SOURCE: "Franklin D. Roosevelt on the Verge of the Presidency," in The Antioch Review, Vol. XVI, No. 1, March, 1956, pp. 46-79.

In the following essay, Tugwell surveys the challenges faced by Roosevelt at the beginning of his first term of presidency in 1933.

Early in the day on 4 March 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt with his new official family, asked the blessing of God on the administration which was about to begin. He might well ask for Divine assistance; no other seemed adequate to the national exigency. The degeneration of the economic system had not been stayed by the prospect of a change in Washington. If anything, conditions were worse; and they were certainly worse in the whole financial structure. In fact the sickness which, until February, had been kept fairly far away from the centers of finance by one means or another¹ was now reaching those welldefended citadels, the metropolitan banks...