In class today, Mr. Stewart mentioned that the Hundred Days was one of the chapters that was going undone in the Wiki project. I happened to read that chapter for the 40 point Wiki review worksheet, so I thought I’d give a brief overview of it.
The Hundred Days
FDR assumed the presidency of the United States at one of the country’s more dire times. Here are the things that he did after his inauguration:
1. The banking crisis at the time saw every bank in 32 states shut down. FDR approached this first item of business by calling Congress into a special session to discuss an emergency bank measure and declaring a national bank holiday. When the banks reopened, deposits and gold began to flow back into the banking system. The banking crisis was over.
2. Soon after, Roosevelt sent another emergency measure to Congress, hoping to cut $500 million from the federal budget. This $500 million would come from such expenditures as government agencies, the pay of civilian and military government employees, an a 50% slash in payments to veterans. This was passed. Roosevelt also signed the Beer-Wine Revenue Act which re-legalized beer and light wines.
Now, federal expenditures were substantially less and revenue could be earned from the sale of beer and light wines.
3. Roosevelt’s next legislative proposal was regarding agriculture; he came up with a plan of domestic allotment. Roosevelt’s “domestic allotment” was a plan that aimed to address the grievances of the agricultural sector, which was “huge and variegated” (farmers that grew different crops from different states had no uniform voice). Agricultural income was on a downwards spiral, and the sector’s depression pre-dated the Great Depression by over a decade, but still, there was no existing unifying power that could effectively pull the agrarian community from its depression.
Domestic allotment called for government payments to farmers who agreed not to produce certain crops. These payments were to be financed by new taxes on agricultural processors (canners, millers, packers, commodity brokers). Purchasing the surpluses quickly exhausted financial resources, so domestic allotment sought to eliminate the production of any surpluses in the first place (this is where government payments would be used as incentive to keep farmers from producing certain crops).
4. FDR next requested for legislation with regards to solving the problem of unemployment of the country. His solution? The Civilian Conservation Corps. Roosevelt proposed the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to deal with the nation’s high unemployment rates. The CCC was to employ 250,000 men to work on a number of public works projects, which included forestry, flood control, and beautification projects. Corps workers built firebreaks, lookouts, bridges, campgrounds, trails and museums in national forests and parks. This number swelled to 3 million by 1942 and young men were being provided with steady pay of $30 dollars a month. Unemployment relief had never been so effective or powerful.
*Note: up to this point, though all of FDR’s legislation had been successful, it did not necessarily significantly help economic recovery. Rather, it had been deflationary. So, he called for the signing of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). It had three parts:
1. Provided for federal regulation of maximum hours and minimum wages in various industries (industrial workers now had the right to “organize and bargain collectively through their representatives”).
2. Created NRA, which would oversee government-sanctioned cartelization. Production in whole industries would be controlled, prices and wages would be raised. This would prevent unfair competition and overproduction.
3. Created the Public Works Administration (PWA) which was to undertake public construction projects.
By now, the Hundred Days were nearly over. In the final days of it, Roosevelt signed and Congress passed several acts: the Glass-Steagall Banking Act (split commercial and investment banking, created federal insurance of bank deposits), a Farm Credit Act, and a railroad regulation bill.
Sources: Freedom From Fear
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