The first mandate as President of Roosevelt was clear and challenging. As regards economy, he rescued the United States from its worst depression. Economic conditions had deteriorated enormously. Unemployment was the twenty-five percent of the nation's workforce. More than twelve millions Americans were out of work. A new wave of bank failures hit in February 1933. Roosevelt promised a "New Deal" to help the country out of the Depression. But the meaning of the program was not clear. He said he would try something to end the depression, and if it worked, he would move on to the next problem. But if it failed, he would admit the failure and try something else. In general, the First New Deal looked to stabilize the U.S. financial system, provide relief and jobs to the suffering, and reenergize America's capitalist economy.
FDR established several public relief programs in 1933 to end the crisis of starvation and the needs of the unemployed. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) made direct cash allocations available to states for immediate payments to the unemployed.
The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) put 300.000 young men to work in camps planting trees, building bridges, and cleaning beaches.
The benefits of these social programs were clear: they provided relief for millions of Americans on the verge of starvation and gave them jobs.
As regards political issues during FDR, it is worth mentioning that the Supreme Court and a part of Republicans and conservative Democrats had proven hostile to FDR's New Deal. Roosevelt managed to remove them. However, he encountered stiff resistance.
In February, 1937, he wanted to expand the membership of the court. This maneuver would have put six new Roosevelt- appointed justices to the Court, giving him a comfortable majority that could be expected to validate the New Deal. Then, most of the press got furious, and denounced that FDR was a dictator, because he had a large majority in both houses of Congress. He also believed he needed to reform and strengthen his Presidency and specifically the administrative units and bureaucracy charged with implementing the chief executive's policies. The President's conservative critics pounced the plan, seeing it as an example of Roosevelt's imperious and power-hungry nature; Congress finally bottled up the bill.
