FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

ABSTRACT

The paper discusses the contribtuion of Great American President Franklin Roosevelt to the American economy during the Great Depression. Thirty-second President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States is one of the most brilliant of American politicians, led the nation in the most turbulent era in its history when, in the worst economic crisis, he joined the Second World War. He applied the supposed New Deal and fought decisive battles to curb the power of monopolies and succeeded in establishing state control over important economic areas.

Franklin Roosevelt And How He Was A Transformational Leader

Franklin Roosevelt

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945), thirty-second President of the USA (1933-1945). Roosevelt was a member of an old, wealthy New York family and a distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt. Charming, energetic and good-looking, he became a State Senator in 1910 and three years later Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Wilson. In 1921, his career suffered what could have been an irreparable set-back when he was stricken with polio and was paralyzed from the waist down, but he fought back with great courage and determination, encouraged by his wife Eleanor Roosevelt (Trolander, 1975).

In 1928, he was elected Governor of New York and in 1932 became Democratic presidential candidate. He promised a 'New Deal for the American people', who were suffering from the Great Depression, and won an overwhelming victory, carrying forty-two states to Hoover's six. He faced a perilous situation: GNP had fallen from 103.8 billion dollars in 1929 to 55.8 billion in 1933; the banking system had almost collapsed; there were between twelve and fifteen million unemployed; farmers in a desperate situation, as their income had fallen by two-thirds since 1929. Private charity could not cope with the demands made upon it, so many people starved. It appeared that revolution was imminent (Warren, 1959).

Roosevelt acted decisively and with great vigour. He told the nation that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself' and passed through Congress an Act which put all banks under federal regulation. He then gave the first of his 'fireside chats' on the radio and assured Americans that it was safe to bank their savings. The crisis was averted. There followed the 'Hundred Days', when fifteen New Deal bills were passed between March and June 1933 They were designed to reduce unemployment, control banking and credit and help agriculture and small-scale industry. They also aimed to protect the workers, at a time when employers were cutting wages. An even more radical programme began in 1935, when social welfare measures such as old-age pensions and unemployment insurance, long familiar in Western Europe, were passed. Trade unions were protected, the rich taxed more heavily, and in the 1936 election Roosevelt won by a record margin, carrying every state except Maine and Vermont (Watkins, 1993).

In 1939, Roosevelt turned his attention to national defence and the threat to world peace. For the first time, foreign policy claimed a large share of his ...