23 Managing the Great Depression, Forging the New Deal

1929–1939

The stock market crash of 1929 and the resulting depression burst the inflated economic bubble of the 1920s and plunged many Americans into an uncertain future. The thousands of distressed letters that Eleanor Roosevelt received from Americans recounting their tragic circumstances hint at the despair the economic crisis caused. When Franklin Roosevelt entered the White House in 1933, replacing Herbert Hoover’s fiscally conservative approach, he launched a “new deal” program of reforms demonstrating the active engagement of the federal government. Critics complained he did not go far enough, while others described him as dictatorial in his control of the economy. To the broad coalition of American voters, however, FDR inspired hope that “happy days” were fast approaching. From his initial efforts to shore up financial institutions, Roosevelt’s New Deal broadened in response to labor and working-class concerns to embrace public programs providing basic necessities and creating “safety net” guarantees that came to define a liberal consensus regarding government’s role and responsibility in the twentieth century.