Publisher's Synopsis
The social and economic policies implemented by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during his 12-year Administration took a revolutionary approach to combating the suffering imposed upon the American people by the Great Depression after the stock market crash of 1929. The federal government, before the New Deal programs were enacted in the 1930's, did not provide widescale public works programs or extend financial relief to impoverished and unemployed Americans. Instead, a system of voluntarism and private charity strong advocated by President Herbert Hoover, were the primary means whereby the unemployed and those without economic resources could obtain relief.
New Deal programs such as Civil Works and the Civilian Conservation Corps. which put Americans to work and the passage of the Social Security Act to provide old age benefits as well as Unemployment Insurance, were major departures from the standard manner that poverty was managed in the United States. This monograph looks at the influence that a late 19th and early 20th century religious movement known as the Social Gospel has on President Roosevelt and his New Deal policies and programs.
A close analysis of his addresses, inaugural speeches and State of the Union orations demonstrate that President Roosevelt took the ideas presented in the Social Gospel Movement, mainly that Jesus wanted men to help one another and for the leaders of the State to use its resources to aid those in need, in order to formulate and implement his New Deal policies. A study of the president's early life with an emphasis on his relationship with his parents, his Groton headmaster Endicott Peabody as well as his Labor Secretary Frances Perkins will demonstrate that these mentors influenced his religious principles which led to his New Deal policies.
