June 16, 1933 saw both Roosevelt's signing of the Banking Act and the implementation of diverse legislation including:
- the Farm Credit Act;
- the Emergency Railroad Transportation Act;
- the National Industrial Recovery Act;
- a $238,000,000 allotment for the production of 32 new U.S. Navy ships.
The investment of federal monies in a series of public works programs, which provided desperately needed jobs, formed an integral part of Roosevelt's domestic agenda, the New Deal. Millions of unemployed Americans went to work in the 1930s in programs such as the Work Projects Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Under Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, the Public Works Administration initiated and oversaw about 34,000 public works projects.
The Folklore Project of the Federal Writers' Project, a New Deal program established in 1935, employed writers to collect life histories from a broad spectrum of American citizens. Many of those interviewed expressed gratitude for the New Deal programs:
I am heartily in favor of the New Deal, and its results are apparent even in my neighborhood. In former years, my pastor...was often hard put to it to take care of some of his flock. But the work furnished and the wages paid to those in our neighborhood on the WPA [Works Progress Administration] are apparent, and if it is so in this small section, what must its accomplishments and rehabilitative affects be throughout the United States?"Mrs. Eulalia McCranie,"
Jacksonville, Florida,
Rose Shepherd, interviewer,
circa February 23, 1939.
American Life Histories, 1936-1940
To my mind one of the greatest accomplishments of the New Deal has been the organization of the Civilian Conservation Camps. The training given the boys will be of lasting benefit. They have changed many a boy from a liability to a valuable asset to his country. They have kept thousands of boys off the roads just idly roaming over the country . . ."Women and the Changing Times,"
Augusta, Georgia,
Mrs. Daisy Thompson, interviewer,
February 16, 1940.
American Life Histories, 1936-1940
- To read other transcripts of reflections on Roosevelt's New Deal, search on New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt, the names of programs, or their acronyms in American Life Histories, 1936-1940. Learn more about the career of the only president ever to be elected to office four times. Search the Today in History Archive on Franklin Roosevelt.
