Unit 9:: The New Deal

What should the government’s role be in American economic life? This was an easy question to answer before the Great Depression of the 1930s. The federal government did almost nothing that directly affected everyday economic activity at that time, because most Americans did not think that was the government’s role. As President Calvin Coolidge famously said during his administration in the 1920s, “If the Federal Government should go out of existence, the common run of people would not detect the difference in the affairs of their daily life for a considerable length of time.” With the sufferings caused by the Depression, an unprecedented number of Americans started looking to Washington for help so that they could survive an economic downturn that had changed American economic life forever. In November 1932, these Americans elected Franklin D. Roosevelt president of the United States. When he entered office in 1933, this help took the form of Roosevelt’s New Deal.