Picture the United States in early 1933: banks are collapsing, one in four workers has no job, farmers are burning crops they can't sell while people starve in cities, and confidence in the entire economic system has evaporated. That's the mess Franklin D. Roosevelt inherited the moment he was inaugurated in January 1933.

His answer was a completely new relationship between the federal government and ordinary Americans. Instead of leaving the economy to sort itself out (which is what his predecessor, Hoover, had largely done), Roosevelt had the government step in directly — giving people jobs, food, and financial protection. This programme became known as the New Deal.

Think of it like a doctor treating a patient having a heart attack: Relief is the emergency resuscitation, Recovery is getting the patient walking again, and Reform is putting them on a long-term health plan so they don't collapse again.

The sheer speed of these early changes gave this period its nickname: The Hundred Days.

FDR didn't create one giant fix — he created a whole toolbox of separate agencies, each targeting one specific problem (farming, unemployment, banking, electricity, and so on). Because each agency had a long official name, people just used the abbreviation — and collectively they became known as the Alphabet Agencies.

The examiner tip in the source material is genuinely useful here: write the full name once, then just use the abbreviation. Let's go through each one properly so you actually understand what it did, not just what it stands for.

AAA — Agricultural Adjustment Administration

Problem it solved: Farmers were producing too much food, so prices had collapsed and they were going broke — even though people in cities were hungry.

Solution: Paid farmers to produce less, which pushed prices (and therefore profits) back up.

Result: Farmers' revenue doubled 1933–1939. But it was controversial — some farmers destroyed crops that could have fed the poor, which looked terrible while people were starving.

FERA — Federal Emergency Relief Administration

Poured $500 million into direct relief — soup kitchens and similar schemes. Between 1933–1935 it distributed over $3.1 billion and gave work to more than 20 million people. This is the most "pure Relief" of all the agencies.

CWA — Civil Works Administration

Aimed to create 4 million short-term jobs before winter 1933 hit. It succeeded numerically, but many of the jobs were essentially pointless "make-work" jobs nicknamed boondoggles — the classic example is paying 100 people in Washington to scare pigeons away with balloons. It only lasted one winter, and all 4 million people became unemployed again afterwards.

PWA — Public Works Administration

Unlike CWA, this created 4 million long-term jobs building genuinely useful infrastructure — schools, hospitals, dams, airports. Great for skilled workers, but not much help for the millions of unskilled workers who needed jobs immediately.

NRA — National Recovery Administration

Set fair prices, working conditions, and a minimum wage, and banned child labour and sweatshops. Businesses that met these standards could display the "Blue Eagle" symbol, and the government encouraged people to buy from Blue Eagle businesses. By 1933, over 2 million employers were on board and 22 million+ workers benefited.

CCC — Civilian Conservation Corps

Gave temporary work to single unemployed men aged 18–25 — clearing land, planting trees, building reservoirs. By 1938, over 2 million men had passed through it, receiving free food, shelter, and clothing, plus transferable skills. The catch: pay was just $1 a week, and each project lasted only six months.

HOLC — Home Owners' Loan Corporation

Helped people keep their homes by offering lower-interest mortgage loans. Over 800,000 people successfully repaid HOLC loans. But it didn't help farmers, and it excluded houses worth more than $20,000.

TVA — Tennessee Valley Authority

This is probably the single most impressive Alphabet Agency, so it's worth understanding in full. The Tennessee Valley was one of the poorest regions in America — half its population relied on charity, and only 3% of farms had electricity. The TVA built dams to stop flooding and soil erosion, and those same dams generated cheap hydroelectric power.

By 1940, the TVA was the USA's biggest electricity source; by 1950, 93% of farmers had power. One serious flaw: Black Americans were not permitted to own a TVA model farm — a reminder that even the New Deal's biggest success story had real racial limits.

Three separate pressures forced Roosevelt's hand:

1. The Supreme Court struck him down. It ruled that the NRA had illegally tried to set prices and wages — a power that belongs to Congress, not the president. It also ruled the AAA had illegally paid farmers not to grow food — that was a power belonging to state governments, not the president.
2. Unemployment was still huge. 11 million Americans were still jobless in 1935, and strikes kept breaking out.
3. The 1936 election was coming. FDR needed to win back critics on all sides before voters went to the polls.

Key features of the Second New Deal

Here's the key thing to understand about opposition to the New Deal: it wasn't a simple "some people liked it, some didn't." It was attacked from two completely opposite directions at once — which actually tells you Roosevelt was steering a careful middle path.

From the right: "It goes too far"

• Republicans believed in "small government" — the idea that government should stay out of people's lives and let them succeed or fail on their own merit. They feared the New Deal would make Americans lazy and dependent on handouts, and thought FDR had grabbed too much presidential power.
• Wealthy Americans resented paying higher taxes to fund the New Deal — money they saw being spent on tree-planting schemes or given to the homeless.
• Business leaders disliked the NRA forcing them to improve conditions, pay a minimum wage, and limit working hours — they felt it hurt profits and competitiveness.

From the left: "It doesn't go far enough"

Senator Huey Long of Louisiana argued the New Deal was far too timid. His plan: confiscate every dollar a person owned above $5 million and redistribute it, which he claimed would give every American family a house, a radio, and a car.

The Supreme Court's opposition

Unlike political opponents, the Supreme Court's opposition was legal, not ideological. It ruled Roosevelt had exceeded his constitutional powers — the NRA's price/wage-setting and the AAA's farm payments both belonged to Congress or state governments, not the president. This forced FDR to redesign those policies as the Soil Conservation Act and other Second New Deal measures.

Unemployment fell from 12.8 million (1933) to 5.6 million (1941) — that sounds impressive, but it never dropped below 10% throughout the entire 1930s. For all the money and effort poured into the New Deal, a huge number of Americans stayed jobless for the whole decade. Why?

Notice the vicious circle hiding in point 3: unemployment stays high → wages stay low → people can't afford consumer goods (cars, radios, fridges) → sales of those goods drop → the businesses that make them have to lay off workers → unemployment stays high. The New Deal never fully broke this loop on its own.

What actually ended unemployment: World War Two

By the late 1930s, many people feared the New Deal had failed and the US might slide back into depression. Then the war changed everything. Car factories switched to making planes, tanks, and guns. Farmers who'd been struggling to sell crops suddenly had huge demand to feed soldiers — plus exports to Britain and the Soviet Union. Coal, oil, iron, and steel all boomed. Combine that industrial surge with millions of men joining the armed forces, and unemployment nearly vanished: just 670,000 unemployed Americans by 1944.

This is the exam's favourite type of question, because there's no single correct answer — you're expected to weigh up both sides and reach your own supported judgement. The trick is knowing the evidence on both sides well enough to argue either way convincingly.

Nationwide successes (hard to dispute)

• Improved regulation of banking — the money invested helped the economy recover.
• Fireside chats rebuilt public trust in government.
• Created a national welfare system — before the New Deal, the USA was the only developed Western country without social security.

Group-by-group breakdown — success vs failure