that Uncle Sam was watching them. Numerous other legislation was passed including the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, The Home Owners’ Corporation, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. All of these measures helped insure Americans of a better way of life then and now. Perhaps the biggest impact of the Great Depression and the New Deal Policies was the isolation of America from the rest of the world. The American government and its people were so absorbed in their own self-interests and miseries that they ignored what was happening in Europe. In the 1930s, Roosevelt’s foreign policy was based on the needs of internal economic recovery. Despite the tariff agreements, the decade was characterized by international economic welfare. Neutrality legislation was enacted in Congress to prevent involvement in the event of war. In truth, they had decided on this policy, years before the Japanese overran the Chinese Province, Manchuria. If the United States had backed the League of Nations, the Japanese might have been brought to their knees. However, Washington, backing the isolationist sentiments of the American people, proclaimed the Stinson Doctrine that merely declared that the United States would not recognize any territory acquired by force. There was no real sentiment for armed intervention among depression-ridden Americans, who remained strongly isolationists during the 1930s. The Manchuria incident and the failure of President Roosevelt to make plans at the London Conference to stabilize the national currency and revive international trade may have plunged the world into deeper isolationism and played directly into the hands of power-hungry dictators. American isolationist policies and moods deepened as the war went on. In 1941, Congress rejected a bill that would have granted twenty thousand German-Jewish children entry to the United States. At the same time, the State Department suppressed earl...
