Depression. Immediately following his inauguration, Roosevelt went to the White House to work on programs to end the Great Depression. In his first 100 days in office, there were 15 programs or laws developed to end the Great Depression Some of these programs helped provide jobs, regulate the banking industry and the stock market, and also gave help to farmers. More programs followed after the first 100 days. The government was very active in trying to end the depression.

President Hoover and President Roosevelt had ideas about how to deal with the Great Depression. While there were a few similarities, there were far more differences.

The differences between President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s philosophies and those of Herbert Hoover can be seen clearly in how they handled the Great Depression. The world together with the American economy experienced downturns less than a year into Hoover’s presidential term. The President hoped that the situation was going to improve but when the economy edged into the depression, Hoover developed and employed a number of strategies to manage the situation. Hoover did not believe in direct influence by the federal government on market prices or controlling businesses. The President rejected proposals to manipulate the value of the currency since he viewed such strategies as leaning towards socialism. Hoover believed it was possible to improve the economy without interfering with American individualism and this position also rejected direct aid to citizens. His approach to the situation was received with much dissatisfaction among the population who instead voted in Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt promised a different approach through the “New Deal”. He instituted direct funding for most of the projects and believed in deficit funding instead of volunteerism as was the case with Hoover. In summary, Roosevelt and Hoover differed majorly in their financial philosophies especially with regards to jump-starting the American economy during the depression.

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt had different ways of dealing with the Great Depression. For the first two years of the Great Depression, President Hoover took very little action to deal with the depression. He believed in a laissez-faire philosophy. This philosophy meant the government would play a very limited role in dealing with the economy. The inaction of the government made things worse when the depression began. When Hoover tried to take action in his last year of his presidency, it was too little, too late.

When President Roosevelt took office, he immediately launched a series of programs to ease the effects of the Great Depression. There were 15 major programs in his first 100 days in office. These programs helped put some people back to work, helped to regulate the banking industry and the stock market and helped farmers who were struggling. While these programs didn’t end the Great Depression, they did help to reduce unemployment somewhat and ease the suffering of some of the people. Plus, President Roosevelt launched some major programs that we still have today. One of these is the creation of the Social Security system.

The inaction of Hoover made things worse while the actions of Roosevelt helped ease the hardships many people faced as a result of the Great Depression.

President Hoover was a firm believer in what he called rugged individualism. Like a lot of Americans, he thought that people should stand on their own two feet and provide for themselves and their families without expecting any direct help from the government. Hoover strongly believed that providing the poor and unemployed with federal assistance would sap their moral fiber and make them reliant on the government.

That said, Hoover was not completely opposed to all forms of government involvement in ameliorating the worst effects of the Great Depression. He authorized millions of dollars of federal funds to be allocated to the states, which were then to be used for poor relief. But Hoover still fundamentally believed that the unfettered operation of the market economy—rather than government intervention—was the best way to bring prosperity back to the United States. Allied to this was a firm belief in the benefits of private philanthropy to help those unable to fend for themselves.

FDR's approach was completely different. He believed that the Great Depression was such an unprecedented disaster that radical changes were necessary to dig the United States out of the huge economic hole it was in. This meant massive direct involvement by the federal government on a hitherto unprecedented and unthinkable scale. Under FDR, a number of federal agencies were set up to provide jobs for the unemployed and get the economy moving again. Vast sums of tax dollars were devoted to this end, representing a radical departure from the prevailing economic and political wisdom, which had always held that balanced budgets were essential for the nation's well-being. (Ironically, in 1932 FDR had run on a platform of promising to balance the budget.)

For the first time ever, the United States federal government was now actively involved in providing millions of jobs that would normally have been created by the private sector. FDR reckoned that the private sector, exhausted by the Great Depression, simply lacked the ability to tackle the scourge of mass unemployment. Only the federal government, with its vast power and huge financial resources, could really make a difference.