The New Deal

The New Deal was the sweeping set of federal programs enacted under Franklin Roosevelt between 1933 and 1939 to address the Great Depression. It permanently expanded the role of the federal government in American economic life.

When Franklin Roosevelt took office in March 1933, roughly a quarter of American workers were unemployed, thousands of banks had failed, and the country's industrial output had collapsed. In his first hundred days, Roosevelt and Congress passed a torrent of legislation that reshaped the federal government. The Emergency Banking Act stabilized the banking system. The Civilian Conservation Corps put young men to work on public lands. The Agricultural Adjustment Act paid farmers to reduce production. The National Industrial Recovery Act tried to coordinate industry and labor under federal codes. A second wave of legislation followed in 1935, including the Social Security Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Works Progress Administration. The New Deal did not end the Depression, which lingered until the mobilization for World War II. But it transformed the relationship between the citizen and the federal government. Before 1933, most Americans had little direct contact with Washington. After the New Deal, the federal government insured bank deposits, paid old-age pensions, set minimum wages, regulated the stock market, and built dams, post offices, and schools across the country. The Supreme Court initially struck down several New Deal laws, but after Roosevelt's 1937 court-packing attempt and changes in the Court's composition, it began upholding broad federal authority over economic activity. The basic framework of the modern administrative state dates from this period.