American Visions of Europe

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1882 - 1945 Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in 1882 at Hyde Park, New York and attended Harvard University and Columbia Law School. He followed the example of his fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, whom he greatly admired, and entered public service through politics, as a Democrat. He won election to the New York Senate in 1910 and President Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920.

In the summer of 1921, when he was 39, Roosevelt was stricken with poliomyelitis. He fought to regain the use of his legs, particularly through swimming. At the 1924 Democratic Convention, he appeared on crutches to nominate Alfred E. Smith as "the Happy Warrior." In 1928, Roosevelt became Governor of New York, and was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. In his first "hundred days" in office, he proposed, and Congress enacted, a program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

By 1935 the Nation had somewhat recovered, but businessmen and bankers were turning more and more against Roosevelt's New Deal program. They were appalled because he had taken the Nation off the gold standard and allowed deficits in the budget, and disliked the concessions to labor. Roosevelt responded with a new program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the unemployed.

In 1936 he was re-elected by a large margin. Feeling he was armed with popular support, he sought legislation to enlarge the Supreme Court, which had been invalidating key New Deal measures. Roosevelt lost the Supreme Court battle, but a revolution in constitutional law took place. Thereafter the Government could legally