America's Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal

Roosevelt’s New Deal Recovery programs focused on stabilizing the economy by creating long-term employment opportunities, decreasing agricultural supply to drive prices up, and helping homeowners pay mortgages and stay in their homes, which also kept the banks solvent.

 Within the first One Hundred Days, Congress enacted 15 major pieces of legislation establishing New Deal agencies and programs. Among the Recovery programs were the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which “established codes of fair practice for individual industries … to promote industrial growth,” and the National Recovery Administration (NRA). The NRA was one of the most controversial of the New Deal programs because it required government-based industrial regulation. Some of the rules, viewed as pro-union, included “defining labor standards, and raising wages.”

 Three of the New Deal Recovery programs are the focus of this section of the exhibition. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) worked to “ease the desperate plight of farmers,” and is still considered one of the more controversial New Deal programs. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) provided work for a variety of professionals including nurses, librarians, artists, and craftsmen. And, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) would provide employment and hydroelectric power to areas of the country that hadn’t had access to it before.

"Teaching With Documents: FDR's Fireside Chat on the Purposes and Foundations of the Recovery Program,” from the National Archives and Records Administration. http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/fdr-fireside/#documents