50 Fun Facts About The New Deal

What did Franklin Roosevelt's 1933 inaugural address call the only thing Americans had to be afraid of?

Fear itself was the enemy, Roosevelt told tens of millions of radio listeners at the depth of the Depression. In the same speech he warned that he might ask Congress for broad executive power to fight the emergency like a war.

Which drink did the Cullen–Harrison Act make legal again in April 1933, weeks into Franklin Roosevelt's first term?

Beer of up to 3.2 percent alcohol went back on sale on April 7, 1933, a date now marked as National Beer Day. Signing the law, Roosevelt remarked that it would be a good time for one.

Which presidential retreat, called Shangri-La by Franklin Roosevelt, began as a site built by New Deal relief workers?

Camp David was finished in 1938 as Hi-Catoctin, a getaway for federal employees and their families in the Maryland mountains. Dwight Eisenhower renamed it in 1953 for his father and his grandson.

Which metal did Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 6102 require Americans to turn in to the Federal Reserve in 1933?

Gold coins, bullion and certificates had to be handed over at $20.67 an ounce, though jewelers and dentists were exempt. Owning it privately stayed restricted until the end of 1974.

Which future president ran the Texas branch of the New Deal's National Youth Administration in his twenties?

Lyndon Johnson took the job in 1935 at 26 and quit two years later to run for Congress. The agency offered work and schooling to Americans aged 16 to 25.

Which mortgage giant began in 1938 as a New Deal agency that bought loans from lenders to free up their cash?

Fannie Mae is the nickname of the Federal National Mortgage Association, set up to keep money flowing to mortgage lenders. Its rival Freddie Mac was not created until 1970.

Who became the first woman in a US cabinet when Franklin Roosevelt named her Secretary of Labor in 1933?

Frances Perkins held the post for 12 years, more than any other labor secretary. Witnessing the deadly 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York had been a turning point in her life.

What name was given to the evening radio talks in which Franklin Roosevelt explained the New Deal to Americans?

Fireside chats got their name from a CBS executive in 1933, after an aide said Roosevelt pictured his audience as a few people sitting around his hearth. He had first tried the format in 1929 as governor of New York.

Which New Deal program sent its first monthly check, for $22.54, to retired Vermont secretary Ida May Fuller in 1940?

Social Security paid Ida May Fuller $22,888.92 before she died at 100, after she had paid in just $24.75 in payroll taxes. Roosevelt had signed the program into law in August 1935.

Which word for a Boy Scout leather craft became an insult for wasteful government projects during the New Deal?

Boondoggle meant a Scout's leather lanyard until 1935, when The New York Times reported that relief money was paying for craft classes where the jobless made them.

Which New Deal agency, nicknamed Roosevelt's Tree Army, put unemployed young men to work in forests and parks?

Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees planted more than three billion trees between 1933 and 1942. Each man earned $30 a month, and $25 of it had to be sent home to a family dependent.

Which New Deal agency began building Norris Dam in 1933 to bring cheap power to a poor stretch of the South?

Tennessee Valley Authority dams brought power and flood control to a region where malaria affected 30 percent of people. Herbert Hoover had vetoed an earlier federal dam there as socialistic.

Which New Deal agency, headed by Harry Hopkins, gave paid jobs to 8.5 million Americans between 1935 and 1943?

Works Progress Administration crews built more than 620,000 miles of streets and over 10,000 bridges. Its workers also sewed clothing for the needy and served millions of school lunches.

What has the FDIC, a New Deal agency created in 1933, guaranteed for ordinary Americans ever since?

Bank deposits were first insured up to $2,500, after more than a third of American banks had failed. No depositor has lost a penny of insured money since.

Which New Deal agency, created in 1934 to police Wall Street, had Joseph P. Kennedy as its first chairman?

The Securities and Exchange Commission went to Kennedy, a self-made multimillionaire financier, partly because of his own experience on Wall Street. He led it from 1934 to 1935.

Which New Deal agency had ten million acres of cotton plowed up and six million piglets killed to lift farm prices?

The Agricultural Adjustment Administration paid landowners to leave fields idle, using a new tax on food processors. That tax got the original law thrown out in 1936.

Which New Deal agency, created in 1934, protects home lenders against losses so buyers can make small down payments?

The Federal Housing Administration changed how Americans bought houses: before it, a typical mortgage ran three to five years and demanded 30 to 50 percent down.

Which symbol did American shops display to show they followed the codes of the National Recovery Administration?

The Blue Eagle went into shop windows and onto packages, and businesses that did not show one were very often boycotted. The law behind it was ruled unconstitutional in 1935.

In a jab at the New Deal, which dish did Al Smith say Roosevelt's government was submerged in?

Alphabet soup became the standard joke about agencies such as the FERA, the CWA and the NYA. At least 69 new offices were created during Roosevelt's presidency.

What did the REA, a New Deal agency created in 1935, bring to isolated farms through loans to member-owned cooperatives?

Electricity reached about ninety percent of American farm homes by 1959, House Speaker Sam Rayburn said. The cooperatives bought power wholesale and carried it out over their own lines.

Which Dallas city park, finished in 1940 by New Deal relief workers, was the site of John F. Kennedy's assassination?

Dealey Plaza was built by relief crews on the spot where the first home in Dallas once stood. It is named for George Bannerman Dealey, an early publisher of The Dallas Morning News.

Which Louisiana senator, nicknamed the Kingfish, challenged the New Deal with his Share Our Wealth plan?

Huey Long built a network of 27,000 clubs with over 7.5 million members by 1935. He was assassinated inside the Louisiana State Capitol that year while preparing a run for president.

Which Michigan 'Radio Priest' turned from praising the New Deal to attacking it before some 30 million weekly listeners?

Charles Coughlin fell out with Roosevelt after accusing him of being too friendly to bankers. He said he had started broadcasting after the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross at his Royal Oak church.

Which California physician proposed paying every American over 60 a pension of $200 a month, to be spent quickly?

Francis Townsend launched his crusade in 1933 with a letter to his local newspaper, after losing his job as a city health officer. His plan never passed, but its popularity pushed Congress toward a pension law of its own.

Which Kansas governor lost the 1936 presidential election to Franklin Roosevelt, carrying only Maine and Vermont?

Alf Landon lost even his home state and won just eight electoral votes to Roosevelt's 523. He lived to 100, and Ronald Reagan came to the birthday party in Topeka.

Which British economist, who met Franklin Roosevelt in 1934, called budget deficits a good thing in a slump?

John Maynard Keynes had urged governments since 1924 to create jobs by spending on public works. He pressed the case on Roosevelt by letter and face to face, and the two men spoke highly of each other.

Which Secretary of the Interior for nearly 13 years also directed billions in Public Works Administration projects?

Harold Ickes held the Interior post from 1933 to 1946, the longest tenure in the office's history. His tight grip on the budget and his hostility to corruption earned him the nickname Honest Harold.

Which Florida college founder led the informal Black Cabinet that advised Franklin Roosevelt on racial issues?

Mary McLeod Bethune also directed the Division of Negro Affairs at the National Youth Administration. The private school she started for Black students grew into Bethune-Cookman University.

Which Iowa-born hybrid corn pioneer ran farm policy under Franklin Roosevelt before becoming his vice president in 1941?

Henry A. Wallace founded the Hi-Bred Corn Company, which became extremely successful, and edited his family's farm journal. He joined the cabinet in 1933 and stayed until 1940.

Which president echoed the New Deal by naming his own domestic program the Fair Deal in a State of the Union address?

Harry S. Truman asked Congress for national health insurance and federal aid to education, among other measures. A conservative coalition in Congress voted both down, and only a few of his major proposals became law.

What did Franklin Roosevelt order every American bank to do for four days in March 1933, two days after taking office?

Forcing banks to close their doors for a four-day 'holiday' halted the panic: when they reopened on March 13, customers lined up to return their stashed cash.

What name is given to the 1933 special session in which Congress passed 15 major bills at Franklin Roosevelt's request?

The Hundred Days got their name from Roosevelt himself, who coined the phrase in a July 1933 radio address. Every president since has had an opening stretch measured against it.

What nickname was given to Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell and the other professors who advised Franklin Roosevelt?

The Brain Trust began with three Columbia University professors gathered for the 1932 campaign at the suggestion of Roosevelt's speechwriter Samuel Rosenman. A New York Times writer, James Kieran, put the label into print.

In which city did Franklin Roosevelt first pledge a new deal for Americans while accepting the 1932 nomination?

Chicago hosted the 1932 Democratic convention, where Roosevelt broke tradition and set a precedent by accepting the nomination in person. A phrase from that speech named his whole program.

Historians sort the First New Deal into three Rs: relief, recovery and which third aim, targeting the financial system?

Reform meant rewriting the rules of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression, while relief went to the unemployed and recovery was about getting the economy back to normal levels.

Which institution did Franklin Roosevelt try to enlarge by up to six members in a failed 1937 bill?

The Supreme Court had struck down several New Deal measures, and the plan would have added a justice for every sitting member over 70. The Senate sent it back to committee by 70 votes to 20.

What did the Schechter brothers sell in the 1935 case that sank the National Recovery Administration's codes?

Chickens that the government called diseased gave the ruling its nickname, the sick chicken case. The justices were unanimous that the codes handed lawmaking power to the president.

Which 1935 law, known by its Senate author's name, guarantees workers the right to form unions and bargain collectively?

The Wagner Act also banned employers from interfering when their workers organized. It left out farm and domestic workers, however.

What right did the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 create for American workers, alongside time-and-a-half overtime pay?

A minimum wage came packaged with a forty-hour workweek and a ban on oppressive child labor. As late as 1955, retail, farm and construction workers were still not covered.

Which 1933 banking law, known by its two sponsors' names, walled off commercial banks from investment banking?

The Glass–Steagall Act took its name from Senator Carter Glass and Representative Henry Steagall. Congress repealed its main barriers in 1999 with the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act.

Which photographer took Migrant Mother in 1936 while documenting farm poverty for the Resettlement Administration?

Dorothea Lange found the family by chance in Nipomo, California, on a cold, rainy afternoon in March 1936. The mother stayed anonymous until 1978, when a journalist identified her as Florence Owens Thompson.

Which 20-year-old director staged an all-Black Macbeth for the New Deal's Federal Theatre Project in Harlem in 1936?

Orson Welles moved the play from Scotland to a Caribbean island and swapped its witchcraft for Haitian vodou. The show sold out for ten weeks, and opening-night crowds stopped traffic for blocks around the theater.

Which painter, later famous for his drip technique, drew a weekly paycheck from the New Deal's Federal Art Project?

Jackson Pollock spent several years on the project's payroll, when its artists were paid $23.60 a week. The money supported him before his paintings could earn him an income.

Whose life stories, about 2,300 in all, did the New Deal's Federal Writers' Project record in the late 1930s?

Formerly enslaved people in 17 states told their stories to the interviewers, with Arkansas alone contributing nearly 700 accounts. The collection also holds more than 500 photographs.

Which John Steinbeck novel has the Joad family shelter at a clean migrant settlement modeled on a real New Deal site?

The Grapes of Wrath drew on Weedpatch, a federal center for migrant workers near Bakersfield, California. The book is dedicated to its administrator, Tom Collins, the model for the character Jim Rawley.

Which Oregon mountain hotel, built by New Deal relief workers, was the exterior of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining?

Timberline Lodge stands 6,000 feet up Mount Hood, and Franklin Roosevelt dedicated it in person in September 1937. Local artisans built and furnished it, using large timbers and stone from the site.

Which New Deal agency graded the neighborhoods of 239 cities on maps that are often linked to redlining?

The Home Owners' Loan Corporation began its maps in 1935 at the request of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and historians debate how far lenders relied on them. Such discrimination was not explicitly outlawed until 1968.

Which party did most Black voters still back in 1932, before the New Deal pulled them toward Franklin Roosevelt?

The Republicans were still the party of Lincoln to most Black Americans who could vote in 1932. By 1936 most had switched, beginning an alliance with the other side that lasted into the next century.

Which group, backed by du Pont money and with Al Smith on its committee, formed in 1934 to oppose the New Deal?

The American Liberty League took more than half its 1935 money from fewer than two dozen bankers, industrialists and businessmen. It scaled back after Roosevelt's 1936 landslide and disbanded in 1940.

Which magazine predicted a 1936 landslide defeat for Franklin Roosevelt after polling car owners and telephone users?

The Literary Digest polled ten million people and heard back from more than two million, but its mailing lists skewed toward wealthier Americans. It folded within 18 months of the election.