American History: A Survey 10/e   Alan Brinkley
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Summary

Franklin D. Roosevelt was bound by traditional economic ideas, but unlike Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt was willing to experiment and was able to show compassion. During the first two years of his New Deal, the groundwork was laid for a new relationship between government and the economy. Roosevelt sought temporary relief for the desperate unemployment, plus long-term recovery and reform for industry and finance. Not everything worked, and the Depression was not stopped, but Roosevelt got the country moving again. In 1935, frustrated and facing pressures from all sides, Roosevelt launched a new set of programs, which sometimes is called the Second New Deal. The new programs were less conciliatory to big business and more favorable to the needs of workers and consumers than were those of the New Deal of 1933. Roosevelt was swept to reelection in 1936 by a new coalition of workers, blacks, and liberals. Soon, however, Roosevelt's political blunders in the Supreme Court fight and congressional purge effort combined with growing conservative opposition to halt virtually all New Deal momentum. The legacy of the New Deal was a more activist national government poised to serve as the broker between society's various interests.

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