Government Expansion in the 1930s
After the Senate twice rejected the Versailles Treaty, the US turned away from a leadership role in international relations. Women did get the right to vote in 1920 with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, but the political consensus was that the US “return to normalcy,” the slogan for Republican Warren Harding’s presidential campaign that year. The US struggled with the imposition of Prohibition, which made it a crime to manufacture, sell or transport alcohol but not to drink it. There was widespread evasion of this unpopular policy, and significant resources were spent prosecuting people whose profession had essentially been outlawed by a constitutional amendment. Eventually Americans recognized that it had been unwise to insert a public policy measure into the Constitution, and the process of repealing the amendment began. This would not be completed until 1933.
The Roaring Twenties saw isolationist sentiments increase as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics imposed communism on the people of Russia while fascist governments took power in Italy and eventually Germany. After President Harding died while in office, the Republicans remained in power as Calvin Coolidge used radio to speak to the people directly for the first time. He passed up a chance to run again in 1928, but successfully handed off power to his Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover. The economy was booming, unemployment was only 3.2%, and the voters trusted the Republicans.
But then Black Tuesday struck. The stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, and the economy went into the Great Depression. President Hoover was unable to rally the economy, and unemployment got worse during each year of his administration. It eventually reached 23.6% in 1932, the next presidential election year. Since there was no national program of aid to the poor, and states lacked the funds to provide welfare, millions suffered.
Franklin Roosevelt won the 1932 Democratic nomination and proposed reforms that followed some of Herbert Croly’s suggestions in The Promise of American Life. Elected in a landslide, Roosevelt and the Democrats created a New Deal that would become the cornerstone of the Democratic Party platform for the next century. In this unit, you will find Roosevelt’s 1932 campaign address at the San Francisco Commonwealth Club, along with two State of the Union Addresses: 1941 (which set forth his “four freedoms”) and 1944 (where he pronounced an economic bill of rights that inspired many subsequent Democratic reforms).
Despite Roosevelt’s popularity, there was opposition to his New Deal programs. Conservative Herbert Hoover and liberal Walter Lippmann both expressed concern that big government would crowd out private freedom while doing little for middle class and poor people. But the majority wasn’t listening, as Americans elected FDR a record four times, all by substantial margins.
