There is a popular cluster of myths surrounding our Great Depression:
1) It just happened unexpectedly. (Crashes, including the one in 1929, are the predictable and inevitable consequence of inflationary monetary policies.)
2) Hoover made it worse by not helping. (Hoover intervened massively and continuously.)
3) FDR’s New Deal rescued us. (FDR continued and expanded Hoover’s interventions, close to the point of fascism.)
Lets take a look at #3. Here are a two illustrations of FDR’s New Deal policies:
Roosevelt supporter-turned-critic John T. Flynn, in The Roosevelt Myth (1944), wrote:
The NRA [National Recovery Administration] was discovering it could not enforce its rules. Black markets grew up. Only the most violent police methods could procure enforcement. In Sidney Hillman’s garment industry the code authority employed enforcement police. They roamed through the garment district like storm troopers. They could enter a man’s factory, send him out, line up his employees, subject them to minute interrogation, take over his books on the instant. Night work was forbidden. Flying squadrons of these private coat-and-suit police went through the district at night, battering down doors with axes looking for men who were committing the crime of sewing together a pair of pants.
“A hapless New Jersey tailor named Jack Magid became nationally famous after he was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned by the code police for the “crime” of pressing a suit of clothes for 35 cents when the Tailors’ Code fixed the price at 40 cents. The NRA was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 27, 1935.” (from mises.org)
“Executive Order 6102 is an Executive Order signed on April 5, 1933 by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ‘forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, and Gold Certificates.’ The Order required most people to deliver on or before May 1, 1933 all but a small amount gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve. Under the Trading With the Enemy Act of October 6, 1917, as amended on March 9, 1933, violation of Executive Order 6102 was punishable by fine up to $10,000 ($166,640 if adjusted for inflation as of 2008) or up to ten years in prison, or both. Because of this forced immediate sale of gold to the Federal Reserve at the government set price of $20.67 per troy ounce, this Executive Order is often referred to as the Gold Confiscation of 1933. Shortly after this forced sale, the price of gold from the treasury for international transactions was raised to $35 an ounce.” (from wikipedia.org)