Chapter in Perspective

By the 1920s, the corporate industrial economy had grown for over half a century, developing both strengths and weaknesses. The consumer culture of the 1920s and a business-oriented government promoted the pursuit not only of money but of debt as well. When mass purchasing power could no longer sustain prosperity, the economy collapsed. The greatest depression in history dawned, bringing massive unemployment, withering prices, and a stagnated economy. No president before Herbert Hoover had dared to stimulate the economy for fear of throwing it hopelessly out of balance. Hoover's policies, for all his good intentions and relatively bold initiatives, were too modest and too wedded to the old order to make much difference.

If the Great Depression lingered despite Hoover's unprecedented efforts, then to deal with the economic disaster would seem to require a political earthquake. Yet Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was no revolution in public policy. It sought ultimately to reform capitalism by modifying some of the excesses that led to the Great Depression. If there were a revolutionary aspect, it lay in the New Deal's willingness to commit government to compensating for swings in the economy and to supporting those in need. The New Deal marshaled the government activism and executive leadership of progressivism but with little of the moralizing that often accompanied progressive reform. With the New Deal the modern liberal state was born. It brought hope, but it didn't bring recovery.

Federal investigator Lorena Hickok, traveling across America in search of the New Deal's impact on the lives of ordinary people, found hope but not enough help. Roosevelt was restoring confidence and Americans were looking to Washington and talking about federal programs as never before. Roosevelt's New Deal may not have brought recovery but it provided relief to thousands, initiated lasting reforms, and made the federal government the active manager of economic and social well-being.