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After a great rise in the stock market, the 1929 crash brought about an economic depression, which had to be addressed
by Hoover, and then, more successfully, by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The most striling characteristic of the stock market
in 1929 was investors' obsession with speculation. Hoover believed that unemployment relef would be the most beneficent
if it came from private charities. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was designed to loan money to financial institutions
to prevent bankruptcies. Franklin D. Roosevelt and his advisers believed that to restore purchasing power to farmers, production
should be cut. Roosevelt's Hundred Days banking legislation was designed to support strong banks and eliminate the weaker
ones. Franklin D. Roosevelt's initial New Deal legislation was surprisingly conservative. The Hundred Days refers to the period
immediately after Roosevelt's first inauguration. The Tennessee Valley Authority was designed to bring modernization and jobs
to desolate areas of the upper rural South. Huey Long advocated "sharing the wealth." The Social Security Act of 1935 was
a fundamentally conservative measure.
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