(At the end of the year, Congress ratified the 21st Amendment and ended Prohibition for good.) Roosevelt’s quest to end the Great Depression was just beginning, and would ramp up in what came to be known as “ The First 100 Days.” Roosevelt kicked things off by asking Congress to take the first step toward ending Prohibition-one of the more divisive issues of the 1920s-by making it legal once again for Americans to buy beer. In his first “ fireside chat” three days later, the president urged Americans to put their savings back in the banks, and by the end of the month almost three quarters of them had reopened. On March 9, Congress passed Roosevelt’s Emergency Banking Act, which reorganized the banks and closed the ones that were insolvent. The next day, Roosevelt declared a four-day bank holiday to stop people from withdrawing their money from shaky banks.

He promised that he would act swiftly to face the “dark realities of the moment” and assured Americans that he would “wage a war against the emergency” just as though “we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” His speech gave many people confidence that they’d elected a man who was not afraid to take bold steps to solve the nation’s problems.ĭid you know? Unemployment levels in some cities reached staggering levels during the Great Depression: By 1933, Toledo, Ohio's had reached 80 percent, and nearly 90 percent of Lowell, Massachusetts, was unemployed. “First of all,” he said, “let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Roosevelt delivered his first inaugural address before 100,000 people on Washington’s Capitol Plaza. On March 4, 1933, during the bleakest days of the Great Depression, newly elected President Franklin D.

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