The First Hundred Days

A Nation in Freefall

When Franklin Roosevelt took the oath of office on March 4, 1933, the United States was closer to collapse than at any point since the Civil War. Unemployment stood at roughly 25%. Over 5,000 banks had failed since 1929, wiping out the life savings of millions. Industrial production had fallen by nearly half. Farmers were burning crops because it cost more to transport them than they were worth. In some cities, people were literally starving.

Herbert Hoover, leaving office, was a broken man. He had tried various interventions — the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, limited public works — but his philosophical commitment to voluntarism and limited government prevented the scale of response the crisis demanded. On Inauguration Day, virtually every bank in America was closed by state order. The financial system had simply stopped functioning.

Roosevelt's inaugural address struck the note that would define his presidency: 'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' It was a deliberately psychological message. Before proposing any specific policy, Roosevelt understood that the first task was restoring confidence — convincing Americans that their government was competent, active, and on their side.

The Legislative Blitz

Roosevelt called Congress into special session on March 9, 1933, and over the next hundred days pushed through fifteen major pieces of legislation at a pace never seen before or since. The Emergency Banking Act passed on its first day — most members of Congress hadn't even read it. The speed was deliberate: Roosevelt wanted to project decisive action and prevent opposition from organizing.

The major measures included the Emergency Banking Act (restructuring and reopening banks under federal supervision), the Civilian Conservation Corps (putting 250,000 young men to work in national forests), the Agricultural Adjustment Act (paying farmers to reduce production and raise prices), the Tennessee Valley Authority (government-owned electric power and regional development), the National Industrial Recovery Act (establishing codes of fair competition and, crucially, guaranteeing labor's right to organize), and the Glass-Steagall Act (separating commercial and investment banking and creating the FDIC to insure deposits).

Not all of these measures worked as intended. The NRA's industrial codes became bureaucratic nightmares. The AAA's policy of destroying crops and livestock while people went hungry was politically toxic. But the cumulative effect was transformative: the federal government was doing something. After three years of Hoover's cautious incrementalism, Roosevelt's hyperactivity was itself a form of therapy for a traumatized nation.

The Philosophy of Experimentation

What unified the First Hundred Days was not a coherent ideology but a willingness to try anything. Roosevelt famously told his advisors: 'Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.' This pragmatic experimentalism infuriated ideologues on both sides. Conservatives saw creeping socialism. Radicals like Huey Long thought Roosevelt wasn't going far enough.

The 'Brain Trust' — Roosevelt's circle of academic advisors including Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and Adolf Berle — provided intellectual ammunition but disagreed among themselves. Some favored central planning, others competitive markets with guardrails. Roosevelt picked and chose from their ideas, often playing them against each other. The result was a New Deal that was ideologically incoherent but politically brilliant — it offered something to almost every constituency while maintaining Roosevelt's personal dominance over the process.