not focus on one a thing at a time you get an organization like the National Recovery Administration that was deemed unconstitutional. If FDR was more focused he would not have wasted his time in something that was discovered to be unhelpful. Another example of FDR’s alphabet soup that was not helpful for what was happening in the nation. Although some of these programs did help they did not do enough. If not for World War II the unemployment rate would have defiantly been higher. Another major problem was that the New Deal did not help everybody. All of these organizations were given out at a state level. Because of this people were still prejudice against African Americans and Latinos. Since the New Deal was not working as well people were getting desperate and started to listen to people such as Huey Long and Coughlin. They were both preaching socialist ways. When people start listening and following these leaders you know there is a problem when people are willing to try these crazy ways. With FDR’s New Deal the economy just went into Roosevelt’s Recession. Although FDR helped us get out of the Great Depression he got us right back into his Recession.
14. Lexi Wehbe March 26, 2012 at 5:12 pm

    I do not think the New Deal was too radical to solve America’s economic problems but I also do not think it wasn’t radical enough. I think it was just radical enough given the situation. At the time, Roosevelt was pressured to make monumental changes in order to revive America, so granted not all of the changes would suffice for all of the American citizens immediately. When dealing with such a tragedy that has never before occurred in the United States, there is nothing to study from history to judge how to fix the situation. There had never been such a devastating fall out of the American economy before 1933, so there was no way of telling what solution would be most effective. Because the problem was so drastic, only a solution equally as drastic could fix everything that was broken within a reasonable time period. The laissez-faire policy may have been generally more popular and fitting for the United States, but once the United States hit the depression, continuing that policy even with miniscule modifications would not have best suited America in their given state. America needed the government’s hands to guide the United States’ economy onto a road to recovery. Some may argue that the New Deal wasn’t radical enough, but no matter what America did, one answer couldn’t fix all of the millions of problems that arose out of the Great Depression. The New Deal was a great start to lead America to a brighter future because it attempted to fix a huge chunk of issues that were deemed most critical at the time. The New Deal couldn’t have been too radical because with the multitude of problems America was facing, it didn’t attempt to tackle all of them at once, simply because it was not possible. Unfortunately, the fortune of Latinos and Blacks was not deemed as significant as many of the other issues, which was mainly why they didn’t receive benefit from the New Deal.
15. Piper S. March 26, 2012 at 5:15 pm

    The New Deal was borderline too radical in solving the problem of the American Depression. The New Deal was not fast enough to solve the depression problems. Roosevelt was heading in the right direction, in my opinion, but everything was taking too long. Roosevelt made all these relief acts and associations that only got the country a little out of their depression but there was so much that still had to be done and he wasn’t making it happen fast enough. These acts and associations made it harder to get out of their economic problems because it just raised the national debt even more. In 1932, the debt was at about $20 billion but in 1939, it was up to $40 billion; so those acts and associations were building greater debts. The New Deal was focused on making America prosperous again but not quickly, they were thinking of in the next 10-20 years, instead of months or a few years. On the other hand, the New Deal could be considered very radical because Roosevelt seemed to try and pass everything he thought of without thinking if it was going to work. Everyone was so desperate to go back to being prosperous that they were willing to do everything, and that includes FDR and the Congress. It didn’t help that there were people that did not support FDR and his New Deal because people started to lose faith in him, which probably made FDR even more desperate to spout out new ideas. The New Deal was borderline too radical simply because it included desperate moves to get America pumping again, and some parts it was not radical enough because it was not working fast enough. The New Deal would have been a great idea if we weren’t in a deep depression like we were, but in a slump that was much smaller.
16. kevin talty March 26, 2012 at 5:19 pm

    The Great Depression was one of the hardest problems America has ever faced. A fourth of the work force was out of work and banks were collapsing left and right because people were withdrawing their money and rich not putting anymore in. Over production sent prices sky rocketing down and a government tax cut for the rich made “fake” success in the stock market. Then, the stock market came crashing starting the worst decade long depression in history. Roosevelt coming into his presidency had an upward climb and I think his plans were perfect for want was needed. He had to expertly balance to things that cannot be done together. He had to stop overproduction and get people to make fewer products so prices will go back up. But, he also had to millions of people back to work and get them back in jobs producing things. It is so hard to accomplish both things because when nation is out of work you want prices low so the unemployed can still buy things to survive but you also want to raise prices so people aren’t working for worthless products. He also one top of this had to stabilize the banks and remake the stock market so another monster collapse doesn’t happen. This is why I think he was the perfect balance between doing nothing and turning the country socialist. He could have pulled a Hoover and just sat back and reassured the country saying it is going to get better soon just wait for capitalism to bring the country back. The other thing he could have down is but in a maximum income or put in other socialist ideas like were everyone makes the same amount of money but he didn’t he found the perfect balance. He set a minimum wage, max work hours, overtime pay, allow unionization, put laws on banks and the stock market, and paid people to keep the price down all which very basic socialist ideas but were need to help the country because as shown with Hoover’s method the old way was not working.
17. Jami Laub March 26, 2012 at 5:20 pm

    I think FDR’s new deal should have been more radical to make changes that would last a lifetime instead of temporary changes on focusing to fix the broken economy. America’s economy was going through a really rough time and needed change to help them restore their economy and get them back into shape. FDR had his ideas to help the economy the three R’s relief recovery and reform he donated a lot of his time to get these programs to work, he needed to focus on each one more to make sure they were effective on the people which they didn’t have a huge impact on anybody, with the amount of money he spent in his many relief programs he could of spent that money doing something much more effective, there were also already so many people without jobs It would be almost impossible to employ all of hem again. The text book also stated that what got America out of the great depression was not FDR’s new deal but it was WW11 by giving a lot of people jobs for building war equipment and needing a lot of men to go to war. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to restore the economy by coming up with programs and plans to employ people and give them money he created the National Recovery Administration in 1933 which created more fair competition codes and set minimum wage levels and maximums regarding work hours Other parts of the New Deal that were necessary for proper recovery. The Public Works Administration and the Civil Works Administration, which employed millions of people and put them to work on many public works projects. Works of the PWA included large-scale things like hospitals and tunnels while the CWA focused on smaller projects like roads and parks.
18. Marisa Williams March 26, 2012 at 5:21 pm

    Was the New Deal too radical or not radical enough to fix America’s economy? Personally, I find it a little inaccurate to associate it with either of the two extremes. While it is true that the New Deal wasn’t the ultimate everlasting savior of the economy, it did help get the people back on their feet, and the nation back on the right track. At a time when jobs were scarce and poverty was widespread among American families, the programs of the New Deal worked to increase the number of jobs available to the people as well as provide government assistance to those who were still stuck. It also attempted to restore a trustworthy banking system by ensuring that savings would not be lost. Many say that the New Deal was “socialist” or “communist”, but really it was only attempting to stimulate the nation’s economy through government assistance. However, some of the acts did have a negative effect on the more well-to-do-such as inflation and increased prices- which was one of the reasons the New Deal received so much criticism. According to Huey Long, the New Deal didn’t do enough to stop the big corporations from doing any more harm. This is not entirely true, because there were restrictions placed on companies of the same type in terms of competition. This not only decreased the number of businesses that closed down, but also resulted in the creation of more jobs and the preservation of old ones. Despite the good that the New Deal did, however, there were still millions of Americans out of work and many families impoverished. I do agree that the final turning point of the depression was World War II, which created even more jobs in weapons and vehicles manufacturing, as well as increasing the circulation of goods to foreign countries.
19. Katie Sullivan - 4th hour March 26, 2012 at 6:34 pm

    The New Deal did many great things for the country during the time of grave depression, but I don’t think it did enough. Franklin Roosevelt had a handful of great plans to get the economy back, but many of his plans contradicted the others or didn’t help at all. For instance, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was meant to help the economy by regulating prices and production. The AAA eventually caused many tenant farmers to lose their land, homes, and jobs. In the first 100 days alone, FDR and his Brain Trust passed many new acts and created many new programs to help the population receive jobs and economic stability. As a result of the handful of programs, the American dollar underwent extreme inflation, causing prices of goods to rise. Not the best way to boost a failing economy. The New Deal reforms did not help as much as Roosevelt had intended. The programs seemed to favor helping mostly the farmers and focused on a lot of social reform.
    However, not all of the New Deal was harmful. With the banking holiday, many of the banks were able to reopen and people were then encouraged to put their money back into the backs. Along with the banks, the Glass-Steagall Reform Acts created the FDIC, which insured bank deposits up to $5,000, hoping that people would trust their banks not to fail again. Many of Roosevelt’s reforms created many jobs like the CCC and the PWA.
    Overall, the New Deal was showing slow improvement in the economy until the second crash in 1938. All in all, I don’t think that the New Deal was too radical; FDR just had too many ideas. The radical ones were his critics, like Huey Long and Father Coughlin. Long’s ‘solution’ of giving a $5,000 salary was very irrational and would have never worked.
20. Grace Lee March 26, 2012 at 6:40 pm

    The New Deal wasn’t radical enough to fix the broken economy, but ideas like “Share the Wealth” by Huey Long were too radical to fix anything. Obviously, FDR came into office knowing that there was a lot to change and redo and fix, which is why he created the 3 Rs: relief, recovery and reform. He created numerous acts in order to try to help the nation. A problem was, I think, that he panicked too much and came up with all the acts to relieve the Americans of their worries, but the more acts he came up with, the less thought there was behind each of them. Another problem was that, honestly, no matter how hard FDR worked, he wouldn’t have been able to completely bring back the economy to the high it used to be—at least not quickly enough for people to not become impatient and frustrated. Perhaps this is what he had in mind. If he had thought more about America’s success in the long run, he would’ve been a little more radical and more careful with each step he took.
    It is true that he didn’t care for the impoverished people as much as he should’ve. But it’s also true that people like Father Coughlin and Huey Long were too obsessed with trying to prove to America that we, essentially, had to turn against the wealthy businessmen. FDR focused on balancing the budget, but he should’ve been thinking of ways to better the poor instead of worrying about the wealthy. Again, the fact that he dove right into his presidency with a bunch of acts, for Americans who weren’t at all familiar with his governing style yet, was a bad idea.
    It is a valid argument to say that the war ended the Great Depression, not the New Deal, and I think that FDR has used a radical approach to this historically monumental problem, he would’ve been able to solve more parts of it.
21. Alec Barnes March 26, 2012 at 6:43 pm

    To say that the new deal was not radical enough, some policies regulating products and work forces were so controlling they were close to being socialist. To say that it was too radical, on the other hand, seems a bit farther than I would have taken it. After adjusting to a laissez-faire government, and the country’s still boiling upset with Hoover, America was at a crossroads, turning into the fiery turmoil of the Great Depression. But, as Americans lost jobs left and right, and the country shrank down into damage control, a new light shined with FDR’s New Deal. Was it a long term solution that could be counted on for the rest of days? Absolutely not, but it got America by until confidence was restored in America again. It was almost similar to an extended period to get back on our feet again. These practices and government regulations were not meant so that everyone would have to somehow work for the government until it controlled us, and for someone to want that as a government in our nation has clearly not understood our principles. Latino Americans also were not quite the highest on the list of people who were affected by this Plan, and many Latino Americans felt that they had been cheated and refused to work at other jobs thus making them a larger part of the staggering percent of unemployment. So, even with the New Deal, the percent of people working was still not where it should be because they were combating with the Dust Bowl, upset Latinos refusing to work and also the very real idea that the government can’t employ everybody and still call itself a democracy.
22. Rennie P March 26, 2012 at 7:09 pm

    FDR had really well-structured and intelligent ideas in the sense that he knew what the US economy needed and desired. I think he did the most that any one person could have done in his situation. I firmly believe that Americans have this idea that the economy can just be fixed with better with a smart president. It’s obviously hard to completely alter the way our capitalist society works by making small changes. People constantly complained about the massive gap between the rich and poor, but that’s what capitalism is. For those who criticized the New Deal for not being radical enough to fix the economy, they probably would’ve also freaked out if there was a revolution that lead to a socialist government. I still believe, however, that the New Deal could have been more radical if FDR wanted the impacts of the ND to be greater. I think he had a lot of confidence in what small actions could do for the government, which is understandable, because it would be functionally impossible to alter the government in such a way that we were suddenly more socialist than communist. He obviously did what he could to save the economy. I think FDR was a terrific president and had one of the best plans for government that we’ve seen in America’s history thus far. However, he needed to be a little more thorough in his attempts to save the economy, and I think he probably knew this too. With making things like the AAA, he knew that government interference was the way to go. Even though the book and many others think that the war ended the great depression and not the New Deal, I think the ND greatly helped. Not only did he increase government interference (which was greatly needed for reasons such as huge companies taking over small businesses- which is the problem we see in the economy today), but ended prohibition which helped the economy in many ways.
23. Shounak V. March 26, 2012 at 7:25 pm

    I feel like the New Deal was not radical enough. FDR made countless “Alphabetical Organizations”, but most of them didn’t even work. A lot of them just died out with very minimal effect, not helping the economy as much as FDR thought it would. I feel like if he focused more on the most important things, like the unemployment, than on some of the random corporations he made, that the economy would have been in better shape. Some of the corporations focused on like the building of dams and the electrical power of things. I feel like that should have been on the lower end of the list as priorities, but FDR wasted a lot of time just doing those. Along with that a couple of them were so bad that the Supreme Court even got rid of them. I feel like FDR was so caught up in the new deal, he didn’t take a second to think what issues he should really focus on. For example, I feel like he didn’t do enough with the unemployment. Yes, the unemployment did decline a solid amount from 1933, but that still wasn’t enough. The only major, lasting corporation that really helped out the people was the CCC, and the WPA. I think if FDR made more corporations like those around the country, the economy would have been a lot better. I also think FDR didn’t do enough with banks. Yes, he did do the “Bank Holiday”, and he did cut the coinage of gold to paper money for a little bit, until stopping it because of trade complications, but I think he could have done more. I feel like he could have done a lot more with helping out the banks, so people would feel more comfortable with storing the money there, instead of under their mattress. I feel like if he focused more on the things that were important, the Great Depression would have ended much earlier.
24. Caitlyn Dolan-- Hour 1 March 26, 2012 at 7:35 pm

    Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program was radical and instituted needed change in the United States. Despite the fact that it didn’t end the Great Depression and some programs ultimately led to the “Roosevelt Recession,” the New Deal had viable and progressive ideas in its groundwork, and FDR was trying hard to save the U.S. through recovery, relief, and reform. Yet these ideas were too radical to bring up the United States economy, and too idealist to keep the economy afloat. New Deal “alphabet soup” programs like the National Recovery Act (NRA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), Public Works Administration (PWA), and Tennessee Valley Authority Act (TVA) and other “One-Hundred Days” programs each had a theme—reducing unemployment, allotting land to farmers, inflating prices to lower debt, helping homeowners, etc. However, these acts had small details and different focal points that contradicted those of other acts, or were wasteful. The AAA, for example, aimed to increase prices and limit production of food by murdering millions of pigs, retiring millions of acres of farmland, and paying farmers not to plant resulted in huge inflation and farmers without land to farm on: therefore, unemployed. Yes, FDR’s programs had good intentions, but were too quickly pushed through Congress and into law, and not clearly thought over. They were pricey and often quickly reformed or repealed—think the NRA and the AAA vs. the TVA. All America did was throw billions of dollars at government programs that weren’t proven effective, and were harmful to lower and middle classes. FDR’s programs were merely ideas spewed out into law, without consideration to all the effects each program could have, creating welfare states and doling out power to one organization after another. If FDR had come out with a cohesive, concrete package attacking each of the major issues of the depression: banks, the economy, trade, spending, and relief he would have developed a progressive, and radical, solution instead of the haphazard hodge-podge of bills that ultimately recessed the economy. Radicalism was widely accepted by U.S. citizens in this era because it offered up new solutions to American problems, and new ways to restore the American Dream. America during the Great Depression consisted of a bunch of crushed dreamers, looking for programs to alleviate their desperation, which is why Americans began to turn away from capitalism and resort to communist and socialist theories. Despite an American willingness to change seriously, serious change hadn’t worked. Too much, too soon put America close to where it had started. Mussolini and Hitler had regimes that were powerful yet short lived; Huey Long and Coughlin were shot and “impeached” from the radio, respectively. Their radical ideas had moral and value behind them, but they were too much of change for a country, or a group of supporters, to handle. Change is good, but the overload of it that FDR’s New Deal offered wasn’t.
25. Natalie S. 3rd Hour March 26, 2012 at 7:50 pm

    The New Deal may not have been the sole factor in ending the depression (in fact it wasn’t), but the reforms certainly helped and were important to how the United States developed. The New Deal might have been more successful if it were to improve social equality by passing relief out in a different manner as to avoid racial prejudices. In this manner, the New Deal was not radical enough. I do not think the New Deal should have been made much more radical because the government shouldn’t have too much power, but a few tweaks to the plan could have made all the difference to its success. Father Coughlin thought that the New Deal wasn’t radical enough, but in a far different way than me. He was very prejudiced and simply thought that Roosevelt wasn’t doing enough. If FDR had done much more, the government would have too much control. The only reasons Huey Long thought that it was too radical were a personal grudge against Roosevelt and the bias thought that he went too easy on corporate and banking interests rather than focusing on the poorer states like Louisiana. I think the relief, recovery, and reforms of the New Deal helped accomplish a lot of positive change that was desperately needed in the United States at that time. Things like the Public Works Administration (PWA) that created jobs and public buildings and projects were positive things and were definitely not too radical. Other organizations with positive outcomes created by the New Deal were the CCC, the CWA, the SEC, and the FHA. The New Deal also started off with an 8 day bank holiday to repair (the first of the three r’s) the banks and people’s faith in them. They closed down a percentage of the banks that would not be able to run effectively and helped the rest so that people would feel confident about leaving their money there. This was, again, positive and not too radical.
26. Colleen Feola March 26, 2012 at 7:57 pm

    I think the New Deal could be considered radical, but I believe that drastic times call for drastic measures. After the Great Depression, a result of the stock market crash of 1929, the country was in shambles. People were struggling to survive, to find jobs, and make ends meet. President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1932, following these devastating times. He had to try everything in his power to help Americans. FDR created the New Deal which focused on the 3 R’s: relief, recovery, and reform. Immediate relief and recovery were vital, followed by permanent recovery and reform. Within days of his inauguration, FDR called upon congress, so called “The Hundred Days Congress” to provide immediate relief to the people in 100 days. For example, the Agricultural Adjustment Act was passed to help regulate farm prices, production, and alleviate suffering and the Civil Works Administration was used to create jobs during the harsh winter of 1933-1934.
    The New Deal also embraced progressive ideas. Some of the most important effects included bank relief (The Emergency Banking Relief Act of 1933 regulated banking transactions and foreign exchange and reopened 75% of banks), creating jobs (The Civilian Conservation Corps put 250,000 men to work), and helping industry and labor (The National Recovery Administration created “fair competition” among industries and set limits to work hours and wages). Other important effects of the New Deal were the Wagner Act of 1935 which established union rights and the Social Security Act, which created an old-age pension, unemployment insurances, and disability payments. FDR created programs that are still being benefited from today. For example, most of our grandparents are benefiting from his installment of the old- age pension.
    Although World War 2, not the New Deal, ended the Depression, I believe that the New Deal was as successful as it could be. I think that FDR’s New Deal was just radical enough to lessen the repercussions of the Great Depression get the economy back on its feet.
27. Spenser Robnett March 26, 2012 at 7:58 pm

    The New Deal wasn’t radical enough to fix the broken economy. I am siding with a few of his critics for the reason that it didn’t go fast enough. The slow pace didn’t get the economy out of the depression and people still remained jobless, homeless, and even worse, starving. I’m not saying that FDR had to be so radical that he would be Socialist like the views of Huey Long. Something like taking $5,000 out of a wealthy person’s bank account sounds like a good idea to a poor, Louisiana farmer, but in reality is a stupid thing to do. This isn’t the Soviet Union; the United States of America isn’t some old communist country that puts all there money into a pot and lives off the same wages. Ideas like those on the other side of the world are too radical for the U.S., but there are some necessary changes that need to be on the radical side of the spectrum. Even our text book stated that the New Deal didn’t pull us out of the depression; the war did. It’s a different idea but something so radical such as war created jobs for men and women and finally our country that was some $15 billion in debt can see the see the light again. Plus, the relief was passed down through the state levels so minorities at the time couldn’t get any relief. A change was necessary and even the views of demagogues like Coughlin and Long were on the right track. Relief, Recovery, and Reform was on the right track but it was to slow in the sense of people is still hurting from the banks going down almost a decade later. There’s a fine line between being too radical and radical and FDR took the long way out. This is why the harsh criticism was so much.
28. Kian Soleimani March 26, 2012 at 8:06 pm

    I thought that FDR’s “New Deal” needed to be a little more radical, for several reasons. The problem with the New Deal was it was as effective as it should have been. For one FDR didn’t keep his promise to the people that he would balanced the budget. It also wasn’t effective statistically because the number of unemployment didn’t drop dramatically, which showed a lack of effort on his part. He could of also put more focus on some of the important parts in the New Deal meaning get rid of the ineffective ones. I also agree with Charles Coughlin when he said that FDR had dictator thoughts and ideas of communism. Don’t get me wrong he did help improve the economy, as the unemployment dropped from 25%-14%. soon after he started reducing spending on Emergency Relief and Public Works. From 1937-1938 it was no longer called a depression but a Roosevelt recession. I also thought that FDR didn’t put enough emphasis on the reform part according to his New Deal policies, except for his social security policy which still takes affect today. People also need to think in perspective of the rich asking was it really fair? Why just tax the rich more? Does it seem a little unconstitutional? Well in my opinion I think that it’s perfectly fine to tax the rich because of the millions of Americans out of work that could truly use tax relief. I thought that (WPA) was one of the great policies because it helped recover the economy by giving people work projects like constructing buildings, schools, roads, and etc………. FDR overall put a good effort on improving the economy in the end even though the unemployment wasn’t as planned. It did improve and it wasn’t until WWII when the U.S. Truly prospered. I also agree that some of the relief programs didn’t really help Latinos and blacks, I don’t really think that FDR targeted just that minority group but America as whole.
29. Weston Blum March 26, 2012 at 8:23 pm

    On the area of just looking at its radical-ness, it seems like it depends on what the country was looking for. If the country was looking to become closer to a socialistic state, it clearly was not. But, if we had wanted to go back to laissez faire economic policy, it obviously was too far and radical. But on terms of success, it seemed to not be radical enough. The country clearly needed drastic change, and this was not enough of it. The country started to get better as time went by, but it truly was World War 2 that got the country out of the great depression. The New Deal was radical enough to make it so the country had many thousands of jobs ready for people to take, and reasonable wages and hours for their jobs, once the jobs were necessary. But if all the country wanted was to get out of the depression, it was not radical enough. If we just wanted radical change, we could have invaded some country like Mexico and started a war on a grand scale. Or possibly a nation like Italy. As we would see in the near future, nothing creates demand for manufactured goods like a massive war. And if we have less people at home and more jobs for the people who are at home, it creates demand and makes higher wages. All of the spending and relief programs were great, but if all we wanted was radical change to alleviate the stressors of the great depression, a war would have been the best way to do it. We may have lost, but we would be economically better off if we did not lose. So no, the new deal was not too radical to solve America’s economic problems. But, it was probably the best way to help with out problems. Massive war and self-created demand would have gotten us out quicker, but it might have doomed us for the future. In addition, without all of the policies put in place that the new deal made, a war would not have been so economically friendly that World War 2 would end up being for the country.
30. Ben Bejune March 26, 2012 at 8:23 pm

    I believe that FDR’s new deal was too progressive and the situation could have been handled differently. We must keep in mind the circumstances of the great depression before we criticize the action that was taken to fix this issue. At the height of the depression the unemployment rate was as high as 25% and many people who had jobs were struggling to get by. When FDR was elected he chose to attack the problem rather to sit back and do less like Hoover did. Given this approach FDR seemed to throw stuff at the wall and see what stuck. This means that even if there was a doubt in the way a program would help those who were suffering; it would still be used because you never know what might work. This is the first reason why the new deal was too radical. I believe that FDR could have looked into each issue more to find one great solution to the problem rather than 4 good solutions. This could have also prevented the Roosevelt recession in 1938 that was fixed thanks to WWII. One of the other main issues for why the new deal was too radical was the actual programs that were instituted. Programs and acts like the NRA, AAA, SSA and many other alphabet soup programs were pushing America into socialism. Thankfully these programs were ended and prevented capitalism from becoming extinct (the U.S. was the only functional capitalist country in the early 20th century and if we had fallen into socialism it would have been the end of capitalism). Now there were a couple of organizations that were quite effective and we still see the effect of some of these organizations 70+ years later. Organizations such as the CCC and CWA created jobs and helped increase the purchasing power of many Americans and it also help build and repair buildings and roads that were in need of fixing /building. Out of every act/law that was created during the new deal the most radical was Social Security act. This effectively created a welfare state and now people are relying on the government for money which costs everyone else more money. This goes against everything that America is for and was pushing America into a socialist country. FDR did a great job with short term fixes for the jobs market (CCC and CWA) and for the very poor but should have stopped there because some of the things we still have today i.e. social security, unemployment insurance are now creating a class of people that rely on the government to get by. If these acts had been intended for short term use I believe that America would have a smaller lower class and a much larger middle class due to less government reliance. In the end the new deal was only really effective at lowering the unemployment rate but also created a recession due to the amount of spending it created. If it had not been for WWII the county would not have recovered very quickly. The new deal was too radical and many of the changes made to our country seemed too radical and almost dangerous to our own economy and have forever changed the citizens that live in this country.
31. Kristina Satullo March 26, 2012 at 8:45 pm

    The New Deal wasn’t radical enough to completely put American back on its feet. It never did get America fully out of its depression, because it wasn’t until the war that America’s economy began to become more stable. After the New Deal was created, people still remained jobless, homeless, and starving. Relief, Recovery, and reform certainly did help in many ways, but it didn’t do enough fast enough many thought. The organizations that FDR created put many people to work like the Public works administration and the civil works administration. The public works administration put millions to work of large scale things such as public building and hospitals. The civil works administration put many more to work or smaller projects. These positive changes were definitely not too radical considering the large amount of people they helped. The New Deal wasn’t radical enough in the sense of social equality. Jobs and relief wasn’t spread equally among the people and there were many areas of the Untied States that didn’t receive enough attention. Racism also prevented many from being included in the jobs that were being created. The New Deal shouldn’t have become too much more radical though. If the government had been as radical as Huey Long, or Father Coughlin, then the government would have too much power and influence over the United States. Wealth should be spread out, but you shouldn’t take money from people you feel have too much and give it to someone else. Even though more could have been done to help more people a little bit faster during the great depression FDR did a good job balancing how radical his ideas got. If they weren’t radical enough then not enough would get done, but if they were too radical it would give the government a dangerous amount of power.
32. Elizabeth Hentschel March 26, 2012 at 8:46 pm

    Elizabeth Hentschel
    I think that the New Deal was just radical enough to solve America’s economic problems. Like you said in the beginning of the blog, with any type of change there is always going to be someone that’s displeased. So it only makes sense that political figures that were jealous of Roosevelt’s position, such as Huey Long, and the opposing political party were against him. You’re always going to have the super radical politicians and the anti-radical politicians, but I think that Roosevelt was a perfect median between the two. Roosevelt accomplished many amazing, life changing and radical things throughout his term as president. First of all, his limitation of bank failures from 1933-1945. America went from having 4,004 bank failures in 1933 to zero bank failures in 1945. More than the banks, there was overwhelming unemployment when Roosevelt took office in 1933, one in every four workers was out of work. Roosevelt passed act after act forming more and more corporations to end unemployment. Saving many civilians that may have turned into criminals otherwise. Roosevelt also created Social Security, which was one of the most complicated laws to ever pass Congress. This provided federal-state unemployment insurance. Roosevelt also finally got America off of the gold standard, something that presidents had been trying to do for years. It would only make sense that Republicans would criticize this, since they represent many big businesses that benefitted form the gold standard. But by getting off of it we benefitted the American people, not just big businesses. The New Deal didn’t benefit everyone though. There were still prejudices against blacks and Latin American’s when relief was being passed out. FDR fixed a lot of things but he didn’t end racism in America. There was so much more that Roosevelt did to help better America. From all these points I think that the New Deal was just radical enough to solve America’s economic problems.
33. Sam Yost March 26, 2012 at 8:48 pm

    The goal of FDR’s New Deal was, as you said, relief, recovery and reform. The New Deal did a good job with relief and recovery. In the first hundred days, corporations like the CCC and CWA were created to provide jobs to some of the many unemployed Americans. Many public works projects were also started with the sole purpose of putting people to work. With jobs came relief. Recovery came in the form of the Emergency Banking Relief Act, the AAA, and taking the U.S. off the gold standard. These were all done in an attempt to stabilize the economy. I feel, however, that the New Deal was lacking in the reform department. It did little to prevent what caused the Depression in the first place. Sure, setting a minimum wage, abolishing child labor, and starting social security were all important, but they won’t prevent the Great Depression from repeating itself. All-in-all, I think the New Deal was not radical enough. FDR did do a good job with immediate relief and recovery, but not enough reform, which is the most important. It is like an injury. You may be able to fix all your cuts with Band-Aids, but if you ignore your broken arm, you will be in big trouble later on. We determined the causes of the Great Depression to be agricultural and industrial overproduction, and a big tax cut for the rich. There was, however, no long-term reform for these issues. Another problem was the proximity of events. FDR tried to start too many projects too quickly. I think it would have been more effective to spread things out in order to find out what worked and what didn’t. Rather than cram all the relief and recovery into one hundred days, FDR should have used closer to a year. Then he could spend the rest of his presidency focusing on the very important long term reform.
34. Eli Winer March 26, 2012 at 8:52 pm

    Eli Winer

    I believe that the New Deal tac tics were the best thing that FDR could do at the pressing times of the great depression. It is clear to see that with Herbert Hoover in the position of president, his laizze-fair policies were not nearly enough to bring us anywhere up from the economic state of the depression. Under the presidency of FDR with his New Deal, we can see that through all of the “alphabet soup” agencies, the economy and faith in the government and country as a whole increased, even though the New Deal did have it’s flaws. What government plan doesn’t? that is why I say that at the time and with the knowledge of that day, FDR’s New Deal ideals were the best that could be done. It was said that FDR’s beliefs in big government involvement were viewed as socialistic. If FDR had done even more radical movements with the New Deal, then the public opinion of FDR would be pushed closer and closer to the socialist persona on the governmental spectrum. Herbert Hoover was not involved enough, and that lead to the American people’s economic demise. On the other hand, FDR was just involved enough to help a significant amount, but still avoid too much government involvement with the public. Even though FDR’s ideals had their flaws, he still found the (to our knowledge) substantial balance of government power to deal with the crisis. With those political figures such as Huey P. Long, they clearly were too intense for this time. The people weren’t only depressed, they were desperate, and that is a possibly deadly combination. Long’s influence was silenced with the click of a trigger, if Roosevelt had become even more radical like some feared he would do, he might have suffered the same, or the country could have suffered worse.
35. Megan Van Ermen March 26, 2012 at 8:55 pm

    When the depression hit America, it left devastating results. Not only did many people loose everything but there was almost no one that was willing to help. When FDR came into office, there was a lot of pressure on him, and his methods at the time, seemed like they would be the answers to some peoples prayers. There is no denying the fact that FDR had many big plans and ideas to help get America out of the worst economic state it had ever been in. FDR’s plans to try and solve the Depression were radical ideas but the New Deal in general had many flaws, which in my opinion, made it not radical enough to help get America out of the terrible depression it was in. To start, many Americans had lost almost everything with the stock market crash in 1929, and after 4 more years, change had almost become non-existent. There is no doubt that World War II was the main event that got America out of the Depression, but the New Deal helped to give America a little jump start into making the economy better. With new agencies like the Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Homeowners Loan Corporation (HOLC), America was on its way to making the depression a thing of the past. But agencies like these could definitely not be enough to bring the economy around completely and these agencies weren’t helping everyone. Not only was there still a huge amount of unemployed, but people were also becoming desperate. I think hope came when FDR came into presidency and promised to make change, but the changes he made weren’t enough. After awhile, some people were very desperate that they bought into the very radical plans of people like Huey Long, and Charles Coughlin. I also think that compared to Long and Coughlin, FDR’s New Deal didn’t seem as drastic but it was still a better route to take. In all, FDR’s New Deal was a jump-start into helping to economy but it wasn’t radical enough to finally get America out of the Depression and the War finally did that for the U.S.
36. Jackie F March 26, 2012 at 8:59 pm

    I think the New Deal was radical enough to get the ball rolling, but without World War II, I don’t think it alone would have been successful. I think the quick action of the New Deal was needed, especially compared to the do-nothing attitude of Hoover. A majority of the reforms made by the New Deal in my opinion did nothing but many of them were very useful and important. Even though many of the reforms were not useful I think they were necessary just to get something done and to reassure the public that everything that could be getting done was getting done as fast as possible. I think this approach of try everything and hoping something works helped bring up the moral of the country even if it was not exactly efficient. I would agree that some of the reforms could have used more time and thought but I also think it was very necessary to show work getting done. Showing all the legislation and reforms being passed helped to ease the panic and the feeling of helplessness around the nation, it helped to reassure people enough to start taking small risks again that can benefit the economy. FDR’s radical reforms helped to start the economy up again, but I think later more time and deliberation was needed on reforms. I think that once the economy started to pick back up, FDR should have focused more not on rapid reforms but smart, deliberate, and effective reforms. I think this would have prevented the recession of the late 1930’s that nearly wiped out anything gained from FDR’s radical reforms. If he had done this I think that just maybe we wouldn’t have needed World War II to bring us out of the Great Depression all together, just maybe. I really think that World War II was the rallying point that the nation needed to get back up on its feet. So maybe even with the smarter more deliberate reforms, we would need WW2 to take sympathy towards communism or fascism away, and truly restore faith in America.
37. Emma Dolan March 26, 2012 at 9:02 pm

    The New Deal programs themselves were not too radical. Instead, I find that the method in which FDR employed his ideas is the center of unease regarding governmental revolution during the time period. FDR’s presidency was an entirely new concept for the majority of the population—we were used to a laissez-faire, unobtrusive method of government. The New Deal smothered that. Despite the aura of desperation engulfing the United States at the time, pushing too much of something new is often degenerative to stability. We were on fragile ground, and although willing to accept radical ideas, having them immediately integrated into the system may have come as a shock. Roosevelt’s first 100 days was an example of this. As opposed to planning and refining the most effective reform plans, the president essentially threw as many lifelines as he could, solving problems in the short term with a long-term margin of error. The sheer number of acts verified and instigated during Roosevelt’s initial period in office is mind-blowing—the “alphabet soup” acts doused the nation in change. The intentions were good, and many of FDR’s farming, business, and construction acts helped to repair the economy and bring jobs back to millions out of work. Like stated previously, Roosevelt’s programs were acceptable in the short term, but acts involving the NRA, AAA, and similar organizations were soon brought to court and question, thus being deemed unconstitutional. The blog reflects this: Roosevelt received flak from all sides; he was pressured into making the New Deal. Rapid-fire activism such as this would be eyed with suspicion in the present as well. This coupled with the exclusions many of the New Deal programs exhibited, the rate at which the programs were introduced, and future amendments necessary to revise the acts leads me the conclude that the execution of the New Deal was the nucleus of controversy, or radicalism, as opposed to the programs themselves.
38. Johnny R. March 26, 2012 at 9:13 pm

    I personally do not think the New Deal was too radical to fix the America’s economic problems because America needed something radical to get us out of the deep depression we were in at that time. FDR created the National Recover Administration (Otherwise know as the NRA) in 1933. The NRA was created to make a minimum wage and a maximum regarding the work hour’s people could put in. Other important things that were created because of the New Deal were the Public Works Administration and the Civil Works Administration. These were programs which employed millions of people and put them to work on many public works projects. Both of these associations helped get the hard working people of the United States back working. I don’t think that these things created by FDR and the New Deal were too radical because I think the Government should be helping their people out in a time of need and creating jobs through public works isn’t too radical in my opinion. The New Deal was definitely not as radical as the proposed plans from Senator Huey Long and Father Coughlin. Huey Long wanted some really radical things like the rich would help out the poor. The poor in Huey Long’s plan would get $5,000 a year. That is pretty radical and ridiculous because they really did nothing to earn that money it was from the rich who earned their money fair and they would just be giving it up in taxes to help out the poor. The New Deal had some new things in it for the time, but it was not too radical. In my opinion if it would have been a little bit more radical we may have been able to get out of the depression because the New Deal really didn’t get the US out of the depression. It helped, but it was not the sole cause.
39. Nick Benedetti March 26, 2012 at 9:20 pm

    I think that the New Deal was too radical of a plan to pull America out of The Great Depression. The Government became too involved in the economy with plans like the NIRA which set the bar for things like minimum wage. I feel like the relief and recovery efforts were good, it was the reform policies which made the New Deal too radical. Plans like the NIRA were too radical because they made large quick changes in our economy and change tends to be seen as “scary”. Even some of the recovery plans like the CWA were a bit radical to me. The CWA provided public work jobs to four million workers for $15/week. A plan like these makes those workers dependent on the U.S Government for their employment, and what happens when there is nothing left to be worked on or the money dries up ($3,120,000,000 to pay all employees a year inflated to $50,261,096,227.42 in now a day’s terms). There would be 4 million workers out of a job in the flash of a day. This load being dumped onto an already struggling economy would be detrimental (Good thing for the jobs created by WWII). Some ideas that were not very radical were the FDIC, and the SEC. The FDIC insured bank deposits up to $2500 per investor which would prevent your money from disappearing overnight like it did in the Great Depression. This idea was solid in theory, however if a lot of the banks collapsed at once, there would be a lot of cash that would have to be paid to the people by the Government. The SEC regulated the stock market and restricted margin buying was probably one of the greatest things that came from the Great Depression in my opinion. The SEC would try to stop any insider trading, and also set a cap on the money you could invest that wasn’t your money. In all I think that the New Deal had its good policies and bad policies, but in the end it was too radical to pull America out of the Great Depression.
40. Sam Frederik March 26, 2012 at 9:23 pm

    Sam Frederik
    Blog 32: Was the New Deal Too Radical?

    The general definition of a radical is a person with ideals of change and new viewpoints, and Franklin D. Roosevelt most definitely displayed radicalism throughout his presidency. Upon entering the presidency on March 4, 1933, the country’s unemployment rate was 25% higher in major industrial areas, farm income had fallen by 50%, and all banks were closed; no one could reach their savings or cash a check. Roosevelt’s plan for the country, the New Deal, introduced new agencies and banking reforms that, whether proving to be beneficial or detrimental, would shape the economy dramatically.
    I believe that the plan itself was sufficient enough to bring the country out of its Depression; it was the people of the United States who were either too radical or not radical enough that caused the New Deal to not work to its full potential. The notions of Huey Long, or who I’ve come to refer to as Robinhood (steal from the rich, give to the poor), were centered around his impoverish surroundings in Louisiana. Long, as well as other Roosevelt criticizers such as Charles Coughlin, promoted socialistic concepts to appeal to the country’s enormous population of the unemployed and poor. Although viewed by the devastated working classes as a plausible solution, the rich, who would serve as the sacrificial lambs to “share the wealth,” as well as Roosevelt and the Democrats, saw the flaws in Long’s plan and made it a point to keep Long away from a prominent position in Washington.
    The ones who were not radical enough to embrace the New Deal came from a different standpoint, a standpoint that involved the inability to psychologically accept a complete change in government. After 12 years of laissez-faire Republicanism, many didn’t know how to adjust to the new Democratic activist rule that Roosevelt was to implement.
41. Renata B March 26, 2012 at 9:26 pm

    In my personal opinion, the New Deal was too radical to fix the broken economy. Although it is true the New Deal looked like it was making some progress, all FDR was really doing was putting band-aids on broken bones. It might look like it was taken care of, but nothing was truly fixed. Once he stopped pumping more and more money into the broken economy, the economy crashed again after improving for a few years. The thing is, the way that it took the economy the second World War in order to pick the economy back up shows that they were pumping money into a broken system. The people like Coughlin, Long, and the LL had a right to disagree with FDR’s New Deal. In a strange way, the New Deal was stuck between being way too radical for America and yet not radical enough in order to actually help the people for a long time. He failed to make important changes to the economy that helped it get out of its depression in the long term. In that way, the plan of throwing whatever he could out there to see if it would stick hurt him.

    Looking back on some of his decisions that were made within the New Deal now, it clearly shows that FDR truly did not know what he was doing. The New Deal continuously contradicts itself and not many of the decisions made for the New Deal were actually curing the disease that the country’s economy fell ill to. Unlike Hoover who tried to have more of a trickle down, long term effect, FDR rushed into decisions that weren’t the brightest. In my eyes, FDR had plenty of time between when he was first elected until when the war started to end the depression. Seeing as he clearly failed, I believe that even Huey Long’s socialist “Every Man a King” plan would have worked better to end the depression than FDR’s New Deal.
42. Shayna Brickman March 26, 2012 at 9:29 pm

    I believe that the New Deal was sometimes too radical, but had a few benefits. The Country didn’t need some of the thing FDR proposed. Like Long said, we needed a new banking reform. A lot of FDR’s proposals that had to do with farmers and favoring the farmers as well as social reform type acts were too radical and really didn’t help us in the long run. He felt that the government needed to deal with the citizens, but really the Government can only do so much. Some of FDR’s proposals were good like the ending of child labor, as well as the minimum wage and 9 to 5 working day. Many of his “alphabet” programs were really just a waste of time, such as the AAA and NRA. This country wasn’t used to having such an active government, since a lassez-faire style government in the past controlled the US. This made it hard for the American people to adjust to this new lifestyle. Roosevelt didn’t focus on fixing on thing at a time, instead he continually jumped from thing to thing trying to quickly make a new “act” to help save our economy. He was desperate and was willing to try anything to fix our economy and therefore he tried to fix everything at once and made a huge mash of different ways to try and help everyone. His programs such as the NRA, CCC, AAA, TVA, and PWA, each shared the common idea of reducing unemployment, inflating prices to therefore lower the debt, and help farmers. The acts had small details and different main points that ended up contradicting each other and were then basically trash. His programs were obviously not extremely thought over, but instead he tried to push it through Congress for a quick recovery. If you think about it, we really kinda wasted money since we threw all this money into these programs and they didn’t even end up working out. Another issue was that the New Deal didn’t address the African Americans and Latinos like it should have. There were many prejudices still during this time, and since the relief money was passed out at the state level, many of these people didn’t receive the benefits. The difference between Roosevelt and his enemies (Long and Coughlin), were that he tried to ease into these new “radical” ideas, where they just threw them out there and hoped the country accepted it. As you can see, it was too much change too quickly for the country to handle. Therefore FDR’s approach was more appropriate, but Long and Coughlin had better thought processes.
43. Sarah Costello March 26, 2012 at 9:30 pm

    Sarah Costello
    Was the New Deal to Radical?
    No, I do not think that Roosevelt’s New Deal was too radical to solve America’s problems during the Great Depression. I can see how many people thought the New Deal was too radical because the government had never had this much participation in the lives of average Americans, especially after Hoover’s lassiez-faire presidency. Roosevelt was solely focused on fixing the problems of the Great Depression. From the very beginning of Roosevelt’s presidency, he was focused on fixing the economy. Beginning with the Emergency Bouskins Relief Act witch cave banks an eight day holiday; this helped assess the situation and was able to re-open 75% of the banks. He also created the National Recovery Administration (NRA) that forced companies to create a maximum amount of work hours and a minimum wage. It was later replaced by the Standards Act because the NRA was deemed unconstitutional in 1935 in the trial of Schechter Poultry vs. US. This allowed for companies to hire people to work the extra shifts. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was created to get more unemployed men to work as well. The economy seemed to be improving so Roosevelt to the jump to cut back on spending with some of the programs. This was a mistake and sent the American people tumbling back into what was known as the “Roosevelt Recession” in 1938. The New Deal was not radical enough in some places. It excluded many minorities in the reforms, specifically blacks and Latinos. Most often the minorities were the last hired then the first fired when it came to jobs. The reforms should have been designed to accommodate everyone, not just whites. Also, it should have focused on eliminating racism in the work place.
    It wasn’t really the New Deal that pulled America out of the recession, it was WWII. The increased need for soldiers and weapons provided way more jobs than the New Deal. Roosevelt was able to uplift the American’s spirits and really focus on fixing the work place and the economy.
44. Aaron Tellis March 26, 2012 at 9:34 pm

    Yes the New Deal was too radical to fix the economic problem of the great depression. This was because first of all people like Huey Long and Coughlin were against The New Deal and they had a lot of followers who believed what they believed and Huey and Coughlin thought that the New Deal was socialist and Communist. Also the New Deal didn’t help everybody only some and throughout the eight years the new deal didn’t really help it brought back some jobs but then in 1938 the problem got even worse and there was another recession. The New Deal arguably did nothing really big to help the economy it was mainly ww2. Another reason why the New Deal was too radical to fix the economy because FDR seemed kind of corrupt after trying to pass the court packing bill to pretty much make him into a dictator. Roosevelt’s New Deal could not possibly worked after that, and he tried this because of some of the things he tried to pass like the NRA and the AAA which limited the work week so another person could have a job the NRA was giving a job with extra time when the employees already there could work that time and get the money they needed and the AAA which reduced production to raise prices in farms but this was stupid because if there is a depression the last thing the consumers need is a rise in prices this is mainly why the New Deal was too Radical too change anything dealing with the economy.
45. Alex Contis March 26, 2012 at 9:35 pm

    Was the New Deal too radical?
    After the nation prospered through the 1920’s it seemed as if America would be flying high for the rest of its entire existence, it was a fertile land where the American Dream took root and thrived. The world was moving quickly towards the future that looked just as promising as ever, until the stock market crash of 1929. Just 8 months into fresh President Hoover’s America had failed, his faith in others policy could not sustain an entire nation. By 1932 America needed a leader, they needed a change, and they needed Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Within his first 100 days in office, FDR turned the 12 year laissez faire government style of the republicans before him, into an activist government full of relief programs centered about the 3 R’s: Relief Recovery and Reform. The Relief for the increasingly growing unemployed and poor workers, Recovery of the economy, trying to get the country out of the red, and finally Reform of the financial system to prevent anything as catastrophic as the Great Depression from ever happening again. I don’t think that the New Deal was too radical at all, in fact I feel like it did a lot of things in an ideal way. The most noted and still celebrated sanction of the ND is the Social Security Act, which is still around today. FDR also appealed prohibition, which helped jump start the economic recovery, giving enterprise to alcohol manufacturers. Yes, a few ideas failed but I believe you need to fail sometimes to realize what really works. Wannabes like Coughlin and Lewis just took any opportunity to bash the president’s ideas since they were never fully embraced into the elitist circle. Coughlin was bitter due to the fact that he was never placed on FDR’s cabinet, even though he persuaded his millions of listeners to send their votes his way. While Huey Lewis was eager to make his socialist views known to the public and ignite the passion of Americans. So, it is obvious that they would throw out words like radical to jeer the man in charge. The New Deal was indeed flawed but it layed the groundwork for relief that would be eventually reached after the war effort.
46. Cory Shanbom March 26, 2012 at 9:36 pm

    It’s not completely clear to say if the new deal was or wasn’t radical enough to fix the economy. Most of his critics were pushing in both directions and although was unclear if it needed to be more radical, it probably couldn’t have gotten more radical and still be accepted by the government. So, despite the goals of Roosevelt to fix the economy, there wasn’t really an easy way to fix the economy on his own. The New deal looked promising, but as you know it wasn’t nearly enough to get the money back and circulating at a healthy rate. Most of the radical critics of the new deal were borderline socialist and the conservative critics were republicans who were faithful in the system that had failed. Their solutions represented the two forces that pulled the new deal in different directions, radical and conservative. The answer is not definite if the New Deal would have worked either way but it can be easily said that nothing was enough and if it was enough it probably would have caused more outrage and have been shut down by the government. Some of FDR’s New Deal plans were already deemed unconstitutional and shut down (NRA and AAA). The economy really needed the one thing the government couldn’t provide on it’s own. A need for jobs and a real demand for production. WWII is the only real solution that I can definitely say would work because well, it did. In short, The new deal really did what it could and couldn’t have been the sole savior of the economy because it failed with the second economic depression, even if it was more radical or less radical. Despite this the New Deal instituted public works programs and social security legislation that are still in use today.
47. Bradley Taylor 5th Hour March 26, 2012 at 9:37 pm

    I believe that the new deal was not too radical to solve America’s problems. When FDR became president, he had three main points that he wanted to go by, relief, recovery, and reform. These points were what most or all of his organizations were made on and FDR was under a lot of pressure to improve the economy. There are always going to be critics to something and since America was under 12 years of laissez-faire policies, most were afraid of this new idea of radical government intervention. People never want to change something that has been working for a while, so why intervene? Well there was the Great Depression in the US at the time and that is why FDR decided to try to help. Organizations like the EBRA helped because it helped reopen about 75% of the banks. Not everything in the New Deal benefited everyone though. It did not help African Americans, Latin Americans, and other minority races. This happened because most of the relief was passed out at the state level, as the blog said, and most of the states still had prejudice towards the minorities. The New Deal also didn’t decrease the unemployment all the way because not all people got employed under the organizations like the CCC and WPA. It did decrease though because of these projects and they did help the workers and their families. The New Deal did not get America out of The Great Depression, WWII did. So was the New Deal that radical? If it was more radical, it would have gotten America out of the Great Depression. People may say it was too radical, but the New Deal was like a way to help someone, not get them all the way out of trouble. This is shown because not everything was fixed by the New Deal.
48. Claire Weber March 26, 2012 at 9:40 pm

    For America, being in a depression was the worst thing possible and the people needed a new and fresh-minded leader. Roosevelt kept it fresh by doing new and sometimes radical things. The New Deal provided a new view and helped a lot of people by using their three R’s: Relief, Recovery, Reform. With all three tasks, it provided coverage all over the country. Still it didn’t work out because of the people against it and how slow it was. Politicians like Huey Long and Coughlin were once for Roosevelt when the New Deal was being used but they soon changed their minds when the plan was too slow to receive a good recovery. So both men turned against Roosevelt and started their own plans and ideas. Huey Long used Louisiana as a way to gain trust and popularity. He did it by telling them that the New Deal did nothing for them but he could. He was on his way to the top but was assassinated. Coughlin used the radio to communicate with his followers but soon his words became nothing. The New Deal could have been great if Roosevelt found a better and more sufficient way to relieve everyone in America by putting away the prejudice of blacks and Latinos and taking care of all citizens. Another way to make the New Deal more idealistic and popular would to either go radical or conservative, not in the middle like it was. It was because there were both racist and optimistic people working on the plan that things went slowly and didn’t work out as Roosevelt had wanted. Overall, I think that Roosevelt tried his best to communicate with the people of America and help him but he was a little close minded and because of that, the New Deal didn’t work out.
49. Madison Lennox March 26, 2012 at 9:42 pm

    I feel that the New Deal was just radical enough for the country at that period of time. Roosevelt entered office with a broken economy and broken spirits of the American people who were emotionally drained and he had to make some big changes. I think his New Deal strategy sounded like a good idea at the time because America had just had their Lasseiz-Faire policy, which was basically a “hands-off” government, and he thought they should try something completely different. Since the country’s economy was in such a dire state when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took it over from Herbert Hoover, there was no way FDR could have continued doing what Hoover was doing, it wouldn’t work. The country needed a completely new mindset with new methods. President Roosevelt created the National Recovery Administration as a way to create more fair competition codes and to set minimum wage levels and maximum working hours. The NRA helped small businesses and working men and women who needed these laws to survive, literally. Some other parts of the New Deal that were needed for a steady recovery were the Public Works Administration and the Civil Works Administration, which employed millions of people and put them to work on many public works projects. The Public Works Administration worked on the bigger jobs, like hospitals, while the Civil Works Administration focused on smaller projects, like parks. If FDR showed less effort than he had and created less acts, then the country could have gone way lower than it already was. These new acts started to work fairly quickly, but when Roosevelt began to cut back on his spending and his job programs, the country fell into another depression. This shows that the New Deal was working, but Roosevelt got too excited when he saw this and tried to save money, which then caused it to stop working. With the New Deal, there was still unemployment and unrest by many, but it’s not like the country would turn perfect overnight. If the New Deal was more radical, it could have pushed the country too far over the edge. But, in the end, it was just radical enough.
50. Kevin Dagenais March 26, 2012 at 9:45 pm

    I believe that the New Deal was not radical enough to help the economy as a whole. At that time period, people were suffering from the depression and were in desperate need of help. Although President Roosevelt came up with the New Deal to fix the economy, the results did not happen as expected. What really ended the depression was the Second World War. All of the Acts and programs created were meant to help people with their financial issues, promote jobs, regulate problems with banks and many more. These actions only helped a little. Although the economy did get slightly better but it was still in bad shape. For example: In 1933, the GNP of the U.S was about $55 billion dollars in today’s money. In 1939, just when the war started the GNP grew to 90 billion dollars. Also, employment did rise a little bit. In 1933, the employment rate was about 39% and in 1939 the employment rate was about 46%. So the New Deal did help people individually but not the country’s economy. Once the war started, everything boosted back up and the economy was fixed. FDR did follow his policy of the RRR’s (relief, recovery, and reform), and it did help people. But his programs only helped people to have bread on their table and a roof over their head. This is not enough to fix the economy. Besides there was racial discrimination back then, so mostly whites would get these benefits and still a large percentage of the population would be in trouble such as blacks, Latinos, and many more. I believe that FDR should have focused on the economy as a whole instead of helping everyone individually. If the country followed all of Huey Long’s new ideas, then the economy would have been much better. Huey desperately wanted to fix this depression by creating very radical ideas that to him seemed reasonable and possible to do. I believe that if he wouldn’t have been assassinated, he would have been president and perhaps fixed the depression quicker.