Franklin D Roosevelt's Accomplishments

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 to 1945. He is not only one of the most widely known presidents, he is also one of the most fondly remembered. Between his skilled handling of not only the great depression but World War II, he has earned his place in history.
He was born to James and Sara Roosevelt in 1882. James was a wealthy business man as well as a land owner. Sara also came from a wealthy family, and was 26 years younger than James. They lived near Hyde Park, which was 50 miles north of New York City. Growing up, he had little interaction with his peers because he was schooled at home until the age of fourteen, when he attended the Groton school. He didn’t find much success here, due to the

home schooling, and in 1900, he attended Harvard. He was a lot more successful here, with good social standing he had been lacking at Groton. He became the editor of the schools newspaper, the Crimson. More importantly, Harvard is where he became a democrat. During his stint at Harvard, he fell in love with Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. She was a distant cousin of his, and Theodore Roosevelt’s niece. Together, they had six kids, one dying in infancy. During his marriage, he attended law school at Columbia University. He went here for two years and never graduated, never displaying passion for the law. In 1910 he was asked to run for political office, and agreed due to his admiration for Theodore Roosevelt (Miller Center).
Roosevelt ran for the State Senate from Duchess County in upstate New York. In this specific election, he was a democrat running in a republican area. The only reason he won this was because of the split in the Republican Party between progressives and conservatives, as well as his family name and his energy. He won by over a thousand votes. While he was in the senate, his politics were progressive. He believed that the government had a role to play in creating and maintaining a fair and equitable society, and protecting individuals from economic or political power. In 1912, he won re-election to the senate and forged a friendship with Louis Howe, who would become his chief political advisor. He never finished this term, however, because he was asked to be assistant secretary to President Wilson’s secretary of the Navy. While he was there, he slightly overstepped his role and began shaping the general naval policies; he was a big believer in ‘big navy’ which earned him support, and by 1917 he was supervising much of the navy. During his tenure in the Wilson administration, he had an affair with Eleanor’s social secretary Lucy Mercer. He was discovered and offered a divorce, but Franklin promised not to see her again. He broke this promise and their relationship became more about politics than love. In 1920, the democrats voted him as the vice presidential candidate to James Cox. This was not successful, so he became the vice president of the company Fidelity and Deposit, a financial firm. In the summer of 1921, he contracted Polio. He was at his second home in Campobello Island on the Canadian Atlantic coast. He swam in the cold waters, came home tired, and the next morning he was feverish and his left leg was numb. The following day, he was partly paralyzed from the abdomen down. He never recovered the full use of his legs and was in a wheelchair the rest of his life, but he kept what scholars call his ‘zest for life.’ In 1922, he aided Alfred Smith’s campaign for the governorship of New York City. Two years later, Smith asked him to run for the same position to help boost democratic support in order to support his presidential campaign. Though Smith lost his campaign, FDR won the governorship (Miller Center).
In his first election in 1932, there were mixed opinions on FDR. His support was mostly coming from the southwest. At this time, the Democratic Party was split into two key issues: Catholicism and prohibition. However, the depression overrode this issue. Garner was his vice president. Rumors were going around about his illness, so he flew to Chicago to accept the nomination. FDR ran against Herbert Hoover, who was so unpopular that his strategy was to stay under the radar so that people would focus on Hoover’s inadequacies and the nation’s problems. He traveled across the country attacking Hoover and promising better times. There was a huge difference between FDR and Hoover- FDR said that by working together they could overcome, while Hoover preached individualism. FDR won by a landslide, in both popular and electoral votes. His congress was also democratic, which would be key in passing legislation later (the new deal) (Miller Center).
His second election, 1936, he had lost a lot of support from businesses due to the Wagner and social security act (which I’ll talk about later). He ran against Alfred Landon, who was a moderate conservative who was supposed to take FDR’s votes in the Midwest (didn’t really work). One thing this election did, though, was clearly show that democrats were the national majority. Roosevelt also put together the ‘new deal coalition’ which was a voter alliance of different races/religious or ethnic groups (Miller Center).
His third election, 1940, was unprecedented. However, he only ran because the Democratic Party nominated him, and the situation in Europe deteriorated. He ran against Wendell L. Willkie, who was pretty much a democrat; he supported FDR’s legislation and FDR actually wanted him in his party. Their campaigns became slinging insults at each other. FDR won 55 percent of the popular vote and 38 electoral states vs Willkie’s 10 (Miller Center).
His fourth election he was willing to run again and got all but 87 of the 1075 delegate votes of the Democratic Party. Harry Truman was vice president, and they ran against Thomas Dewey. Voters decided not to change presidents in the middle of the war, so FDR got 54 percent of popular votes and 432 to 99 in the Electoral College (Miller Center).
In his first term, Roosevelt believed in American Capitalism, and was neither a die-hard liberal nor a conservative, and as consequence his policies were often contradictory, and his congress got exasperated with him a whole lot.

For example, scholars divide the New deal into two parts, because he changes his approach during the second deal, and it’s just confusing if you don’t. The first new deal was from 1933 to 1935. It began immediately, with what’s known as the ‘hundred days.’ The ‘hundred days’ were from March to June 1933, in which he passed around 15 bills. In general, the first new deal was to stabalize the U.S. financial system, provide relief and jobs to the suffering, and reenergize the capitalist economy. On March 19th he declared a ‘bank holiday.’ People were withdrawing their money from banks, and the holiday put a pause to this. FDR called congress into an emergency session where they enacted the Presidents Banking Proposal- basically, the federal government inspect all the banks, re-open those that were good enough, re-organize, and close the ones that were beyond repair. On March 12, he did his first ‘fireside chat’ (ushistory.org). Fireside chats are the term used to describe a series of 30 evening radio addresses given by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He gave this first one eight days after taking office, and ensured citizens that their money was safe in the reopened banks, and as a result nearly 1 billion dollars went back into the banks. In May 1993 he signed the security act, which required corporations and stockbrokers to release accurate info about stocks to investors. In June 1933 he signed the glass Steagall act, which created the federal deposit insurance corporation, guaranteeing the savings of Americans. In 1934, the Securities and exchange act created the Securities and Exchange Commission which was responsible for regulation of financial markets. In 1933, he took off American Gold Standard, and the banking act of 1935 gave

the country a central banking mechanism for the first time. The Reorganized Reconstruction Finance Corporation made it possible for millions to buy or renovate homes. Public renovation programs in 1933 helped meet starvation and unemployment needs. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration made direct cash allocations available to states for immediate payment of the unemployed. The Civilian Conservation Corps put 300,000 young men to work. The civil works administration spent almost 1 billion on public works like airports, but it was shut down after only four months because the program was costly. These policies garnered criticism from conservatives who didn’t like the ‘free handouts to the undeserving poor.’ To spur the recovery of agriculture, congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act in May 1933, which was meant to inflate farmers’ incomes by offering cash incentives to farmers who agreed to cut production. It did increase farmer’s income by more than 50 percent, but it appealed to the large farmers rather than the small ones in poverty. And since this act required less production, crops and livestock were consequentially killed, so this act was frowned upon by many. The Tennessee Valley Authority aimed to put the resources of the Tennessee Valley (which was the poorest area in the country at this time, stretching from Virginia to Mississippi) into boosting the economy by building power plants that would bring not only jobs, but electricity. His most controversial legislation was the National Industrial Recovery Act passed in 1933. The NIRA created the public works administration, which hoped to create jobs and stimulate the economy by building projects like the golden gate bridge, but the administration didn’t spend its entire budget so it was only party successful. The NIRA also suspended anti-trust laws, but this was a big fail as the businesses just did what they wanted, and labor unions grew. However, the Supreme Court invalidated the NIRA in the 1935 Schechter Decision (Miller Center). The Supreme Court also declared the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional in 1936 (ushistory.com).