America's financial sector in the late s was a house of cards. American businesses in the s increasingly raised capital either by soliciting private investment or by selling stock. Over two million Americans poured their savings into the stock market, and many more into investment schemes. But there was little or no regulation of these companies and these supposed investment opportunities, nor much oversight of the process.
Too often, Americans put their money into "get rich quick" schemes which had no chance of long-term financial return, or into companies that made no real profits—and sometimes no actual products!
The stock market proved particularly volatile during the s. It soared from through ; the New York Times index of industrial stocks grew from points to points in the summer of alone. Investors bought stocks "on margin," meaning they produced only a small down-payment and borrowed the rest from their broker or bank.
As long as the stock increased in value, all was well. The investor would later sell the stock, repay the broker or the bank, and pocket the profit. But as the economy slowed in —with fewer consumer purchases, creeping unemployment, and higher interest rates—stock owners tried to sell, but found no buyers; the market tumbled. Two days in particular, October 24 "Black Thursday and October 29 "Black Tuesday" , saw investors desperately trying to dump stocks. On the latter day, brokers sold over 16 million shares.
American farmers suffered in the s, with their income one-third of the national average. The chief problem was overproduction.
American farmers benefited from new technologies that increased their productivity, but the glut of product, along with overseas competition, caused prices at market to drop precipitously. Farm earnings plummeted further when the economic crisis began in as urban areas lacked the income to purchase agricultural goods. With American farmers earning less, they could not pay their bills and mortgages. Rural banks failed without these payments, placing more pressure on a banking system already shaky, due to the stock market crash.
After , drought conditions plagued the Midwest, further compounding existing problems. If the economic outlook looked bleak from the nation's fields, they appeared just as dreary from its factory floors. While industrial productivity and profits increased in the s, wages remained stagnant. These profits, more often than not, were placed in the in the stock market or in speculative schemes, rather than re-invested in new factories or used to fund new businesses, both of which theoretically would create new jobs.
The combination of agricultural woes and industrial stagnation conspired to grind America's economy to a halt in the early s. Moreover, the world economy was suffering from a general slowdown in the late s. The Treaty of Versailles that ended the Great War required Germany to pay reparations to France and Britain, which, in turn, owed money to American banks. The German economy, wrecked by the war, could not sustain these payments, and the German government turned to the United States for cash.
Europe's economic health, then, was built on a web of financial arrangements and hinged on a robust American economy. Each of these factors helped create and sustain a severely unequal distribution of wealth in the United States, where a tiny minority possessed incredible riches.
Five percent of the populace held nearly a third of the money and property. Over 80 percent of Americans held no savings at all. Moreover, the American economy depended upon consumption, but because of the stagnation in wages, the collapse of agricultural markets, and rising unemployment all of which led to the growing gap between rich and poor , most Americans could not buy the products that made the economy hum. Wealthier Americans, by contrast, failed to spend their money, choosing instead to invest it.
It was a consumer economy in which few consumed. Between and , 5, American banks collapsed, one in four farms went into foreclosure, and an average of , jobs vanished each week. By , over 12 million Americans—nearly one-quarter of the workforce—were unemployed. Statistics alone, however, cannot tell the story of the "Great Depression. The nation's will sagged and its future seemed, at least to some, in doubt.
President Hoover took substantive steps to alleviate the crisis, but accomplished little. His political fortunes sagged accordingly.
In New York, Governor Roosevelt reacted slowly at first, hoping, much like Hoover, that the economy would turn around. When it did not, FDR determined that "there is a duty on the part of government to do something about this.
As the depression deepened, FDR got the New York state legislature to pass a public works program for the unemployed and to grant relief to the needy. All of these actions established FDR's credentials as a liberal reformer. Roosevelt won re-election in , no mean feat for a governor serving during the Great Depression.
President Hoover faced no such rosy outlook. As the Great Depression worsened in the early s, Republican prospects for the presidential election withered. The Democrats, on the other hand, looked to the rising star of their party, Franklin D. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A. Garfield Chester A. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D.
Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Bush Bill Clinton George W. Help inform the discussion Support the Miller Center. University of Virginia Miller Center. Franklin D. Born on October 27, in Manhattan, Roosevelt survived the tragedy of losing his wife and his own mother to illness on the same day in , an assassination attempt in , and an extremely dangerous military charge in Cuba in The former President passed away in at the age 60 from a blood clot that had lodged in his heart.
He had been in declining health for several years. As a child, Roosevelt witnessed the Abraham Lincoln funeral procession. There is a photo of the young Roosevelt perched in a window watching the procession in New York City in April that surfaced in the s. Theodore Roosevelt had a really, really good memory. But biographer and historian Edmund Morris cited several documented cases where Roosevelt was able to recite obscure poetry and other content well over a decade after he read the documents.
Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt were fifth cousins. Roosevelt agreed because he was thinking of running for President in No one thought that Roosevelt would take over for McKinley later in Roosevelt was the first President to win a Nobel Peace Prize. As President, Roosevelt adopted an aggressive foreign policy, but he also saw America as deserving a role as a global peacemaker.
In fact, the wedding date itself was selected with the sitting president in mind: March 17, , when he was already scheduled to be in New York for the St.
Teddy, who by all accounts adored his niece, was thrilled to be there, but perhaps inevitably it was the Rough Rider who garnered almost all the attention. TR stole the show again when he met with reporters before leaving the reception. Sara Delano Roosevelt was a domineering mother-in-law. Not everyone was thrilled with the marriage. She went so far as to whisk Franklin away on a foreign vacation in the hopes of changing his mind.
She lost that battle, but Sara went on to wage familial war with her daughter-in-law for the rest of her life. Eleanor, naturally upset with the situation, found Franklin unsympathetic to her plight. Which is not surprising when you realize that Sara had kept her only child on just as tight a leash for his entire life. In fact, until her death in —after FDR was already president—it was Sara who handled the Roosevelt family finances, doling out allowances to Franklin and Eleanor as she saw fit.
Navy a post previously held by cousin Teddy. The following year, he attended a keel-laying ceremony at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for a Pennsylvania-class battleship officially known as BB On December 7, the Arizona was bombed during the attack on Pearl Harbor and 1, of its men went down with the ship. The next day, Roosevelt appeared before Congress asking for a declaration of war against Japan. The images show a smiling Roosevelt sauntering down the gangplank, just seven years before he was stricken with polio and permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
The presidential election pitted Franklin Roosevelt against one of his neighbors. In his campaign for an unprecedented fourth term in office, Roosevelt faced Republican Thomas E. Dewey , a former federal prosecutor and Manhattan District Attorney. In fact, he lived less than 30 miles from the Roosevelt family home at Hyde Park.
This marked the last time that both major-party candidates for president lived in the same state, until the election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Roosevelt and Dewey also shared another bond; both had served as governors of New York, with Dewey elected 10 years after Roosevelt had left the office to assume the presidency. FDR was an avid stamp collector.
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