“Grass would grow in the streets of a hundred cities,” President Herbert Hoover predicted, if his Democratic opponent were permitted to carry out his plans for large-scale federal intervention (Siracusa and Coleman 2002, 19). But by the time of the 1932 election, three years of economic contraction had already wrought devastation on an unprecedented scale. National income had been cut in half and 5,000 banks had collapsed, wiping out 9 million savings accounts. Most disconcerting was the persistence of plenty amidst want: while industry functioned at a small fraction of capacity, a substantial share of the population went without basic necessities. With fully one quarter of the workforce unemployed, many began to question whether the capitalist system itself would survive the damage. Against this backdrop of economic wreckage, Franklin Roosevelt defeated the deeply unpopular Republican incumbent with a stunning 57.4 percent of the vote while sweeping his party to new and vastly expanded majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, respectively (Kennedy 1999).

Having promised a “new deal” for the American people, Roosevelt moved fast to enact a flurry of novel policy responses to the deepening crisis. Within his first year in office, the president acted to shore up the financial system with an Emergency Banking Act, to relieve farmers with the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and to boost industrial prices and employment with the innovative National Industrial Recovery Act.