Within the first hundred days after the inauguration dozens of agencies were set up to dispense emergency and short-term governmental aid and to provide temporary jobs, employement and construction projects, and youth work in the national forests. The Tennessee River Valley Authority (TVA) undertook to provide flood control, hydroelectric power, and economic reconstruction for an entire seven-state area.

In 1935 the New Deal shifted to provide wider safeguards. The Social Security Act provided for nationwide systems of old age and unemployment insurance. Maximum hours and minimum wages were also set in certain industries in 1938.

Some New Deal laws were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, but by 1937 Roosevelt had made enough new appointments to achieve a court majority favouring most of his measures.

In 1937 Roosevelt, under pressure from the business community, curbed government spending drastically in order to balance the budget, which sent the economy plummeting back towards 1932 levels.

In the fall of 1937 the president inaugurated an Anti-Monopoly program, massive government spending began again, and by June 1938 the crisis was past.

Despite resistance from the business community most of the New Deal reforms became a permanent part of the U.S.A. For the last 60 years the social safety net of the New Deal has cushioned the severity of the cyclical business downturns and prevented so far a repetition of a full-scale depression.