Franklin D Roosevelt as President

Franklin D Roosevelt as President played a critical role in reviving the sunk American economy. America was in a national crisis when Franklin D Roosevelt was elected as President. Below is information of what America was like when President Franklin D Roosevelt took office and how President Franklin D. Roosevelt made history when he solved the national crisis.

America before Franklin D. Roosevelt was President

When Governor Franklin Roosevelt took office:

• 15 million Americans were unemployed
• 25 per cent of the work force
• many got their daily meals in public bread lines;
• banks all over the country had closed their doors, personal savings, homes and
• farms had been lost; and
• thousands of business had been shut down.

How did President Franklin Roosevelt solved the national crisis when he became President?

In his first Inaugural Address, President Franklin D Roosevelt told the American people:

"We need not shrink from honestly facing conditions. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive, and will prosper. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasonable, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

Franklin Roosevelt 's early work as the President of the United States of America

President Franklin D. Roosevelt put the government to work creating jobs for the unemployed and relief for the poor and hungry. President Franklin D. Roosevelt stimulated the economy and made vast social reforms. In many countries, like Russia and Germany, totalitarianism was on the rise in 1932. But in America, government committed itself to helping its people.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt 's Hundred Days

During his so-called Hundred Days, in the first three months of his term, President Franklin D. Roosevelt rushed through Congress a flood of programs aimed at reviving the economy by a vast expenditure of public funds. President Franklin D. Roosevelt imposed:

• excess profit and dividend taxes,
• cut government salaries, and
• got Congress to gain control of the banks,
• devalue the dollar,
• withdraw all the gold in the country and
• go off the gold standard.