The New Deal — History Reading Comprehension Lesson

Reading Passage

The New Deal

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd President of the United States on March 4, 1933, the nation was in the grip of the worst economic crisis in its history. The Great Depression had been grinding on for more than three years. One in four Americans was unemployed. Banks had failed across the country, wiping out people’s savings. Farmers couldn’t sell their crops. Millions of families had lost their homes. ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,’ Roosevelt famously declared in his inaugural address, projecting confidence and determination. He promised a ‘New Deal’ for the American people.

Roosevelt moved with extraordinary speed in his first hundred days in office — a period that became a benchmark for presidential action. He immediately declared a bank holiday, closing banks to stop a wave of panic withdrawals, and pushed through the Emergency Banking Act to stabilize the banking system. He signed dozens of major pieces of legislation, creating new agencies and programs at a pace never seen before or since. The New Deal was not a single unified plan but a collection of experiments — some successful, some not — aimed at providing relief to the desperate, recovering the economy, and reforming the financial system to prevent future collapses.

The New Deal programs touched nearly every area of American life. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) put young men to work planting trees, building trails, and improving national parks. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) employed millions in building roads, bridges, schools, and public buildings — and also funded writers, artists, musicians, and actors who produced public murals, plays, and guidebooks. The Agricultural Adjustment Act paid farmers to reduce production in order to raise crop prices. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insured bank deposits, restoring public confidence in the banking system. Social Security, created in 1935, provided a safety net for elderly and unemployed Americans.

The New Deal was enormously popular with many Americans who saw the federal government taking action to help ordinary people for the first time at such scale. But it also had fierce critics. Conservatives argued that it represented dangerous government overreach and threatened free enterprise. The Supreme Court struck down several New Deal programs as unconstitutional. Roosevelt responded with a controversial proposal to add justices to the Court — his ‘court-packing plan’ — which failed in Congress but may have influenced the Court’s shift toward upholding New Deal legislation. Some economists argued the New Deal prolonged the Depression by creating uncertainty; others credit it with preventing complete economic collapse.

The New Deal did not end the Great Depression — it was World War II and the massive military spending it required that finally brought full employment and economic recovery. But the New Deal permanently transformed the relationship between the federal government and American citizens. Programs like Social Security, federal bank deposit insurance, and the regulation of financial markets remain central features of American life today. The idea that the federal government has a responsibility to protect citizens from economic hardship — controversial in Roosevelt’s day — became a foundational principle of American governance. Roosevelt served four terms and is consistently ranked among the greatest U.S. presidents.

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