A-3 In 1939, the United States was still ensnared in a severe economic depression, one that crippled the nation for a full decade. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal experiments had brought some relief to a population reeling from unemployment, inflation, and scarcity, but considerable transformations—vast federal spending, price regulations, job placement, the expansion of unions, greater access to home loans, social security for the elderly and disabled, and the public's restored confidence in their government—did little to bring prosperity to the American people.
By the end of the 1930s, 17% of the American work force remained unemployed; 30% still lived in poverty; and the most needy and least organized citizens, such as domestic workers, sharecroppers, new immigrants, blacks, and unmarried women, reaped few of the New Deal benefits. FDR's great experiments, then, did not end the Great Depression. Only mobilization for a world war would bring an end to the most devastating economic crisis in United States history.
In late 1939, a full two years before the United States entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided it would be necessary—and perhaps wise—to invest time and money into national defense. Despite his promise to keep the nation out of the war escalating abroad, Roosevelt carefully and deliberately prepared the country for a worst-case scenario. By the spring of 1940, he convinced Congress to increase defense spending, enlarge the army, and expand the U.S. military air fleet. Through billions of dollars in federal spending—largely focused on rearmament and national security—he managed to funnel money into a peacetime draft, increase wages for military personnel, offer subsidies for defense manufacturing, and grant loans to aid Great Britain and the Soviet Union. (Not exactly invoking neutrality in his decision to assist the