Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Impact On US History

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was the 32nd president of the United States of America. During his presidency Franklin D. Roosevelt changed U.S. history by coming up with the New Deals and his involvement in World War II (WWII). The New Deals were some of the main things that helped most Americans get out of bankruptcy during the Great Depression. Then with his involvement in WWII he led the U.S. troops into war. Some of the acts he did at that time still have an impact on U.S. history today.

The first New Deal was a series of laws that were created to help get the U.S. out of the Great Depression. There was a total of three pieces of legislation created: NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Act), TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), and AAA

(Agricultural Adjustment Act). The New Deal was intended to stabilize the economy and provide a better life for Americans.
The NIRA was enacted by congress in June 1933. This was one of the measures President Franklin Roosevelt thought would help get Americans out of the Great Depression.
Title I of the NIRA provided for suspension of antitrust constraints against price-fixing and urged industries to adopt and submit to the governments codes for price levels sin each industry.

In the interests of raising prices and generating profits, taxes, and investments, the government was prepared to tolerate temporary recourse to state-approved cartelism proportionately, industries were required to engage in collective bargaining, thus placating the government’s powerful constituency in organized labor by the greatest legal encouragement it had yet received from Washington.

Title II was a 3.3 billion allocation for an emergency Public Works Administration, which would build and repair federal buildings, roads, bridges, dams, and other assets and facilities, employing as many as two million of the unemployed.

Title III was presented in vague form, to be filled out by the congress to provide some offsetting revenue for the billions to be spent in Title II. Since this was a radical departure for Roosevelt’s balanced-budget pledges, especially the speech at Pittsburgh on September 19, 1932 the President went public with the distinction he had been trying for several months to sell privately, and referred to these expenses as

“investments.”1

The NIRA bill was subjected to fierce debates by congress over amendments but was finally passed thanks to pressure from Roosevelt. FDR’s winning strategy was to keep all of the titles together. This helped to ensure that the less popular portions of the bill were passed. For example, Title II, which had a big acceptance, could not be voted on separately from Title I, which had less support. FDR stated that “History will probably record the National Industrial Recovery Act as the most important and far-reaching legislation ever enacted by the American Congress. It represents a supreme effort to stabilize for all time the many factors which make for the prosperity of the nation, and the preservation of American standards.”2 The NIRA would then play an important role in the future of the United States for other bills to be passed, such as the wartime price and production controls as well as Richard Nixon’s anti-inflation measure in 1971 that built upon this legislation.
The TVA was originally proposed to two different presidents, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. Both presidents vetoed the bill. Franklin D. Roosevelt came to office and within 100 days, he signed and passed the bill. Prior to the TVA the region it was established in was one of the most affected by the Great Depression. Because of the TVA, the U.S. started to create dams. A total of sixteen dams and one steam powered plant were created within the years of 1933 and 1944. The U.S. was able to employ 28,000 workers to complete the construction needed. One benefit of having the dams was to use them to produce electrical power, which Roosevelt and his administration believed would make life easier for those in rural areas and bring up the economy. They also believed that if private enterprises would not give electric power to remote areas because it was too expensive and that the farmers couldn’t afford it, then it should be the government’s responsibility to provide it. By 1941, the TVA became the largest electrical producer in the U.S. This caused a big uproar with private companies and they brought the federal government to court multiple times saying it was unconstitutional for the TVA to take their business by selling cheaper electricity. To this day, TVA is one of the largest public electrical providers in the U.S.
After WWI agriculture was ruined in Europe until the 1920’s. This put the U.S. at an advantage because Europe was going to have to buy an abundance of food from American farmers. When Europe did recover, American farmers found it hard to find export markets for their goods. In the U.S. “there were 106 million acres producing corn and 40 million producing wheat, and there was anticipated surplus to requirements on the order of 300 million bushels of wheat 30 million hogs, and 8 million bales of cotton.”3 Eventually this led to the U.S. producing too much food to be consumed which caused prices to lower. The decline for agricultural goods left many farmers struggling to pay for their land. By the 1930’s many farmers were in serious financial difficulties. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, he called congress into session to introduce proposals which he called the New Deals. One of the first to be introduced was AAA. A main goal of AAA was to restore purchasing power to farmers prior to WWII. The money the United States would use to pay the farmers to refrain from growing their food came from increased taxes towards certain companies. These companies would buy from farms and turn the goods into food and clothing. The AAA evened out the supply and demand so that prices would support decent purchasing power for farmers. The Agricultural Adjustment Act controlled the seven basic crops: wheat, rice, corn, cotton, tobacco, peanuts and milk. The AAA would do so by offering farmers money for not producing those crops as much. To this day there is still a type of control on what and how much farmers will produce.
One of FDR’s biggest impacts was when he created the Civil Conservation Corps (CCC), which could also be called Roosevelt’s “Tree Army.”4 “The CCC was able to bring together one of Roosevelt’s deepest values which was work and conservation.”5 Within three days of taking office, Roosevelt was trying to convince Harold Ickes to make the governor of Florida take some agricultural land and use it to settle the unemployed.

By March 10th, the governor told FDR it was impractical to move the unemployed to the proposed land. Roosevelt summoned Ickes and Henry Wallace to the White House for an emergency meeting. He wanted to discuss a bill about enlisting 500,000 men for work on government projects by the middle of summer. Within eleven days Roosevelt sent a message to congress. It was designed to tell the country that relief and jobs were on the way. Thanks to the CCC supporting young workers the Public Works Administration aimed to helping the middle-aged unemployed. Roosevelt knew that large scale projects would take years to get off the ground. Other tasks like clearing trails, draining swamps, planting trees, fighting forest fires, and building cabins in national parks and forests could begin immediately. “Roosevelt was told repeatedly that this was going to be an impossible task for all sorts of reasons.”6 Even Wallace who was known for his dreaminess didn’t think it was possible, as he noted that “the forestry service couldn’t possibly handle such a large group.”7 FDR wanted

to pay the men one dollar a day which angered Frances Perkins. Some at the labor department argued that it would bring down wages and that work camps were related to “forced labor.” The president of American Federation of Labor stated in March that the CCC “smacked of Fascism, Hitlerism, and Sovietism.”8 FDR’s message was that he wanted 250,000 men working in the forests by summer. “Do it now. I won’t take any excuses!”9 After he set this almost impossible goal, FDR had to work on getting it on its feet. He then invited members of the House of Representatives and the Senate to the White House. While they were there he was able to answer each one of their objection and show them his detailed knowledge of wage levels. He then wrote that “1.92 dollars a day not including transportation or wages is absurdly high and it must be greatly reduced.”10 The bill did pass easily only coming upon one significant issue in the House. A republican, Oscar De Priest, who was the black member of congress, successfully inserted an amendment barring discrimination. FDR signed it on March 31st. FDR ended up recruiting a machinist union vice president that he barely knew. Robert Fechner, director of the agency, told FDR that hiring a labor man would lead to inefficient administration. Franklin Roosevelt’s response was that “it doesn’t matter the Army and Forestry service will really run the show.”11 294 “However this was all a charade because FDR was really planning on running the whole thing from the White House with Louis Howe.”12 But when Howe insisted on signing off every decision at every camp, paperwork started to pile up and camps weren’t getting built quickly enough. But for an impatient president to speed things up Roosevelt instructed that more authority go to the Army. By April 7, only thirty-four days into the administration, the first corps members were enlisted. By July 1st, less than four months after Roosevelt made his demand of 250,000 men he exceeded his quarter-million goal. Nearly 272,000 men were enrolled and 1,300 camps were made across the country. Although no women were allowed in the CCC, African Americans, housed mostly in segregated camps, eventually it made up of 10 percent of the corps and 14,000 American Indians were immediately included. Colonel Duncan Major reported to Roosevelt that the speed of the mobilization was record breaking in all of American war and peacetime records and has never been matched since. After the crime in Chicago dropped 55 percent a Chicago judged credited the agency with getting trouble making men off the streets. Thousands of small businesses located near camps were able to stay afloat by serving the needs of corps members. “The future labor leader Lane Kirkland who grew up in South Carolina remembered how the south was stripped of vegetation, rivers were thick with mud from erosion, every farm had a gully, and when it rained the topsoil would wash away. If you were to go there now though all you would see are millions of pine trees that are now the basis of the timber and pulp industry.”13
Over nine years, more than 3 million men were given meaningful work corps members planted an astonishing 3 billion trees, developed 800 state parks, protected 20 million acres from erosion,, and cleared 125,000 miles of trails, including those used for the first downhill skiing in the United States at Stowe, Vermont. (A president who could not use his legs indirectly launched the ski industry.) Perhaps most important the civilian Conservation Corps inspired programs over the next several decades such as the Job Corps, Peace Corps, VISTA and AmeriCorps and thousands of community projects, leaving no doubt that the father of national service in the United States was FDR.14

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was Roosevelt’s vision of a work relief program that employed more than 8.5 million people. “By September 1937 the WPA, which was the New Deal’s most effective jobs program, had cut its rolls nearly in half, from 2.5 million to 1.45 million.”15 Their wage was around 41.57 dollars a month. The WPA employees worked on building bridges, roads, public buildings, airports, and public parks. Under Harry Hopkins, the WPA would spend up to 11 million dollars before it was cancelled in 1943. WPA did employ more men than they did women, as women comprised 13.9 percent of the workers. The WPA did pay low wages and couldn’t employ everyone, so some families had to seek other assistance from state relief programs. Those programs only paid 10 dollars a week. Due to this program, Roosevelt was sent a poem that read “I think that we shall never see a president like unto thee… poems are made by fools like me, but god, I think, made Franklin D.”16
Before the 1930s, support for the elderly wasn’t a federal concern, with an exception for veteran’s pensions. However, with wide-spread struggle common for old people due to the Great Depression, there were many different proposals for a national old-age insurance system. On January 17, 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a message to congress asking for Social Security legislation. Eventually the bill passed both houses and then on August 15, 1935 FDR signed the Social Security Act into law. When naming the chair of the act, Roosevelt named Perkins. When named, Perkins asked “if it wouldn’t make sense for someone other than her to serve as chair.”17 However Roosevelt’s response to that was “no, no you care about this thing. You believe in it. Therefore I know you will put your back to it more than anyone else, and you will drive it through.”18 Social security is a program that continues today. It is when the government takes part of your earnings from work and stores it for when you are ready to retire so you will have an income to live off of.
On July 5, 1935, a bill called the National Labor Relation Act, also known as the Wagner Act, was signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt. The name Wagner Act came from naming it after Senator R. Wagner. What the act did for the people was it gave “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection.”19 With this act they were able to get the National Labor Relation Board involved. Their job was to make sure that any disputes between management and workers were resolved fairly, penalize employers for unfair labor practices, and to make sure there are democratic union elections. To this day, the president elects 5 of the board and would be assisted by 33 regional directors. During 1937, this act contributed to an increase in union membership and made labor work a system not to be messed with both politically and economically. The Wagner act made joining unions safer for Americans and still to this day it is much safer than it was before it was created.
Without Roosevelt, the Great Depression could have been resolved in a completely different way. He was the one who came up with the New Deals and made them possible. His ideas from the New Deals like AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act), NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Act), and TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), Civil Conservation Corps (CCC), Works Progress Administration (WPA), Social Security Act (SSA), and National Labor Relation Act (Wagner Act) have changed history. Every single one of those acts still today a century later have still affected U.S. and without Franklin Delano Roosevelt who knows what the U.S. would be like now.