The New Deal was the name of an action plan launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to address the Great Depression in the 1930s. The author states that the policies that Roosevelt introduced with the New Deal were a departure from the prevailing economic ideas of the time, which provided for very limited government intervention in the economy. Roosevelt realized that in order to sustain industry in a country as large as the United States, the country's transportation infrastructure needed to be built. Among the things that his board decided on with the New Deal were new banking laws, new economic laws, social system reforms that ensured the rights of trade unions and unemployment benefits. Roosevelt also banned child labor. Roosevelt enacted legislation that reduced the salaries of public officials, including the president himself, and used the savings (which amounted to about five hundred million dollars) to create a number of new job-creating projects.
