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The 54-nation London Economic Conference, meeting in the summer of 1933, revealed how intimately Roosevelt's early foreign policy was entwined with his schemes for domestic recovery. This distinguished assemblage, in which the USA was represented,
New Dealers, on the other hand, staunchly defended their record. Admitting that there had been some waste, they pointed out that relief — not economy — had been the primary object of their multi-front war on the depression. Conceding also that there had been some graft, they argued that there had been very little in view of the immense sums spent.
Foes of the New Deal condemned its alleged waste, incompetence, confusion, contradictions, and cross-purposes, as well as the chiseling and graft in the alphabetical agencies — "alphabet soup" sneered Al Smith. Roosevelt had done nothing, it was said, that an earthquake could not have done better.
From 1933 to 1937 the country had been gradually inching its way out of the depression. This painful progress was no doubt largely due to the billions of dollars injected by Congress into the economic bloodstream. Although millions of disheartened souls remained unemployed, gratifying gains had been registered. "We planned it that way", remarked Roosevelt cheerily.
As the presidential campaign of 1936 impended, the New Dealers were on top of the world. They had achieved considerable progress, and millions of "relievers" were grateful to their bountiful government. The exultant Democrats, meeting in Philadelphia, pushed through the renomination of Roosevelt, idol of the "forgotten man".
A gratifying beginning had meanwhile been made by the New Deal in the field of slum clearance. With a view to speeding both recovery and better housing, Roosevelt set up the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) as early as 1934, under authority granted by
The mushrooming electric-power industry, no less than the holding companies, attracted the fire of the New deal reformers. Within a few decades it had risen from nothingness to a colossus which represented an investment of thirteen billion dollars. A public Utility, it
A radical new approach to farm recovery was adopted when the Emergency Congress established the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). Through "artificial scarcity" this agency was to establish "parity prices" for basic commodities.
A daring attempt to stimulate a nationwide comeback was undertaken when the Emergency Congress authorized the National Recovery Administration (NRA). This ingenious scheme was by far the most complex and far-reaching effort by the New Dealers to
The overwhelming unemployment problem, perhaps even more than banking, clamored for prompt remedial action. Roosevelt had no hesitancy about using federal money to assist the unemployed, and at the same time to "prime the pump" of industrial recovery. One has to pour a little water into a dry pump to start the flow.