Urge to Purge

President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933 in the depths of the Depression. Virtually all of FDR’s major New Deal programs were enacted during his first term. An improving economy added to his popularity. The 1934 mid-term elections enhanced his Democratic Congressional majorities, and his landslide re-election and long coattails in 1936 brought the United States closer to one-party government than the republic had been since Reconstruction. But events that occurred during Roosevelt’s second term, notably the defeat of his 1937 proposal to add justices to the U.S. Supreme Court (see “Unpacked,” p. 30), emboldened Democratic critics. Conservative Democrats began to be more critical of FDR’s progressive agenda, inflicting his first significant legislative defeats. Roosevelt’s solution, “primarying” disloyal Democrats in the 1938 election by endorsing their more progressive opponents, proved to be a political blunder second only to his Court enlargement proposal.

IN MARCH 1933, WITH THE ECONOMY IN FREE FALL and multiple banks failing every day, Roosevelt acted quickly and decisively. He summoned Congress for a three-month special session, which led to his famous “First Hundred Days” of legislative action. Two days after taking office he imposed a bank holiday, and three days later, by voice vote, Congress passed his Emergency Banking Act. Reassured by the president’s first “fireside chat” explaining that their deposits would be insured, people retrieved their money from under mattresses and deposited that cash in banks.

Civilian Conservation Corps job creation, Agricultural Adjustment Act farm subsidies, Tennessee Valley Authority dam construction, and wage and price regulation by the National Recovery Administration were sponsored under laws enacted early