Franklin D. Roosevelt Enlightened Administrator In The 1930's

Enlightened Administrator Essay As the Great Depression hit in the 1930’s, Franklin D. Roosevelt saw a problem in the current structure of the economy and political policies and, in his Commonwealth Club Address, he offers a solution with the regulatory state and “enlightened administrator”. One area that desperately needed a solution was the agriculture industry, specifically in the dust bowl, as detailed in Timothy Egan’s novel The Worst Hard Time. The unchecked production and prevailing individualistic mindset of the farmers had created an ecological problem of disastrous proportions. With the aid of new programs and leaders, the people struggled to solve the problem, with uncertain success, as with many of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. In Roosevelt’s speech to the Commonwealth Club, he gives a brief history of America and, while commending American industry, offers a solution to the depression by the creation of a regulatory state, restricting business where needed for the …show more content…
Why a group of individualistic farmers were supportive of the federal government’s aid can be explained in one citizen of the dust bowl’s words “If Roosevelt burned down the capital we would cheer and say ‘Well, we at least got a fire started, anyhow.”(304). The hardworking farmers found faith in the fact that someone somewhere was doing something, anything at all. When Roosevelt’s visit to Amarillo brought rain, it was an almost unimaginably symbolic reassurance that times would get better. And get better they did, the drought ended in the 1940s, and, almost laughably, the farmers ripped up the shelterbelt trees to plant more wheat and by using up not the soil but the water in the Ogallala aquifer, were able to become prosperous again. This in a way shows the transient nature of the conservation project, similar to the many projects and agencies of the New Deal