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FDR Aides Created Our World

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By JOHN STEELE GORDON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 1, 2009

"Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America," by Adam Cohen (Penguin Press, $30)

By the time Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as president on March 4, 1933, banks were closed in 38 states, and withdrawals were limited in the other 10. The stock exchange had announced that it wouldn't open that morning and wouldn't say when it would reopen.

Unemployment was, officially, more than 25 percent and actually far higher as many of those counted as employed were working only part time. Farms were being foreclosed at the rate of 20,000 a month. Hundreds of thousands were living in "Hoovervilles" and eating at soup kitchens or scavenging food from garbage cans. Farmers could not find a market for their crops. Many thought the end of the American experiment was near. Adam Cohen's new book, "Nothing to Fear," shows why it was not.

The country and its political and economic assumptions would change profoundly in the first few months of the new administration. From March 4 to June 16, 1933, the new president signed no fewer than 14 major acts of legislation, an astonishing pace of more than one a week. By the end of the so-called 100 days, the banking and financial system had been remade. Sweeping federal relief for homeowners, farmers and the unemployed was in place. The country was off the gold standard. Recovery had at least begun.

When the stock exchange reopened on March 15, the mood of the country had changed so much that the Dow Jones Industrial Average shot up 15 percent.

The Emergency Banking Relief Act, which hadn't even been written on March 4, was sent to Congress on March 9. The chairman of the House banking committee, who had the only copy, with penciled additions, walked down the aisle waving it over his head and shouting, "Here's the bill; let's pass it."

The Republican House leader admitted to not having read the bill but said Congress needed "to give the president what he demands and says is necessary to meet the situation." Roosevelt signed it into law nine hours after he had sent it to the Hill.

Cohen brings this brief but extraordinary period in American history to vivid life. He does so by concentrating not on its central figure, Roosevelt, but on a handful of his aides. Household names in their day, they are largely forgotten now except by historians. As Cohen makes clear, they should not be. We live in the world they did so much to create.

John Steele Gordon is the author of "An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power."

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