You are exactly right, sir!
Reading up a bit on the Depression from Peter Jennings’ “The Century”:
Roosevelt provided a sense of supreme confidence. He had no remedy, perhaps, but...he did have energy - a bouyant audacious spirit...
A letter he received said “People are looking to you almost as they look to God”...
No less a Republican than Gov. Landon of Kansas pronounced that “even the iron hand of a national dictator is in preference to a paralytic stroke”, while Senator David Reed went one step further - “If this country ever need a Mussolini, it is now”....
On the day he was inaugurated, Roosevelt closed every bank in the country. He would decide which banks deserved federal support and which would have to go under. It was the day the money stopped; literally, you had to cadge a meal, live on the tap in places that knew you, pay with a check for a cab ride and once - I remember- for a shoeshine.
Roosevelt’s advisors worked long hours to come up with a rescue bill that propped up banks with federal loans. It was rushed through the House (with cries of “Vote! Vote!” and on to the Senate where it was passed.
And from Alistair Cooke’s “America”:
On the day he was inaugurated, Roosevelt closed every bank in the country. He would decide which banks deserved federal support and which would have to go under. It was the day the money stopped; literally, you had to cadge a meal, live on the tap in places that knew you, pay with a check for a cab ride and once - I remember- for a shoeshine.
Cooke also writes about the NRA (National Recovery Administration) which for two years fixed the prices and wages of everything from “steelworkers to burlesque strippers”.