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"I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a New Deal for the American people", said Roosevelt in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination. That theme, which he returned to frequently during the campaign, gave a collective name to his politics — the New Deal. The series of measures that he inaugurated was a natural development from his cousin's "Square Deal" and Wilson's "New Freedom".
During the first "Hundred Days" of the Roosevelt administration, the President made ten speeches, sent Congress fifteen messages, eased many laws to enactment, talked to the press twice a week, conferred personally or by telephone with foreign statesmen, and made many important decisions. Yt he remained serene, confident, and smiling. Here are the legislative and executive landmarks of those hundred days in 1933:
♦9 March Emergency Banking Act
♦20 March Economy Act
♦31 March Civilian Conservation Corps
♦19 April Gold standard abandoned (ratified 5 June)
♦12 May Federal Emergency Relief Act
♦13 May Agricultural Adjustment Act
♦14 May Emergency Farm Mortgage Act
♦18 May Tennessee Valley Authority Act
♦27 May Truth-in-Securities Act
♦15 June Home Owner's Loan Act
♦16 June National Industrial Recovery Act
♦16 June Glass-Steal Banking Act
♦16 June Farm Credit Act
The Economy Act was initiated by F.D.R. and Levis Douglas, director of the budget, to redeem a platform pledge to reduce the cost of government. All federal appointees took at least a 15 per cent salary cut, and other savings were affected. This, as it turned out, was a false start.
Great crises often call forth gifted leaders; and the hand of destiny' tapped Roosevelt on the shoulder. On a dreary inauguration day March 4, 1933, his resonant voice, broadcast nationally from a bulletproof stand, provided the American people with electrifying new hope.
Roosevelt moved decisively. Now that he had full responsibility, he boldly declared a nationwide banking holiday, March 6, 1933, preliminary to opening most of the banks on a sounder basis. He then summoned the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress into special session to cope with the national emergency. The members stayed at their task for the so-called "Hundred Days" (March 9-June 16, 1933), grinding out an unprecedented basketful of remedial legislation. Roosevelt's New Deal program was sparked by three R's — relief, recovery, and reform. The short-range goals were relief and immediate, recovery, especially in the first two years. The long-range goals were permanent recovery and reform of current abuses, particularly those that had produced the boom-and-bust catastrophe.
Firmly ensconced in the driver's seat, Roosevelt cracked the whip. Congress so fully shared the panicky feeling of the country that it was prepared to rubber-stamp bills drafted by White House advisers-measures that Roosevelt called "must legislation". Congress gave the President extraordinary blankcheck powers: some of the laws that it passed expressly delegated legislative authority to the Chief Executive. Roosevelt was delighted to accept executive leadership, and Congress responded to it, although he did not always know precisely where he was going. He was inclined to do things by intuition-off the cuff. He was like the quarterback, as he put it, whose next play depends on the success of the previous play. The desperate mood of the action-starved public was such that movement, even in the wrong direction, seemed better than no movement at all.
The frantic Hundred Days Congress passed many essentials of the New Deal "three R's", though important long-range measures were added in later sessions. These reforms, already foreshadowed by the Democratic platform of 1932, were generally in keeping with the earlier Progressive-New Freedom tradition. Many of them were long overdue, sidetracked as they had been by World War I and the Old Guard reaction of the 1920's. The New Dealers, sooner or later, embraced such schemes as unemployment insurance, old-age insurance, minimum-wage regulations, and restrictions on child labor. Most of these forward-looking measures had already been adopted a generation or so earlier by the more enlightened nations of Western Europe.
