First and second terms (1933–1941)
By early 1933, the US was at the nadir of the Great Depression. At least a quarter of the workforce was unemployed, and an estimated 1.2 million people were homeless. By March 3, the eve of Roosevelt's inauguration, 32 of the 48 states—as well as the District of Columbia—had closed their banks. Historians categorized Roosevelt's program as "relief, recovery, and reform": relief for the unemployed, recovery in boosting the economy back to normal, and reform of the financial and banking systems. Roosevelt presented his proposals directly to the American public in a series of radio addresses known as "fireside chats".
One of his first actions in office was to declare a national "bank holiday". He convened a special session of Congress on March 9, when Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act with very limited review. The act was drafted by members of the Hoover administration; according to the author Jonathan Alter, it gave the president "unprecedented control over the financial system", and authorized the Federal Reserve Banks to issue banknotes. In the weeks after the holiday ended on March 15, over $1 billion was deposited, ending the bank panic. The "Hundred Days Congress" set a benchmark against which future presidents have been compared. On March 22, Roosevelt signed the Cullen–Harrison Act, permitting the sale of beer; Prohibition was officially repealed in December with the 21st Amendment.
Roosevelt signed the Economy Act in an effort to cut the federal government budget. This included a reduction in military spending from $752 million in 1932 to $531 million in 1934, and a 40% cut to veteran benefits; over 500,000 veterans and dependents lost pensions. The veterans were well organized and strongly protested, so most benefits were later restored or increased. Congress overrode the President's veto and passed the Bonus Act in January 1936. It pumped sums equal to 2% of the GDP into the consumer economy and had a major stimulus effect.
Roosevelt saw the establishment of a number of agencies and measures designed to provide relief. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration, under the leadership of Harry Hopkins, distributed relief to state governments. The Public Works Administration (PWA), under Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, oversaw the construction of large-scale public works such as sewer systems and lighthouses. The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) increased the share of farms with electricity from 1% to almost 50% by 1941. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) hired an initial 250,000 unemployed men for rural projects; it ultimately employed over 3.2 million total. This included over 2,600 veterans who participated in the second Bonus Army march in May 1933. Roosevelt also expanded Hoover's Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which funded railroads and banks. Congress gave the Federal Trade Commission broad regulatory powers and provided mortgage relief to millions of farmers and homeowners. Roosevelt also set up the Agricultural Adjustment Administration to increase commodity prices, by paying farmers to leave land uncultivated and cut herds. The policies were criticized when some crops were intentionally plowed under and livestock slaughtered; it also accelerated the transition from smallholding to commercial farming.
Economic reform was the goal of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933, which established the National Recovery Administration. The act established the first federal minimum wage and supported collective bargaining, but also suspended antitrust laws and encouraged price-fixing. NIRA was ineffective and became unpopular, and the Supreme Court in May 1935 declared it unconstitutional. Roosevelt reformed financial regulations with the Glass–Steagall Act, creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to underwrite savings deposits. In 1934, the Securities and Exchange Commission was created to regulate investment firms, while the Federal Communications Commission sought to regulate telecommunications. The NIRA included $3.3 billion (equivalent to $82.08 billion in 2025) of spending through the Public Works Administration.
Roosevelt worked with Senator George W. Norris to create the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which built dams and power stations, controlled erosion, and improved wages in the poverty-stricken Tennessee Valley. However, it displaced thousands of residents for these projects, many poor farmers and tenants. Roosevelt also declared that all gold privately held by American citizens was to be sold to the US Treasury and announced the abandonment of the gold standard and a devaluation of the dollar.
Although the president's party had lost seats in most previous midterm elections, the Democrats gained seats in the 1934 Congressional elections. Empowered, Roosevelt made it a priority to create a social insurance program with the Social Security Act. Roosevelt insisted that it should be funded by payroll taxes, saying, "We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program." Compared with the social security systems in other countries, the Social Security Act of 1935 was conservative. Against Roosevelt's original intention for universal coverage, the act excluded farmers and domestic workers, among others, totalling about forty percent of the labor force. Nevertheless, according to the historian William Leuchtenberg, it represented a "new landmark in American history" in instituting individual social rights.
After winning Congressional authorization for further funding of relief efforts, Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Led by Harry Hopkins, the WPA employed over three million people in its first year. It undertook numerous massive construction projects in cooperation with local governments. It also set up the National Youth Administration and arts organizations. The National Labor Relations Act guaranteed workers the right to collective bargaining through unions of their own choice. The act also established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to facilitate wage agreements and suppress repeated labor disturbances. The act did not compel employers to reach an agreement with their employees, but it opened possibilities for American labor. The result was a tremendous growth of union membership, especially in the mass-production sector. When the Flint sit-down strike threatened the production of General Motors, Roosevelt broke with the precedents of many former presidents and refused to intervene; the strike ultimately led to the unionization of both General Motors and its rivals in the American automobile industry.
While the First New Deal of 1933 had broad support from most sectors, the Second New Deal challenged the business community. Conservative Democrats, led by Al Smith, fought back with the American Liberty League, savagely attacking Roosevelt and equating him with socialism. However, Smith's boisterous rhetoric let Roosevelt isolate his opponents and identify them with the wealthy vested interests that opposed the New Deal, strengthening Roosevelt for the 1936 landslide. Conversely, labor unions, energized by labor legislation, signed up millions of new members and became a major backer of Roosevelt's re-elections in 1936, 1940, and 1944. Burns suggests that Roosevelt's policy decisions were guided more by pragmatism than ideology. Roosevelt argued that "The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation".
Eight million workers remained unemployed in 1936, though economic conditions had improved somewhat since 1932. Roosevelt had lost the support of the business community because of his support for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Social Security Act. The Republicans nominated Kansas Governor Alf Landon, a little-known candidate whose chances were damaged by the public re-emergence of the still-unpopular Herbert Hoover. While Roosevelt campaigned on his New Deal programs and continued to attack Hoover, Landon sought to win voters who approved of the goals of the New Deal but disagreed with its implementation. An attempt by Louisiana Senator Huey Long to organize a left-wing third party collapsed after Long's assassination in 1935. The remnants supported William Lemke of the newly formed Union Party. Roosevelt won re-nomination with little opposition at the 1936 Democratic National Convention, while his allies overcame Southern resistance to abolish the long-established rule that required Democratic presidential candidates to win the votes of two-thirds of the delegates rather than a simple majority.
In the general election, Roosevelt won a record 60.8% of the popular vote and carried every state except Maine and Vermont. Democrats controlled over three-quarters of the seats in each house. The election also saw the consolidation of the New Deal coalition; while the Democrats lost some of their traditional allies in big business, they were replaced by groups such as organized labor and African Americans, the latter of whom voted Democratic for the first time since the American Civil War. Roosevelt lost high-income voters but made major gains among the poor and minorities. He won 86 percent of the Jewish vote, 81 percent of Catholics, 80 percent of union members, 76 percent of Southerners, 76 percent of blacks in northern cities, and 75 percent of people on relief.
The Supreme Court became Roosevelt's primary domestic focus during his second term after the court overturned many of his programs. The more conservative justices upheld the principles of the Lochner era, which saw numerous economic regulations struck down on the basis of freedom of contract. Roosevelt proposed the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, which would have allowed him to appoint an additional Justice for each incumbent Justice over the age of 70; in 1937, there were six. The size of the Court had been set at nine since the Judiciary Act of 1869. Roosevelt's "court packing" plan ran into intense political opposition from his own party, since it upset the separation of powers. A bipartisan coalition opposed the bill, and Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes broke with precedent by publicly advocating its defeat. Any chance of passing the bill ended with the death of Senate Majority Leader Joseph Taylor Robinson in July 1937.
Starting with the 1937 case of West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, the court began to take a more favorable view of economic regulations, which historians have described as "the switch in time that saved nine". That same year, Roosevelt appointed a Supreme Court Justice for the first time, and by 1941, had appointed seven of the court's nine justices. After Parrish, the Court shifted its focus from judicial review of economic regulations to the protection of civil liberties. Four of Roosevelt's Supreme Court appointees, Felix Frankfurter, Robert H. Jackson, Hugo Black, and William O. Douglas, were particularly influential in reshaping the jurisprudence of the Court.
With Roosevelt's influence on the wane following the failure of the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, conservative Democrats joined with Republicans to block the implementation of further New Deal programs. Roosevelt did manage to pass some legislation, including the Housing Act of 1937, a second Agricultural Adjustment Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938. The FLSA outlawed child labor, established a federal minimum wage, and required overtime pay for certain employees. He also passed the Reorganization Act of 1939 and subsequently created the Executive Office of the President, making it "the nerve center of the federal administrative system". When the economy began to deteriorate again in mid-1937, Roosevelt launched a rhetorical campaign against big business and monopoly power, alleging that the recession was the result of a capital strike and even ordering the Federal Bureau of Investigation to look for a criminal conspiracy (they found none). He then asked Congress for $5 billion (equivalent to $111.98 billion in 2025) in relief and public works funding. This created as many as 3.3 million WPA jobs by 1938. Beyond this, however, Roosevelt recommended to a special congressional session only a permanent national farm act, administrative reorganization, and regional planning measures, all of which were leftovers from a regular session.
Determined to overcome the opposition of conservative Democrats in Congress, Roosevelt actively campaigned in the 1938 Democratic primaries for challengers who were more supportive of New Deal reform; he failed badly, managing to defeat only one. In the 1938 elections, Democrats lost six Senate seats and 71 House seats, with losses concentrated among pro-New Deal Democrats. When Congress reconvened in 1939, Republicans under Senator Robert A. Taft formed a Conservative coalition with Southern Democrats, virtually ending Roosevelt's ability to enact his domestic proposals.
Roosevelt had a lifelong interest in the environment and conservation. Although he was never an outdoorsman or sportsman on Theodore Roosevelt's scale, his growth of the national systems was comparable. When Roosevelt was governor of New York, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration was essentially a state-level predecessor of the federal Civilian Conservation Corps, with 10,000 or more men building fire trails, combating soil erosion and planting trees. As President, Roosevelt was active in expanding, funding, and promoting the National Park and National Forest systems. Their popularity soared, from three million visitors a year at the start of the decade to 15.5 million in 1939. The Civilian Conservation Corps enrolled 3.4 million young men and built 13,000 miles (21,000 kilometers) of trails, planted two billion trees, and upgraded 125,000 miles (201,000 kilometers) of dirt roads. Every state had its own state parks, and Roosevelt made sure that WPA and CCC projects were set up to upgrade them as well as the national systems.
Government spending increased from 8.0% of the gross national product (GNP) under Hoover in 1932 to 10.2% in 1936. The national debt as a percentage of the GNP had more than doubled under Hoover from 16% to 40% of the GNP in early 1933. It held steady at close to 40% as late as fall 1941, then grew rapidly during the war. The GNP was 34% higher in 1936 than in 1932 and 58% higher in 1940 on the eve of war. The economy grew 58% from 1932 to 1940, and then grew 56% from 1940 to 1945 in five years of wartime. Unemployment fell dramatically during Roosevelt's first term. It increased in 1938 but continually declined after 1938. Total employment during Roosevelt's term expanded by 18.31 million jobs.
The main foreign policy initiative of Roosevelt's first term was the Good Neighbor Policy, a re-evaluation of US policy toward Latin America. The US frequently intervened in Latin America following the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. After Roosevelt took office, he withdrew US forces from Haiti and reached new treaties with Cuba and Panama, ending their status as US protectorates. In December 1933, Roosevelt signed the Montevideo Convention, renouncing the right to intervene unilaterally in the affairs of Latin American countries. Roosevelt also normalized relations with the Soviet Union, which the US had refused to recognize since the 1920s. He hoped to renegotiate the Russian debt from World War I and open trade relations, but no progress was made and "both nations were soon disillusioned by the accord."
The rejection of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919–1920 marked the dominance of non-interventionism in American foreign policy. Despite Roosevelt's Wilsonian background, he and Secretary of State Cordell Hull acted with great care not to provoke isolationist sentiment. The isolationist movement was bolstered by the Neutrality Acts in the early to mid-1930s, stopping the "merchants of death" in the US from selling arms abroad. The president was refused a provision he requested giving him the discretion to allow the sale of arms to victims of aggression. Roosevelt largely acquiesced to Congress's non-interventionist policies in the early-to-mid 1930s. In the interim, Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini joined Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler in supporting General Francisco Franco and the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. As that conflict drew to a close in early 1939, Roosevelt expressed regret in not aiding the Spanish Republicans. When Japan invaded China in 1937, isolationism limited Roosevelt's ability to aid China.
Germany annexed Austria in 1938, and soon turned its attention to its eastern neighbors. After completion of the Munich Agreement and the execution of Kristallnacht, American public opinion turned against Germany, and Roosevelt began preparing for a possible war. Relying on an interventionist political coalition of Southern Democrats and business-oriented Republicans, Roosevelt oversaw the expansion of US airpower and war production capacity. When World War II began in September 1939 with Germany's invasion of Poland and Britain and France's declaration of war on Germany, Roosevelt sought ways to assist Britain and France militarily. Isolationist leaders like Charles Lindbergh and Senator William Borah successfully mobilized opposition to Roosevelt's proposed repeal of the Neutrality Act, but Roosevelt won Congressional approval of the sale of arms on a cash-and-carry basis. He also began a regular secret correspondence with Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, in September 1939—the first of 1,700 letters and telegrams between them. Roosevelt forged a close personal relationship with Churchill, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in May 1940.
The Fall of France in June 1940 shocked the American public, and isolationist sentiment declined. In July 1940, Roosevelt appointed two interventionist Republican leaders, Henry L. Stimson and Frank Knox, as Secretaries of War and the Navy, respectively. Both parties gave support to his plans for a rapid build-up of the American military, but the isolationists warned that Roosevelt would get the nation into an unnecessary war with Germany. In September 1940, the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 authorized the nation's first peacetime draft. The size of the army increased from 189,000 men at the end of 1939 to 1.4 million in mid-1941. In September 1940, Roosevelt openly defied the Neutrality Acts by reaching the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, which, in exchange for military base rights in the British Caribbean Islands, gave 50 American destroyers to Britain.
Leading up to the July 1940 Democratic National Convention, there was much speculation as to whether Roosevelt would run for an unprecedented third term. The two-term tradition, although not yet enshrined in the Constitution, had been established by George Washington. Roosevelt refused to give a definitive statement, and he even indicated to some ambitious Democrats, such as James Farley, that they could seek the Democratic nomination. Farley and Vice President John Garner were not pleased with Roosevelt when he ultimately ran. As Germany swept through Western Europe in mid-1940, Roosevelt decided that only he could see the nation safely through the Nazi threat. He was aided by the party's political bosses, who feared that no Democrat but Roosevelt could defeat Wendell Willkie, the popular Republican nominee.
At the July 1940 Democratic Convention in Chicago, Roosevelt easily swept aside challenges from Farley and Garner, who had turned against Roosevelt in his second term because of his liberal economic and social policies. To replace Garner on the ticket, Roosevelt turned to Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace of Iowa, a former Republican who strongly supported the New Deal and was popular in farm states. The choice was strenuously opposed by many of the party's conservatives, who felt Wallace was too radical and "eccentric" in his private life. But Roosevelt insisted that without Wallace on the ticket he would decline re-nomination, and Wallace won the vice-presidential nomination.
An August poll by Gallup found the race to be essentially tied, but Roosevelt's popularity surged in September following the announcement of the Destroyers for Bases Agreement. Willkie supported much of the New Deal as well as rearmament and aid to Britain but warned that Roosevelt would drag the country into another European war. Responding to Willkie's attacks, Roosevelt promised to keep the country out of the war. Roosevelt won the 1940 election with 55% of the popular vote, 38 of the 48 states, and almost 85% of the electoral vote.
