Democrat Franklin Roosevelt was elected mainly because he promised to try new solutions to end the Great Depression.

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: "This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

STEVE EMBER:Soon after he was elected, Roosevelt launched a number of imaginative economic policies to solve the crisis.

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: "Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our great natural resources.

"Hand in hand with that, we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers. And by engaging, on a national scale, in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. Yes, the task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products, and with this, the power to purchase the output of our cities.

"It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the federal, the state, and the local governments act forthwith on the demands that their costs be drastically reduced."