The unemployment rate when Roosevelt took office was over 20% and these were primary wage earners.
The banking system was collapsing, taking customer’s savings with it. 30% of the money supply simply vanished, there was no FDIC to protect them. “Demand” disappeared, no one had the money to buy anything. Businesses wouldn’t hire or expand.
Programs like the Civilian Conservation Corp were a better option than the dole, which was pretty much the only alternative. There simply were no jobs to be had in the private sector with the economy caught in a deflationary spiral.
We’ve had numerous depressions. We had one in 1921. Like most of them, it lasted about a year to a year and a half. Then the economy boomed again, especially with Coolidge’s supply-side tax cuts and spending cuts.
When teh depression hit in 1929, the government tried to fix it (Hoover was a progressive, albeit a lighter progressive than his successor.) Then FDR came in and got government massively involved.
Taht made what should hve been a normal depression into The Great Depression — much longer and deeper than it should have been.
but it helped centralize power, which is all that progressives like FDR really cared about.