Tag: Franklin D. Roosevelt

03/21/11

The Redistribution of Wealth

By Robert Day, appeared in September 1935

This cartoon, by Robert Day, appeared in September 1935. The key to the gag is that the speaker seemingly can no longer afford to maintain her enormous yard, fill her swimming pool, or repair her crumbling walls and front gate. Roosevelt argued that taxation according to ability to pay was ‘the American principle’. There was a huge gap between the richest and the poorest people in America. Roosevelt wanted to redistribute the wealth among people through the taxation of incomes in order to end the Great Depression.

03/20/11

Hoover got Hoovered

Cliff Berryman, Washington Evening Star (1932)

The cartoon above was published during the presidential election in 1932 between the popular Franklin D. Roosevelt who gained recognition as the governor of New York, and his unpopular rival Herbert Hoover. This cartoon shows Roosevelt asking Hoover to leave his seat with an implication that Roosevelt will finish the rest of his job. Consequently Roosevelt won the election and began his attempt to solve the nation’s problem. Unlike Hoover, who’s action plan was to wait for the country to fix itself, Roosevelt on the other hand, drastically made changes with all his programs known as the New Deal. Some of these new programs include Works Projects Administration (WPA), Civilian Conservation Administration (PWA), the National Youth Administration (NYA), Farm Security Administration (FSA), National Recovery Administration (NRA) and Public Works Administration (PWA). The cartoon below illustrates Roosevelt’s active action and rapid progress during his first term as presidency.

Cliff Berryman, Washington Evening Star
03/19/11

Don’t re-shuffle them cards! I like this hand.

It IS a New Deal

It IS a New Deal, 3/11/33 By Talburt in thePittsburgh Press

The public’s response to Roosevelt’s programs were viewed in high favor.  It seemed like he was handling things very quickly and efficiently.  It was with the ending of prohibition and the handling of the bank emergencies, that gave the American people faith in him.  It also helped him that many people viewed him as a trusted figure.  People needed faith with dealing with the Depression, and the economic turmoil that the United States was in.

Roosevelt was able to enter almost every American who owned a radios home, in a way that no other president before him could.  I believe the artist, after hearing him like so many other, believed that with the changes that have been made so far and so quickly, Roosevelt New Deals were worth believing in.This image was drawn days after the Bank Holiday was proposed by Roosevelt when he first came into office.

03/15/11

FDR and the New Deal

From the cartoon, we can see a man was surrounded by a bunch of dancing kids. The man in the middle was President Franklin D. Roosevelt; on the backs of the kids’ shirts were printed WPA, PWA AND AAA, which stand for Works Progress Administration, Public Works Administration (which constructed roads, dams, and public buildings), and Agricultural Adjustment Act (which provided funding to farmers to curtail their production). These were all the programs set up under FDR’s New Deal. There were some other kids facing us, which from the artist’s points should represent the other programs adopted by FDR, such as Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which served to insure deposits in banks, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which provided for navigation, flood control, electricity generation and economic development in the Tennessee River Valley and the National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA), which provided for codes of fair competition to regulate industry, and for the first time in American history guaranteed the rights of labor to bargain collectively, etc. These programs were responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call the “3 Rs”: relief, recovery, and reform. That is, relief for the unemployed and poor; recovery of the economy to normal levels; and reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression.