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- On January 30, 1882 in Hyde Park, New York Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born.
- James Roosevelt,
- Franklin's father, was a prosperous railroad official and landowner(Lawson 25). His
- predecessors, when they came from
- the Netherlands, were succes Roosevelt learned from private tutors, not going to school
- until the age of fourteen. He had
- already studied German, Latin and French by the time he had started school(Freidel 6).
- Sailing, bird hunting and stamp
- collecting were among his hobbies. On his In 1896, at the age of fourteen his parents
- sent him away to Groton,
- Massachusetts, to a private, boys only, boarding school. He was not very popular
- among the students, but was
- respected by his peers and was never the object of pranks pulled by the ol From there,
- Roosevelt went on to enter
- Harvard in 1900. There too Roosevelt remained an average student, making it through
- with a C average most of the
- time(Hacker 19). At Harvard, his social activities took preference over his academic
- pursuit and the In 1903 Roosevelt
- graduated from Harvard and entered the Columbia Law School. He dropped out in his
- third year after passing the New
- York bar examination(Hacker 24). Soon after, Roosevelt started practicing law with a
- New York law firm.
- While still in law school, Roosevelt met Anna Eleanor Roosevelt a distant cousin, only a
- few years younger than
- him(Alsop 28). They were married on St. Patrick's day, March 17th, 1905(Freidel 13).
- He was twenty-three and she
- was twenty-one. Her fathe A few years later in 1910, Roosevelt accepted the
- Democratic nomination for the New York
- State Senate(Freidel 17). He won the elections, and in the following January he entered
- the Senate at the young age of
- twenty-eight(Freidel 18). Later in 1912 he ra In July of 1921, while vacationing at
- Campobello Island, he went sailing
- with his children. One day, they saw, what appeared to be a forest fire, on a nearby
- island they quickly sailed to shore to
- help put out the fire. It took a couple of hours and w was able to walk in the pool
- unaided. His disease, poliomyelitis, had
- affected him on land but in the water he was as quick as anyone. In 1926 he bought
- Warm Springs for $200,000(Hacker
- 40). In 1927 he contributed two-thirds of his wealth(Freidel 47) a His physical
- disabilities didn't hinder his climb of the
- political ladder. In 1928 Roosevelt ran for governor of New York and won the election
- with a large margin. One of his
- main goals was that the state should own the electric companies and other util In October
- of 1929, when Roosevelt was
- still Governor, the stock market suddenly collapsed. This caused nation-wide panic.
- Grain and cotton prices dropped
- tremendously due to an overabundant supply, and many farmers were out of jobs.
- Rapidly, people w Roosevelt did not
- run for the presidency in 1928 because that year, most of the country was in favor of a
- Republican candidate for
- president. Four years later in 1932, a week before his fiftieth birthday, Roosevelt
- announced his candidacy for president
- Through his campaign speeches he preached of a 'New Deal' for the American people,
- one that would lift them out of the
- depression. Now he was going to fulfill his promise. Roosevelt did not sit back and
- watch the country take itself out of a
- depression. uests would be permitted to reopen and those that couldn't, wouldn't. Banks
- that couldn't meet withdrawals
- requests would, together with federal aid, meet the withdrawal demands(Lawson 48). Of
- the nineteen thousand banks,
- only about twenty-four hundred Like he said in campaign speeches, If I were elected
- President, my first step would be
- to mobilize the country for war on unemployment(Woolf). This is exactly what he
- started to do. Another main bill passed
- in the hundred days was the Civilian Conserv He also signed into law one of the most
- important laws that today helps
- back up our bank system. Until that time there was no insurance to cover for banks that
- went bankrupt or collapsed. The
- Banking Act of 1933 changed all of this. The government put a He also accomplished
- many things which greatly boosted
- the economy. He reduced the 1934 federal budget by 13%. Although he often spoke
- that the American Navy and
- Marines should be the best in the world, he was not hesitant in cutting the 1934 defense
- bud On August 14, 1935 he
- signed into law the Social Security Act. This act offered protection to the needy and old
- through pensions and public aid,
- and promoted unemployment insurance.
- He ran again for a second term in 1936 against Alfred M. Landon of Kansas and beat
- him by well over eleven million of
- the popular vote, and won 523 out of the total 531 electoral votes, the biggest landslide
- since James Monroe defeated
- John Quincy Adams Again he ran for a third term in 1940 against Henry A. Wallace. He
- beat his opponent 449 to 82 in
- the electoral voting. He ran for last time in 1944, and won again with an easy margin.
- On March 30, 1945, Roosevelt returned to Warm Springs to take a rest from the
- presidency. On April 12 the only
- president in American history to serve more than two terms had died. He served his
- people more than twelve years and
- had now taken his final re
- <br><br><b>Bibliography</b><br><br>
- Alsop, Joseph, FDR, A Centenary Rememberance, The Viking Press, New York,
- 1982.
- Hacker, Jeffrey H., Franklin D. Roosevelt, Franklin Watts, New York, 1983.
- Freidel, Frank, A Rendezvous With Destiny, Little, Brown and Company, Boston,
- 1990.
- Lawson, Don, FDR's New Deal, Thomas Y. Crowell, New York, 1974.
- Woolf, S.J., Thomas Depicts the Socialist Utopia, New York Times Magazine, July 24,
- 1932,
- The New York Times Company.
- <br><br>
- Words: 958
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