The New Deal and Its Legacy

📋 Course Outline

1. Great Depression and Roosevelt's response
2. Relief, recovery, and reform
3. Fireside Chats and public trust
4. Second New Deal and welfare state
5. Labor rights and Social Security
6. Opposition and Supreme Court crisis
7. Legacy and political realignment

📖 1. Great Depression and Roosevelt's response

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Great Depression : Great Depression : the severe US economic collapse after 1929 that paralyzed the economy and caused mass unemployment and bank failures.
• New Deal : New Deal : FDR’s domestic programs, public works, financial reforms, and regulations enacted from 1933 to 1938.
• Laissez-faire capitalism : Laissez-faire capitalism : an economic doctrine favoring minimal state intervention in markets and relying on private action.

📝 Essential Points

• On March 4, 1933, FDR launched his presidency in the worst US crisis, saying fear itself was the only thing to fear.
• After the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, by 1933 GDP had fallen by half and unemployment hit 25% of the workforce.
• Thousands of banks had collapsed by 1933, leaving the financial system effectively paralyzed.
• Hoover failed to resolve the crisis partly because he trusted laissez-faire and rugged individualism rather than stronger federal action.

💡 Memory Hook

Fear itself → start the New Deal from fear of collapse.

📖 2. Relief, recovery, and reform

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions