This letter from 1932 is a precursor to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s revolutionary New Deal of the 1930s. In reaction to the onset of the Great Depression and the allocation of emergency funds to his state, Roosevelt, as New York Governor, instructs Frederick S. Greene to put the money into highway projects that will alleviate the unemployment problem and boost the state’s infrastructure. This government intervention in state affairs began a policy that formed the basis of the New Deal, which arguably pulled the U.S. out of the devastating Great Depression. 

The Great Depression of the 1930s resulted, at its height, in more than 12 million unemployed, 5000 banks closed, 9 million savings accounts wiped out, farm income dropping 60% and the Gross National Product dropping from $104 billion in 1929 to $59 billion in 1932. The towns and cities were filled with unemployed men looking for work and food, often with thousands showing up for just a couple of job vacancies. Whole families lived in the slums nicknamed the ‘Hoovervilles’ and the ‘Dust Bowl’ of the Great Plains had turned farms into desert. At the root of the Great Depression lay environmental disaster, farm failures, the stock market crash, a huge rich-poor divide, bank failures and government inaction. It was this last point that Roosevelt seized and strove to change in order to tackle the other issues. The New Deal was controversial, and is still debated to this day, but ultimately made active movements to involve the federal government in the daily lives of the American people and consequently systematically improve them. FDR’s reforms, which included the Emergency Banking Act, the Civil Works Administration and the Glass-Stegal Banking Act, were largely pushed through in his first 100 days and were designed to take control of the flailing economy and rejuvenate the employment rate. As shown in this 1932 letter, Roosevelt’s reforms often focused on creating employment simultaneously with improving infrastructure. With the Civic Works Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, jobs were created in building new roads and buildings as well as working on the national parks and other environmental spaces. The New Deal not only provided new jobs but also placed new restrictions on the banks and businesses, a movement that proved controversial with many of the Republicans and the businessmen of the US. Socialist policies were brought in, with unemployment insurance and pensions promised to employees in the Social Security Act and a national minimum wage and maximum working week set by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Essentially, Roosevelt’s New Deal aimed to tackle the root causes of the Great Depression and systematically weed them out of the American system. To do so, he tackled the policies of employment, the freedom of the banks and business, the government-sponsored support of the people and the agricultural economy, amongst many other issues.

The success of the New Deal is debated by historians, as the cost of the reforms nearly doubled the national debt by 1940 and millions were still out of work. However, though some reforms were declared unconstitutional or ineffective and disbanded, some still exist to this day and continue FDR’s work. The fear of the Republicans in this period was that Roosevelt was creating a Communist state and undoubtedly the New Deal indicated a greater period of government control than seen before. However, it arguably also stabilized the economy and, perhaps more importantly, the obvious action of the government to tackle the Great Depression made the American public feel more comfortable and supported, though their troubles continued for many years to come. In that way, the New Deal was a great success.

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