After two successful and dramatic years, the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt would face their first

electoral test in the 1934 U.S. midterm election. History says that presidents lose seats in Congress

during midterm elections,

but Franklin Roosevelt has already defied history four or five times.

Can he make it six?

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music 20th century. Episode 290, The Second New Deal.

So far in this podcast, I've devoted, what, five episodes just to cover the first year of the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, 1933.

Well, it was an important year.

Today, I want to move on to the next couple of years of the Roosevelt administration, but before I do that, I still need to say a word about one last event in 1933 related to the administration's

foreign policy. I already mentioned the London Economic Conference, which was held in June

1933. Herbert Hoover had pushed for this conference as a way for the nations of the world to address the Great Depression collectively.

But Franklin Roosevelt was skeptical of the project. The British and the French were talking up a plan for debt relief and stabilization of the value of the U.S. dollar as key components of an international plan to fight the

depression. Debt relief, of course, meant the United States giving debt relief to the British and the

French, an idea that was not very popular in the United States. Idaho Republican Senator William

Borah spoke for many Americans when he said that, quote,

The troubles of the world were really due to the war and to the persistence of Europe in keeping great armaments.

And therefore he saw no reason to bail out these unrepentant warmongers.

More important was Roosevelt's opposition to pegging the value of the dollar at a relatively

high level. A major component of the New Deal program was to lower the value of the dollar

to undo the damage that had been done by the

deflation America had experienced since 1929. And so Roosevelt sent a cable to the conference

...