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Категория: Английский язык
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.
But in 1937 a sharp business recession set in which hit bottom in 1938. The President's numerous critics, branding this setback "the Roosevelt Depression", asserted that if F.D.R. could plan upward spirals he must also have planned the downward dip. The recession was probably due basically to an over rapid cutting back of "pump-priming" spending by Washington.
Undiscouraged, Roosevelt had meanwhile been pushing the remaining major reforms of the New Deal. It was not all clear sailing. Early in 1937 he urged Congress — a Congress growing more conservative — to authorize a sweeping reorganization of the national administration in the interests of streamlined efficiency. But the issue became tangled up with his presumed dictatorial ambitions in regard to the Supreme Court, and he suffered another stinging defeat. Two years later, in 1939, Congress partially relented and in the Reorganization Act gave him limited powers for administrative reforms.
The New Dealers were accused of having the richest campaign chest in history; and in truth, government relief checks had a curious habit of coming in bunches just before balloting time. To remedy such practices, which tended to make a farce of free elections, congress adopted the much-heralded Hatch Act of 1939. It prohibited federal administrative officials, except the highest policy-making officers, from active political campaigning and soliciting.
By 1938 the New Deal had clearly too much or its early momentum. Magician Roosevelt could find few spectacular new reform rabbits to pull out of his tall silk hat. In the Congressional elections of 1938 the Republicans, for the first time, cut heavily into the unwieldy New Deal majorities in Congress, though failing to gain control of either house.
