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12/12/2008

The Great Depression, Part II

As we continue our story of The Great Depression and the Inauguration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I was struck by the similarities to our situation today, including the temperament of FDR and Barack Obama. One thing is for sure, though, the current transition is a lot smoother than the one in 1932-33, at least in terms of the relationship between the outgoing and incoming administrations. 

--- 

Recall that the election results of ‘32 showed Roosevelt with a resounding 472-59 victory over Herbert Hoover in the Electoral College. But there was a huge problem. FDR wasn’t taking the oath of office until March 4*, a full four months away, and as it turned out the global Depression deepened over this period. 

[*This would be the last time the country waited this long. The Twentieth Amendment, ratified on Feb. 6, 1933, provided that presidents would thereafter take office on January 20 and the newly-elected Congress on January 3.] 

The transition from Hoover to Roosevelt was also a messy and awkward one. They didn’t trust each other, especially as Hoover sought to stay active in combating the Depression and FDR refused to commit himself to some of Hoover’s proposals before March 4, 1933. The four months, the bleak winter of 1932-33, came to be known as “the interregnum of despair.” Unemployment continued to rise and panic struck the banking system. 

“Depositors played it safe by taking their cash out and squirreling it away. In Michigan, where automobile production stalled, the threat of runs on the banks impelled the governor to extend the Lincoln’s Birthday closing indefinitely. As the panic spread, governors of other states also found excuses for imposing banking holidays. When the Hoover administration ended, four-fifths of the nation’s banks were closed, and the country teetered on the brink of economic paralysis.” [“America: A Narrative History”] 

“The harsh interregnum was a time of exaggerated worry over the peril of incipient revolution, as Iowa farm rebels recalled the insurrection of Daniel Shays, but it was even more a time of torpor. Harold Clurman recalled the drab anxiety of New York City that winter: ‘It seemed as if the very color of the city had changed. From an elegant bright gray by day and a sparkling gold by night, the afternoon had grown haggard, the nights mournful.’ The morale of the country had been shattered, and many seemed almost palsied by fear. Charles M. Schwab of Bethlehem Steel was quoted as saying: ‘I’m afraid, every man is afraid.’ One periodical thought the clue to the period lay in Shakespeare’s words: 

 I find the people strangely fantasied;
 Possess’d with rumours, full of idle dreams;
 Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear. 

“On the eve of the inauguration, Editor and Publisher asserted: 

‘What this country needs, if we are to shake off the torpor of fear and hopelessness, is a series of blinding head-lines proclaiming action, resolute leadership, a firm grip at the controls… 

‘Blinding head-lines…let them come! The people and the press await with bated breath.’” [“The Growth of the American Republic”] 

As the global economy was crumbling, the world was also becoming a markedly more dangerous place. Adolf Hitler was installed as chancellor in Germany, and Japan was determined to devour Manchuria. 

During this time the issue of World War I debts stirred anew. Author David M. Kennedy describes the scene in his book “Freedom From Fear.” 

“Scarcely a week after the election, as Roosevelt sifted contentedly through messages of congratulation in the governor’s mansion in Albany, he received a lengthy telegram from Hoover. The British government, Hoover explained, was urgently requesting yet another review of the international debt question. To add point to their request the British proposed to suspend payment of their $95 million debt-service installment due on December 15. Congress had only reluctantly agreed to Hoover’s moratorium of the preceding year, and ‘if there is to be any change in the attitude of the Congress,’ Hoover explained to Roosevelt, ‘it will be greatly affected by the views of those members who recognize you as their leader and who will properly desire your counsel and advice.’ Other questions about foreign relations were also pending, including plans for a World Economic Conference in London during the coming winter and the status of the Disarmament Conference already in progress in Geneva. Accordingly, Hoover asked for ‘an opportunity to confer with you personally at some convenient date set in the future.’” 

David Kennedy notes that “Hoover’s action in seeking the advice of his victorious opponent was unprecedented. It had all the appearance of a magnificent gesture of statesmanship. It also contained sinister political implications. The debt issue was the tar-baby of American politics. To touch it was to glue oneself to a messy, intractable problem that had defied the genius of statesmen for a decade.” 

Most academics and Wall Street types, let alone Europeans, favored outright cancellation of the war debts. “Yet Congress and most Americans beyond the Atlantic seaboard continued to regard the debts as immutable financial and moral obligations – and as safeguards that served to remind those interminably quarrelsome Europeans that they could not expect to finance another war in the United States.” 

Hoover had pledged not to cancel the debt outright, but at the same time he had imposed the moratorium due to the Depression. For his part, Roosevelt concluded it wasn’t an issue he wanted to be tied to, at least until he took over in March. 

FDR did, though, agree to meet with Hoover on November 22, 1932. David Kennedy: 

“On the appointed day, accompanied only by his increasingly ubiquitous adviser Raymond Moley, Roosevelt was ushered into the White House Red Room, where President Hoover and Treasury Secretary Ogden Mills were waiting. The hair hung heavy with sullen tension. Hoover had insisted that Mills attend the meeting because he had been warned by so many people that Roosevelt would shift his words that he wanted a reliable witness present. Moley thought that no two people in the country distrusted Roosevelt ‘as a human being and as President-elect’ more than Hoover and Mills….The president, grave but jittery, stiffly addressing his treasury secretary as ‘Mills’ and fixing his eye first on the carpet and then on Moley – but seldom on Roosevelt – smoked a fat cigar. All the others nervously lit cigarettes. 

“Roosevelt greeted Mills, his Harvard classmate and Hudson Valley neighbor, with a cheery ‘Hello, Ogden!’ and kept up a gay and nonchalant front. But FDR, wary of his recently defeated adversary, also cupped in his hand several cards on which Moley had jotted questions that needed asking, including one about possible ‘secret agreements’ that Hoover might have already made with British and French officials. Roosevelt may also have had in mind the sour memory of his last visit to the White House. At a presidential reception for governors the preceding April, Hoover, whether from callous design or thoughtless insensitivity, had kept Roosevelt waiting in a receiving line for nearly an hour. For a man whose bulky weight was supported entirely by the heavy hip-to-ankle steel braces that encased his useless legs, the ordeal was agonizing and humiliating. Roosevelt, for all his generous temperament, would have been less than human if the episode had not shaded his attitude toward Hoover.” 

Hoover spoke first on November 22, and Raymond Moley later said, “It was clear that we were in the presence of the best-informed individual in the country on the question of the debts. His story showed a mastery of detail and a clarity of arrangement that compelled admiration.” 

But nothing came of the meeting, nor from a second session on January 20, 1933. David Kennedy: 

“The only concrete result of these failed attempts at cooperation was the deepened conviction of Hoover and his associates that Roosevelt was a dangerously light-weight politician. [Secretary of State] Henry Stimson thought that Hoover’s mastery of the debt issue, compared with Roosevelt’s display of vacuous bonhomie, made FDR ‘look like a peanut.’ Hoover deemed Roosevelt ‘amiable, pleasant, anxious to be of service, very badly informed and of comparatively little vision’ and told Stimson that he had spent most of his time in conversation with Roosevelt ‘educating a very ignorant…well-meaning young man.’” 

As the Depression deepened during the transition, Hoover continued to ask Roosevelt for some reassuring public statements, but none were forthcoming. 

What the American people saw in FDR, though, was a man of vitality, utter self-confidence, and calm demeanor. Many commented on his temperament, which was seen to be perfect for the times. Then on February 15, 1933, Roosevelt gave a memorable demonstration of his powers of self-control. David Kennedy: 

“Alighting in Miami from an eleven-day cruise aboard Vincent Astor’s yacht, FDR motored to Bay Front Park, where he made a few remarks to a large crowd. At the end of the brief speech, Mayor Anton J. Cermak of Chicago stepped up to the side of Roosevelt’s open touring car and said a few words to the president-elect. Suddenly a pistol barked from the crowd. Cermak doubled over. Roosevelt ordered the Secret Service agents, who were reflexively accelerating his car away from the scene, to stop. He motioned to have Cermak, pale and pulseless, put into the seat beside him. ‘Tony, keep quiet – don’t move. It won’t hurt you if you keep quiet,’ Roosevelt repeated as he cradled Cermak’s limp body while the car sped to the hospital. 

“Cermak had been mortally wounded. He died within weeks, the victim of a deranged assassin who had been aiming for Roosevelt. On the evening of February 15, after Cermak had been entrusted to the doctors, Moley accompanied Roosevelt back to the yacht, poured him a stiff drink, and prepared for the letdown now that Roosevelt was alone among his intimates. He had just been spared by inches from a killer’s bullet and had held a dying man in his arms. But there was nothing – ‘not so much as the twitching of a muscle, the mopping of a brow, or even the hint of a false gaiety – indicate that it wasn’t any other evening in any other place. Roosevelt was simply himself – easy, confident, poised, to all appearances unmoved.’ The episode contributed to Moley’s eventual conclusion ‘that Roosevelt had no nerves at all.’ He was, said Frances Perkins, ‘the most complicated human being I ever knew.’” 

FDR’s calm during the ordeal aroused admiration in another demonstration of his courage. 

Needless to say, the automobile ride to the Inauguration on March 4, however, proved to be a frosty one, belying the beautifully sunny day, as “Hoover stared stiffly at the crowds, while Roosevelt smiled and waved.” [“American Heritage: The Presidents”] 

But the crisis of confidence had given way to a mood of expectation. FDR asserted “that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” 

Roosevelt promised to fill the vacuum of leadership: “The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.” More: 

“Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our inability to pay has failed; the government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.” 

Roosevelt talked of the “false leadership” that sought to solve problems through exhortation. “They have no vision,” FDR said in his Inaugural Address, “and where there is no vision the people perish.” 

“This nation asks for action, and action now! It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure. I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require.” 

If Congress failed to support these recommendations: 

“I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis – broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency as great as the power that would be given me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe….The people of the United States have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes.” 

Roosevelt immediately closed the banks for four days and gave the American people a break before summoning the Seventy-third Congress into special session on March 9. The first bit of legislation, as noted below, was signed within eight hours of his taking the oath. 

During the so-called Hundred Days, Congress received and enacted the following major proposals from the president with a speed unlike anything seen before in American history. 

March 9…The Emergency Banking Relief Act
March 20…The Economy Act
March 31…Establishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps
April 19…Abandonment of the gold standard
May 12…The Federal Emergency Relief Act
May 12…The Agricultural Adjustment Act, including the Thomas Amendment, which gave the president powers to expand the money supply
May 12…The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act, providing for the refinancing of farm mortgages
May 18…The Tennessee Valley Authority Act, providing for the unified hydroelectric development of the Tennessee Valley
May 27…The Federal Securities Act, requiring full disclosure in the issue of new securities
June 5…The Gold Repeal Joint Resolution, which abrogated the gold clause in public and private contracts
June 13…The Home Owners’ Loan Act, setting up the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation to refinance home mortgages
June 16…The National Industrial Recovery Act, providing for a system of industrial self-regulation under federal supervision and for a $3.3 billion public-works program
June 16…The Glass-Steagall Banking Act, separating commercial and investment banking and establishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
June 16…The Farm Credit Act, which reorganized the agricultural credit system
[“America: A Narrative History”] 

During the 1932 campaign, Roosevelt said in a speech: 

“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” 

And so he did. 

As for Herbert Hoover, he would later claim the New Deal was a failure and that only World War II restored prosperity. He died at the age of ninety on October 20, 1964. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. once wrote that Hoover’s tragedy was that “of a man of high ideals whose intelligence froze into inflexibility and whose dedication was smitten by self-righteousness.” 

Hoover spent his years out of office becoming one of the great humanitarians of the century, but as Saul Braun concluded in “American Heritage: The Presidents”: 

“(Scholars) now recognize that Hoover did more to fight the Depression than was recognized at the time. He used the power of the government to deal with the economic problems, but he lacked the capacity to address the issue of relief with the same vigor he had shown in feeding the hungry in Belgium and Russia. As a result, his reputation has never escaped the repudiation that the American people delivered to him in 1932.” 

Sources: 

“American Heritage: The Presidents,” edited by Michael Beschloss
“Freedom From Fear,” by David M. Kennedy
“The Growth of the American Republic,” by Samuel Eliot Morison, Henry Steele Commager, and William E. Leuchtenburg
“America: A Narrative History,” by George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi 

Wall Street History returns next week.
 
Brian Trumbore



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-12/12/2008-      
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Wall Street History

12/12/2008

The Great Depression, Part II

As we continue our story of The Great Depression and the Inauguration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I was struck by the similarities to our situation today, including the temperament of FDR and Barack Obama. One thing is for sure, though, the current transition is a lot smoother than the one in 1932-33, at least in terms of the relationship between the outgoing and incoming administrations. 

--- 

Recall that the election results of ‘32 showed Roosevelt with a resounding 472-59 victory over Herbert Hoover in the Electoral College. But there was a huge problem. FDR wasn’t taking the oath of office until March 4*, a full four months away, and as it turned out the global Depression deepened over this period. 

[*This would be the last time the country waited this long. The Twentieth Amendment, ratified on Feb. 6, 1933, provided that presidents would thereafter take office on January 20 and the newly-elected Congress on January 3.] 

The transition from Hoover to Roosevelt was also a messy and awkward one. They didn’t trust each other, especially as Hoover sought to stay active in combating the Depression and FDR refused to commit himself to some of Hoover’s proposals before March 4, 1933. The four months, the bleak winter of 1932-33, came to be known as “the interregnum of despair.” Unemployment continued to rise and panic struck the banking system. 

“Depositors played it safe by taking their cash out and squirreling it away. In Michigan, where automobile production stalled, the threat of runs on the banks impelled the governor to extend the Lincoln’s Birthday closing indefinitely. As the panic spread, governors of other states also found excuses for imposing banking holidays. When the Hoover administration ended, four-fifths of the nation’s banks were closed, and the country teetered on the brink of economic paralysis.” [“America: A Narrative History”] 

“The harsh interregnum was a time of exaggerated worry over the peril of incipient revolution, as Iowa farm rebels recalled the insurrection of Daniel Shays, but it was even more a time of torpor. Harold Clurman recalled the drab anxiety of New York City that winter: ‘It seemed as if the very color of the city had changed. From an elegant bright gray by day and a sparkling gold by night, the afternoon had grown haggard, the nights mournful.’ The morale of the country had been shattered, and many seemed almost palsied by fear. Charles M. Schwab of Bethlehem Steel was quoted as saying: ‘I’m afraid, every man is afraid.’ One periodical thought the clue to the period lay in Shakespeare’s words: 

 I find the people strangely fantasied;
 Possess’d with rumours, full of idle dreams;
 Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear. 

“On the eve of the inauguration, Editor and Publisher asserted: 

‘What this country needs, if we are to shake off the torpor of fear and hopelessness, is a series of blinding head-lines proclaiming action, resolute leadership, a firm grip at the controls… 

‘Blinding head-lines…let them come! The people and the press await with bated breath.’” [“The Growth of the American Republic”] 

As the global economy was crumbling, the world was also becoming a markedly more dangerous place. Adolf Hitler was installed as chancellor in Germany, and Japan was determined to devour Manchuria. 

During this time the issue of World War I debts stirred anew. Author David M. Kennedy describes the scene in his book “Freedom From Fear.” 

“Scarcely a week after the election, as Roosevelt sifted contentedly through messages of congratulation in the governor’s mansion in Albany, he received a lengthy telegram from Hoover. The British government, Hoover explained, was urgently requesting yet another review of the international debt question. To add point to their request the British proposed to suspend payment of their $95 million debt-service installment due on December 15. Congress had only reluctantly agreed to Hoover’s moratorium of the preceding year, and ‘if there is to be any change in the attitude of the Congress,’ Hoover explained to Roosevelt, ‘it will be greatly affected by the views of those members who recognize you as their leader and who will properly desire your counsel and advice.’ Other questions about foreign relations were also pending, including plans for a World Economic Conference in London during the coming winter and the status of the Disarmament Conference already in progress in Geneva. Accordingly, Hoover asked for ‘an opportunity to confer with you personally at some convenient date set in the future.’” 

David Kennedy notes that “Hoover’s action in seeking the advice of his victorious opponent was unprecedented. It had all the appearance of a magnificent gesture of statesmanship. It also contained sinister political implications. The debt issue was the tar-baby of American politics. To touch it was to glue oneself to a messy, intractable problem that had defied the genius of statesmen for a decade.” 

Most academics and Wall Street types, let alone Europeans, favored outright cancellation of the war debts. “Yet Congress and most Americans beyond the Atlantic seaboard continued to regard the debts as immutable financial and moral obligations – and as safeguards that served to remind those interminably quarrelsome Europeans that they could not expect to finance another war in the United States.” 

Hoover had pledged not to cancel the debt outright, but at the same time he had imposed the moratorium due to the Depression. For his part, Roosevelt concluded it wasn’t an issue he wanted to be tied to, at least until he took over in March. 

FDR did, though, agree to meet with Hoover on November 22, 1932. David Kennedy: 

“On the appointed day, accompanied only by his increasingly ubiquitous adviser Raymond Moley, Roosevelt was ushered into the White House Red Room, where President Hoover and Treasury Secretary Ogden Mills were waiting. The hair hung heavy with sullen tension. Hoover had insisted that Mills attend the meeting because he had been warned by so many people that Roosevelt would shift his words that he wanted a reliable witness present. Moley thought that no two people in the country distrusted Roosevelt ‘as a human being and as President-elect’ more than Hoover and Mills….The president, grave but jittery, stiffly addressing his treasury secretary as ‘Mills’ and fixing his eye first on the carpet and then on Moley – but seldom on Roosevelt – smoked a fat cigar. All the others nervously lit cigarettes. 

“Roosevelt greeted Mills, his Harvard classmate and Hudson Valley neighbor, with a cheery ‘Hello, Ogden!’ and kept up a gay and nonchalant front. But FDR, wary of his recently defeated adversary, also cupped in his hand several cards on which Moley had jotted questions that needed asking, including one about possible ‘secret agreements’ that Hoover might have already made with British and French officials. Roosevelt may also have had in mind the sour memory of his last visit to the White House. At a presidential reception for governors the preceding April, Hoover, whether from callous design or thoughtless insensitivity, had kept Roosevelt waiting in a receiving line for nearly an hour. For a man whose bulky weight was supported entirely by the heavy hip-to-ankle steel braces that encased his useless legs, the ordeal was agonizing and humiliating. Roosevelt, for all his generous temperament, would have been less than human if the episode had not shaded his attitude toward Hoover.” 

Hoover spoke first on November 22, and Raymond Moley later said, “It was clear that we were in the presence of the best-informed individual in the country on the question of the debts. His story showed a mastery of detail and a clarity of arrangement that compelled admiration.” 

But nothing came of the meeting, nor from a second session on January 20, 1933. David Kennedy: 

“The only concrete result of these failed attempts at cooperation was the deepened conviction of Hoover and his associates that Roosevelt was a dangerously light-weight politician. [Secretary of State] Henry Stimson thought that Hoover’s mastery of the debt issue, compared with Roosevelt’s display of vacuous bonhomie, made FDR ‘look like a peanut.’ Hoover deemed Roosevelt ‘amiable, pleasant, anxious to be of service, very badly informed and of comparatively little vision’ and told Stimson that he had spent most of his time in conversation with Roosevelt ‘educating a very ignorant…well-meaning young man.’” 

As the Depression deepened during the transition, Hoover continued to ask Roosevelt for some reassuring public statements, but none were forthcoming. 

What the American people saw in FDR, though, was a man of vitality, utter self-confidence, and calm demeanor. Many commented on his temperament, which was seen to be perfect for the times. Then on February 15, 1933, Roosevelt gave a memorable demonstration of his powers of self-control. David Kennedy: 

“Alighting in Miami from an eleven-day cruise aboard Vincent Astor’s yacht, FDR motored to Bay Front Park, where he made a few remarks to a large crowd. At the end of the brief speech, Mayor Anton J. Cermak of Chicago stepped up to the side of Roosevelt’s open touring car and said a few words to the president-elect. Suddenly a pistol barked from the crowd. Cermak doubled over. Roosevelt ordered the Secret Service agents, who were reflexively accelerating his car away from the scene, to stop. He motioned to have Cermak, pale and pulseless, put into the seat beside him. ‘Tony, keep quiet – don’t move. It won’t hurt you if you keep quiet,’ Roosevelt repeated as he cradled Cermak’s limp body while the car sped to the hospital. 

“Cermak had been mortally wounded. He died within weeks, the victim of a deranged assassin who had been aiming for Roosevelt. On the evening of February 15, after Cermak had been entrusted to the doctors, Moley accompanied Roosevelt back to the yacht, poured him a stiff drink, and prepared for the letdown now that Roosevelt was alone among his intimates. He had just been spared by inches from a killer’s bullet and had held a dying man in his arms. But there was nothing – ‘not so much as the twitching of a muscle, the mopping of a brow, or even the hint of a false gaiety – indicate that it wasn’t any other evening in any other place. Roosevelt was simply himself – easy, confident, poised, to all appearances unmoved.’ The episode contributed to Moley’s eventual conclusion ‘that Roosevelt had no nerves at all.’ He was, said Frances Perkins, ‘the most complicated human being I ever knew.’” 

FDR’s calm during the ordeal aroused admiration in another demonstration of his courage. 

Needless to say, the automobile ride to the Inauguration on March 4, however, proved to be a frosty one, belying the beautifully sunny day, as “Hoover stared stiffly at the crowds, while Roosevelt smiled and waved.” [“American Heritage: The Presidents”] 

But the crisis of confidence had given way to a mood of expectation. FDR asserted “that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” 

Roosevelt promised to fill the vacuum of leadership: “The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.” More: 

“Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our inability to pay has failed; the government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.” 

Roosevelt talked of the “false leadership” that sought to solve problems through exhortation. “They have no vision,” FDR said in his Inaugural Address, “and where there is no vision the people perish.” 

“This nation asks for action, and action now! It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure. I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require.” 

If Congress failed to support these recommendations: 

“I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis – broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency as great as the power that would be given me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe….The people of the United States have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes.” 

Roosevelt immediately closed the banks for four days and gave the American people a break before summoning the Seventy-third Congress into special session on March 9. The first bit of legislation, as noted below, was signed within eight hours of his taking the oath. 

During the so-called Hundred Days, Congress received and enacted the following major proposals from the president with a speed unlike anything seen before in American history. 

March 9…The Emergency Banking Relief Act
March 20…The Economy Act
March 31…Establishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps
April 19…Abandonment of the gold standard
May 12…The Federal Emergency Relief Act
May 12…The Agricultural Adjustment Act, including the Thomas Amendment, which gave the president powers to expand the money supply
May 12…The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act, providing for the refinancing of farm mortgages
May 18…The Tennessee Valley Authority Act, providing for the unified hydroelectric development of the Tennessee Valley
May 27…The Federal Securities Act, requiring full disclosure in the issue of new securities
June 5…The Gold Repeal Joint Resolution, which abrogated the gold clause in public and private contracts
June 13…The Home Owners’ Loan Act, setting up the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation to refinance home mortgages
June 16…The National Industrial Recovery Act, providing for a system of industrial self-regulation under federal supervision and for a $3.3 billion public-works program
June 16…The Glass-Steagall Banking Act, separating commercial and investment banking and establishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
June 16…The Farm Credit Act, which reorganized the agricultural credit system
[“America: A Narrative History”] 

During the 1932 campaign, Roosevelt said in a speech: 

“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” 

And so he did. 

As for Herbert Hoover, he would later claim the New Deal was a failure and that only World War II restored prosperity. He died at the age of ninety on October 20, 1964. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. once wrote that Hoover’s tragedy was that “of a man of high ideals whose intelligence froze into inflexibility and whose dedication was smitten by self-righteousness.” 

Hoover spent his years out of office becoming one of the great humanitarians of the century, but as Saul Braun concluded in “American Heritage: The Presidents”: 

“(Scholars) now recognize that Hoover did more to fight the Depression than was recognized at the time. He used the power of the government to deal with the economic problems, but he lacked the capacity to address the issue of relief with the same vigor he had shown in feeding the hungry in Belgium and Russia. As a result, his reputation has never escaped the repudiation that the American people delivered to him in 1932.” 

Sources: 

“American Heritage: The Presidents,” edited by Michael Beschloss
“Freedom From Fear,” by David M. Kennedy
“The Growth of the American Republic,” by Samuel Eliot Morison, Henry Steele Commager, and William E. Leuchtenburg
“America: A Narrative History,” by George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi 

Wall Street History returns next week.
 
Brian Trumbore