FDR's First Hundred Days: Bank Holiday, Fireside Chats and Frances Perkins

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When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, governors across the country had restricted bank withdrawals and Americans could not reach their own money. Manufacturing output had fallen by a third since 1929, unemployment had climbed from about 4 percent to 25 percent, and prices had dropped 20 percent in a deflationary spiral that made debts impossible to repay. Herbert Hoover had considered a national bank holiday but feared it would cause more panic. Roosevelt declared one, and on March 12 used his first fireside chat to explain in plain language why the banks were closed and why reopened banks would be safe. Within a month hoarding stopped and billions of dollars returned to the banks. Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act the same day it was introduced, opening the first hundred days and an advisory brain trust told to try everything and admit failures.

Frances Perkins, the first woman in a presidential cabinet, took the Labor post only after Roosevelt backed her list: a 40-hour week, a ban on child labor, workers' compensation, unemployment insurance and a minimum wage. The Agricultural Adjustment Act paid farmers to destroy crops and slaughter millions of pigs while city residents stood in bread lines. With unemployment still above 20 percent in 1935, a second New Deal brought the WPA, Social Security and the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Supreme Court struck down early agencies, a conservative coalition formed in 1938, and Southern votes came at the cost of segregated programs and exclusions for domestic and farm workers.

• The phrase New Deal came from a Stuart Chase magazine article and was slipped into the nomination speech at the last minute.
• Roosevelt initially opposed the FDIC, fearing deposit insurance would encourage reckless banking.
• The Economy Act of 1933 cut government salaries and veterans' pensions by 15 percent.
• Roosevelt and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau kept a balanced regular budget and a separate emergency budget, rejecting Keynesian deficit spending as a philosophy.
• Monetarists led by Milton Friedman blamed the Federal Reserve for the depression and argued some New Deal policies prolonged unemployment.