What did the New Deal Accomplish?
Source: Gilder Lehrman Institute’s historynow.org (3-1-09) [Anthony Badger is Paul Mellon Professor of American History at Cambridge University and Master of Clare College. He is the author of a number of books, most recently FDR: The First Hundred Days (Hill and Wang, 2008).] The Hundred Days were an accident. Roosevelt took advantage of the need to reopen the banks to ask Congress to stay in session to pass recovery and reform legislation. Much of that legislation was improvised. The haste dictated by the economic crisis profoundly shaped the New Deal response in the Hundred Days. Despite the four months between election and inauguration, Roosevelt had few worked-out legislative or recovery plans. He certainly had no plans to deal with the rapidly escalating banking crisis. When he took office and shut the banks, he had to turn to held-over officials in the Treasury and Federal Reserve to dust off legislative proposals that they had devised in the Hoover years. The key was not more c
