Opposition to The New Deal Essay

The New Deal, it’s many Administrations and their policies were making major changes to American Industry and society. As a result of this, some people were quite unhappy and attempted to stall The New Deal. As time went on, FDR’s gained more and more power over the reformation of the American economy and businesses. People feared the amount of power FDR had and started questioning his intent. What really caused people to question Franklin D. Roosevelt was his attempt to â€Å"fix† the Supreme Court. As the nine judges making up the court were mainly old and conservative, FDR believed they were too opinionated and too eager use their authority without considering the consequences. Therefore he decided it wise to request he appoint up to six new, open-minded judges. Some people saw this as FRD attempting to tamper with the constitution in order to give himself more power, and it scared them. It was mainly because of this reason that FDR’s request was turned down, but the judges certainly seemed to have got the point and from then on were a lot more careful. Republicans certainly disliked The New Deal and found it dangerous. Leading Republican, Frank Knox, summed up Republican views on The New Deal by saying â€Å"The New Deal candidate has been leading us toward Moscow†. By this he meant that with Roosevelt’s increasing powers and his guidance and control over industry it seemed that he was slowly but surely verging towards communism. They also disliked Roosevelt’s industrial laws because they took power of the owners and benefited the workers with policies such as trade unions and social security. Some extreme opposition came from a self-educated man with a degree in law after only 8 months – he was a â€Å"shameless politician with no morals† and he fought dirty. In order to get where he was he had fixed ballots by placing his own men at available posts in the state government, he had used blackmail and bribery to get votes. Sometimes opponents were as much as kidnapped on Long’s orders. Huey Long became US senate in 1930 and claimed that if he were to become president he would adopt the policy of confiscating any personal fortunes of over 3 million U.S dollars and giving $5000 to each and every less wealthy family. Long did not at any point explain how he would do this, but the idea of much needed money being given to them for nothing was jumped at by the poorer families, and Long gained a lot of support. Fortunately for FDR, Long’s career ended due to assassination before he was able to challenge him. So with certain aspects of luck, and a well-conducted New Deal, FRD managed to rescue America from its depression without any great hitches. There were careless flaws such as the move Roosevelt made trying to fix the SC without considering the consequences, but in the end all went to plan and opposition was only opposition, and not a threat to the New Deal.