President Roosevelt

Semester Exam Chapter 9 Essay

In this chapter there are different images of President Roosevelt. One photograph might present FDR as weak, while another shows him as strong and confident. A cartoon might praise or criticize him. Write three paragraphs in which you compare several different viewpoints on FDR, and then Draw your own conclusion about him.

During President Roosevelt’s first hundred days in office, he proposed and Congress passed 15 bills. These measures, known as the First New Deal, had three goals: relief, recovery, and reform. In order to achieve these goals, FDR established many agencies. One example is, within the first hundred days, FDR successfully reformed the financial system. The financial reforms helped restore confidence in the economy. The citizens were happy to put their money into the bank because they knew that even though the bank failed, they were still able to have their lifetime savings.

However, on the other side, they argued that FDR did “too much”. To many conservatives, the New Deal was destroying free enterprise and undermining individualism. The New Deal was described as “the most stupendous invasion of the whole spirit of liberty” by the former president Herbert Hoover. In addition, Robert Taft, the son of former President William Howard Taft, claimed that FDR’s program threatened individual freedom. Due to many people felt FDR had deserted the Democratic Party’s principles of a limited federal government, they founded the American Liberty League.

In spite of many criticisms against President Roosevelt, the effort he made is undeniable. He brought back the citizens’ confident about the nation while the whole country was desperate. Also, the AAA made the prices of the crops back to normal which allowed farmers to have more income than before. Overall, FDR did an impressive job of pulling the

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