FDR's Latest Critics

Was the New Deal un-American?

By Eric Rauchway
Posted Thursday, July 5, 2007, at 7:18 AM ET

Seventy-five years ago this week, on July 2, 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the Democratic nomination for president and pledged "a new deal for the American people." He promised public works, agricultural price supports, new mortgage markets, working-hours legislation, securities regulation, freer world trade, reforestation, and repeal of Prohibition. Congress passed laws for all these goals and added, in his first term alone, watershed management, legalization of labor unions, deposit insurance and a stronger Federal Reserve Board, and Social Security. All these remain: We live in the nation the New Deal made.